WolfeBlade: de Wolfe Pack Generations by Kathryn Veque (top 20 books to read .TXT) 📗

He really wasn’t speaking to Harman at that point, but to his son. Nicholas swallowed the last bite in his mouth.

“Who?” Nicholas said. “I surely cannot go.”

John shook his head. “Not you,” he said as if his son were an idiot. “I suppose I could take an entire army there, lay siege, and demand answers, but that would take too much time and effort and money. Nay, we must be more subtle than that. A spy, in fact. Someone we can send as a traveler seeking respite or a devoted servant, a gift from one of the de Leia allies. Someone who can ask the right questions of de Leia and find out answers.”

Nicholas frowned. “Directly ask him?”

“He is the one who knows.”

That was true. Nicholas noticed that there was a covered dish on the table, one his father had missed kicking off when he’d put his leg upon the table, and he pulled off the cloth to reveal boiled eggs underneath. He began stuffing them in his mouth.

“Then you send someone to get close to de Leia,” he said, his mouth full. “The man isn’t married, so mayhap we send a mistress to him. A woman who can get into his bed and into his mind. Women can work wonders on men if they are skilled enough.”

John looked at him as if a thought had just struck him. “Giddy.”

Nicholas’ eyebrows lifted. “You feel giddy?” he said before he realized what his father meant. “Do you mean Giddy Garwald?”

John nodded. “The same,” he said. “The woman can suck the steel off a sword. She’d discover what we want to know, straight from de Leia himself.”

Nicholas knew the woman his father was speaking of – a loose woman from a local village who had warmed John’s bed many a time. She was a little older, a little rounder and fuller, but she was pretty. And she knew how to use her mouth and what God gave her between her legs.

Given enough money, the perfect spy.

John smiled as if quite pleased with himself.

“A few coins to Giddy and she’ll do as I ask,” he said as he stood up from the table. “In fact, there’s an apothecary in Gretna Green who has all manner of potions. Potions for truth, among other things. If Giddy’s feminine wiles do not work on de Leia, then mayhap we can find a potion that will do the job for her. We’ll send her on to Falstone well-armed. She’ll find out what we want to know.”

Nicholas simply nodded, grabbing more boiled eggs, as John grabbed his son and pulled him from the cottage without another word to Harman. They simply left, slamming the door behind them.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

John had spoken of his plans in front of Harman, which had been careless, but in hindsight, he didn’t really care. The old man was no longer of any value to him, so the moment Harman delivered his information, he had outlived his worth. It didn’t matter if Harman had heard them speak of the whore named Giddy because the old man wasn’t going to live to see the sunset.

John paused before he mounted his horse.

“Barricade every door, every window, and light the cottage on fire,” he said. “It would not do for Harman the Wise to tell Merek de Leia what he knows.”

Nicholas wasn’t distressed by the command in the least. They had about twenty men with them, so he sent some to light torches and still others to barricade the doors and windows of the cottage, which shared a common wall with another cottage. Anything they lit on fire would carry to other homes.

But that didn’t matter to Nicholas or the de Soulis men – they did as they were told.

Harman must have sensed that something terrible was going to happen because he and his wife slipped out of the cottage through the rear, through the pony’s chamber, taking the little beast with them. They had only what they could carry, moving far enough away that John and Nicholas could not have seen them.

Then, they stayed to the shadows and watched. It wasn’t long before they saw men swarming their little cottage, barricading doors, tossing lit torches in through the windows. The cottage went up in flames remarkably fast as Harman grabbed hold of his wife with one hand, the pony with the other, and made their way out of the village to the southeast. They had their lives, but de Soulis thought they were dead, so it was best that they leave – permanently.

He thought about returning to Falstone to tell Lord de Leia what John de Soulis had planned for him. He considered it carefully. But if valuable information involving the life of his daughter didn’t move the man, surely the plan to send a spy to discover her location wouldn’t move him, either.

Harman didn’t feel inclined to help Merek de Leia one way or the other.

He headed east.

Back at Deadwater, the de Soulis men ended up burning down nearly half the village that day.

CHAPTER TEN

London

She could see him across the street.

Gavriella’s heart leapt into her throat when she realized Andreas was across the street, waiting for her just as he said he would.

He’s here!

Truthfully, she’d been watching for at least two hours. Ever since she had woken up next to Camilla about three hours after she closed her eyes. It wasn’t nearly enough sleep, but she had been too excited, too nervous, to go back to sleep, fearful she would sleep all day and miss something she very much wanted to attend…

Andreas.

It was funny how that fearful, quiet, nervous woman who had arrived at The Asher not long ago was now starting to come out of her shell. Before she met Andreas, meeting a man she’d only just become acquainted with for an unchaperoned excursion would have been unheard of. She was fearful and jumpy, and suspicious of every man she saw. But somehow