Past actions cause present dangers.
Eugenie
DesChamps thinks she is safe, hidden in the English village of Little
Houghton. She paints landscapes to
supplement her income. She embarks on a
flirtation with Charles Audley. To her
the world seems radiant, so very different from eight years ago.
No
one knows that she once was a toast of Paris, a pretense she used to acquire
information to pass on to English spies.
Eugenie hated the corrupt French government that had caused the deaths
of her family. When a French agent
discovered her double game, she barely
escaped with her life.
Eight
years ago, Tobias Kennit worked with Eugenie, stealing information about
Napoleon’s troop movements. Then their
operation crashed. He fled, believing
that Eugenie was executed as a traitor to her home country. Toby abandoned his undercover spying and
became a gamester and a rake.
Yet
now the English spycatcher Roger Nazenby has approached Toby once more. He wants him to protect a cryptographer
living in the village of Little Houghton.
French spies have infiltrated England to capture Charles Audley and
return with him to France. Toby agrees
to the assignment only because the woman he wants to marry (Melly Ratcliffe)
lives in that village.
Charles
Audley returned to his home village for peace and quiet after stressful years
in London developing a series of ciphers for English agents. His latest ciphers led to English victories
in the Peninsular War.
In
Little Houghton, he is charmed by Eugenie DesChamps, a mysterious French
artist. Their flirtation distracts him
from his cryptography, but he feels no guilt whenever he is in her company.
When
Toby sees Eugenie, he is shocked.
Eugenie is not dead, and he wants answers from a woman he thought was a
double agent. Is she in Little Houghton
to help kidnap the cryptographer? She
convinces him that she is not—but who is the threat to Charles Audley? And can they protect Audley when they do not
know when or where the attack will strike?
French
agent Didier Poulaine has spent eight years weaving together the snippets of
threads to help him locate the only two spies who ever escaped him: Eugenie de la Croix and an Englishman
masquerading as a French military officer.
He tracks them to Little Houghton, the location of the cryptographer he
came to England to kidnap—or kill.
Poulaine’s
threads have woven together. Three lives
intersect again and involve a fourth.
Blood must be shed before the past is purged. Whose blood?
The Dangers for Spies is a romantic suspense set in
Regency England, part of the Hearts in Hazard series. While this novel and The Game of Spies have interconnected characters, D4Spies is a complete work on its
own. However, readers will have a richer
experience if they have also read The
Game of Spies.
