Out-take from The Spymaster's Lady

Someone asked how Grey reacted to Annique getting her sight back. The first time he saw he with her eyes working, was he startled?
Or what?

This is an out-take from the working document of The Spymaster's Lady.
(Annique is called Anneka in this draft.)
This bit of story, in Grey's POV, didn't make it into the final draft.


***

Doyle's smuggler contacts passed word that Anneka would be landed in Dover. She was easy enough to spot on the docks. But he was expecting a blind woman. She wasn't blind.

Grey stood in the shadow of a tavern doorway and studied her. Her eyes were definitely working. It was Anneka Villiers he was dealing with, so he had to ask himself if he could possibly, possibly have been wrong about her eyes.

But no one on earth can control the dilation of the pupils. She'd been blind.

More than that, today a kind of wonder clung to her that said the light of her eyes had been taken and returned to her. She looked from coiled ropes to the peeling, rocking boats to a herring gull perched on a bollard and collected the sights into herself like a farm girl putting eggs carefully into a basket.

In the middle of all that noisy, fish-filled squalor, she stood and grinned. Her face transformed itself to the cheeky, blazingly-alive Gypsy boy he'd seen juggling in the town square in Bruges. The light inside her was brighter than sunlight glinting off the sea. For the first time he realized how shadowed she'd been the whole time he'd known her by fear and exhaustion and blindness.

Was she carrying the plans? He didn't see how. He'd bet she wasn't carting a spare handkerchief under that hideous dress. Too bad. It would have been easier for both of them if she'd had the plans on her.

She pulled a shabby black scarf around her countrywoman dress and started into town. It was the first mistake he'd ever seen her make, that clothing. Nothing on earth could make her look a farm girl.

She walked like a dancer through the filthy streets. Like a fire flickering. None of the sailors lounging along the quays or on the doorsteps of brothels called after her. They'd buy a black-haired Irish whore tonight and dream about Anneka, but not one of them thought Anneka's quality was within his reach.

The next hour was busy. He wasn't the only man waiting for her at the dock. Somebody else had been alerted by the same smugglers. There were rats on her trail. He set his men to picking 'em off as soon as they showed themselves. But he had only three agents with him and God knew how many people were after Anneka Villiers this warm fall afternoon. She didn't spot them herself for a while, too busy enjoying life to be properly careful of it.

She was in the market, smiling at some oranges, when she noticed the cut-throat who'd been shadowing her for a block and a half. It was pure joy to watch her slide into the crowd, smooth as slicing water, and vanish.

He sent Fletcher to deal with yet another thug who was lurking among the chicken coops and he took off after Anneka.

He was in time. Barely.

She was cornered in an alley, squared off against five times her fighting weight. Duval and two of his bully boys. When he got there, she'd reduced one Frenchman to a whimpering welter of blood. She was having less luck poking a hole in Henri. She couldn't get close. The Frenchman had a reach like an ape.

So he took care of Henri for her. He didn't break his neck. Anneka kept leaving the bastard alive for some reason and it seemed polite to defer to her judgement. All he did was bounce him off a wall and, hoped, crack one of his shoulders. Then Anneka put a knife into Duval – his arm, not his throat. That was enough to send the pack scurrying.

She sagged against the wall, breathing hard, pale as parchment. If he'd come into that alleyway five minutes later ... the thought of her, bleeding her life out in this dim, ugly squalor, hit like a body blow. She was game enough, and a clever fighter, but she lacked edge. He clenched his hands into fists to stop them shaking.

If she were his agent, he wouldn't let her off the front steps without a backup.
*****