here is unavoidable, you might as well make yourself useful. Pay for your keep, as it were.”
Her stomach fluttered in alarm.
“I happen to be working on a case for Bow Street that requires the translation of a number of Russian documents. You can decipher them.”
Her tension eased a fraction, accompanied by the very faintest sense of disappointment. She’d thought he meant to proposition her again. “Very well. I can do that.”
“Good.” He leaned back in his chair, tugged open a drawer in his desk, and withdrew a large stack of papers. “You can start straight away.”
Anya frowned as he deposited the mountainous pile on the desk in front of her. His lips twitched as he noted her obvious displeasure.
“Unless you have any objection of course?”
She ground her teeth. So, he was going to demand his pound of flesh, was he? “None at all,” she said sweetly. “Would you like me to work in here?”
She prayed he would say yes. She would snoop through every one of his drawers as soon as he left her alone. She would know more about this man who was holding her under polite house arrest.
“No. I have work of my own to do. There’s a desk in your suite you can use.”
“So, I’m to spend all my time indoors?”
“That would be the most sensible option, yes.” He sent her a dry look. “I’m sure you have a lively social calendar, Miss Brown, but you’ll have to curtail your regular amusements if you wish to remain undiscovered.”
She narrowed her eyes at his withering sarcasm. He probably thought her “regular amusements” included spending her evenings at Haye’s brothel on her back or on her knees.
“You want my protection?” he continued softly. “You’ll follow my rules. Of course, you’re more than welcome to leave at any time, although I suspect Petrov will catch up with you fairly quickly if you do. He might already have discerned your home address.”
Anya clutched her hands together and fought a pang of guilt and worry for Elizaveta. Would Vasili’s men dismiss her as just a roommate? Or would they hear her accent and realize she shared a closer connection with Anya? Would they threaten her?
She bit her lip, plagued by indecision. What a choice. Was she safer staying close to the wolf, residing in his den? Or trying to navigate the flock alone? Unfortunately the answer was obvious. Accepting temporary defeat, she drew the topmost couple of documents toward her and began to skim through them then glanced up in shock. “These are confidential military communications. How did you get these?”
Wolff gave a disarming smile. “We have our ways.”
“You mean spies?”
“Agents. Sources of information. Yes.”
She studied the letters again. Some were almost a year old, dated a few weeks before Waterloo. June the eighteenth; it was a date etched into her memory, the day she’d lost Dmitri.
“So you want these translated? What do you wish to know?”
“I want a list of every person mentioned in these dispatches. Even if they seem inconsequential. It will be extremely tedious, but it’s important work.”
“Why? Who are you looking for?”
“A Russian who was passing information to the French. The bastard’s treachery cost countless lives. I lost good friends at Waterloo. Men I’d fought with for years. Men I’d come to love like brothers. If the traitor’s not already dead, I want him brought to justice.”
His voice had deepened with passion, and Anya fought to keep her expression neutral, even as her heart thudded against her ribs. Vasili. Surely he was talking about Vasili? There couldn’t be that many Russian traitors out there, could there?
“That’s a noble goal,” she managed evenly. “Do you have any suspicion who it might be?”
“Someone close to the tsar, or to one of his advisors. Unfortunately, the French spy who was his contact is dead, so we can’t get any more details from him. All we know is that the French called him ‘The Cossack.’”
He rubbed his fingers over his jaw and Anya fought an internal debate. Should she tell him that Dmitri suspected Vasili? If Vasili was indeed the traitor, he deserved to be caught and punished. But she was supposed to be the princess’s servant. How would she have been be privy to such information?
“I believe I know who your traitor is.”
Wolff’s bows rose to his hairline.
“The man you seek is Count Petrov.”
He didn’t bother to hide his disbelief. “The very man you wish to avoid? That’s rather convenient, isn’t it? What proof do you have?”
“Nothing concrete,” she said. “But