Lady Killer by Michele Jaffe Page B

lead the English to triumph despite being massively outmanned and outgunned by their enemy.
    But while many English cheered their victory, those at the top knew that the war was far from over. Realizing that they could not outmaneuver the English at sea, the Spaniards had very cleverly begun undermining the country from within. Shortages of vital supplies from food to coal were natural during a war, and with such shortages came dissatisfaction. The Spanish took advantage of this, liberally distributing the gold they brought back from their American territories to anyone who would work for them within the borders of England, using it to sow discontent and encourage smuggling, particularly of high-quality English gunpowder. They thus created a second front to the war, and a much more difficult one. Unlike armor clad soldiers or ships of war, these enemies were difficult to spot, and, once spotted, even more difficult to subdue. For the past half year, Three’s attentions had been focused on this invisible war, a delicate game of chess whose board was the island of Britain and whose stakes were the life of a real queen and her subjects.
    Three was not a spy—although he did occasionally venture out to collect his own information—but rather the man who decided what to do with the information Elizabeth’s spies procured. Three knew from personal experience that people believed what they saw and he designed the defensive strategy for England based on this knowledge, fortifying her against her enemies by working to create illusions of strength and weakness, preparedness and vulnerability. His men monitored sales of gunpowder and poison, carefully watching for any signs of instability within the kingdom of England. He was a problem solver, a strategist. And Queen Elizabeth’s most potent secret weapon.
    Speculation about his true identity abounded among both those friends and enemies who were privy to his existence—he had discovered the week before that his enemies called him “The Wasp” in honor of the pain and destruction his work caused them—but only the queen and the men in this light-filled garret knew who he really was.
    Miles Fraser Loredan, Viscount Dearbourn, the third person behind the queen in charge of England’s security, saluted each of his men as he passed by their desks on the way to an open door at the rear of the room. In the country the operation occupied the entirety of his wine cellar, but when he was forced to relocate to London because of his wedding, his headquarters were jammed into a much smaller space. Despite the somewhat cramped atmosphere, Miles felt an enormous sense of freedom as he entered, as if, only here of all the spaces in his vast town house—in these hot, crowded attics, stuck above even the most humble of his servant’s quarters—was he actually at home. He took a deep, satisfied breath, and looked toward the broad man with gray hair sticking out of his head like a bottle brush standing in the open door of his private office.
    The man’s tan and the wrinkles around his eyes were his badges of honor from having served Her Majesty’s Navy for three quarters of his fifty years of life. They were the only such badges he had, being one of the most irascible seamen in that organization, whose most notable career achievement was having spent more time in the Brig than any other sailor alive.
    Most men, even those unaware of his reputation, steered clear of Tom Furious on sight, but then most men did not know that Tom’s visits to the Brig were precisely timed, or that he was actually the brother of the current minister of war and closely related to seven other royal advisors, or that for thirty years he had been the Navy’s most confidential and successful courier of information.
    When any of the “broken” clocks in Miles’s house pointed at three, it meant that his attention was needed urgently. And the presence of Tom Furious only confirmed the importance of the