Then she couldn’t think anymore for the wild feelings rocketing through her, and she offered herself up to them, sensing that it was the only way to fully be with him.
In that moment, when he was hers and she was his, her blood soared, her mind exploded, and she felt her body become his in a way she’d never thought to experience. They were part of each other. Together.
It was glorious. A conflagration of color and light and . . . everything. She’d never had a clue that being with him could be like this.
“Hart!” she screamed, and he swiftly stifled the sound with his mouth.
Then he collapsed against her, his heart beating so frenziedly that she feared she’d hurt him. Especially when she felt him jerking and then spilling something into her.
She was too replete to do anything for a few minutes while he shuddered against her.
When at last he stopped moving and she could tear her lips from his, she whispered, “Are you . . . all right?”
He uttered a strangled laugh. “Better than I’ve . . . ever been in my life.”
That cheered her. “Oh, good. Me too.”
It was all she could say for a while.
They stood there, wrapped around each other, his face pressed into her neck and her legs locked about his hips. Now he was softening inside her, but she still loved the feeling of him up against her down there, a reminder that he’d just been a part of her. She liked that.
She loved that. She loved him. Could she really not marry him if he proved to be as reckless and untrustworthy as Papa had always said? Because the idea of being Hart’s wife was as tantalizing as the idea of having an endless supply of peacock feathers for her hats.
Yet there was that small, practical part of her that knew she could never be happy if she couldn’t respect him. Or if she thought he was gambling away the funds meant to go to their children. Or—worst of all, doing this profoundly intimate act with other women.
So what was she to do?
After a moment, he pulled back to gaze intently at her. “I hope you realize, sweetheart, that you’re mine now. Body and soul.”
She stared up at him, unsure what to feel. “What does that mean?”
“It means we’ll marry as soon as possible.”
Her heart leapt before she caught hold of it and yanked it back down to earth. “Not necessarily.”
That seemed to catch him off guard. “Why?”
“You still haven’t answered all my questions.”
“Anne—”
“I mean it.” She disentangled herself from him. “I need to know what your plans are for our future.” Swiftly, she straightened her clothes and hair. “How can I put my whole trust in a man who won’t tell me the truth about his profession? About what his hopes are? Especially if you also intend for us to have children.”
“Of course I intend for us to have—” With a muttered curse, he hastily buttoned his drawers and trousers. “Please, love, must we have that discussion now?”
“I fear we must.”
Raking a hand through his hair, he said, “Very well. I suppose you’ll have to know sooner or later. But you must promise not to speak to Lord Fulkham anymore about it until you and I are married.”
She tipped up her chin. “You’re that sure of me, are you?”
“No,” he said, his gaze turning uneasy. “The truth is, I’m not at all sure of you. That’s why I haven’t said anything until now. Because my position with Fulkham is very odd.”
“I already figured that out.” And it worried her.
“All right.” He dragged in a deep breath. “There’s no easy way to say this. For the past four years, beginning while I was still in the army, I’ve been doing some spying for the undersecretary.”
Her jaw dropped. “What do you mean, spying?”
He gave a harsh laugh. “Come now, you know what spying is. Insinuating oneself into situations without revealing one’s actual purpose. Finding out the truth for the government. Taking risks. Discovering what the enemy is planning.”
Her heart faltered. “Oh. That spying.” She turned away from him, her mind reeling. “And . . . and you do this regularly?”
“As regularly as I can. The pay is good. As undersecretary, Fulkham was also rather informally spymaster of the foreign office.” He released a low curse. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this, but if you’re to be my wife, I figure you ought to know.”
“Of course,” she said mechanically, though this wasn’t at all what she’d expected. No wonder the two men had laughed at her for suggesting he was a law clerk.
“Anyway, now that Fulkham has moved into the position of foreign secretary, he’s training me to take his place as undersecretary so that I can become spymaster. It isn’t certain yet, though, so you can see why I was rather reluctant to speak of it.”
Hart as a spy—she could see it only too well. He had the smooth tongue to get past anyone’s suspicions; the sly way of questioning people that made them reveal their secrets before they even realized they were; and, after his years abroad, a knowledge of varying levels of society that would make him comfortable anywhere.
Come to think of it, those qualities would make him a good undersecretary as well, for politicians needed those, too. And if he married her, he would also have the perfect wife for such a position. An earl’s daughter.
Her heart sank. No, that couldn’t be why he’d sought her out, could it? As a marquess’s son, he could easily find a wife with such connections. Why, he had plenty of connections of his own. He didn’t have to marry her. Second sons went into politics all the time. They ran for the House of Commons and took positions in the government.
Not wastrels. Not gamblers.
Yes, but he had Lord Fulkham on his side.
Did he? The man had fairly laughed at the idea of Hart working for him as a law clerk. Perhaps that was because he didn’t take Hart’s aspirations seriously. But he might if Hart married Lady Anne, an earl’s daughter.
Then something else occurred to her. “If you’re a spy, how could you not have found me before now?”
He looked flummoxed. “I wasn’t a spy six years ago when I was on leave, and I wasn’t in England for very long.”
“I’m not talking about then. I’m talking about when you returned to England five months ago. Earlier this week, you were angry that I didn’t seek you out once I learned you were back from your cavalry post abroad. But you didn’t go looking for me, either, did you?”
A veiled look crossed his face. “Well, no. I assumed that you—”
“So you didn’t look for me at all. Even though by then, you were, according to you, an experienced spy and I was in London. You could have found me if you’d bothered to search. But you weren’t interested anymore. You’d moved on. And it was too much trouble.” Her throat felt raw. “As it apparently always is with you where it concerns me.”
“What the devil is that supposed to mean?” He crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw tight as a drum.
“That whenever things are difficult, you abandon ship, Hart. Can’t get my father or yours to approve the marriage? Oh, well. You’ll see if you can arrange it next time you’re in the country. Why bother to actually ride over to Stilford before you joined your regiment and tell me to wait for you? Or give me some way to reach you? No, you go off and hope for the best. Then, when you return, you can’t find me in Stilford. What a pity. You didn’t look anymore after that.”
His throat worked convulsively. “I’d assumed you were married by now.”
“But you didn’t actually try to determine that for yourself.”
Remorse filled his face. “No. I didn’t fight to find you, that’s true.” He set his shoulders. “But I’m fighting for you now.”
“Only because you practically stumbled over me here,” she said bitterly. “And because my rank as an earl’s daughter plays conveniently into your aims to become the next undersecretary. If you’d known that about me before, you might ha
ve come hunting for me sooner, I dare say.”
The blood drained from his face. “How can you possibly think that?”
“How can I not? You’re a marquess’s son and a handsome, charming cavalry captain to boot. Women are always fawning over you, second son or no.” The pain of years spent being the odd one out cut through her. “Meanwhile, I’m the freckle-faced, ginger-haired hat lady. Being an earl’s daughter is the only thing I have to recommend me.”
She shifted her gaze from him. “U-usually I don’t mind that so much, because Mama and I have a nice enough life. But I love you, so I can’t bear it if that’s how you see me—as the peculiar woman you have to marry in order to ensure your fine career as undersecretary.”
“God, sweetheart, that is not remotely how I see—”
Noises in the hall made him break off. Both of them froze. He put a finger to his lips as footsteps sounded near the door, so close by that they held their breaths.
“None of you have found Anne?” Delia asked. “I could have sworn she came this way.”
“I haven’t seen her.” That was Clarissa. “Perhaps she went to the ballroom. We only have a few hours to finish getting everything ready before the crowds come first thing in the morning. We need her.”
“Yvette, go look for her on the balcony,” Delia said. “Clarissa and I will look in the ballroom. She’s got to be around here somewhere.”
As soon as the footsteps faded, Anne headed for the door. “I have to go, Hart. We can talk tomorrow.”
He caught her by the arm. “Anne, please . . .”
She met his gaze, shaken to find him looking stricken. “They’ll return any minute, and I can’t be found with you or we’ll have no choice but to marry.”
“And would that be so bad?” he asked hoarsely, running a finger over the patch of skin left bare between her evening glove and her cap sleeve. “Being married to the man you love who also loves you?”
The words arrested her. Tantalized her. If she dared believe them. “No, not bad at all,” she whispered. “It’s what I want most. But I would always wonder if . . .” She shook her head, not wanting to discuss it anymore. “I have to go.”
Pulling her arm free, she unlocked the door and slipped out. She knew she was being a coward, knew she might be making the biggest mistake of her life. But she had to think this through and decide if she could trust him when he said he loved her for herself.
Because if she couldn’t . . .
That sort of marriage would be worse than no marriage at all.
Hart watched her go, her reaction a punch in the gut. It had never occurred to him that she might still feel so uncertain about what had happened between them through the years. And it had never occurred to him that she might see herself as something less than the creative, highly original beauty he saw her as. Or, worse yet, she might fear that she was “the peculiar woman you have to marry in order to ensure your fine career as undersecretary.”
Now that he realized why she’d been so skittish, he saw how thoroughly he’d mucked things up. He honestly couldn’t blame her. She was right. He could have looked harder for her. He could have fought harder for her.
He’d had the chance to watch what his friends and relations had gone through for love—risking blackmail, scandal, ruin, and sometimes even death. Anne had been willing to risk poverty, though he’d never known it because he’d never given her the chance. And why? Because some small part of him had been afraid that if he’d asked her to run away with him with nothing but the clothes on their backs, she wouldn’t have gone.
His throat tightened. He’d always been seen as the failure of the family. The gambler who’d had to be packed off to India. Father had never told the rest of his brothers why, so they’d assumed it had been to keep him away from creditors, and he’d let them think so.
Still, there was some truth to their perception of him as the devil-may-care wastrel. Until Fulkham had taken a chance on him, he’d drifted aimlessly from one post to the next in the regiment, drinking and gambling and doing what all young men did who had little chance of military advancement with no war going on.
Fulkham had given him a goal to cut his teeth on, and for that he would be eternally grateful. But Anne had always been at the back of his mind. So why hadn’t he looked harder for her?
Because it had been better to think of her as pining for him all these years than to discover that she might be happily married. That she might have moved on without sparing him another thought.
All the while, she’d been hurting. Feeling abandoned. Any fool who’d met her father could have figured out why she hadn’t written or responded. And if he’d truly thought she’d done it deliberately, he wouldn’t have looked for her in Stilford. No, he simply hadn’t tried. So she was right about that.
Very well. Then it was time he did try. Really try to win her. And there was only one way he could think of to show her that he wanted her for her—not for who she was now, or even for what she’d had then. Only one way to show her that she was not “the freckle-faced, ginger-haired hat lady” to him.
Fulkham wouldn’t like it, but it didn’t matter. Because given the choice between a life with Anne and one without her, Hart would choose her every time.
Seven
ON THE AFTERNOON of St. Valentine’s Day, the charity sale was moving along nicely. Thanks to the pleasant weather and the thawing of the snow, half of Shrewsbury seemed to have turned out to buy embroidered gloves, needlepointed screens, and scores of other fripperies, not to mention Anne’s hats.
She ought to be ecstatic over that, since they’d raised an enormous sum for the orphanage. But the absence of Hart made it difficult for her to rejoice. She hadn’t seen him once today, and she was starting to worry.
Perhaps she’d been too harsh last night. But what had he expected? He’d told her that he’d spent the past few years being a spy, yet he hadn’t lifted a finger to find her! How was she supposed to take that?
Was she reading too much into it? Had he thought so, too?
Or had he, as usual, just given up on her? If he had . . .
No, she refused to let herself grieve over that. If she mattered that little to him, it was better she know it now than later. Yet the thought that he really could only have cared about her for her connections, flimsy as they were, cut her to the bone after all his sweet words and passionate actions this week.
Was it really possible for a man to show so much affection to a woman he didn’t care about? Was her heart that foolish? The part of her that loved him and wouldn’t listen to her practical, doubting side still wanted to trust him.
“Lady Anne,” murmured a low male voice next to her. “Might I have a word with you?”
She whirled around, hoping to see Hart, but it was only Lord Fulkham. “Of course.”
He nodded to a door leading onto a balcony, and as soon as they went out onto it, he blocked the door handily with a potted plant. “First, do you know where Hart has gone? I need to talk to him.”
She shook her head. “He and I had . . . a bit of an argument last night, so I fear he’s returned to London.”
His features softened. “Don’t worry about that. I checked with the grooms and they said he took a horse and left late last night. But he had no bags, and he promised to return the horse today. I thought perhaps he told you where he was going.”
“No.” Still, relief coursed through her. At least she hadn’t driven him beyond reach.
“There’s something else we should discuss. I fear that I may have given you the wrong impression about your fiancé last night.” He glanced out over the extensive grounds of Lord Knightford’s hunting lodge. “I should have regarded your questions more seriously, instead of using them to torment Hart. But he’s such a joking fellow that I sometimes forget the true nature lying beneath the easygoing façade.”
She swallowed. “What true nature is that?”
“Surely you’ve noticed it yourself. He’s loyal, respons
ible, and thorough. He takes his work very seriously, and I consider him an asset to my office. Which is what I should have told you.”
“You didn’t know who I was to him,” she said. “At least not until last night.”
“But I did know.” He turned to fix her with a hard stare. “He asked me about you, remember?”
“Yes, but you didn’t know why he was asking.”
“Actually, I did. Because when I asked why he wanted to know, he told me he’d offered marriage to you in your youth and had been turned down by your father.”
She blinked at him, shocked to hear that Hart had been so truthful about it, even from the beginning.
“He and I have no secrets, Lady Anne. Indeed, he told me he wished to renew his courtship of you. If you’d allow it.”
As hope wormed its way into her heart, she sucked in a breath. “But . . . but last night you seemed not to know . . . not to be aware of who I—”
“Because I never show my cards first. It’s always best to see the hand of one’s opponent before making a play.” He scrutinized her closely. “I assume Hart told you what he actually does for me?”
She drew into herself, unsure how much she should say.
“It’s all right. I assumed he would—he’s in love. And a man in love will reveal whatever he must to gain the woman of his dreams.”
Pain sliced through her. “How can you be sure he’s in love?”
Lord Fulkham chuckled softly. “My dear lady. Not for nothing have I been a spymaster all these years. It’s written all over his face when he speaks of you, talks to you, looks at you. I’ve never seen Hart like that with any other woman.” He fixed her with a serious glance. “But I haven’t quite determined how you feel about him.”
She tipped up her chin. “That’s not your concern.”
“It is, if it means that marrying you will distract him or throw him off his game. I have to be sure you’ll support him if I make his position more permanent.”
“Of course I’ll support him!” she said hotly. “If I marry him, it will only be because I intend to put everything I have into the marriage.”
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