by Darcy Burke
When she’d seen the duke’s hand bleeding, she had not hesitated. She’d done what she had to so that the bleeding stopped. This could be no different. She had to act with determination and purpose. Remain alert, for at any moment Sauveterre could come for her. In order to stay alive, she must develop a plan.
She set the letter down on the bed and exhaled. If she could get the information Sauveterre wanted, then the threat would disappear, for the moment at least. Tonight, she’d search the duke’s library one last time.
And if she still couldn’t find anything, then she’d have to go to the duke himself. Even gaol was a better alternative than waiting for a madman to kill her.
At least in gaol, she’d be safe from Sauveterre.
Vivian stood in the center of Abermont’s personal library. Behind her, filing cabinets lined one-half of the back wall, while floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered the rest of the wall. To her right, the red draperies were pulled across the big bay windows, blocking out her movements from the outside. She breathed a sigh of relief at that, for at least here, she felt somewhat protected—as long as no one found her.
She directed a glance over at the door. No one was in the hall. For now, she was alone. The duke had gone to the local public house, while Lady Elinor and Miss Arden Spencer retired to their rooms early. Thomas was already asleep. The other staff took advantage of their master’s absence to natter on in the servant’s hall.
Sucking in a deep breath, she went to the door and gave it a push. Almost shut. A little space so that she’d hear if anyone approached, but closed enough to hide her actions. Her stupid, fruitless actions—for she’d searched this library before and turned up nothing, as she no doubt would now. How was she supposed to prove the Duke of Abermont was a spy, when he clearly had nothing to do with anything out of the ordinary?
One last try to forestall Sauveterre. One last fool’s errand.
She rubbed her palm across her skirt, her fingers digging into the fabric. The muslin was light and soft against her skin, yet the hairs on the back of her neck prickled as though she’d brushed up against the smooth slickness of bone again.
She dropped her grip on her skirt. Summoned the little bit of courage she still had left. Stepping to her left, she rifled through the popular novels stacked on the low table. Fanny Burney’s Camilia. Lyrical Ballads, which had her favorite poem, Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Her hand wavered as she flipped through the pages of the book, looking for...something. What in particular, she didn’t know. Messages in the margin, perhaps, or papers folded inside.
But it was simply a book, with no hidden answers. She stacked the books back in order. Had they been facing straight ahead or off to a jaunty angle? She couldn’t remember, so she left them centered on the table.
She paced to the cabinets against the wall, slowly opening the top flat drawer. Architectural plans for some sort of quarry, if the first few sheets were any indication. Nothing there, either.
Oh, God, she was going to bleed out in the street like Evan. Alone. No one would stop to help her. No one would care.
An image of Abermont as he had been that night in his office, the fresh bandage tied on his hand, sprang before her. She’d felt comfortable around him. Almost normal. As if somehow her mind knew she could trust him, despite the fact that prior to this week they’d only ever exchanged a few pleasantries. As if he’d mourn her death, no matter how much she’d betrayed his trust.
Yet feeling sorry she’d died was a different emotion entirely from wanting to help her stay alive. She couldn’t guarantee he’d help her if she were forced to confess what she’d done.
Vivian moved to the next drawer. More plans, this time for improvements to the farmer’s cottages in the villages. The next drawer was deeper and taller, housing a big bound volume. She pulled it out, staggering under the weight. She rested it on top of the cabinet, flipping through the pages. Lists and lists of tenant rents, costs of the quarry, expenses pertaining to the upkeep of the house.
The same type of information she’d already sent, to no avail. Sauveterre claimed that Abermont was financing some sort of revolution in France, but she hadn’t been able to locate any indication of that in the duke’s financial records.
She slipped her hand into her pocket, her fingers brushing against the note written by her brother’s murderer. He’d shaped his quill, dipped it in ink, and formed threats to her with the same hands he’d used to thrash Evan. He’d walked the letter down to the post with the same booted feet he’d stomped onto Evan’s face.
And he’d kill her with the same hands he’d used to squeeze out the life from her brother.
Not if she had anything to say about it.
Vivian yanked her hand from her pocket. Thrusting her chin out, she crossed to the window seat and pulled off the cushions. She had too much to accomplish to let Sauveterre win. The bastard would pay for what he’d done to Evan. A life for a life, and she certainly wouldn’t be trading hers.
She opened up the wooden bench. The cavity inside was stuffed with extra pillows and a few blankets. Again, nothing useful. But she did not break down. She did not cry.
She was stronger than that.
She crept to the escritoire pushed up against the wall near the door. As she pulled open the center drawer, the slides stuck, letting out a tremendous groan. Vivian halted immediately, directing an apprehensive glance at the door. Still no one. But if anyone had heard the squeak, her time was limited.
She moved quicker, shifting through a pile of recent mail. Invitations to house parties, invitations to routs, invitations to the musicale...Good Lord, how did one man know so many people, let alone have that many friends? While she fought for her life, Abermont went to musicales! The absurdity of their opposite situations struck her, snapping her head back up. Stuffing the invitations back in the proper space, Vivian yanked open the next small drawer, all cautiousness forgotten in the wake of her ire. Writing quills. The remaining tiny cubbies were for sand, a blotter, and an inkpot.
Nothing. No, no, no. It was becoming glaringly obvious that she’d have no choice but to throw herself at the mercy of Abermont. But first, one last check...
She kept searching through the desk, but all she could find were half-written notes to his secretary about the village, and blank stationery for future purposes. She knew he kept his seal locked in the left top drawer, but she hadn’t been able to lift the key off of him when he’d visited the schoolroom.
“Blast,” she murmured. “Blast, blast, blast.”
Footsteps sounded outside the library, approaching swiftly. Closing the drawer, she crept to the left, pressing herself up against the back of the door. Within a minute, the interloper appeared in the hall—the housekeeper, heading toward the servant’s stairs in the back of the house. Her breath stilled in her lungs until the housekeeper passed by.
Finally, as the door to the stairs clicked shut, Vivian let out the breath she’d been holding. That had been close. Too close. If the housekeeper was out and about, the rest of the servants might be too. With one last fleeting look around the room, Vivian fled the library, slipping into the murky darkness of the hall.
Tomorrow, once she’d completed her morning responsibilities, she’d go to Abermont and tell him everything. Tomorrow, she’d beg him to not to throw her in gaol. Tomorrow, she’d put her life in the hands of another man, all based on a feeling she had when she was around him.
Tomorrow, she’d cease to be a free woman.
Chapter 5
James stalked down the hall, intent on completing another hour’s worth of work before bed. After he’d finished going over the mission assignments, he’d headed down to the tavern to meet Richard. That had been a mistake, for Richard was brimming with “suggestions” on who James’s new bride should be. After an hour of listening to his friend’s running commentary on every available chit—and some who weren’t—in the Beau Monde, James craved the solitariness of the secret room behind his library. Nothing but tw
o desks and a wall of filing cabinets in there. No one to tell him who to be, or how to conduct himself. Or more importantly, who to marry.
It had been easier around Miss Loren. He’d sought her out in the garden because talking to her had made him feel...functional. Like finally, someone else understood—someone who hadn’t known Louisa. Someone he could talk to without feeling as if he had to apologize for her death.
Someone he could simply be himself around.
Whoever that person was now.
His Hessians made almost no noise as he stole silently through the dark hall. He had not bothered to have to the servants light the sconces, for after years of night missions, his eyes adjusted quickly to the black. Welcomed it.
He stopped dead in his tracks halfway to his library, the hairs on the back of his neck raising.
The door was ajar.
The door should never be ajar at this hour, so long past when the maids were due for their cleaning rounds.
Pressing himself up against the wall, he drew a knife from the slit in the inner lining of his boots, wrapping his hand firmly around the handle. With the blade in his hand, he immediately felt more in control, far more than he’d have been with the pistol in his waist holster. The pistol might misfire, but the knife was always accurate. Deadly. He could slit a man’s throat as easily as he could count to a hundred. The motions had become routine. Training and a decade of experience had solidified him into a killing machine, built for blood and pain and not much else.
Creeping forward, he kept his back to the wall. Light peeked through the crack. The Argand lamp had been lit inside. Damnation. That would limit the nearness, and the angle, of his approach.
He edged closer, thanking God for Elinor’s strange desire to stick foliage in every open space. The tall, capacious potted plant was next to the entrance to the library, and offered him cover while he looked through the small opening in the door.
There was a woman. She stood with her back to him, but that made no difference. He recognized her instantly, from the flaxen curls contained atop her head in a prim coiffure, to the subtle curves hidden by a dreary gray dress just a smidgen too big. His mind rebelled at the very idea, even as his body answered with the same fervor that began whenever she was around.
Miss Vivian Loren.
His Miss Loren.
Possessiveness flooded him. He wanted to storm into that room, take her by the shoulders, and demand an explanation. God, he’d thought she was different. Untouched by the cruel spy game that had already taken too much from him.
He should have known better. He’d been made into a hardened spy. That life was all he’d ever have. Everyone, even his own bloody governess, would eventually hide an ulterior motive.
He pressed back against the wall, careful to keep out of sight. There was nothing to gain by acting now. He’d let her keep hunting. The more information he had, the better equipped he’d be to deal with the peril she now presented.
He forced the rage down. He needed to remain calm. Gather all the details, then make a decision. Through the sliver of open door, he could make out her movements. Her posture was rigid, her movements tentative as she flipped through the blueprints.
She was nervous.
Good.
That gave him a perverse flicker of pleasure. A trained agent would never exhibit such hesitance. A trained agent would move with efficiency, and a trained agent would not make the mistake of lighting the lamp. He’d bet a monkey that Miss Loren either had not been involved in covert activity for long, or more likely, she was a common thief.
Either way, she’d be no match for him.
She leaned over the cabinet where he stowed his plans for improvements on the village. Nothing incriminating there. Since her back was to him, he leaned a bit further into the room, scanning for further signs of upset. She’d moved the books on the low table. That was no issue either.
He held back a sigh of relief, for she bypassed the bookshelves on the back wall. If she’d pulled out a certain book on the wall and then pressed the far right volume on the third shelf, the back panel would be activated and the entire shelf would recede, revealing the secret room where he kept the records for the Clocktower.
Instead, she stepped to the right. As he watched, she tugged his ledger from the bottom drawer. His eyes narrowed as she flipped through the pages, finally getting to his financial records. All this searching, yet she hadn’t removed a single thing from his office. Her being a thief was becoming more and more unlikely.
As she turned, he was forced to retreat from the doorway back to the shadows of the potted plant. He dare not risk being seen through the crack in the door when she faced him. Though he couldn’t ascertain exactly where she was, the creak of wood moving against wood told him she’d found the window seat. In a minute, she’d closed it again.
She hadn’t found what she was looking for.
He heard her approach, then stop. From the length of her strides, he guessed she’d paused in front of his desk. He remained in the shadows, not daring to emerge, for her position would bring her directly in front of him. A loud squeak broke the relative quiet. She’d opened the top drawer of his desk, and she wouldn’t find anything there but writing supplies. For a few minutes, the room echoed with opening and shutting drawers, shuffling paper, and finally a muffled curse.
That sealed it—she was no thief. A thief would have seized the gold paperweight on his desk; the ancient Chinese vase on the low table, worth more than four times her annual salary; or the small red chalk study known as the “Three Graces” by the Italian painter Raphael, framed above the filing cabinets. The gilded gold frame alone was worth a mint, even if she did not recognize the value of the sketch.
Not to mention the fact that she was a bloody bad sneak. In all his years with Clocktower, he’d never seen anyone conduct such an inefficient, noisy search. Her strengths laid clearly in handling his rambunctious brother, not in stealth. So why in the devil was she searching his library? Had someone sent her here? Wickham had checked her background, but something must have been missed.
None of this made a damn bit of sense.
All he knew was that she’d betrayed his trust. If she didn’t have a damn good explanation, he’d make sure she paid for that mistake.
A shaky light appeared at the end of the winding hall, coming toward him. His fingers tightened against the handle of the knife. The beat of his heart quickened as his other senses sharpened, readying for attack.
But as the figure advanced, he discerned the hazy features of Mrs. Engle, his housekeeper. She held a candle in her hand, accounting for the moving flicker. His heartbeat returned to a steady rhythm. Though he did not fear Mrs. Engle, he tucked further between the wall and plant, taking refuge in the darkness. He couldn’t chance that the housekeeper would acknowledge him, thus alerting Miss Loren to his presence.
The housekeeper headed toward the stairs. When the door clicked shut, Miss Loren sighed in what he imagined to be relief. To her knowledge, no one had seen her. James held his breath as she came out from the library, willing her to pass by without noticing him.
As Miss Loren strode in the opposite direction, James inched after her. When the hall forked off, she took the right turn, heading toward the nursery. Her room was located beside the nursery, so that she could tend to her charge at all hours, if need be. Stopping at the entrance, she glanced over her shoulder. He ducked behind another potted plant. Never again would he question Elinor’s purchases of more plants.
She went inside the room, shutting the door behind her. Yet it did not close all the way, as Abermont House had heavy oak doors, and hence an extra tug was needed to seal the lock. James nudged the door with the tip of his boot, enlarging the gap enough so that he could watch her.
The oil lamp sputtered to life as she lit the wick, casting a shadow away from the candle’s flame. She faced him as she sat down on the bed, sliding off her slippers and lining them up neatly at the foot of the bed. In the lam
plight, her hair looked even more golden than normal, reminding him of the softest satin. God, how could he still want to run his fingers through her hair when he didn’t know if she was an enemy or not? His body refused to listen to reason, ruled instead by primal urges.
She stood, facing him. For a second, he wondered if she could see him. But her nimble fingers plucked at her fichu, untucking the cloth from the neckline of her gown. His mouth went dry at the revealed expanse of porcelain flesh, the swell of her breasts. His cock hardened as she tilted her head back, rubbing her hand in a circular motion against her neck.
Bollocks.
If only he’d known how traitorous she could be when she’d offered to bandage his wound. Demanded to bandage his wound was more like it. He would have told her just what he did to people who betrayed him...or so he wanted to think. Because even now, watching as she strode to her jewelry box, a small voice in his voice sounded. Claimed this was not who she really was, that she’d been forced to spy on him. The woman who had listened to him talk about Louisa without pity could not be an enemy agent.
Please, Lord, not her.
He couldn’t explain how in such a short time this woman had come to mean so much to him. It lacked logic, and it certainly was dangerous. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by what he thought he knew of her.
She pulled open her jewelry box, dropping in her earrings. His eyes zeroed in on that jewelry box—there was a piece of parchment inside the bottom drawer. A letter, from how it was folded. Had there been more papers in that drawer? He’d have to investigate it further.
Closing her jewelry box, Miss Loren proceeded to the wardrobe in the far corner of the room. He could not track her movements in his small window of light, but he marked the swish and sway of fabric. She emerged from the wardrobe, and made her way to the bed, pushing the sheets down. Selecting a book from the bedside table, she crawled into bed.
