Circle of Spies

by Roseanna M. White

  If possible, her expression emptied still more. She kept flipping leaves. “Since the day you arrived.” Five simple words, yet her tone was rich with meaning. Accusation aimed at herself, disappointment. A sorrow that must have run deep indeed to elicit that note of betrayal.

  One he knew all too well. “You never knew about your husband, then.” He wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or not.

  Given her shaky exhale, the correct answer was not. “No. And discovering it now makes me revisit every conversation we ever had, makes me wonder what information I told him from my father that I shouldn’t have. Makes me wonder if he ever would have looked my way if Daddy were a lawyer or an academic. Anything but a naval authority.”

  The laugh slipped out before he could stop it. When she turned her sharp, cat eyes on him, he shook his head. “Have you looked in a mirror lately? It wasn’t your father that drew his eye.”

  She tilted her head again. Any moment now she’d either purr or hiss. “Was that a compliment?”

  “Maybe.”

  Now she was the one to laugh, low in her throat and electrifying. Then she shook her head and returned to her task. “My family tried to warn me away from Lucien. They didn’t know about his…allegiance. But they saw in his character what I refused to see. And, of course, his family owned slaves. That alone made them object.”

  He studied another page, though he knew he wouldn’t remember much of what he read. He’d have to return alone so he could concentrate. “Are you not the abolitionist the rest of them are?”

  Now her wisp of laughter sounded bitter. “I am. But my first cause was always myself. And I so wanted to hurt him.”

  “Who? Your father?”

  “No.” She straightened her shoulders and looked at him again. “Dev’s even worse than Lucien, isn’t he? Barbara said…she said he killed a man in a duel.”

  “Sounds right.” And he didn’t even want to consider the torture Hughes would devise for him if he’d seen that kiss. The thought made something go tight in his chest. Not out of fear, not of Hughes. Something deeper.

  He flipped another page. Time to change the subject. “You did a good thing, bringing Barbara here.”

  Her smile, serene for once, made his chest go tighter. “I know. It’s what Stephen would have wanted me to do. I so wish…I so wish I hadn’t been cruel all those years ago. I deprived them of something precious. I made Stephen hide their love.” She shook her head.

  And yet the fact that he had… “You and he must have been very close.”

  She nodded, sniffed, and blinked a few rapid times. Then she pasted on a smile that was strained around the edges. “What about you and your brother? Were you close?”

  She might as well have tossed a bucket of icy water over him. Slade kept his gaze on the page before him. Some sort of encrypted telegram, given the length and arrangement. “No. Never.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Ross.”

  A beat, silent and tense. Marietta lowered the page in her hands. “Were you far apart in age?”

  His breath came out short and amused. “Oh, about five minutes.”

  “Twins?” The incredulity in her tone brought his gaze up. “I thought twins were always close.”

  He set down the page. It was merely an acknowledgment, a promise from Hughes to do what had been asked of him. “We were more Jacob and Esau.”

  “Who was who?”

  “That would be the question, wouldn’t it?”

  He glanced up to see the mask of charm reclaim her face. Or maybe her amusement just struck him that way, maybe it wasn’t a mask so much as the way her smile tugged at him. His fault, not hers. But oh, the way that grin knotted him up inside…

  “I have a theory,” she said.

  So had Ross.

  Her smile faded. “I can see it pains you. I’m sorry. When did you lose him?”

  Usually, he would redirect the conversation. Shut it down, extinguish it. But he hadn’t even let himself think about Ross’s death since that night with Pinkerton and his father. When his boss had laid out the plan and his father, eyes deep and sad, had told him to do it.

  He had to clear his throat again. “About six weeks ago.”

  “So recently?” Her hand settled on his arm. He didn’t dare look into her eyes. “I am sorry. The war?”

  “Not directly.” He put aside the papers and reached into the box for a thin, bound manuscript. Her fingers fell away, and he felt the withdrawal down to his toes. Dangerous woman indeed.

  “What, then?”

  His lips didn’t want to form the words. His chest didn’t want to grant him the air. But he forced it through anyway, forced himself to look her in the eye. And said the sentence that had brought him to this path. “I killed him.”

  Sixteen

  Marietta let the words rattle around in her mind. But mingled with them, woven through them, stretched the agony. The way his shoulders balled up said he expected her to recoil in horror. But something about his stance made her inch closer instead. “An accident?”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he tossed a slender, crudely bound book onto the table. “Self-defense. He was waiting for me one night when I got back to my room. I heard someone, felt something swinging toward my head. Ducked. The sledgehammer hit my bureau. When he turned for me again, I shot.” His eyes slid closed. “It was dark. I didn’t know it was him. I…”

  “Slade.” No words seemed sufficient. And though he had just pulled away, she didn’t know what to do but touch. She clasped his hands between hers. “Do you know why?”

  The shrug of his shoulders was filled with what the Germans would call angst. “He’d made no secret of his feelings when I went home reformed a year ago. He hated me. Then I returned to Washington from the field and ruined his plans.” His obsidian gaze clung to hers. “He was the one who had contacted Devereaux and put this whole thing in motion. He used my name because he knew it would get him in.”

  Something inside her strained, and her fingers gripped his tighter. “To foil them and take the glory?”

  “No. He was Confederate.”

  Her eyes slid shut. It had been bad enough to have a cousin who had fought against her brother. She couldn’t even consider Hez and Isaac and Stephen pitted against one another. “I wouldn’t have thought, your being from New York.”

  “He said it was a matter of states’ rights, and he had some valid points. But secession shouldn’t have been the answer. You can’t fix something from the outside.” He gave her hands a returning squeeze and then pulled away, turning back to the crates.

  He moved the top one and sorted through the items in the bottom. After a glance inside it to make sure she knew where everything belonged, Marietta stepped toward the table and flipped open the book. She frowned at the columns within. Numbers with dashes and phrases after them. Explanation of gestures. Crude drawings that looked like something a child might do, simple lines and shapes.

  She glanced again at Slade’s back. “So you assumed the identity he had created for himself, but which used your own name and history. How very convoluted.”

  “Good word.” The smile he shot her may have been shadowed, but it was at least a smile. That was something.

  “I think these must be KGC codes.” She tapped the booklet.

  She expected him to straighten and come see, but apparently he was more intrigued by whatever was in the crate. When he pulled out a wicked-looking knife, she understood why. Backing into the table, she stared at it. Perhaps it was a hunting knife…though neither Lucien nor Dev knew how to hunt. Protection against the violent streets? Perhaps, but both wore pistols for that.

  Though it hadn’t done Lucien any good that final dark night.

  “There’s blood on it.” Slade held the blade up toward the lantern. “Not much. Looks like it was cleaned pretty well, except where the blade meets the handle.”

  He no doubt had more experience with weapons than she, though her father had taught
her how to handle a gun with reasonable accuracy. “Why would he have that here?”

  Slade shrugged. “Protection. Utility. Hunting. Could be an heirloom, given the styling.”

  “With blood on it?”

  “Might be fifty years old for all we know.” He put it back as if it didn’t matter. As if his eyes weren’t as hard as jet as he considered it. Then he straightened and came to look at the booklet. “Hmm.”

  “Hmm?”

  He glanced from the pages to her. “There’s a book across the street I’d like to compare this too. Would you mind if I took it? It’s easier to transport the smaller one without being seen.”

  “So long as you have it back before Dev gets home.” She folded her arms over her middle and scanned the small room again. She was ready to escape the cellar. It was too cold on the one hand…and too warm on the other, with Slade Osborne taking up all the air. His coat smelled like him, citrus and spice, and filled her with the foolish longing to lean close again. She shrugged out of it. “I’d better return before I am missed.”

  He nodded and put the coat back on, his breath catching on an inhale, eyes flashing to hers. Then he reached to his inner pocket and tried to slip the booklet in. It apparently wouldn’t slide easily, for he pulled another slender tome out.

  A familiar slender tome. Ignoring the chill air that surrounded her again, she snatched it from his fingers. “Granddad’s book of prayers.”

  She heard his sharp intake of breath but didn’t look up. It had been years since she had last held this treasured volume, with its aged leather binding and yellowed pages. The ink within had long ago faded to reddish brown. “He gave this to you?” It would be just like Granddad, to save something for years and then pass it along on a whim to a near-stranger.

  Or, as he would say, at the prodding of the Spirit.

  “You can have it if you want.” Uncertainty did strange things to his voice, made it lower, so that it thrummed over her nerves.

  “No.” Much as she loved this book, she didn’t need the original—she already carried it inside her mind. She closed her eyes now to flip through the pages as they had been a decade earlier, paused to read a few of the words transcribed by her great-great-grandfather. The words whispered out. “ ‘God of my end, it is my greatest, noblest pleasure to be acquainted with Thee…’ ”

  “I just read that one this morning. The prayers are beautiful.”

  “Yes.” She opened her eyes and let her fingers remember the feel of the cover. It had a scratch that hadn’t been there ten years ago. Summoning a soft smile, she handed it back. “He must have seen something special in you to give you that. It has been in my family for a century.”

  Uncertainty edged toward panic. “Then I shouldn’t—”

  “He gave it to you. Keep it.”

  His eyes went still again, the wavering vanished, and that hint of a smile reappeared on his lips as he tucked both books into his pocket. “Interesting family you have, Yetta. What’s his story?”

  No one but Walker had ever called her Yetta. So why did it sound right coming from Slade’s lips? Warm enough to make her aware anew of the cold, familiar enough to tease the smile back to her mouth. “Oh no, Slade. One kiss does not entitle you to that information.”

  “No?” His hint of a grin grew to a full one, and full of mischief as he slid closer. His hands settled at her waist again, and her foolish heart beat too fast. What was she doing? “What about two? What will that get me?”

  Why did she have no desire to fend him off? She rather chuckled and rested her hands on his arms. “Trouble.”

  “Convenient. It’s an old friend.” He leaned down, his intent as obvious as it had been in that flash on the steps.

  Marietta lifted her face and waited, watched his wolf eyes gleam, flicker…and then shift, as if he heard something. He halted several inches away, inclined his head, and then retreated a step with a scowl. “Blast it.”

  “What?” She heard nothing. No footsteps, no carriages…

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Not what I wanted that to be, Lord.”

  “Pardon?” The cold compounded, and she wrapped her arms around herself again. Still, it seeped all the way to her core.

  Slade rubbed a hand over his face and leveled a gaze on her that was…warm. Open. With no hint of the wolf. “My conscience. I’m sorry. I had no right to kiss you, not when you’re promised to Hughes.”

  Now her blood ran as cold as the air. “I’m not going to marry him.”

  “He doesn’t seem to know that.” A small glint reentered his eyes.

  Her chin lifted a notch. She couldn’t stop it. “Do you think it a wise time to send him into a rage?”

  Now the flashes she saw race across his face were more of fear. And somehow she suspected they weren’t for himself. “No. You can’t do that. He would…”

  He would what? She didn’t want to think he would hurt her, but Cora’s scream echoed in her ears. She could almost hear the fire of his dueling pistol, the gasps of a dying man who had done nothing worthy of a fight.

  If he could be so violent because of her, what would he do to her if she broke things off? Or what if the duel had been more because of the castle under the house? Her house. And if she refused to marry him, what would he do for that? She shivered.

  Slade ran a hand down her upper arm and cupped her elbow. “Do you realize what will happen to him if he succeeds in his plans, Marietta? He could hang.”

  The shiver turned to convulsion. She couldn’t love the man he was, the one who had lied to her about the things he valued most highly. But she didn’t want to see him executed. “Do your job then, Slade. Stop him.”

  “I will. But he’ll still be arrested and spend the rest of his life in prison.”

  She would never have to see him again. He could never reach her, but she wouldn’t have his death on her hands. She nodded.

  “You’re sure you’re all right with that? To the point you’d be willing to testify in court?”

  Testify? She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut, but she forced them open wide. Forced her breathing to steady when it wanted to ball in a scream or a sob. “Is that what this was about?”

  Had that always been what it was about? Had she ever been more than a means? A means to her father for Lucien, a means to the house for Devereaux, a means to a witness for Slade.

  “This?” He looked baffled for about half a second, and then realization dawned. He squeezed her elbow. “No, this was about your being too blasted alluring. The question is because I’ve been watching the two of you together for almost a month now. You look to be very much his girl.”

  She didn’t pause to examine why the observation made her blood boil. It was enough that it fired through her. Surging up on her toes, she pressed a hand to the back of his head, pulled it down, and caught his mouth in a kiss as searing as the anger in her veins. And then, just as his arms started to come around her, she pulled away. Not to tease, but because the fire turned from anger to shame, and a small voice inside chided her.

  No doubt the same voice that had just chided him. She couldn’t quite catch her breath when she turned away. “I’m not his girl.” Unwilling to look to see if he believed her, she spun for the stairs and charged up them.

  The door refused to budge when she pushed, and the circle of light dogged her heels. Giving in now to the urge to close her eyes, she leaned her head against the unyielding wood.

  She heard the lantern come to a rest on the step. His hand settled on her back. “I’m sorry. Again.” Oh, he had such a voice. So rich. Just the right timbre. It was a shame he so often chose silence. Although he could have chosen it again now, and she wouldn’t have minded. “I’ve made a mess of things where they should have stayed neat and put us both in danger. Worse, I didn’t show you the respect you deserve.”

  As if she deserved any respect. What was wrong with her, that she must always have a man’s affections? Her stupid, foolish heart was as fickle as t
he weather over the bay. From Walker to Lucien to Devereaux, and now would she focus her vain hopes on Slade Osborne?

  Willing the idiotic fluttering of her heart to still, she pasted on indifference and made a show of examining the door. “There’s no need to dwell on it. We shan’t make the same mistake again.”

  He ran his hand down the opposite side of the door and found the latch within five seconds. Though he paused with his hand upon it. “Thanks for listening. About Ross.”

  They must have been identical twins for Ross to have tried to take his place as he had. Two of them with the same dark, brooding good looks, the same strong jaw. Had they both had the wolf’s eyes? Not that the predator shone through Slade’s in his softer moments. Only when he was at work, playing the part his brother had written for him. The part, perhaps, he had played of his own volition before he went home changed?

  She had a feeling the turn of her lips was too small to be called a smile. “Thank you for trusting me enough to share.”

  With a scant nod of acknowledgment, he pulled on the latch and pushed open the door.

  Because she wanted to linger, she swept through the opening without hesitation. And because it hurt so much, she paused in the study, turned, and lifted to her toes to press a kiss to his cheek. Friendly, that’s all. A show of appreciation for honesty in a world that seemed to have none.

  Yet when she rushed into the hall, her heart twisted, keen and painful. She wanted her mother. Someone to embrace her with no expectations, someone to love her in the truest sense. She would grab her cloak and…no, Mama was spending the day with Paulina and baby Ezra. Marietta would be welcome there, but it wouldn’t be the same.

  For a moment she stood in the hall with no direction. Then her eyes caught on the side staircase, and her feet aimed that direction. A minute later she knocked on the door to Barbara’s sitting room, and her friend opened it with a welcoming smile.

  Marietta hastened in. Barbara was about as close to Mama as she could get just now.