Agent of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  “Oh, come on, Lainie, you can’t be that tired, nice quiet job like that. Ben’s going to sing for us.” Jack had his hand on her elbow now, and she nearly yanked it away, but remembered in time that he was her friend and not going to shove her up against a stack of crates—

  “Just one drink, Jack, it’s been a long day,” she said, and followed him into the tavern. Noise and light greeted her, and laughter, and she put on a smile and hid her confusion and misery away where she could take them out and indulge them later, in the privacy of her room. Ben, leaning against the pianoforte, smiled when he saw her and came to greet her.

  “You’re late,” he said, and raised his hand to her cheek. “And you’ve got something on your face.”

  Too late, she remembered Morgan hitting her. She put her hand up to cover her cheek and Ben’s hand brushed against hers. He looked puzzled, then took her hand away and looked at the bruise. “What happened?” he said.

  “Nothing.” It sounded false even to her.

  “It can’t have been nothing. Did you fall?”

  “I—” She was so tired. “Yes. I fell.”

  Ben looked at the bruise again, then into her eyes. She looked away, feeling guilty and stupid. What kind of agent couldn’t come up with a good lie?

  He touched her face again, gently, then his hand went still. “Morgan,” he said in a low, rough voice. “I’ll kill him.” He strode to his chair and picked up the coat he’d slung over it.

  His movement brought her out of her stupor. “No, no, stop, please, don’t do it!” she cried, grabbing his arm.

  “What’s the problem?” Jack asked.

  Ben ignored him. “I warned you,” he told her. “You knew he was dangerous. You thought you could keep out of his way. I warned you he was more than you could handle.”

  “Ben, let the rest of us in on this,” Liam said.

  Telaine shook her head, pleading with her eyes. She couldn’t let him leave. Her imagination supplied her with a dozen scenarios in which Ben confronted Morgan, all of which ended with him dead, most of which ended with Morgan flinging his body at her like some sick trophy. She shook her head again. If she could show Ben how much this mattered to her, maybe he would let it go.

  Ben looked from Telaine to Liam. “Morgan’s been harassing her,” he said, his voice flat. “Today he went too far.”

  Liam looked at Telaine in puzzlement. “Why didn’t you say something?” he asked. “We could’ve found a way to keep him away from you.” There was nodded and verbal agreement from the crowd.

  “Lainie, let go,” Ben said.

  “No. You promised you wouldn’t go after him. You promised me.”

  “Happen I lied. Not going to let him get away with this.”

  “He’s going to kill you. I couldn’t bear it if he did.”

  “You think I—we—could bear it if he did anything to you?”

  Telaine looked around the room at her friends. Every face was filled with concern for her. Tears threatened to spill over her cheeks. No one in Aurilien would care if the Princess dropped dead, she thought irrelevantly, and then she really was crying.

  Ben stopped trying to reach the door and removed her hands from his arm. “Morgan needs to know you’ve got people ready to defend you. Needs to stop thinking you’re helpless. You know he won’t stop unless someone makes him.”

  “I’m not helpless. I can handle it,” Telaine said, trying to sound assertive through her tears. “Stay out of this, Ben. I don’t need your help.”

  The room went quiet. Ben took a step back, as if she’d slapped him, then he went expressionless in a way that frightened her more than his fury had. “Happen you don’t,” he said. He slung his coat around himself and pushed through the crowd to the door. The sound of it closing behind him was barely audible in the silent room.

  Telaine stared at the door. What did I say? She looked around. No one met her eyes; the floor and the ceiling and the furnishings were apparently far more interesting. “I didn’t mean,” she began, took a deep breath, and said, “I just wanted to keep him out of this.”

  “Why?” asked Maida from behind the bar.

  “Because I don’t want him to get hurt,” she said.

  “Looks like you did a fine job of doing that yourself,” her friend retorted.

  “But I didn’t mean…” Her hands were shaking again, and she took hold of a chair to steady herself. I don’t need your help. Those sounded like words you couldn’t take back.

  Liam cleared his throat, drawing her attention. “Lainie, we all know you like to do for yourself,” he said, “but nobody can do everything for herself. And when you tell the man who loves you that you don’t need him, well…” He shrugged.

  Telaine’s mouth dropped open, and she was grateful she was already hanging on to the chair, because without it she would have fallen over in shock. “Loves me?” she said in a tiny voice.

  Everyone started speaking at once, their words jumbling together in the confusion, a few voices cutting across the noise.

  “Never seen any man so swept off his feet by a woman,” said Liam. “Never in all my days.”

  “Don’t know how you didn’t know. Everyone else did,” said Isabel.

  “He looks at you like you’re water in the desert,” said Maida. “You can’t have missed that. Or I guess you can.”

  Telaine was dazed, as if all the noise was happening somewhere far away and she could hear only echoes. “I didn’t know,” she said. She let go of the chair and found she could stand unsupported. “What do I do?”

  The noise diminished. “Ben’s a proud man, Lainie,” said Jack. “You—he won’t get past that in a hurry. Might want to give him time.”

  Ben’s face rose up in memory, still and expressionless and without a trace of the love she hadn’t realized was in his eyes every time he looked at her. It tore at her heart, and she closed her lips on the keening cry that tried to escape them. “No,” she said, “I think I need to go,” and pushed through the crowd and into the cold, dark night.

  She stopped outside the tavern, not knowing where to go. If Ben had decided to go after Morgan anyway, she would never find him in the dark. She looked south and saw a light go on in the house by the forge.

  Relief filling her, she ran, tripping and catching herself and running again, until she reached Ben’s back door. She waited for her breathing to slow, then knocked. It was a perfectly ordinary, polite sound that had nothing of her tumultuous feelings in it, and she almost wanted to laugh at how absurd it sounded. She waited. Nothing happened.

  Telaine knocked again. He can’t hear me, she thought, but that was ridiculous, his house wasn’t that big, and even if he had retreated upstairs he would be able to hear the knock. But there was still no answer. Her breath was coming more rapidly again, steaming in the cold night air, and she tried to calm herself. This was ridiculous. If they could just talk to each other—!

  She pounded hard on the door with her fist. The light went out, leaving the house in darkness. It was like a punch to the stomach. So he didn’t love her anymore. Didn’t love her, just as she realized how much she loved him.

  She’d assumed their relationship was—not casual, of course, they cared about each other, but she’d thought it hadn’t gone any further than that. It was obvious, now, that he loved her, and she hadn’t seen it because—why? Because she was too stupid to know her own heart, or to recognize love when it was handed to her. He’d told her he would always come after her. He’d showed her how he felt in a million little ways, every single day. And Eleanor had even warned her he was the kind of man who gave his whole heart. She just hadn’t been paying attention. As usual.

  Telaine leaned her head against the door. A proud man, Jack had called him. She’d humiliated him, and in public. He wouldn’t get over that in a hurry. He might not get over it at all. It had been an emotional day, but even the shock of figuring out the Baron’s plan and the terror of Morgan’s assault couldn’t top the misery she fel
t right now.

  She was cold, and her heart ached, and she wished there were some kind of inherent magic that would let you wind back time, make different choices. That moment in the tavern was playing out in an endless loop in her head, I don’t need your help and then Ben’s white, emotionless face, until she wanted to run away screaming—but, then, where could she run to get away from herself? She wished she could blame the Princess for destroying everything, but no, this was entirely the fault of that idiot Telaine North Hunter.

  Light bloomed, streamed through the window, and she straightened in time to avoid falling through Ben’s back door as he opened it. The house was two steps up from the forge floor, so Telaine had to look up at him where he stood. He didn’t look angry, or upset, just cast that level, unsmiling gaze on her and said nothing.

  She gaped at him, said, “Ben,” then realized she didn’t have a plan for what she would say to him when she found him. She groped about for words, feeling a rising panic, and started babbling.

  “I’m not good at letting other people help me. I wanted to protect you and I forgot you might want to protect me because I’m not used to being protected, and I think that means we should try to protect each other. I know it’s stupid, but I didn’t know you love me, and maybe that’s the wrong thing to say because you might think I don’t love you, because if I did I would have known how you felt. But I do love you. I just didn’t know until it was too late.”

  The words rattled off into the distance, leaving her feeling empty and uncertain as to what she’d said. He looked at her with no change in his expression. “Happen we should have this conversation inside,” he said, and held the door open for her.

  She waited until he sat on the sofa, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together, to take the rocking chair opposite. Having said her piece at the door, she didn’t know what else to say, or do. Ben’s jaw was clenched, and he looked as if he might never speak again, which meant it was probably still her turn to talk. She opened her mouth, then closed it, afraid she might start babbling again. She wanted so badly to ease the pain she’d caused him.

  “I don’t know how it is I understand Morgan so well,” she said, deciding on total honesty and openness. She probably should have told him this long before. “I look at him and I know what he’s thinking, or what he’s going to do next. It’s frightening and it makes me sick to my stomach. But that’s how I know what will happen if you meet him. He will know what you mean to me and he will kill you to torture me. So I lied when I said I was trying to protect you. I was trying to protect myself.”

  Ben looked up when she began speaking and kept his eyes on her the whole time. She couldn’t read his expression. He was going to make her work to get a reaction. It was nice to know he had some flaws, and that stubbornness was one of them. Maybe he and Aunt Weaver should hold a stubbornness contest, she thought wildly, and had to choke back a semi-hysterical laugh.

  Her hands were shaking again from the emotions she was trying to keep in check. She took a calming breath that was almost completely ineffective and said, “After you left, everyone told me I was stupid because I didn’t know you loved me. I was stupid. You were never anything but clear about it, and I just didn’t understand. I didn’t understand even when a lot of other people hinted about it to me. I think it’s because I got to be twenty-three without knowing what love was like, or even what it felt like to be attracted to someone. I was too busy with my work to let anyone get that close, I think. But it’s no excuse for how oblivious I was. I’m sorry.”

  Ben shifted his weight, but said nothing. Telaine clenched her hands together. “I don’t know what else I need to say,” she said. She thought back and listed everything aloud. “I’m sorry I said I didn’t need you because that was both cruel and a lie. I’m sorry I said it in public, which made things worse. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you about Morgan—you have no idea how sorry I am about that. I’m sorry I didn’t know you were in love with me. And I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  Ben leaned back on the couch and spread his hands on his knees. His expression was still inscrutable. “What do you think I should do with all that?” he asked.

  Telaine looked at the floor. He didn’t sound as if her apology mattered to him. She ought to leave, go back to her room and start coding the message about the imminent invasion, forget she’d ever loved Ben Garrett. “I don’t know,” she said. “I would like you to forgive me, if you can. I love you. I want more than anything for you to love me again.” She sounded so pathetic. How had she gotten herself into this? Falling in love with a country blacksmith she couldn’t even tell her real name to?

  Silence. “You weren’t kidding about being stupid about love,” Ben said. “You couldn’t hurt me like that if I didn’t love you. And love’s not something you turn on and off like that tap.”

  She looked up at him, startled. Ben sighed. He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees again.

  “I won’t say I’ve got a right to defend you just because we’re walking out together, because that’s like I own you,” he said, “but you can’t expect me to watch you in trouble and not do everything in my power to fix it. That’s part of what love is. Lainie, I want you to need me. I want to know you look at me and see someone you can call on anytime, for anything. I don’t want you treating me like a mewling babe can’t take care of himself, much less anyone else. Because I don’t treat you that way at all.”

  She nodded. Her chest was tight with tears she refused to shed. It was so easy to manipulate a man with tears.

  Ben looked off in the direction of the kitchen, shaking his head, and a smile touched his lips. “Should’ve known you’d follow me right away. Other girls, happen they would’ve given up, let things fester, but Lainie Bricker can’t leave things alone. I stood there behind the door, listening to you knock, and I turned out the light because I wanted to hang on to my anger a while longer. And you didn’t go anywhere. So I thought, do I need my anger more than I need her?”

  That, and his smile, broke something loose inside her, and then she was crying and covering her face with her hands, thinking crazily that sparing him the sight of her tears might be less manipulative, and heard him kneel on the floor at her feet.

  “Sweetheart, you don’t have to hide from me,” he said, peeling her fingers away from her face, and that made her cry even harder. Everything she’d endured that day turned into tears that poured out of her like an endless river, and she threw her arms around his neck and sobbed into his shoulder, him stroking her hair and murmuring calming words.

  “I do need you,” she said when her flood of tears had abated. “There’s something I need to tell you. I can’t bear it alone. But I want to sit down together, because you’re not going to like what I have to say.”

  He took her hand and sat next to her on the sofa, and in a trembling voice, with many pauses, she told him what Morgan had done to her. Telling him comforted her, made the fear more distant, though she could tell as she spoke that Ben was having trouble not leaping up and flying off into the night to find and murder Morgan. When she finished, he put his arms around her, drew her to sit close against his chest, and said, “I wish I’d been there.”

  “So do I.”

  “You going to listen to me now when I warn you about him?”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Sorry. I meant, how are we going to keep you safe from him?”

  “I’ve been wondering if I could appeal to the Baron. He already knows Morgan makes me uncomfortable, and I think he may value me more than he does Morgan.”

  “Baron’s as dangerous in a less obvious way. Don’t think you ought put yourself in his hands.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “I’m not going back to the fort tomorrow. I’m going to Ellismere in the morning.”

  “Safe as anywhere. Wish I could come along, though.” He gave her a squeeze.

  “I’ll come right back. I promise.”

  She craned her head to l
ook at him and smile, and her heart beat faster when he gave her his brilliant smile in return. The smile turned mischievous. “Now,” he said, turning her in his arms to face him, “I heard somewhere you’re in love with me.”

  “You know how rumors are,” she said. “Never can tell which to believe.”

  He pulled a face. “That’s a shame,” he said, “because I was planning to kiss you if you were.”

  Telaine put her arms around his neck. “I think that’s an excellent plan.”

  He smiled again, then kissed her, trailing his fingers along her cheek and threading them through her hair. “I think I should do that again,” he murmured, and she replied by sliding her hands around the back of his neck and kissing him until they both had to come up for air. He smelled so good, crisp and clean like the hot metal of the forge.

  His lips met hers again, passionately, and the feel of them swept away the memory of Morgan’s terrible kiss and filled her with longing for more. He doesn’t know who I am, she thought, but it was distant and tiny and she could barely hear it over the sound of her heart beating.

  Ben put his arms around her and pulled her to him, his kisses growing more urgent, his hands stroking her back and sliding under her shirt to caress her skin. She kissed him harder, willing him to touch her more. She wanted him so badly her whole body felt like it was on fire. This is what love feels like, she thought, but it was so much more, it was walking hand in hand down the street, laughing over a shared joke, that brilliant smile of his that told her he loved her, body and soul.

  No. Loves who he thinks you are.

  That inner voice was getting harder to ignore. His hands moved further up her back, brushing the strap of her brassiere, and for a moment she saw a future in which they lay naked together on his bed, sharing that ultimate expression of love. He’ll have to know the truth eventually, and how will he feel when he realizes he’s slept with a woman who doesn’t exist?