The Secrets of a Scoundrel

by Gaelen Foley

  He sent her a mild, warning look. She was toeing her way onto sensitive ground.

  “Why didn’t you just borrow money from one of them instead of using Lowell’s moneylenders? All your friends are wealthy men.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t do that. I don’t take advantage of my friends.”

  “Hmm. So, what’s your poison, then? Hazard? Faro? Whist?”

  “Whist?” He looked askance at her. “Whist is for old ladies.”

  “Well, then? What’s your game?”

  “I don’t gamble anymore,” he replied, bristling a little.

  She gazed at him.

  “But . . . in my day,” he admitted a moment later—­rather ruefully—­as if a part of him needed to talk, “I would’ve bet on anything. I especially liked the prizefights. Horse races. Any stupid thing, really.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” he echoed. “I don’t think I ever had a reason.”

  “Of course you did. You’re Nick Forrester. You don’t do anything without a reason, not you. So what did you like about it?”

  “This is a stupid conversation,” he informed her.

  “Really? I find it fascinating. I find you fascinating.” She bit into the macaroon.

  He scoffed and looked away, startled, not the least because he could feel his face flush with boyish embarrassment at her interest in him.

  She swallowed the dainty mouthful and washed it down with a sip of Riesling. “Well, you are,” she said. “I want to understand you, Nicholas.”

  “Why?”

  “No reason. I want to know what makes you tick. For instance, what made you want to join the Order? What made you want to quit?”

  “Oh, Lord,” he drawled, falling onto his back on the bed with a weary sigh.

  “Tell me,” she persisted.

  “Tell you what, precisely?” he asked, not at all sure he was ready for an interrogation.

  “The real reason why you gambled.”

  He was silent for a moment. “I guess it boils down to being oddly superstitious,” he confessed. “I mean, I should have died many times over in the field. But I always walked away in one piece, and it just seems to me that there’s got to be a reason—­beyond being good at what I do, I mean. Either I’ve got nine lives like a cat, or there’s some reason I’ve been spared. Something maybe I’m supposed to do or be or see or figure out . . . I don’t know. I sound ridiculous, like some raving mad old gypsy woman.”

  “It doesn’t sound ridiculous at all,” she replied, smiling. “So you wanted to try to find a pattern? A sense of meaning.”

  “Yes,” he said, sitting up in surprise to stare at her. “Exactly so.” Her immediate grasp of his bizarre motivation startled him but made it seem all right to say a little more. “I guess . . . I just wanted a sign. Some sort of sign that what I was doing mattered. That it was right.”

  “Did you ever get one?”

  “No,” he said with a wry, sad laugh. “I lost my bloody shirt. Obviously.” He sighed.

  She stood up slowly, bringing her wine with her. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe the gaming tables was the wrong place to look?”

  He watched her in wary fascination as she came to him and sat down on his lap. “What are you doing?” he murmured.

  A naughty half smile curved her lips as she glanced down at his mouth, and whispered, “I’ll give you a sign, Nicky boy.” She tilted her head and kissed him gently.

  He shivered with pleasure, but held himself back, his pulse already drumming. “You’re drunk, my lady,” he said in fond, chiding amusement.

  “So?”

  “I’m not going to take advantage of you,” he said with heroic resolve.

  “Please?” she breathed, skimming her lips against his ear.

  God. “No more wine for you.”

  “But we’re in Paris.”

  “That’s no excuse,” he teased softly. When he lifted her glass out of her hand and set it aside, she draped her arms over his shoulders and leaned nearer.

  “I want to tell you a secret,” she whispered.

  “Hmmm?”

  “One day, when I was but a girl of seventeen, I followed my father to one of his meetings with you.”

  “What?” He pulled back a few inches to chuckle at her.

  “That’s right. I spied on you all. My father and his protégés.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Curiosity. Jealousy. I didn’t like being shut out of all the excitement! So I had to find out who or what was stealing so much of my papa’s attention from me. And there you all were, at the fencing studio. Hiding in plain sight, just like he taught you to do.”

  Nick shook his head in astonishment.

  “I remember you,” she murmured. “You were standing apart from the others, leaning against a column, looking annoyed.”

  He smiled ruefully. “For some reason, they considered me difficult to work with on occasion. I have no idea why.”

  “You started arguing with Warrington. Nobody argues with Warrington! The Beast.”

  Nick rolled his eyes at the mention of the Order’s most vainglorious hero. “Dukes always think they walk on water. Somebody’s got to take them down a peg.”

  She smiled as she clasped her hands behind his neck and gazed into his eyes. “Well, here’s the secret. You, Lord Forrester, became my favorite from that very day.”

  “Did I, indeed?” he echoed, pleased.

  “Strange, isn’t it?” she teased in a flirtatious whisper, while his heart pounded faster at this revelation. “Usually, the ladies all go mad for beautiful Beauchamp. And Lord Trevor Montgomery is so much nicer than you. So much more of a gentleman. Lord Falconridge as well. Then there’s Lord Rotherstone, who’s obviously cleverer than you—­”

  “No, just more devious,” he insisted with a smile.

  “Warrington’s the mightiest—­”

  “Ha.”

  “And then there’s Drake, Lord Westwood. I don’t know what to make of him.”

  “Nobody does, believe me. Touched in the head, that one.”

  “Yes, he is an enigma. But so are you, in your own way. Personally, I like a mystery.”

  “And you know all this from one reconnaissance mission as a little, seventeen-­year-­old miss?”

  “No, of course not. My father told me all sorts of things about you. All of you.”

  “Did he really? He must have trusted you immensely.”

  “Of course he did. We were the best of mates. He took care not to mention names, but I could usually figure out which one of you he was talking about.” She shrugged. “I don’t think he even realized that I was really listening. He just needed to get things off his chest. And who else could he talk to, really?”

  “I wonder why he never introduced you to us all.”

  “Isn’t it obvious? He didn’t want me falling in love. But he was too late.” She stroked his hair.

  Nick was a tad bewildered. Surely this was just the wine talking. “Well, ahem, I’m sure a young girl like that is, um, prone to infatuations.”

  “Yes, but I am thirty-­four, and I fear I’m still not cured.”

  Once more, he was blushing like a callow youth, staring at the floor, trying with all his might to hold himself back. Never had a woman talked to him this way. Not in all his life. He did not usually allow them close enough even to try. Normally, he’d have been done with her and on his way by now. But with her, well, even now, he could not look away from her dreamy, cobalt gaze.

  “Is that why you came and got me out of prison?” he asked softly. You can’t seriously be saying you’re in love with me.

  She bit her lip and stroked his hair. “I hated the injustice of what they’d done to you. Locking you up in that hellhole after you’d given your whole lif
e to the Order. Ever since you were a child.”

  “I was never a child.”

  She gazed at him thoughtfully. “You never did answer the question I asked you on the ship. How your mother ever agreed to it, how she parted with you.”

  “What do you mean? I did it for her sake,” he answered. “To make her proud of me. And comfortable. And happy.”

  “Did it? Make her happy?”

  “No. She’s a miserable person. But I didn’t realize that till recently.”

  “Oh.” She paused. “Did it make you happy, at least? Being in the Order?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “But eventually that changed?” she prompted softly when he did not elaborate.

  “Yes.”

  She toyed with the collar of his shirt. “So you went into the Order for your mother’s sake. What made you want to get out?”

  He stared at her for a second. “They shot Trevor right in front of me. The enemy did. Shot him in the back, and down he went. My God.” He shut his eyes and shook his head, wincing at the memory. “That,” he uttered, “was my sign.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Trevor, of all ­people. The good one. It should have been me. He’s too good a man. They never should have put him in the field.”

  “My father never would’ve sent an unqualified agent out on a dangerous mission—­”

  “That’s not what I mean. Don’t misunderstand. He’s a damned fine agent. But he’s so bloody honorable. You can’t be, out there. Your father knew it, too. That’s why he put him with me. To stop me from going too far. Because he always knew that, one day, I would.”

  “Too far how?”

  He shook his head and pushed her away, moving her gently off his lap.

  She stood up and frowned in thought, studying him.

  Thankfully, she spared him the demand for a definition. She did not want to know how willing he had been to kill for the cause.

  She picked up her wineglass and retreated to her former seat nearby. “At least you managed to save Trevor’s life.”

  “Just barely,” he muttered. “You obviously don’t know the rest of the story; otherwise, you’d have been cured of your infatuation and wouldn’t keep looking at me like deep down you still think I’m some sort of hero in spite of everything.”

  She arched a brow at him, keeping her distance at last. “Then perhaps you’d better enlighten me.”

  “Yes. I should.” That would lay to rest her misguided admiration of him.

  Still, it took him a long moment to come out with his confession.

  “While Trevor was convalescing from the gunshot wound, I made up my mind, you see, to quit the Order. I didn’t give a damn anymore after seeing my best friend nearly slaughtered right in front of me.

  “Unfortunately,” he continued, “Trevor is not the sort who’d ever lie to our superiors. That meant that as soon as he reported back to the graybeards and told them I was a deserter, they would send out agents either to drag me back to face the consequences or shoot me dead if they couldn’t take me alive.

  “On the other hand, they couldn’t send snipers out to kill me if they knew I had one of our own in custody somewhere.”

  Her eyebrows shot upward. “Oh, dear. So, you . . . used your best friend as a hostage?”

  Nick nodded. “Hell, I saved his life. I figured it would not be too much trouble if I allowed him to save mine.”

  “And how did he react to being held prisoner?” she asked in a dubious tone.

  “Eh, he didn’t even realize it most of the time. He was wounded, out of commission for several weeks. He just thought I was looking after him—­and I was.” Nick heaved a sigh, staring at the floor for a second. “It was only a ­couple of months. I just needed to get some funds together so I could start a new life elsewhere, under a new identity. Far, far away.”

  “Oh, Nick.”

  “When Trevor finally started getting stronger and asking why we weren’t headed back for England, that’s when the trouble started. Because at that point, I actually had to lock him up. Several times we came to blows when he tried to escape. The man can fight,” he said.

  “So that’s why the graybeards put you in that cell.”

  “Oh, no, darling, it gets much worse.”

  “Go on.”

  “As I said, I needed funds. And I do have a rather ­particular set of skills. That woman, Madame Angelique . . .”

  “Ah, the female version of Hugh Lowell, I believe you said?”

  “Yes. Let’s just say I went to work for her. I needed money. She was getting death threats. I took care of them for her.”

  “Oh,” she said with a small gulp.

  “When you take a job as a hired assassin, they don’t usually tell you up front who you’re supposed to kill. At first, they only tell you where and when, and then, in due time, once you get there, the target is revealed.”

  She was silent.

  “Angelique set it up for me. I didn’t know who the target was, honestly. I had no idea. As soon as I found out, of course, I refused. Even though backing out of something like that usually means you’re dead.”

  “Who was the target?”

  He held his breath, dreading her reaction. “The Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool.”

  She covered her mouth with her hand and paled.

  “Somebody set me up to frame the entire Order. The charge was to have been that the Order had nurtured a conspiracy plotting to overthrow the government.”

  “My God,” she whispered.

  “They used me—­or nearly so—­to try to incriminate the whole organization. Fortunately, Beauchamp was working the same problem from another angle, and so we ended by teaming up to stop the real conspiracy. We managed to expose them and take them down. If it hadn’t been for our friendship, and how much we trust each other even in a situation like that, we’d all have been destroyed.”

  “Is that when you ended up taking a bullet for the Regent?”

  “Yes. God’s truth, I wished at the time that it had killed me. Facing my friends after what I’d done was harder than dying. At least I didn’t have to face your father. Virgil was already dead by the time all this took place.”

  She nodded, taking it all in. “So instead of gaining your freedom and the new life you longed for, you ended up in that cell.”

  “I deserved it. Believe me, I’m not complaining. They could have hanged me. Might have done, too, but Beau and even Trevor himself spoke on my behalf. As did the Regent.”

  “Trevor forgave you, then?”

  “I told you he was too good-­hearted,” Nick said wryly, then he shrugged, relaxing a little as he saw she had not fled the room in disgust of him. “Besides, it actually bore good results in his life.”

  “How’s that?”

  “If I had not, er, detained him, he’d have rushed back to London to be reunited with his former fiancée. That woman was all wrong for him. Instead, he missed his chance with her—­she had given him up for dead and married a new beau. As a result, Trevor found a new girl, ended up married to the right one for him, a pastor’s daughter. I haven’t met her yet, but apparently this Grace woman is just as virtuous and sensible as he.”

  She cast him a wan smile.

  “So, you see, at least some good came of what I did,” he said wryly. “Still, it’s hard to live with. Knowing how I failed.”

  “Nick. You’re not the only person in the world who’s ever done anything wrong, you know. We’ve all done terrible things.”

  “Not you?”

  “Yes, even me,” she whispered.

  “Like what?”

  She was silent as she licked her lips, betraying a hint of apprehension. “Well, if it’s to be a night of trading secrets . . .”

  Nick waited, his brow furrowed as he stu
died her. She lowered her head for a second. Taking a deep breath, she lifted her gaze, looked him frankly in the eyes, and said: “I killed my husband.”

  Chapter 13

  Nick held stock-­still. “Come again?”

  “It’s true. I am responsible for his death.”

  “I thought you said he died in the Peninsular War. A fever hit the army camp.”

  “On the face of it, that’s true. But he never even should have been there. He wasn’t a soldier. I drove him to it, you see. I couldn’t stop comparing him to you . . . and the others. All my father’s dashing, handsome, fearless secret agents. I came to hate the sight of him. Isn’t that horrible? Remember, I was forced to marry him to avoid a scandal, after I had gone out of my way to steal him from the debutante bullying my friend.”

  He nodded, remembering what she had told him.

  She shook her head and looked away. “I disparaged him, even insulted his manhood, until one day he came home and threw it in my face that he had bought a commission in the cavalry. He was going to war, he said, and then I would respect him. And now my son will never know his father.”

  She lowered her head again with a pained look, avoiding his gaze. “That, too, my dear Lord Forrester, is very hard to live with.”

  He leaned closer, filled with the urge to comfort her. “Seems we’ve both been through it.”

  “Yes, we have.”

  When she glanced up warily and met his gaze, Nick cupped her cheek in his palm and bent forward, pressing a soft kiss to her lips. His heart pounded as he ended the kiss, though he did not release her face from his gentle hold. “I saw your husband’s portrait back at Deepwood,” he murmured, unable to help himself. “Forgive me, but the man in that picture wasn’t good enough for you. It sounds to me like you were trapped in a prison of your own, just as I was.”

  “Yes,” she breathed, nodding, her eyes closed as she nestled her cheek against his hand.

  He kissed her brow. “You fought against your cage. Because you have a warrior’s blood in your veins.”

  “It doesn’t excuse the way I treated that poor man in my immaturity. I was petty and cruel—­”

  “He wasn’t strong enough to handle you,” he corrected her in a husky whisper. “I’d never let you get away with that if you were mine.”