The Undercover Scoundrel

by Jessica Peterson

  “I’m sorry about what I said last night,” he began. “I know you probably didn’t want to talk about the past, and I forced you. I’ve been so jealous of Osbourne all these years. Angry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I was the one who left. And the child . . .”

  Slowly, carefully, she touched her fingers to the kerseymere sleeve of his coat. She fought against the tightness in her throat.

  “I would’ve written if I could,” she said.

  “I would’ve left something if I could.” He covered her fingers with one of his own. “I thought I understood your grief. I thought I understood you.” He scoffed, looked down. “I was wrong.”

  “You left because you had to, Henry,” she said. “And I did what I had to do.”

  A pause. He looked up and met her eyes. “Do you ever think about what she would be like? Our daughter?”

  Her vision blurred with tears, and she felt them hot on her face; then Henry was gathering her in his arms, and she let him absorb the sounds of her grief in his chest. He was shaking. Still he held her, tightly, her arms to his breast, his arms wrapped about her body, holding her yet closer.

  Our daughter. The daughter they had created together.

  “All the time,” she said.

  The release wasn’t violent; for both of them it was quiet, and thorough, and whole. She remembered how safe she’d felt in his arms at seventeen, how his strength had thrilled her.

  And now that she was witness to his grief, to the tenderness that lurked just beneath his hardened surface, she felt safer still. Because he was the only person in the world who felt this grief as she felt it. She wasn’t afraid to bare it here, in the circle of his arms.

  A different kind of safe. Less thrilling. But perhaps better.

  * * *

  Henry wiped her eyes with his neatly folded handkerchief, and then he wiped his own.

  He took a long breath through his nose; he looked up. “Let’s walk. The rain isn’t far off now.”

  Without waiting for her reply, he looped her arm through his and led her out of the copse. Neither of them spoke until they were back inside the gardens, and strolling across a wide lawn, on the far side of which rose the famed Great Pagoda.

  “Ah, the pagoda,” Henry said. “It’s . . .”

  “Rather phallic, I know,” Caroline said with a small smile. “But it’s an attractive phallus, don’t you think?”

  “Please.” A flush rose, swiftly, from Henry’s neck to his cheeks. “Please don’t ever—just. Those words, together. I can’t.”

  She blushed, too, even as she grinned. “Since when do you have a prudish bone in your body?”

  “Since I turned thirty.”

  He smiled. She smiled. They smiled at each other.

  * * *

  Caroline blinked at the fat raindrop that hit her forehead and rolled to rest on her eyelash. She brushed it away with the knuckle of her first finger.

  Henry tilted his head. “Looks like—”

  Rain, great sheets of it, released from the swollen sky like a long, low breath. It plodded on the leaves of the trees above; it pummeled the ground with muted thuds.

  Henry rolled back his shoulders and shrugged out of his coat; holding it above his head, he wrapped an arm about Caroline’s shoulders and pulled her against him.

  “Quickly!” he said over the rising tumult of the rain.

  “The Orangery,” she replied. “This way!”

  Beneath the shelter of his coat, they scurried across the lawn.

  “Your leg,” she panted as they ran, “is it all right?”

  “My leg?” Henry looked down, as if he’d forgotten it was there. “Oh, yes. Er. It’s quite well, thank you.”

  They were an ungainly pair, to say the least; they tripped and skipped and mauled one another as they attempted to remain side by side under his coat. The tightness in Caroline’s throat loosened, and was replaced by laughter.

  Henry, too, was laughing, poking her with the jutting edge of his hip. She poked back. He laughed harder.

  By the time they reached the Orangery, Henry’s coat was soaked through, and so were Caroline’s skirts. They lurched through the glass doors in a muddy, untidy mess; several patrons stared as Henry shook out his coat. Caroline tried very hard not to keep laughing.

  He turned to her, mouth stretching into a half grin. His hair, usually combed back into a ribboned queue, stuck to his forehead; his cravat was hopelessly mussed.

  She decided she liked seeing him like this, soaked, disheveled, his clothes plastered to his body. It suited him. Him, the Viking-pirate in the horned hat.

  Mostly it suited the daringly cut muscles that arched on either side of his torso.

  “You look a fright,” she said, eyes sweeping appreciatively over said muscles. “I do, too, don’t I?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Here, let me help.”

  Placing his one good coat over his arm, he tugged Caroline behind a sickly looking potted lemon tree.

  “I can—”

  “No,” he said, “I will—”

  “Let me—”

  “Let me—”

  She fought off his hands, giggling as he made one last swipe for the strings of her bonnet. The giggling seemed to ease the soreness in her eyes and throat after all that crying, although now that soreness reappeared in her ribs as she laughed yet harder.

  “Really?” she said.

  “Yes,” he replied, his grin deepening into laughter, “really.”

  Henry was looming over her, his face alive with amusement as he reached for her, teasing. “Now hold still.”

  * * *

  “What’s this?” Henry asked. He lifted a squab from the bench, revealing a velvet-lined compartment beneath.

  Caroline leaned forward in her seat, swaying in time to the carriage. They were on their way back to London; rain pattered pleasantly on the roof. “I’m not sure. Perhaps William hides his lady friends in there.”

  Henry lifted a bottle from the compartment. “Brandy,” he said, peering at the label. He took the cork in his teeth. “Want some?”

  He held out the bottle.

  She grasped it. “It would be rude, and most unkind, to let you drink alone.”

  Caroline sipped tidily, then winced, coughing as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “The bottle,” she sputtered. “It’s half empty. Wonder where William was going when he drank all that brandy?”

  Henry grinned as he took the bottle and drank. “I’d venture he didn’t drink it all by himself.”

  She arched a brow. “Lady Violet?”

  “Girl does like her liquor.”

  “Those two.” Caroline sighed with a shake of her head. Already the brandy was at work, warming her body against the chill damp of her clothes. She felt giddy, and exhausted, after spending the day in Henry’s company.

  The subject of Woodstock’s threat, of the missing diamond, hung heavy, unspoken, between them.

  But Caroline didn’t wish to discuss it now. This afternoon. There would be time enough for the heavy things later.

  The afternoon was theirs. Her sides hurt from laughing so hard, and so often. Her spirit felt lighter, having shared the burden of her secret with Henry at last.

  Henry held out the bottle. “More?”

  She waved him away. “Go ahead.”

  He twisted the cork back into place and set the bottle down into its hiding place; he covered the compartment with the squab. And then he turned back to Caroline.

  “Thank you,” he said. “For today. I’m glad you came. After everything that’s happened these past days, I didn’t want to leave you alone. To your thoughts and fears, I mean. I’ve been doing this for a while now, but the violence—it stays with you, no matter how hard you try to forget it.”

  She swallowed. “I’ll
be all right.”

  “I shall make sure of that,” he said firmly. And even though everything was decidedly not all right, and probably never would be again, the conviction in his words made Caroline feel the tiniest bit better.

  Just a few short days ago, she wouldn’t have thought it possible—not after he’d left her to fend for herself a decade before—that Henry would make her feel safe.

  But wasn’t that what he’d always tried to do, no matter the cost to himself?

  The thought caused a flutter to rise in her chest, a pleasant, ticklish feeling.

  She looked at the knot of her folded hands in her lap. “I’m glad you asked me to come. Though it was hardly difficult to say yes—the Botanic Gardens are to me what that sordid tavern is to you. Heaven.”

  Henry smiled. “A sordid tavern is hardly heaven. Though if the ale is decent . . .”

  Caroline bit her lip.

  “Don’t you remember,” he asked, “when we were in the garden at your parents’ house, how you’d talk about Kew? You wanted to visit, badly, but no one would go with you.”

  “I remember.” She blinked. “And so do you.”

  “I remember everything,” he said softly. “It’s all I had, when I left—what I remembered. I’ve been remembering for twelve years.”

  Caroline felt her cheeks flush with heat. She’d like to blame the brandy.

  She knew better. There was no mistaking that feeling, the flutter that became a full-on rush of blood to her heart.

  “What have you been remembering?”

  “You, mostly.”

  She met his eye. “Henry—”

  It was a warning. A plea.

  “I regret many things, Caroline,” he said. “But I will never regret you.”

  Her gaze moved over his shirt, still stuck to his skin in a most revealing fashion. Did she regret him? Having to let him go, perhaps.

  But there were some things about which she felt less certain. Namely, the passion they shared. And his criminally handsome person.

  Henry’s broad chest rose and fell, straining against the transparent fabric of his shirt. She took her bottom lip in her teeth.

  “What?” he asked innocently. And then, looking down upon that shirt: “Oh, dear, look how wet my shirt is. I shall just have to remove it . . .”

  With deft fingers he coaxed one button free, then the next, and the next, the revealed skin a vibrant foil to the white of his shirt. A smattering of pale, wiry hair covered his chest. She was tempted—so tempted!—to reach out and touch it.

  The side of his mouth quirked up in that saucy half smile of his as he watched her watching him. He held out his arms, baring his chest to her.

  “Would you care to complete the task, my lady?”

  With a disbelieving scoff, Caroline crossed her arms about her breast and fell back against the squabs, glaring pointedly out the window. “You’re shameless, Henry. Absolutely shameless.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want to give it a go? My shirt, that is.”

  Caroline rolled her eyes. “No, thank you.” And fought an enormous smile.

  Twenty-two

  Henry was in love with her.

  It happened as he helped Caroline down from the carriage. The conviction hit him squarely in the center of his chest, like a bullet shot straight through the heart; a sudden, shocking thing, though later he would recognize it had been there along, this feeling, and only then, in that moment, had she knocked it perfectly into place. Like an obstinate dead bolt, coaxed at last into its lock by the proper key.

  It was the warmth of her hand in his, the dark wisps of hair that caressed the back and sides of her nape, the bloom of embarrassment (and arousal, he’d like to think) staining her cheeks. The intelligent, and censorious, gleam in her eyes as they met his.

  He liked teasing her. Mostly because he adored making her smile in the midst of all the doom he’d brought to her doorstep. It was hardly decent of him, playing at getting naked in her brother’s carriage, but then when had either of them—Henry or Caroline—ever wanted to be decent?

  Decent was boring. And Caroline Townshend (she would always be Townshend to him) was anything but boring, even if she refused to indulge in a bit of midafternoon nudity with him.

  She turned to him and smiled. For a moment he couldn’t breathe.

  “Careful,” she said, and reached for his shirt. She slid the top button into its tiny hole. The tip of her first finger brushed his throat. “I daresay I am the only woman in London immune to your chest hair.”

  Oh, heavens. He was very much in love with her.

  He smiled, an enormous thing that hurt his face. They were standing close. Too close, considering all of Hanover Square could see them.

  “I’ll have you know I’m rather proud of my chest hair. Took me thirty years to grow it.”

  She laughed, a high, delighted sound. “Quite the accomplishment.”

  Henry glanced over her head at the stern façade of her brother’s house. On cue, the front door swung open, the earl’s palm wrapped tightly about the brass knob as he moved out onto the front step. His eyes were black and hard as they took in Henry.

  Henry’s smile faded a bit. As if he didn’t have enough enemies with which to contend; he’d almost forgotten how much Caroline’s brother loathed him.

  He stepped back. Reading his face, Caroline glanced over her shoulder.

  She turned back to Henry. “I should go.”

  The light was fading; during their ride back to London, the sky had cleared, and now it was bare, a darkening blue too late for sun, too early for stars; the surrounding buildings blocked a view of the sunset.

  Caroline’s skin shone in the soft light, and a small breeze tickled the wisps of hair at her neck. It was spring.

  And Henry was in love.

  He looked at her a moment too long. He was tempted to reach out and take her hands, but Henry had no doubt the earl would challenge him to a duel if he so much as looked at Caroline the wrong way.

  Henry stepped back, clearing his throat. “Right. I don’t want to keep you. Good evening, my lady.”

  He strode out into the street in a daze, his pulse racing, thoughts whirling. The floral note of her perfume lingered in his nose; he imagined he could taste it.

  It was the one thing he swore he wouldn’t do, falling in love with Caroline. He swore he’d stay away from her, from London; he swore these things to keep her safe.

  He’d left her twelve years ago, to keep her safe.

  And now her life—his, too—was in danger.

  He closed his eyes against the panic that sliced through his chest.

  He was in love.

  And he was in trouble.

  He made a sharp turn into a narrow lane; the evening traffic on Regent Street was distracting, and Henry needed to think.

  Soon, very soon, Woodstock would lose patience. He’d hunted Caroline for more than a decade; his revenge would not wait. Henry would not let him kill her. Not while he still had breath in his body.

  More than once Henry contemplated holding a gun to her scalawag brother’s head, demanding he hand over the diamond. But that would mean bringing more violence to Caroline’s doorstep; and doubtless the earl, being the cocky man he was, would assume Henry would not dare shoot him.

  And he’d be right. Which meant Henry would be forced to tell Harclay about Woodstock. All hell would break loose, and someone—all of them, probably—would end up dead.

  No, he would not confront the earl. Not yet. Henry’s plot with the acrobats was still in play; if he could get the French Blue without having to threaten Harclay himself, it would be best for everyone.

  He would have to wait. And keep watch over Caroline.

  He couldn’t bear the thought of her coming to harm—again—on his account. Her, the woman he loved.


  The woman who, knowing his luck, he’d end up hurting all over again.

  Still.

  He loved her. He’d been an idiot to think falling for her again was anything but inevitable. It had taken him all of an afternoon to fall in love with her a decade ago; an afternoon of bright yellow sun, laughter, and a promise to meet her in the garden the next day. He kept that promise, and met her by the secluded folly on her father’s estate; he met her there the next day, and the next, and the next, always in the morning, always early, so eager to see her, and laugh with her, and tease her.

  She was an earl’s daughter; she came with a ten-thousand-pound dowry. He was a third son, with no position, no money, and nothing to offer.

  Now, ten years later, Henry could boast of a position, and a good one, an honorable one, but serving king and country was hardly a profitable affair. He had very little money, and less to offer a lady like Caroline, who, as a dowager countess, was accustomed to a lifestyle that Good Queen Bess, his fellow feisty ginger, wouldn’t scoff at.

  Even if Henry could somehow defeat Woodstock, and save Caroline’s life; if the earl stopped being a jackass, and handed over the diamond; if Henry negotiated successfully with the French, and in so doing helped end the war; even if all these things came to pass, what did he hope would come of his affection for Caroline? That she would forgive him, and forget about the widowhood she so fiercely defended, and love him as he loved her?

  They had nowhere to live. He couldn’t retire. Agents like him had no choice in the matter; most died young. He wouldn’t subject Caroline to the horrors of his life as an agent; he’d already put her life at risk, and he’d been in London only a week. He wanted better for her. She deserved better than he could give her.

  He was in love with her.

  But he would be damned if she fell in love with him. It wasn’t fair. It was dangerous.

  He would protect her, even if it killed him. He would focus on the diamond, and his duty, and head back to Paris, where he belonged.

  Henry blinked, realizing he’d walked farther—and faster—than he’d intended. He stood at the end of a barrel-ceilinged walkway that led out onto a small, nondescript square. It was prematurely dark here, the buildings lining each side of the square blocking what little light was left.