by Anna Randol
“But the policeman let you past. He couldn’t be suspicious.”
“They’ve set someone else to follow us.”
She started to jerk around, but Clayton gripped her knee. “The old man by the gate is police as well. He signals who needs to be followed.”
She hadn’t seen the old man do anything. Who could he have signaled— “The bread seller?”
Clayton lifted a brow and nodded.
It took a minute for the rest of his comment to register. “Someone else?”
“Someone has been trailing us since shortly after the mud.”
The mud? That had been over an hour ago. “And you didn’t say anything?”
“Our tracker is keeping his distance. I saw no reason to worry you.”
“Or you assumed I already knew?”
“The thought did occur to me.”
How much would it hurt him if she hit him on the head with a cabbage?
“What did the man following us look like?” she asked.
“I never got a clear look.” When she was tempted to glance about, Clayton tightened his hand on her knee, but then he winced and drew away.
“Is your hand injured?” she asked.
He tucked it in his coat. “Nothing of import.”
“How did you hurt it?” She’d always loved his hands. Except for the constant ink stains, they’d been like the hands of a farm laborer or a dockhand. Strong. Long-fingered. Blunt-tipped. One of her favorite pastimes had been trying to imagine what those hands would feel like caressing her naked skin. She’d thought she’d outgrown that.
Apparently not. A tendril of awareness twined up the skin of her thighs.
“It’s an old injury.”
“But what—”
“When we reach the dvor, we’ll leave the cart and lose our admirers in the crowds of the marketplace. Stay close.” He pulled on the reins, and the pony stopped abruptly in front of a huge building wedged in the intersection of several wide streets. Elegant arched windows, columns, and balustrades stretched an entire block. Where was the market?
Clayton climbed down and Olivia did the same, not waiting for him to help. She suspected speed would be important here.
He led her straight through the throng of people crowding around the main doors. Old women carried bags that should have been too heavy for a grown man. Thin, sharp-faced wives had their hands tucked into muffs, children tottering around their ankles in thick coats.
The building was the market. Or rather the market was inside the building.
Clayton caught her arm to stop her from gawking at the hundreds of shops that filled the space, and led her, instead, into the thickest part of the crowd. Past old bookstores, past shops selling furs, perfumes, and gilded icons. Past shopkeepers shouting that their silver was the finest in Russia.
With every step, Olivia felt eyes on her. “How do we know who to avoid if we don’t know who’s following us?”
“We don’t try to avoid anyone. Our best chance is for them not to know we realize they’re there.”
A man walking past with a pile of cloaks brushed her shoulder and sent her stumbling. Clayton’s tug kept her from stepping on a hound tied to a metal ring outside one of the shops, but the dog barked in their wake.
Clayton swore and pulled her through a nearby doorway that swirled with thick woolen scarves. He tugged down two, one a bright crimson red and the other navy blue. Without a word and only a few coins passed to the proprietor, they slipped out again.
Clayton handed her the red scarf. “Tie this one around your head instead.”
“Isn’t the red too—” But then she noticed three other women nearby wearing the same color.
Clayton removed his sheepskin coat, revealing a much finer greatcoat, and tied the blue sash around his waist. “Tuck the old scarf into your coat to disguise your shape.”
She did as he said.
He paused at a storefront a few feet away. “Buy a snuffbox and do not move.” He dropped a few coins in her hand and left her in front of a row of brightly enameled boxes.
She jumped at a hand on her elbow, but it was only a young, dark-haired boy. He beamed at her. “What do you need? Come into the shop to find it.”
“Just looking.” She tried to mumble so he wouldn’t note her accent. She pretended to study a golden snuffbox decorated with a portrait of the czar, who preferred to be called Emperor Alexander.
Where was Clayton?
She glanced around, searching for him, and bumped into a familiar massive chest. She dropped a snuffbox inlaid with a sunset of amber.
“Blin!” She lowered her voice. “What are you doing here?”
“Followed you.”
“Is anyone else with you?”
“No. Tracked you. I’m good at tracking. Had to hunt deer to feed my family.” He smoothed his matted beard. “I had to make sure you were all right. Sorry the count hurt you. I should’ve taken you away. But I was too scared.”
“I’m fine.”
“But your man blew up the count’s house.”
“What?”
“Part of it at least. He went back to the count’s last night and blew up one of the barns.”
Clayton had gone back. Had he killed Arshun? Arshun deserved to die, but the thought of Clayton returning to slay him chilled her. “Was anyone hurt?”
Blin shook his head. “Not this time, but Nicolai told me all about the people the Englishman had hurt. Nicolai was scared of him.” He shifted, dislodging dried clumps of mud from his boots.
Is this what Clayton was now? A killer who’d been stripped of all the good things he’d once been?
“Are you scared of him? I’ll keep you safe if you need me to,” Blin said.
But despite Clayton’s anger and resentment, she’d never feared him. “No. He rescued me.”
She didn’t want Clayton to find Blin. She couldn’t risk Blin getting hurt and she couldn’t risk Clayton deciding that she was a revolutionary. Not before she could warn the czar and not before she could change his mind about the mill. Keeping him here might have bought the mill some time, but she had to ensure he never went after it later.
Blin’s stomach rumbled.
She frowned. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“I had some of the cabbage you left behind.”
She pressed the coins Clayton had given her into Blin’s hand. “Get yourself some food. Then go somewhere safe.”
He stared at the coins in his hand. “I’m not going.”
Clayton brushed the snow off his jacket as he ducked into the smoky tobacco shop. He had to give the bread seller credit; he’d had to go farther than he’d expected before he lost him and could double back to the dvor.
The young girl led him into the rear of the shop, where an old, hunchbacked man sat. “I need information on Vasin.”
The old man shooed his granddaughter from the room, then took a long drag on his pipe. “I have nothing to do with all of that now, as you can see.” He pointed to his clouded eyes and the open crates of dried tobacco sitting around him.
“You were his butler. How did Vasin pass codes between his generals?”
Oborin smoothed his knotted hand over the embroidered blanket covering his legs. “I don’t know.” He blew out a long stream of smoke. “But my granddaughter will need a job soon.”
Ah, that was the price the old man set for his help. That type of arrangement had been Ian’s specialty. Clayton preferred threats. “If there is a revolution, it will start at the palace. Your son still works there, does he not?”
Oborin chomped down on the stem of the polished black pipe he held in the side of his mouth and spoke around it. “Despite all his talk of equality, Vasin wasn’t one to trust the servants. He always wrote his orders in the library, allowing no one inside while he worked.”
It might be a coincidence, but something had caught Clayton’s attention. “Always?”
Oborin nodded.
“What if he recei
ved a note elsewhere in the house? Where would he go to read it?”
Oborin tapped the pipe on the arm of his chair. “To the library. Even at night. He often had me stoke the fires there at odd hours.”
“Were there any books consistently out after that?”
“No. Vasin was fastidious. Never a thing out of place.”
Damn.
“What happened to Vasin’s things after he died?”
“Things had pretty much fallen apart by then. The emperor took all his lands and property. He would have had him executed if Vasin wasn’t nearly dead from his illness already.”
Another useless path. Clayton paused before brushing aside the cloth that acted as the door. “I’ll see what I can do for your granddaughter.”
Oborin slowly removed his pipe. “The few possessions he still retained went with him to his nephew’s wife when he fell ill.”
Ah, perhaps this path wasn’t so useless after all.
Clayton pushed aside the cloth and stepped past a row of ivory pipes. Perhaps he’d been too hard on Olivia. Everything she’d done last night to raise his suspicions could be explained away. It was possible that his distrust of her was making him harsher than the situation warranted.
Where was she?
He’d been certain anyone from Prazhdinyeh wouldn’t have been able to follow them through the market, but what if—
Then he spotted her. At the edge of the shop. Speaking to a huge bearded man. One of the revolutionaries he’d seen at Arshun’s.
He started to reach for his knife and had taken two steps when he realized she was shooing the man away, casting a worried look over her shoulder.
He’d left Olivia alone for less than an hour and she’d already made contact with the enemy. He’d given her an opportunity to redeem herself and she’d just hanged herself instead.
Chapter Ten
Blin had taken only three steps away from her when Clayton appeared a few feet away. Olivia lunged between them, blocking Clayton from following the big man, allowing Blin to disappear into the crowd.
Clayton grabbed her waist to set her aside, but she gripped his arms, refusing to be moved. “It’s not what you think. He wanted to make sure I was safe.”
“And I want to find Arshun.”
Her grip weakened, and he shook her off him, but then swore. Blin was gone.
She braced herself for his tirade.
Instead, he stepped away from her. He traded his sheepskin cap to a boy sitting in a doorway for one of his marbles. Then picked a low-crowned hat from the shop behind him.
As soon as the hat was on Clayton’s head, he stumbled.
Olivia caught his arm again, but he shook her off.
“I will drink when I want, woman!” He spun toward a man selling spirits, and after a few coins disappeared, Clayton held up a bottle with a crow of victory, which earned him bemused chuckles from the men in the shop.
What was he doing? She barely managed to remember to speak in Russian. “I can explain about—”
But Clayton spun her in a circle, which ended with her back flat against the wall between two shops. His chest pressed against hers, his lips brushing in light kisses across her forehead.
Sweet heavens.
He set the bottle down. “Found your revolutionaries already, I see. What did he want?” But his voice was a growl in her ear and his fingers bit into her waist even as his lips continued their soft exploration. Not so sweet, then.
“He protected me at the count’s. He followed me to ensure I was all right.”
“Was he pleased when you told him I’d looked at the code?”
She pushed against his chest. “It’s not like that. I told him I was well and sent him away. Now get off me, you oaf.”
But he wouldn’t release her. “Don’t resist.”
If he thought to punish her, he’d picked his method well. His words spurred a dangerous tension inside her. She liked the pressure of his fingers. It was honest. Consistent. Unclouded with any of the layers of civility they both pretended to possess.
She had to fight the urge to lean toward him to increase the pressure of his lips. To feel the stubble along his jaw burn across her cheek.
“What are you doing?” she managed to ask, as she tried again to pull away, gasping in frustration and pleasure when he refused to let her go.
“Creating a scene.” Clayton’s hand skimmed down her waist and over her hip. But his hand didn’t stop there. He tucked his hand behind the back of her thigh and lifted her leg so it rode up the outside of his hip.
“I know you’re angry with me—” Her words ended as his hips pressed against her. He was aroused. And despite her frustration, she couldn’t help her body’s instant response.
“I’m not angry with you.”
“You think I am a revolutionary.”
“I have all along. Confirmation changes nothing.”
“Except now you are mauling me against a wall.”
“Mauling?” He stilled, and she regretted her choice of words. But then he rocked his hips again, the action rubbing the sensitive spot between her legs. She bit her lip to contain her moan.
“You have no idea the amount of restraint I am showing right now.” His growl swept over her skin like a caress.
“Even though you think I am a lying traitor?”
“I think of you as nothing more than a means to an end.” His fingers twisted in her hair. And this time her hips bucked against his.
“What end?”
He exhaled slowly before he spoke. “There’s a woman I care about far more than you, and I need to keep her safe. And to do that I need to make the cabbage farmer and his wife disappear.”
She didn’t flinch at his words, but she did push at him again. “You’re drawing more attention to us, not less.” How did her hand end up fisted in the lapels of his coat?
His hand slid down her calf and around her ankle. “I need to send a message.”
“What? That you’re stronger than me. That you can make my body be as much a traitor as you think I am?”
Clayton hissed between his teeth at the space right above where she’d tied the scarf. He was about to kiss her there. Suddenly, the wool of her scarf itched unbearably. His lips would be hot, soothing.
“The message isn’t for you.”
A man in a gray felt coat appeared out of the press of people. Another policeman.
As she opened her mouth to warn Clayton, the man lifted a baton and swung hard at Clayton’s back.
Clayton knew from the panic in Olivia’s eyes that someone was behind him. Hell, he shouldn’t have allowed himself to be distracted by her response to—
But he didn’t have time to finish the thought. His body twisted into action.
A policeman with his arm in motion. Olivia’s face contorting with pain as she cried out.
Clayton caught the baton before he’d even realized what it was and pulled it from the other man.
But the policeman didn’t resist, his face pale.
Olivia sucked in gasps behind him, and Clayton risked a glance over his shoulder. She’d clutched her arm protectively to her chest.
He’d meant to draw the police’s attention after his switch from peasant to baron, but he’d thought to catch any blow himself.
Olivia had taken the hit for him. “You struck her?” What the devil had she been thinking? Why had she chosen now to protect him? She always stepped aside.
But that wasn’t true. A memory rose unbidden of restraining her from hunting down his mother when she’d come home, then run off again a month later.
“She’s the one who put her arm out. I was just going to tell you to move along . . . sir?” The young man rubbed his clean-shaven jaw, and studied Clayton a little more closely.
Clayton had forgotten to switch completely from coarse Russian. When was the last time he’d broken character while on a mission? Madeline and Ian would have mocked him for days.
Clayton cursed his arroganc
e. He should have let the original policeman relay his message, but no, he hadn’t been able to resist baffling the minister of police by appearing to materialize in St. Petersburg out of nowhere.
He sharpened his accent and lifted his chin. “Baron Dimitri Komarov. I don’t appreciate you abusing my servant.” He held out the baton with a scowl.
The policeman rubbed at his neck. “This is a public space. There are certain rules—”
Clayton lifted a brow.
“Perhaps if you speak with—”
“No. If the minister of police wishes to speak to me, he can find me at the home of Princess Katya Petrovna.”
The man flinched. “I don’t think the minister needs to be involved.”
“Trust me. He’ll want to know.” Clayton tucked his arm around Olivia’s shoulders and led her away.
“Ow!” She lurched into him.
Clayton couldn’t see past the edge of her scarf. “How badly are you injured?” He needed to see her face.
“You put a marble in my shoe?”
He’d forgotten. “It changes your gait. So we won’t be recognized.”
“Couldn’t you have asked me to limp?” Her voice was tight.
“Not consistent enough.” He reached out and brushed the edge of her scarf back so he could see her. Somehow, the slight invasion was far more intimate than their previous position against the wall. That had been the spy keeping his disguise. This was Clayton wanting to know about Olivia. “Your arm?”
She turned away. “More bruises to add to my collection.”
Why did that admission sit so ill? He and Madeline had taken many blows for each other over the years. And Madeline had been his comrade-in-arms. His friend. Olivia was neither of those things.
But she moaned at his touch and tasted of honey and roses. She refused to cower. And she had the damnable habit of tempting him to smile.
He led her through a different entrance onto a street and hailed a droskie. The driver’s enormous overcoat made him seem like part of the ramshackle cart. Clayton haggled for several minutes before dropping two silver coins in the man’s blackened fingers. “To Princess Katya Petrovna’s,” he ordered.
The cart’s wheels spun in the deepening snow, then finally lurched forward. Olivia gripped the narrow wooden seat to keep from being thrown. “We are truly going there? I thought that was a ruse.”
