Espionage and the Earl

by Win Hollows

Porthos was banging on the rim of his food dish again, informing her he would like more mango chunks. She wasn’t about to rise early to go fetch him some, however. The little devil could wait until regular breakfast time like he knew he should. Celise spoiling him lately was the problem.

  Light glowed through her eyelids, and she wondered how late she’d slept. How late had she been up the night before?

  Scouring her thoughts as she scrunched her eyes in an attempt to keep them shut, she thought about it.

  Tink tink tink.

  Why couldn’t she remember what she’d done last night?

  Oh, yes. The masquerade ball. Max.

  Her stomach quivered. She had been kissing Max and pulling straws from her hair and walking through flower beds, and then…

  Elorie’s eyes flew open. She blinked at the sudden bright light that flooded her vision. Narrowing her gaze, she began to look around herself. She was in an unfamiliar room in a four-poster bed with a pale-green canopy and soft counterpane. The room was spacious with delicate furniture against the walls and chairs in front of a well-kept fireplace across from the bed on which she lay. Light shone through the flowered green curtains at the tall windows. Nothing looked familiar, and she blinked at the out-of-place sensation. A uniformed maid stood in the corner over a washstand spooning something into small vials on its surface.

  Tink tink tink.

  Rising up on her elbows, she immediately cried out at the surge of pain through her abdomen and fell back.

  The maid looked up and rushed over. “Oh, no, miss, don’t try to move!” The curly, redheaded woman pulled up the counterpane over her shoulders. “You’re still in a very bad way.”

  Elorie licked her dry lips, feeling her mouth full of cotton as the pain receded.

  “Do you need more laudanum? I was just dosing some up for ye, My Lady.” She nodded to the vials on the washstand.

  “No,” she croaked, shaking her head. The strange aftertaste in her mouth and lethargy made sense now.

  “Stay right there, and I’ll get the Master,” she said sternly, bustling from the room.

  “Who is the Master?” Elorie called with a strained voice, but she received no answer.

  Where was she? What had happened after Ruben had shot her? All her thoughts of the night before were jumbled and wouldn’t stay put for her to make sense of them. Ruben’s calculating face rose before her, and she shivered. What if he were here? What if he was the Master the maid had spoken of?

  Heartbeat rising, she looked around for something to defend herself with. Just because she’d been put in a fancy room and treated with laudanum didn’t mean Ruben wouldn’t harm her again. He would only take care of her to better enjoy the pain he would cause. Just as her eyes alighted on a candlestick on a nearby table against the wall, a man walked into the room.

  Elorie caught her breath.

  It was Max, his face drawn in anxiousness as he strode toward the bed. He looked wonderful in gentlemen’s country attire of breeches, a white shirt, and a gray waistcoat. He had only a simple ascot at the throat held by an onyx stickpin.

  “How are you feeling?” he said softly, his brow deeply lined as he stood at the foot of the bed.

  Elorie smiled, the pain in her side almost forgotten. “Fine.”

  Max looked at her before eventually shaking his head with a wry smile. “This is why I can’t trust you.”

  “That’s the only reason?” she replied.

  Max grinned and sat down on the edge of the bed near her feet. Just his proximity made her heart swell. “Among others. But I would trust you with my life nonetheless.”

  “It seems I trusted you with mine last night.”

  He frowned. “Last night? You’ve been here at my estate in Surrey for three days.”

  Elorie took a sharp breath in and tried to sit up. Three days?

  The burning in her side forced a hiss from her as she realized she could not accomplish the simple task of rising. Max didn’t try to stop her but watched as she slammed her head back against the pillow with a huff. “I can’t have been here for three days! I have to go back to London!”

  “It’s all right,” he assured her, putting a hand on her shin through the covers. “It was put about that you’re at a house party hosted by the Marquess and Marchioness of Blackbourne. Whoever you’re trying to convince of your Crescenfort identity will be aware of that by now. And no one knows it was you in the garden. My staff here wouldn’t dare breathe a word of your presence.”

  Elorie’s brows rose. “Who convinced them I’m at a house party?”

  “My cousin’s wife, Lady Blackbourne. She was there when you… She seemed to know who you were.”

  Elorie laughed. “Ivy is your cousin’s wife? Your cousin is the Marquess of Blackbourne?”

  He nodded. “We brought you here, despite Ivy’s protests. Asher, my cousin, convinced her to leave it alone for the time being. She was quite concerned about your welfare. What I’m wondering is how do you happen to know Asher’s wife?” His liquid sherry eyes couldn’t hide his suspicion.

  “I met her in a cobbler’s shop some weeks ago,” Elorie said truthfully. “I have had tea with her and some other ladies since.”

  Max nodded slowly. “That’s interesting.”

  Her heart rate sped up. “What’s interesting about that?”

  He shrugged. “It’s interesting that a woman involved in the sorts of things that end with near-fatal injuries makes it a priority to attend tea with well-bred ladies of the ton.”

  “Are you suggesting I’m ill-bred?” she said archly.

  Max smirked. “With that bone structure and brazenness? Hardly.”

  Elorie’s ruffled feather settled back into place. “Precisely.”

  “But it does make one wonder who you really are and from whence you came,” Max ruminated, looking at her intently.

  Elorie cleared her throat. “Surely a viper’s nest.”

  He smiled.

  They continued to look at each other for a moment in silence until Elorie’s stomach rumbled loudly.

  Her eyes widened, and she reached down to cover the offending area beneath the sheets, noting the layers of dressing wrapped around her torso. “Pardon me.”

  He laughed and rose from the bed to pull an embroidered servant’s bell that hung from the ceiling. When a maid appeared not a moment later, Max requested a tray of soup and soft bread be brought up for her. Once he had done this, he came back to sit on the edge of the bed again, this time propping his legs up as well and leaning back against the post at the end so they faced each other.

  Elorie grimaced as she stuffed more pillows behind her head so she could see him at a better angle. It was maddening to be so confined to her current position with Max lazing about as if he owned the place.

  Well, she supposed he did.

  “So are you going to tell me what happened?” Max asked, putting his arms behind his head.

  “No.”

  “Why are you so difficult?”

  “Why are you so curious?”

  “It’s perfectly normal to want to know how the woman I—” He cleared his throat and lowered his arms. “How the woman lying in one of my beds was left bleeding in the middle of someone’s peonies.”

  Elorie pursed her lips. “I wasn’t lying in the peonies. It would be rude to bleed on someone’s horticultural efforts.”

  She could tell Max fought a smile. “Will you tell me who did this to you then?”

  “That would be tantamount to the same thing.”

  Max made a sound of disgust and rolled his eyes. “Why are you bothering with this pretense? I know the goal of your last mission. I know you work for the Hand of Charlemagne, and I know you faked your death to get out of it. At this point, do your secrets really matter if you don’t owe them your loyalty any longer?”

  Elorie looked away toward the window. He had a point. She looked at the sliver of blue sky that peeked through a gap in the curtains. As long as he didn’t fig
ure out her true identity, nothing she told him about her current situation mattered. The Hand would know soon that she wasn’t dead, and they would send others after her. The Damarek wasn’t a prize they would let go so easily.

  Taking a deep breath, she looked back at his sculpted face that not long ago had been the bane of her existence. Now he was … something else. “It was my former partner, Ruben. He found me and intends to bring me back to the Hand. They think I know more about the Lance.”

  Max nodded. “I thought it might be something like that.”

  “It’s rather ironic that I couldn’t tell them anything even if I wanted to.”

  “Is that a thinly veiled ploy for information, Viper?” he asked, crossing his arms again in front of him.

  Elorie smiled. “No. I told you the truth. I don’t want the Lance. It was never about that for me.”

  Max snorted. “People like you and I don’t just give up. We don’t all of a sudden stop the itch in our veins to complete a mission. It’s like a drug.”

  Elorie considered his words. He was right—it was addicting, the rush and the obsession. But she had known the moment she left that she couldn’t go back. That life was cut off from her as surely as if the Viper had really died. Did she long for it? Of course. Yet it was never completing the mission or pleasing the Hand that was the escape. It was the chase. It was living another life for however long she could.

  Max couldn’t understand because he didn’t need to escape from anything. His true life wasn’t a cage, and he had never needed to choose between who he really was and who he wanted to be.

  “You may be right, but that life is gone for me,” she told him. “You have no need to fear me rifling through your study or bedchamber looking for clues about the Lance.”

  “You’re welcome in my bedchamber any time you’d like,” Max murmured, his eyes becoming heated.

  Elorie blushed and looked down at her hands on the coverlet. She had been propositioned many times by numerous men during the course of her roles for the Hand and had come to think of such statements as merely things to collect for later use if necessary. They usually grated on her nerves, in fact, knowing that most men’s desires were selfish and poisoned. The Duke was proof of that. Her father too, in his own way, neglecting anything that wasn’t in his quest to please Cosette.

  Yet Max saying such a thing tempted her like no one ever had.

  “Should I be worried for my virtue while under your roof?” she said playfully, arching a brow.

  Max laughed. “Whatever virtue you have…” He paused and raked her form that was hidden under the bedclothes. “Most definitely.”

  Her mouth went dry at the look of intent on his stone-carved features. It was paramount that she not give in to his advances. Baiting Max was playing with fire, and she had already come too close to the flames on more than one occasion with him. Now that she was under his roof with no chaperonage and, to his mind, no reason not to give in to their desire for each other…

  She truly was in much more danger than she was ready for.

  “How long must I stay here?” she asked. “I assume a surgeon was required.”

  Max nodded. “Yes, and it was a near thing by the time I was able to get you to him. You’ll have some rather distinct scars from it.”

  She made a face. Hopefully, it would displease the duke, so she welcomed them. “And how long ’til I can leave?” Her mother would not be pleased that she’d left for a house party without asking permission, as Cosette was not going to chance Elorie being compromised before her wedding to Morley. Elorie couldn’t chance it either, as her reputation of innocence was fundamental to the conditions of the duke’s offer.

  Max’s jaw clenched, clearly not pleased by her eagerness to flee his presence. “He said you should stay abed for another day, and then you’ll be ready to travel two after that, as long as nothing goes wrong.”

  Three more days. Three days and three nights in a house with the Earl of Eydris. Surely she hadn’t survived multiple attempts on her life and earned a fearsome reputation in certain circles to be conquered by her own desire. Maxwell Berisford was her greatest enemy in so many ways, and she was drawn to him like a moth to the flame. Leaving him when this was over would be more painful than anything she’d ever done, no matter if she gave herself to him or not.

  Perhaps she’d rather face the guillotine after all.

  ****

  She likes my playing, Max thought, as he sat at the pianoforte in the music room. It was only three rooms down from the suite he’d given Elorie, but he hadn’t realized she could hear it.

  “Was that you?” she had asked when he’d come to her room to check on her after he’d played for a little while.

  His face had reddened. “Maybe.”

  She’d smiled from where she sat propped up with a puzzle on her bed. “It was you! You play beautifully.”

  Max had mumbled something and left the room. But he’d begun to play that evening as well, knowing she listened.

  The pianoforte was more often taught to women than men of his station, but his mother had always loved the pianoforte. After his father had died, she had never played it again. So he had taken lessons to be able to play for her. It was luck that he turned out to have a knack for it and rather enjoyed playing as a sort of release. The first time his mother had heard him play, she had wept and hugged him around his shoulders so tightly he’d had to stop in the middle of the bar. Now, just over a year later, it had become a pleasant habit to indulge in now and then when he was home.

  Elorie liked his playing.

  He smiled as his fingers flew over the keys, playing a movement from one of Chopin’s Nocturnes. He would never play for an audience of more than his own family, but it stirred something in him to know that Elorie liked this tiny piece of him he’d shown to no one else.

  He played for a few more minutes before stopping to go down to the kitchens. He wanted to bring Elorie her dinner himself. Staying away from her since this morning had been excruciating, but he knew she needed her rest to heal. The local doctor would be coming by this evening to check on her wounds, so he had requested an early repast be prepared, even if she could only have simple fare.

  When he knocked on her door with a tray in the other hand, he was met with silence.

  Frowning, he pushed open the door and looked in cautiously. “Ellie?”

  His gaze swept the room. The bed was empty.

  Immediately, he set down the tray on a chest of drawers, chest pounding. Where was she? Had something happened?

  He went to the door that connected the bedroom to the small dressing room on the right side corner. Slamming the door open, two women screamed as his eyes widened at the scene.

  Elorie was crouched low over a centrally-positioned toilet in nothing but a linen shift while a maid held her up under her arms.

  “What are you doing?” Elorie shouted, scrambling to pull up her drawers. The motion caused her to lose her balance, and she fell to the side of the toilet with a yelp.

  “Oh!” the flaming redheaded maid exclaimed, dropping her charge in shock and accidentally hitting the flush lever, causing water to spew everywhere.

  “Out!” Elorie screeched, her legs tangled in her drawers as she tried to pull them upward.

  “Urgh!” Max back out and banged the door behind him, heart pumping more furiously than when he’d thought she’d been missing. He blinked several times, unsure of precisely what he should do next. What etiquette existed for when you barged in on a lady on the toilet?

  He heard a groan from inside the wash closet. Clearing his throat, he called tentatively, “Lady Crescenfort? Are you all right?”

  A growl. “Actually, no, I am not all right,” her muffled tones came through the door. “This is the kind of thing people dread happening, and now it’s happened, so there’s really nothing else to be done for it.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the door. He rubbed his neck, which he was sure was as bright red a
s the rest of his head.

  “You’ll forever think of me as the girl you saw in the loo.”

  “No,” he reassured her. “That’s definitely not going to happen.” Although he wouldn’t soon forget the sight of her curvy, corded legs with her drawers around her feet.

  “My Lord,” the maid said. “Perhaps you could give the lady a few moments?”

  He took a step back from the door. “Ahem. Yes, of course. I’ll just be… I’ll be … somewhere else.”

  “That’s probably for the best,” the maid replied.

  Max strode from the room and went out the back entrance to the veranda that overlooked his estate’s grounds. The second-story balcony had a wicker table and two chairs set out on it, and he had often smoked a cigar or two here while looking out over the lands that belonged to his family. The rolling hills of gentle grass gave way to trees, and then, further out, crops that had recently been planted in the fertile earth the area boasted.

  The estate manager he’d hired for while he was away from home did an excellent job of keeping up with the estate’s and tenants’ needs. Contrary to most of his peers’ approaches, he had hired a young man with an excitement for innovation.

  Hence the newly minted toilets that had been installed in each of the house’s water closets.

  Max leaned on the railing and rubbed a hand over his face. The more he thought about it, the less he could control the smile that grew. And then the smile grew into a chuckle, and the chuckle into a laugh until he couldn’t stop laughing even if Tsar Nicholas himself were to appear with a murderous scowl before him. As his shoulders shook and he struggled to draw breath, he prayed to God Elorie couldn’t hear him down the hall. He didn’t care to bet his life on whether or not she found it funny.

  He did wonder what she would think of his estate, if she were to look at it as he did now. Would it please her? Would it make her want to be the lady of such a place? To take pride in the home he could give her?

  Max blinked and turned away from the late afternoon sun’s rays that gilded the green landscape of his property. Such thoughts were treacherous. It could become addicting to think of Elorie as a permanent fixture in his life, but she could no more be the lady of this house than she could be the Queen of England. Besides the fact that she had been a French operative until very recently, she didn’t have the pedigree that a Countess of Eydris would be expected to have. He couldn’t just marry a French nobody without so much as a farthing or a real name. These things were bigger than mere matters of the heart, and his entire family would be spurned for such a thing.