“What did you learn today?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He shook his head free of useless thoughts, but that didn’t cool his body.
“Come, now, Lord Claybrook.” She looked down her nose at him, which caused him to bite back a smile.
“I’m being entirely honest, my lady.”
“You obviously were hell-bent on going somewhere when you left me this morning.”
Other than getting away from her, that is? “I had business to attend to.”
“What business?”
He raised a brow. This was why he hated working with a partner. The constant nagging was aggravating. “Lady Marciano, may I remind you—”
“—that you don’t want to work with me? You’ve made that quite clear. However, we are stuck with each other, much to my regret, so you do have to include me in any and all information you gather.”
His back teeth came together, and it took a few moments for his anger to subside enough to allow him to speak. “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”
She opened her mouth to speak and he held up his hand. Bloody hell, they would get nothing accomplished if she didn’t stop speaking for one blasted moment. “What I was going to stay was that not all my business concerns this mission. I do have other things on my plate.”
She shut her mouth and narrowed her eyes at him, as if contemplating whether to believe him. He was partially telling the truth. He did attend to estate business, but he also had made plans for tonight that he in no way wanted her knowing. In precisely half an hour, he would be meeting a very unsavory character in a very unsavory dockside pub. If Gabrielle knew, she would tag along, and that was entirely unacceptable.
“Very well,” she finally said. “What is our next plan of action, then?”
“Our next plan of action is to get you home, safe, and tucked in for the night.”
“So you can do what? Visit a dockside pub? Meet someone without me?”
It took every bit of his training not to react. “Hardly. I plan to have a few drinks at my club, maybe a few hands of piquet. Then home.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Whether you believe me or not hardly concerns me.”
Those dark eyes bored into him from the shadows on her side of the carriage. He had spent many years learning to be still when his brain screamed at him to move, but tonight was proving more difficult than some of his most dangerous missions. He wanted to squirm beneath her scrutiny but didn’t dare.
“Mi manchi,” she said so softly he almost didn’t hear her. I miss you.
The simple words, spoken in her native tongue, would have pierced his heart if he’d allowed them.
“What happened to us?” she asked.
“I have no idea what you mean.” He steeled himself against the beseeching, hurt look she gave him, but his iron resolve weakened. Damn it, he hated weakness of any kind.
“Yes, you do. You know what I mean.”
“Lady Marciano.”
“Sebastian.”
He almost closed his eyes at his name whispered so softly. She’d done that before—whispered his name like that. In bed. While she was writhing in ecstasy.
“What happened in Venice was an aberration,” he said, the words dispelling the images.
“An aberration. What does that mean?”
Her grasp of the English language was so nearly perfect that sometimes he forgot she wasn’t English at all. “A lapse of control.”
“Ah.” Her gaze flickered away. “A regret.”
“Yes.”
She winced.
“I’m sorry.”
She looked out the window, and he had to bite his tongue to ask for her forgiveness. He’d hurt her, and he hated himself for hurting her. He was pushing her away for his own sanity. If he allowed her back into his heart, he would be lost forever.
“According to a few people I spoke to, Buchanan’s late father was a sympathizer, but the current lord hasn’t shown any inclination toward the Jacobites,” he said, giving her what she wanted. Information. It was better than what he wanted to give her. “I spoke to Buchanan at length tonight after…” He cleared his throat. “After you left. Of course I would not be so crass as to outright ask if he was a sympathizer.”
A small smile touched the corners of her lips. “Of course not.”
“But I don’t believe he is. He has too many irons in the fires of our government. I believe he’s one who likes to work things from the inside out. Change the correct way.”
She nodded and drew in a deep breath. “So what next?”
“Next I make some inquiries in a few places that wouldn’t be suitable for you to venture into.”
Her gaze finally met his. “So you are going to a dockside tavern.”
He inclined his head, the only indication he would give that she was correct.
“May I remind you, Sebastian, that I am a trained spy.”
“I’m well aware, Gabrielle.” Her name on his lips felt perfect.
His carriage pulled up to his residence. “I’ll instruct my driver to see you home safely. I would do it myself, but I have somewhere to be.”
“And it’s not your club for a drink and a rousing game of cards.”
“There are some things I’m suited for, and there are things you are suited for. Let me do my part.”
“That would work if you allowed me to do my part.”
He reached for the door, but Gabrielle put a restraining hand on his arm, causing him to pause. “Sebastian.”
His head jerked up at his whispered name. Out of the shadows, Gabrielle emerged to press her lips against his. If he’d been prepared, he would not have kissed her back, but the unexpected touch had his head reeling and his heart pumping with remembered kisses.
She was everything he’d tried to forget, everything he remembered in the deep of night when sleep eluded him. Her kiss enflamed him deeper than any flame that consumed a forest. His body responded to hers as it always had. And, much to his regret, as it always would.
He groaned, the sound more capitulation than anything else, and crushed her against him. Her hands cupped his cheeks and they singed him. Through the many layers of clothing, he could feel her touch, and it burned him all the way through. His kiss was brutal, demanding, and she responded as she always responded to him, with her own strength and demands. She was his equal in every way. In more ways than he ever imagined. And he wanted her. He didn’t care that they were sitting in a carriage outside of his townhouse, that his tiger, a boy too young to be witnessing such a kiss, was just outside the door waiting for him to alight. He didn’t care about anything other than the woman in his arms, and that was the way it had always been.
She made him forget.
With that thought, he pulled away so abruptly that he had to catch her before she fell forward. But instead of seeing anger or disappointment on her face, he observed a brief glimpse of contemplation before she slipped back into the shadows of the carriage.
“Yes,” she murmured. “An aberration.”
Chapter 7
The atmosphere at The Coxswain was what one would expect from a typical dockside tavern. Watered-down ale and whores who’d seen too much, lived too much, and were way too tired. Sailors making land for the first time in months and sailors preparing to leave for a year. There was an air of excitement and an undercurrent of weariness mixed with desperation and danger. One didn’t turn his back on anyone in The Coxswain.
It was the perfect place for Sebastian’s mood.
He sat at a table with the notorious pirate Phin. Sebastian had met Phin a few years ago, when Sebastian’s brother, Nicholas, married the other notorious pirate, Lady Anne. Lady Anne and Phin had been a fearsome twosome, plundering ships and terrorizing the waters, until she met Nicholas and, to the pirating community’s shock, went legitimate.
Sebastian knew an opportunity when he saw one, and Phin was an opportunity. Phin could get to places Sebastian couldn’t. Phin k
new people who would never speak to Sebastian. Surprisingly, they got along well, even though they were on opposite sides of the law.
They were sitting at a table with two sailors Phin had invited to join them. It was late, the ale had been plentiful, the women pliable. The men were in good spirits and, more important, loose with their words and their money. The loose money excited the whores. The loose words excited Sebastian.
Sebastian had done his best to blend in. He was dressed much like Phin, in boots that reached above his knees, a white shirt with no cravat, an unbuttoned waistcoat, his hair uncombed, his beard unshaved. It felt good not to be restricted by convention and the prying eyes of the aristocracy.
Sebastian had dropped a few hints to those at his table, indicating that he was a Jacobite sympathizer, but no one had yet to bite. This was how spy work went. Some nights—most nights—were for naught. He lived for that one night when everything came together, when someone was brave enough to speak out, when someone was drunk enough to let something slip that took Sebastian’s investigation on a different path.
So far, tonight was not one of those nights, and part of the problem was that Sebastian’s mind wouldn’t stay focused. Damn Gabrielle. Damn that kiss.
Aberration, indeed. She’d soundly proved him a liar, and she knew it. That kiss had taken him back seven months and undone all he had accomplished in trying to forget.
Disgusted with himself and his thoughts, he pushed away from the table. “Excuse me, gentlemen.” No one paid him any mind except Phin, who nodded at him, then went back to telling his story.
Sebastian had had some to drink but was in no way inebriated. He drank to blend in, even though he wanted to drink to forget; but this was a working night, not a self-pity night.
He made his way out the back door and toward the privy. A shadow slipped in front of him. Sebastian tensed and pulled his dagger from his belt. “Who goes there?”
The moon was hidden behind a bank of clouds, and the light from the tavern was too meager to penetrate the shadows this far away. Sebastian was halfway between the door and the privy, smack in the middle of the back garden—if one could call this a garden: a perfect place for an ambush.
The shadow shifted and stepped closer. “I ’eard you talkin’. I ’ave information.”
“What sort of information?” This wasn’t the first time he’d been approached on his way to the privy. ’Twas half the reason he made this trip. Most informants didn’t want to be seen relaying information they shouldn’t.
The shadow man shifted. “ ’Bout the uprisin’. There’s stuff goin’ on. Bad stuff.”
“Go on.”
“Not here. St. Ethelreda’s.”
“When?”
“Hour.” The shadow slipped away as another person emerged from the tavern and stumbled to the privy.
Sebastian reversed direction and headed back to Phin and the table. The night that had begun to seem like a waste of time was beginning to turn around. He tipped his head toward the door as he passed Phin. Phin acknowledged the command with a bored look and a sip of ale while listening to the man next to him.
Sebastian exited the tavern and waited for Phin to appear. The lights of hundreds of ships bobbed on the Thames. One wouldn’t think the river could hold so many, but every day more arrived laden with exotic spices from the Orient, cotton from the American colonies, and all of the other products Londoners simply could not do without.
Phin emerged, and without a word, they began walking. If Phin didn’t lean toward criminal behavior, he would make an excellent spy. Sebastian never had to tell the man when to keep his mouth shut. He never had to watch Phin’s back. He never had to explain his actions, because Phin just knew. They turned the corner and Sebastian hailed a hackney, having abandoned his private carriage so as not to draw attention.
When they were settled and on their way, Sebastian said, “Someone wants to meet me at St. Ethelreda’s.”
“Interesting.”
“I need backup in the event this is a trap.”
“Of course.” There was no missing the pleasure in Phin’s voice. He was a pirate at heart, with the love of a good fight in his blood.
Sebastian felt his own blood heating in excitement that he might finally learn something. Attending balls had yielded nothing. Granted, he’d attended only two, and Gabrielle had distracted him both nights—another reason he needed to keep his distance. Atwater would never allow that, so Sebastian had to at least pretend he was doing what he’d been told to do. But this was what Sebastian had been born to do. Skulking through the night. Ferreting out information from the dregs of society. This was much more amusing than dancing at a ball.
The hackney pulled to the side, and they jumped out. Sebastian had instructed the driver to drop them off a block away. Phin walked ahead while Sebastian stayed back, waiting until Phin reached St. Ethelreda’s and scoped the area out. Phin would find a place to hide and watch, making himself known only if Sebastian encountered any trouble. He didn’t expect any, but he was always prepared for it. Even during boring balls.
He approached the steps of St. Ethelreda’s cautiously. The chap hadn’t said to meet on the inside or the outside, around front or around back. Sebastian didn’t see anyone skulking out front, not even Phin, so he climbed the church steps to find the door unlocked. He pulled it open and peered through the darkness. Absolute silence and the scent of incense were the only things that greeted him.
He propped the door open, not fool enough to block his only escape. He stood completely still, listening with his entire body. The stillness was deafening, stifling, causing him to hold his breath.
He took a step forward, paused, listened, then another step. He continued for a few more steps until his foot struck something soft and immovable. Cursing, Sebastian bent and felt with his hands: a torso, an arm. He reached into his pocket and withdrew matches, striking one to illuminate a body.
Dead eyes stared up at him. The chap was clothed in workman’s garb. His hands were rough and nicked. No doubt this was—had been—his informant. “Damnation,” he muttered into the silence.
He stepped outside and waved Phin in. Phin looked down at the body, expressionless as he toed the dead man’s hip. “Well, this is a bloody inconvenience.”
“Whoever killed him doesn’t want us to know his plans.”
“And he has eyes and ears everywhere.”
“Which means he knows we’re asking questions.”
They looked at each other.
“Did you see anyone out there?” Sebastian asked.
“Nary a soul.”
But that didn’t mean the murderer wasn’t watching them.
—
Years ago Gabrielle forced herself to start drinking the curious beverage called coffee. She wasn’t particularly fond of the bitter brew, even liberally laced with sugar and cream, but she bore the taste when she had to, and this morning she had to.
She was sitting in the kitchen of Buttons Coffee House watching the cook, Mrs. Harris, mix the dough for scones. The hour was far too early for the nobs who frequented the establishment to even be thinking of rising for the day. A few shopworkers had wandered in and then out, but they were now at work, and the place was quiet.
Mrs. Harris was one of Gabrielle’s best informants, although the robust, rotund woman didn’t know it. She simply loved gossip, and if there was a place in London that had its finger on the pulse of the best gossip, it was a coffeehouse.
“Ain’t seen you about in a long while,” Mrs. Harris said as she pounded the dough with her work-worn hands.
“I’ve been in Venice and just recently returned to London.”
Mrs. Harris made a sound that was difficult to interpret. Gabrielle had learned over the years that it was best to keep as close to her story as possible, so all Mrs. Harris knew of her was that she hailed from Venice, was the widow of an Italian count, and was known to entertain certain gentlemen when the urge hit her. Gabrielle never knew if
Mrs. Harris approved of her, but she always seemed pleased when Gabrielle showed up in the kitchens for a good sit-down and a cup of coffee. Gabrielle couldn’t remember exactly when she’d moved from the front room to the kitchen. It had been a gradual development over a long period of time.
The serving girls began wandering in, as well as the boys who ran gossip from one coffeehouse to the next. Yes, the gossip flowed like…well, like the coffee flowed at these places, and boys were hired to spread the gossip from one establishment to the next.
One particular ginger-haired imp yawned widely and scratched his stomach, then looked blearily around the room before his gaze landed on a cooling scone. If Gabrielle hadn’t been a trained spy, she would have missed the swipe of his hand that landed the scone in his pocket. She smiled behind her raised mug and winked at him. His eyes widened, and he hastily backed out of the room.
“So what news have you learned in my absence?” Gabrielle asked.
Mrs. Harris took the question with the seriousness reserved for heads of state and heads of churches: She thought long and hard before answering. “Heard that a certain lord what owns a gaming hell married a certain lady what was married to a fine gent. Quite a scandal that caused.”
“Lord Blythe and Lady Chesterman,” Gabrielle said. Both good friends of hers, and no matter the scandal it caused, she was extremely happy for Claire and Nathan. They deserved their happiness. Besides, the scandal had already died down, replaced by another, no doubt.
Mrs. Harris harrumphed, as if offended that Gabrielle knew more than she did.
“I heard a rumor,” Gabrielle said, choosing her words carefully. “Concerning a possible return of Charles Stuart to Scotland.”
Mrs. Harris’s hands paused in their mixing. “Can’t believe everything you hear.”
“Have you heard something similar?”
A few moments went by while the dough was pummeled into submission. Gabrielle began to wonder if the scones were a lost cause under Mrs. Harris’s not so tender ministrations.
“I heard.”
Gabrielle waited, nearly holding her breath, but it seemed to take forever for Mrs. Harris to come up with her next words.
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