The Counterfeit Mistress

by Madeline Hunter

  She slid her hand to where the robe parted, then ventured under its silk. Warmth penetrated his skin and chest. Desire roared dangerously. To hell with the seduction part. It was all he could do not to grab that blanket and tear it off her. With effort he kept his jaw firm and his eyes clear.

  A caress, like a teasing flow of velvet, drifted tentatively. He must have reacted more than he thought because she smiled again. Then her fingers touched the bandage. A skimming sensation assessed the size and placement of the dressing. No longer flirtatious, but her hand still had him clenching his teeth.

  “You also felt the knife,” she said. “You did not chase them away. You fought them.”

  “It is not too bad. No worse than yours.”

  She strolled away. “It complicates today even more.”

  “If by that you mean it makes neither one of us fit for finishing this game you are starting, you underestimate me.”

  Her glance acknowledged the game, and that she had miscalculated. “I thought perhaps you had sent those men for me. However, if you are wounded . . .”

  “Why would I send them?”

  “Perhaps to abduct me.”

  “I do not need to abduct you in order to investigate your activities. Better to leave you to continue as you were, in fact. And should I ever send men to grab a woman, they would not beat her first.”

  Her head tilted back while she perused the bindings on a high shelf. “You do not follow me only to investigate the rumors about me.”

  Her blanket slipped a bit on one shoulder, revealing more skin and making her appear as naked beneath as she was. She was thin. Too thin, but soft enough. Her body would suit her face and that walk—lithe and delicate. She probably used her femininity the way she used her mind, with dangerous and worldly cunning.

  She was wrong, however. He did not follow her in anticipation of pleasure or seduction. Even if she really were whom she claimed and not the charlatan he suspected, he would never pursue a Frenchwoman for her favors. Even the best of them were not to be trusted.

  Her gaze scanned the chamber, searching. “I had some papers with me. Did you find them?”

  “No. Were they important?”

  “Not so much.” She hitched up the blanket so it covered her shoulder again. “I need to go home.”

  Not yet. “I will send someone to retrieve some clothes for you first. You cannot go like that.”

  “I will wear what I have. I cannot wait.”

  “Your dress is covered in blood.”

  “I have washed out much. My shawl will hide the rest.” She strode toward the bedchamber.

  “Your wrap is sliced to shreds.”

  “Then I will look as poor as I am. The world will not care.”

  It hurt to move more than he liked, but he reached her before she opened the door. Weight braced on a hand placed on the door above her, he barred her escape. “I cannot let you leave until we have the conversation I sought you out for today.”

  She turned and leaned against the door. “What could we have to say to each other?”

  “I know why you were in that alley. I know about the papers that make their way to the coast.”

  “You know nothing. The best in your government have had these conversations with me, and admit they know nothing too.”

  Not for certain, but suspicions ran rampant about her. In the government, and even among the French émigrés. She had to know that. Her show of indifference and impatience was a feint.

  “I know because two times now the papers have been followed from the moment you carried them from your home to the moment they were given to smugglers on the coast.”

  “You are lying. If you followed me these last months I would have known.”

  “Not if I did not want you to.”

  She stretched so her face came closer to his, belligerently. “A waving flag would be more subtle than you are. I always know when you are there. I let you follow while it amuses me, and end it when it grows tedious.

  “Like today?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you were surprised to learn it was I who interfered in that alley. If you always know when I follow you, you should have expected me to at least witness that attack.”

  She pondered his logic. She looked down at herself. “May I dress before this conversation? Or do you prefer that I remain naked so I am more vulnerable?”

  “I much prefer you naked and vulnerable. However—” He removed his hand from the door.

  She yanked the door open and strode in. “I will be fast so you can say what you must. I must go home soon, so I pray that you be quick.”

  He would be quick enough. Eventually she might even return home. Soon, however, this particular shrewd, pretty Frenchwoman would be going to gaol, and that was the best outcome she could expect.

  Chapter 3

  She dressed quickly, and ignored how the damp garments felt like iron pressing against those places she had been hit. Her shawl displayed two long slices, but otherwise had fared well enough. At least it was not covered in blood. Wrapping it around her, she assessed that few would even notice the tears with the way the silk flowed.

  This viscount would see it all, however. The blood and the tears. He would know it was all there. Maybe he would pity her. That would be useful.

  Returning to that library, she sat on the divan next to a damp towel that smelled of the fire potion. He had taken it without a sound. She guessed he had been stabbed more successfully than she had, considering that heavy bandage.

  He did not sit too. Perhaps the wound made that uncomfortable. The silk robe hung off his shoulders like it dared not crease or float. Even in pain and dishabille he remained straight as iron, as if he rode a horse in parade. No one could sway such a man when his mind was made up.

  He intended to interrogate her now. She needed to convince him that while he suspected many things, he knew nothing for certain. One doubt, just one, would buy her some time. She needed it. His suspicions had become small worries compared to the larger ones looming now.

  He hovered and made her feel small and helpless. And naked. Oh, yes, she saw that in him, the awareness that while she had dressed, her garments barely covered her decently now. The knife had done its damage to her dress and the physician had done more, and if not for her long shawl, much of her skin would be exposed. That interested him. She interested him. A woman knows such things.

  She had learned that for sure last spring on the same day that she let him know that she knew of his surveillance. It had ended then, both the following and the interest. Or so she had thought. Now he implied that he had kept the surveillance going, but so cleverly that she remained unaware of it. That was not good news. She did not need trouble coming from two directions.

  “What are in the papers you pass off to messengers?” he asked.

  “Letters. Some to a lawyer of my family, who tries to obtain money from the properties for me. Others are attempts to contact family members who might be alive. I keep sending them, and wait and hope.”

  “You go to a lot of trouble to send letters out of the country.”

  “Family is worth a lot of trouble, don’t you agree?”

  Apparently not. He did not even nod an acknowledgment.

  “You have not only sent letters. Sometimes you have sent unsealed papers. Documents. Stacks of them in rolls such as you carried today.”

  “Today I carried only some items from my business, to bring to a printer who asked for coloring. That is what we do in my home. Color pictures. Ask Lady Cassandra or Emma. Ask that other viscount whom Cassandra married. All have been there and seen the women coloring.” She trusted that would divert him, in the event he had seen that roll today after all.

  His eyes flashed and his face found its most severe expression. “This will be faster if you do not treat me like
a fool. I have told you that those men you meet have been followed all the way to the coast. Those rolls have been seen leaving England on smugglers’ boats. I doubt the printers who hire you to color are in France.”

  Regrettably, Handsome Stupid Man was not stupid enough to be easily hoodwinked. She tried anyway. “Did you see this yourself?”

  “Those whom I trust did.”

  So that was how he had followed her without her knowing. He had set others to the task. How unfair. “They erred. Or the men the printers send to meet me stole and sold my work to those smugglers. Or your trusted men never left London, but spent your coin on ale and told you what you wanted to hear. You know nothing at all and you can prove nothing.”

  He folded his arms and glared down at her. The vaguest wince accompanied the movement. His pose caused that robe to open enough for her to see his chest but he seemed oblivious to that. A nice chest. Lean and hard and evident of an active life. A military man, she assumed. Everything about him suggested that. Not an agent, however. A viscount would not be a lowly agent.

  “Your English is very good,” he said.

  She tried to look flattered by the compliment, but alarm rang in her head. “I have much cause to practice since I came here. I do not only spend my days with my own people.”

  “Did you learn English in France?”

  “I learned what I could. It amused me to do so.”

  His gaze locked on hers. “Even your accent—”

  “I imitate those I hear who are of the better classes.” He appeared merely curious, but she did not like the way he pressed on this. Her head began pounding. “Those who speak a foreign language with a heavy accent are lazy. One need only imitate what one hears, with little effort.”

  He strolled back and forth thoughtfully, casting her glances. “Do you think in English? Have you learned the language that well?”

  A chill passed through her. “Rarely.” She raised a hand to her head. “Pardon, m’sieur, but—” She closed her eyes and fought to conquer the panic shaking through her.

  “Are you ill?”

  His voice startled her. It sounded truly concerned. She opened her eyes to find him right in front of her, down on one knee, peering at her face.

  “Only a little faint. It is passing.”

  “You lost blood today. I expect it was enough to make you faint. And those blows.” His fingertips hovered above the bruise on her face while he examined it.

  “I will be better once I return home and rest.”

  “That is out of the question.”

  Her heart sank. “Because you do not like my half of this conversation?”

  “Because you are too weak.” He stood and lifted her to her feet. “It was ignoble of me to force this talk on you now. Go and rest. We will find another time.”

  He eased her toward the door to the bedchamber.

  “It would feel much better in my own bed. If you would send for a hired coach, I would appreciate it. I will have the coin to pay when I arrive home.”

  “I will not hear of it. The physician said you should not move from here for several days. I should have insisted you return to bed as soon as I saw you and not imposed on you with my questions at this time.”

  He was not going to give in. What a nuisance he could be. She would have to sneak out later.

  “Will the servants not—?”

  “I am here alone right now. No one will know. I will send for food in a couple of hours. I will let you know when it arrives and you can eat something.”

  It was a small apartment then, with no other bedchamber. If he remained in this library, the bedchamber would become her prison.

  She did not undress again, but lay on the bed fully clothed. It still felt delicious. She had truly become a little light-headed, and resting held great appeal. She would indulge herself until that food came. Then she would get away, before he returned to that interrogation.

  Kendale set about arranging a meal for his invalid. He leaned out the window and hailed a boy in the street. Young Harry always loitered there, hoping for errands and a few pence as payment.

  “What can I do for you now, m’lord?” he called up upon hearing his name. “Do you need the leech again?”

  “Go to the White Knight and tell old Percy to send over whatever had been cooked today. Enough for two.”

  “Two, eh? She’s come to then, has she? She looked dead when you carried her in.”

  Kendale flicked one of the pennies he had in his hand. It flew and landed on the stones below with a high note. “That is for forgetting that you saw me carry anyone, lad. And this is for taking my message to the tavern.” He flipped another three pence.

  Harry collected them all. “You want ale with that food?”

  “Wine.” He told himself that he did not choose wine because a Frenchwoman had flirted with him. Rather he felt churlish for having harassed her with questions when she was wounded and sore and sick. He merely sought to make amends.

  He opened cabinets to see where his manservant stored the china and crystal. He should have brought Mr. Pottsward with him on this visit to town, but he almost never did on short journeys. The day he could not wash and dress and care for himself for a week was the day he would know he had lost the battle to remain the man he was, instead of the man this damned title said he should be.

  He found the plates and glassware, and a cloth and silver too. Good of Pottsward to keep it all together. He would have forgotten about the cloth otherwise. Not really sure he was doing it right, trying to remember just where those forks rested all these years when he sat to dinner, he set a service on the library table. To do so he had to remove the large tomes, and the engravings and maps beneath them. Rolling and tying them again, he hid them safely on one of the high shelves of the glassed-in bookcase.

  Then he waited for Marielle Lyon to awaken, and wondered about those engravings again, and the men who had attacked her, and how close she had come to dying over some pictures. She claimed she was on her way to hand those to a print publisher who hired her women to color them. Only these were not colored.

  She said the attack had been a typical alley attempt at theft. He thought that unlikely, but he could not rule it out completely, considering the disappointing contents of that roll of paper.

  His mind turned to the last words she had spoken as she sank to the ground in the alley. Je suis désolée. I am sorry I failed you.

  She had said it in French, then in English. Good English. Too good, now that he had spoken to her. She had been well groomed for this role she played. No doubt she understood English even better.

  He had never trained spies, but if he ever did, that would be one thing he would require—that they spoke the language well and understood it even better. There was no point in having ears and eyes among the enemy unless those ears understood all that they overheard, no matter whether spoken by a schoolmaster or by the worst user of popular slang.

  She had an answer for everything, and had not been at all cowed by his questions and accusations. Even on hearing that her documents had been traced to the coast and into the hands of smugglers known to row across the channel, she had not blinked. What had she said? Ah, yes. That better than he had interrogated her, and they knew nothing now either.

  He shifted uncomfortably on the divan. His side hurt worse than when Anderson had been here. He had been wounded before and knew that was normal. Tomorrow would be worse yet. Then slowly, day by day, it would pass until the morning came when he forgot the wound was there. He eyed the divan on which he would sleep tonight.

  A scratch came at the door. He got to his feet and let in the tavern’s servant. The man bore a tray covered with dishes, each in turn covered with upturned pewter bowls. Two bottles of wine emerged from a sack the servant had slung around his body.

  “Here. Take what is left for yourself.” He hande
d over some coin, more than enough to cover the meal. The servant had already tucked some away before he left the apartment.

  As long as he was up, he went to the bedchamber door. There were sounds on the other side. “Come and eat something.” He spoke quietly enough that if he were wrong and she still slept, she would not hear.

  The door opened and Marielle emerged, carrying her shawl. Without it the damage to her dress showed. It appeared she had used the morning’s washing water to blot out the worst of the blood. That side of her dress clung close to her body from the resulting damp. The dress was one of those old-fashioned ones with a low waist and lacing up the front. He guessed that when new it had been lovely, but now its fawn color had turned to something akin to the hue of very dry dirt on a country road and its wilted white lace trimmings had taken on a gray tinge.

  “I do not have time to eat.” Even so she walked over and lifted the pewter covers and sniffed.

  “I insist. You were faint. If you eat proper meals, you will heal faster.”

  “It is wrong of you to make me your prisoner.”

  “Not a prisoner. A guest. I got skewered while saving your life and I am not about to risk having it all be for nothing because you will not use good sense and rest a day or so.”

  “You only want to ask more annoying questions.”

  “Gentlemen do not impose on ill or wounded women with questions. I would have to keep you here a week before you were fit enough for me to interrogate you further. I do not think of it as imprisoning you, but if you insist on doing so—”

  “A week would be most inappropriate. Impossible. I could not allow it.”

  “The thing about being a prisoner is that there is no choice. However, as I said, you will remain here and rest only as long as the physician ordered. After that, you will be free to go.”

  She smiled to herself, as if she saw through a bald lie. Then she gave one of those shrugs. “Sit. I will serve, since you have no proper help here.”

  He sat and went to work opening the wine. She stood and spooned out the chicken stew and potatoes, then took the bread, broke it neatly, and set some at his place.