All Through the Night

by Connie Brockway

  “Colonel?”

  He slowly released her hand and looked up. She regarded him with brilliant, demanding eyes.

  “I have told you about myself,” she said.

  And far more than you realize, m’dear.

  “Now it’s only fair that you give something in return.”

  “What would you like?” he asked smoothly.

  “Griffin told me about”—she hesitated but plowed on—“about Paris and what you did.”

  “He did, did he?” Jack murmured. “How enterprising of old Grif.”

  “And something of Jamison. Tell me more.”

  She wanted to know about Jamison.

  He’d never spoken about Jamison. For that matter, he’d never talked about his past. He knew what the rumor mills churned out about him. Whether they were lies or truth made no difference to him, but now she asked. She asked and that made all the difference in the world.

  He pushed his chair back and crossed his legs, gazing levelly into her inquisitive, midnight eyes. If this was what it took, this is what he would do. If she wanted his heart dissected on a platter, so it would be.

  He hadn’t meant to care for Anne Wilder. He hadn’t meant to lust after the thief. To find that the two women were one and the same only compounded both desires. The damnable thing was that if what he’d begun to suspect was true, a declaration might well send Anne racing out onto the rooftops for good. So he would do what he could.

  He smiled ruefully. After all, he wasn’t looking for a miracle; he was looking for something much rarer—love.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “I do not know who my parents are,” Jack said. He sounded calm and unaffected. Good. “Jamison claims he might be my father, but that depends on his mood and what he wants.”

  He took a sip of sherry and replaced the glass. “He found me in an Edinburgh workhouse where he was looking for his bastard off a Scottish maid. I volunteered for the position. He accepted. Terms were drawn up to which we both agreed.” There. That hadn’t been so very hard.

  “How old were you?”

  He shrugged. “They assumed I was somewhere near seven. Eight? Maybe nine.”

  For a second a shadow of horror appeared through her carefully maintained mask of politeness.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “The records for those places aren’t well maintained. Those on me were lost. If they’d ever had any.”

  “But what about your mother?” she said.

  “I think she died giving birth to me. I’m not sure. I don’t recall any women but those from the workhouse.”

  “No one?”

  Maybe this wasn’t going to be quite so easy.

  “Who took care of you?”

  He gazed at her helplessly. Hadn’t her father told her what life for beggars was like? “I’m sorry.”

  Anguish shot across her face. She looked away as if the sight of him were painful.

  “I am sorry,” he whispered again.

  “Please, don’t.” She looked so damn miserable and he hadn’t told her anything. Not really. He couldn’t stand having her look so. He started to rise but she turned back to him, her expression fixed.

  “So Jamison may actually be your real father?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” He took a deep, steadying breath. “There was another boy at the workhouse, a sad halfwitted creature who carried the name Jamison looked for. I think he may have been Jamison’s real son.”

  “But why didn’t he rescue the boy if he was his own child?”

  Jack’s lips twisted with something like pity. “Jamison did not have any use for a slow-witted child. So he asked if any of us would take the boy’s place, if given a chance. I said yes.” The confession fell like a death knell. Anne’s hand covered her mouth in the ancient, intuitive sign of aversion.

  Well, yes, Jack thought wearily. What else would she do? He’d stolen another boy’s birthright, perhaps even his life.

  It was over. She would get up now and leave the room. Whether she allowed him to protect her or not, she would be forever beyond him. His hand trembled as he reached once more for the wineglass. His mouth felt unusually dry. He splashed down a mouthful of wine. His eyes closed.

  “But you don’t know if he was Jamison’s son.”

  Still here? But for how much longer? He wouldn’t lie to her.

  “I don’t,” he agreed. “I never will. Though it wouldn’t make any difference. I looked for him once, years ago. He’d disappeared. Died, most likely.”

  “No,” she said quietly, as if speaking to herself. “You’d still see it the same way, wouldn’t you?”

  He tried to read her expression and couldn’t. “We had struck a bargain, Jamison and I. I would get a clean home, regular meals, and an education. He would have my every effort to please him, and later my talents would be at his disposal.”

  “You must hate him.” Her voice was low and vehement.

  “Hate him?” Jack asked in surprise. “No.” At her shocked expression, he felt suddenly embarrassed. He supposed he should hate Jamison.

  “But why not?” she asked. “He was never a parent to you. He took you and blackmailed you and made you think—”

  “Anne,” Jack broke in quietly. “Jamison made an offer. I accepted it and his terms. I am responsible for who I am.”

  “Don’t tell me you love him?”

  Exasperated, Jack combed his hair back from his temples. “Love? Yes. No. I don’t know.” She stared at him in confusion. “The heart doesn’t ask permission. It is singularly unconcerned with the qualifications of those it chooses to love. It mocks the intellect, it subjugates reason, and it holds hostage the will to survive.”

  He was speaking of her as well as Jamison but she wouldn’t know that. Her expression was intent as she listened.

  “Jamison never showed me any affection,” he admitted. “He was brutal and harsh. He manipulated and used me for his own ends. But he was all I knew, Anne.

  “He may not have had any affection for me, but he valued me. Anne”—he held out his hand, palm up, silently pleading for her understanding—“no one had ever valued me before. No one had seen anything in me but a bit of gutter trash that they could ill afford to keep alive but that stubbornly refused to die.”

  His mouth twisted ruefully. “Do I love Jamison? I do not trust him, I do not expect anything from him, nor would I want anything from him. I fear him, I disapprove of him, and I abhor the devil’s bargain I made with him, but still, yes, I suppose you might say I love him. Can you understand that?”

  He held her gaze, his empty hand still held out to her. She glanced down at it, at him. “No, I don’t understand.”

  His hand curled into a fist and he withdrew it. How could anyone understand something so alien? He didn’t understand himself, and he’d failed to explain it to her.

  “What does Jamison have you do?” Her tone begged him to be subtle and creative and to sugar-coat those things he’d done at Jamison’s behest. He’d not come this far to compromise the truth now. He never would have anticipated she would still be here asking questions. Hope fluttered restlessly in his heart.

  “Jamison and a man named Knowles are responsible for the actions of people who work behind the scenes in matters of a political nature. I am one of those people.”

  “What does ’working behind the scenes’ mean?” she asked cautiously.

  “Arranging things, collecting information, making sure that certain eventualities occur, that others do not. Necessarily, most of these actions take place outside the aegis of government approval.”

  “You’re a spy.”

  “Sometimes.” He shifted in his seat. Honesty, he abjured himself. “Yes.”

  “And that’s why you were sent after me. Because this letter that you were told I stole is important.” Her brow furrowed in concentration. “If it weren’t supremely sensitive, this person Jamison,” she fairly spat his name, “would not want everyone dead that he suspected of having seen it.
”

  “Yes,” he agreed quietly.

  She raised her eyes. “I don’t have the letter, Jack,” she said. “I never did. No one hired me to steal it.”

  He’d no reason to believe her. She was a thief and a liar. She’d encouraged his regard so that she might keep abreast of his movements and distract him from his goal. She’d used his body to pleasure her own. She honored the memory of a sainted husband by pitching herself from rooftops and stealing from his friends.

  And he loved her.

  “Yes,” he said. “I know.”

  Her eyes fluttered shut as if she were hoarding some emotion.

  “But as I’ve already explained,” he went on, “it’s Jamison’s beliefs that concern us. You never needed to convince me. What I believe does not make the least bit of difference.”

  She opened her eyes and regarded him with brilliant constancy. “It makes all the difference in the world to me.”

  He uncrossed his legs and began leaning across the linen. Hope seemed perilously close to undoing him. If he didn’t control himself, he’d pitch the bloody table out from between them.

  He could see her recognize the passion in his expression. It intimidated her. He saw it in the watchful way she studied him and in her slight withdrawal. How hellishly amusing. She didn’t even realize the power she held over him.

  “What is it?” she asked. She sounded a shade breathless.

  He cast about, uncertain what she was speaking about.

  “The letter,” she explained. “What is it that’s so important no one else must see it? A record of baptism? A marriage license?”

  Her words recalled him to the very real danger they lived under. Even as they spoke Jamison would be putting into action his next attempt on her life.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Love letters? A confession? What does it look like? Is it a copy of something or a page from a book?”

  He shook his head. “Once more I don’t know. I never saw it. Lord Atwood is the only one who had. He was to be the courier.”

  Her brows puckered with concentration. He wanted to stay with her but he couldn’t. He rose, catching her attention.

  “I’m going to Windsor Palace. I think that’s where this letter originated. If I can discover the letter’s author, I will be better able to follow its trail. There have to be footprints leading somewhere, Anne. I’ll find them,” He moved behind her, heading for the door.

  “Jack?”

  He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Yes?”

  “I want you to be careful.”

  He mustn’t read anything into that. “Yes,” he said, enforcing the casualness in his tone. “I shall certainly do my best.”

  Griffin let him back in the house just before dawn. Jack shed his coat and ordered the sleepy-eyed maid to bring him coffee. Sleep would be impossible after what he’d learned that evening. All and nothing at all.

  The king’s attendant met him at a secret entrance and led him to a high-vaulted room. Inside awaited an ancient blind man, his shriveled body buried beneath the weight of his bedrobes. A single instance when he’d glimpsed this elderly man from afar allowed Jack to name the frail old man.

  “Your Majesty.” He’d bent low and swept his arm out in the grand manner of a bygone age, hoping fervently he did it right. Apparently he had. Over the course of the next few hours, Jack had learned that the fire of the king’s tenacious but unfocused spirit belied the frailty of his appearance.

  “Anything new, Cap?” Griffin asked.

  “The rumors about the old king are true,” he answered.

  “He isn’t mad then?”

  “Oh, mad he undoubtedly is, but his madness is an inconstant thing, interrupted by moments of lucidity. The king wrote that letter, Grif. He writes a lot of letters. His Majesty once had deeded Atwood all of Scotland.”

  Griffin snorted. “Who’d want it?”

  Jack smiled. “But there was one particular time the attendant remembered Atwood taking pains to see that the letter His Majesty wrote was sealed with the royal crest. The attendant didn’t think much of it. He thought Atwood was humoring His Majesty.”

  “And what did he say in this letter he wrote that has Jamison sitting on coals?” Griffin asked sardonically. “Denounce Prinny as a bastard? Should think he might be, hating him as he does.”

  “I don’t know, but I doubt it’s anything quite so dramatic. Every time I asked His Majesty what was in the letter he wrote for Atwood, he started ranting about the moral leprosy that has infected the nation since being led by that ‘fat disgusting creature.’ I believe he was referring to his son.”

  “What about the servants and like?”

  “They substantiated what the attendant said.”

  “I say it would be justice met if the old king disowned the prince regent—where are you going?”

  “I need to send for Burke,” Jack said, his hand on the study door. “I want him to go to Atwood’s and chat up the servants.”

  “She’s in there,” Griffin said.

  Jack withdrew his hand and looked around in surprise. “Anne?”

  “Yes.” Griffin’s expressive face had gone flat.

  “What is she doing up at this hour?”

  “I wouldn’t know. She never went to bed as near as I can tell.”

  Carefully Jack turned the handle and eased the door open. Without turning he said softly, “Thank you, Grif. Get yourself some sleep.”

  “But you should have something to eat,” Griffin protested, his voice sharp with disapproval. “You shouldn’t be getting so involved with that woman, Cap. She’ll get you—”

  “That will be all, Griffin.” He stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him.

  A few remaining embers suffused one side of the room in a soft, soporific light. Anne lay curled asleep in one corner of the faded sofa. The gray cat had tucked itself behind her knees. Sleep had smoothed a brow too often of late lined with worry. The lace covering her bodice rose and fell in a slow, hypnotic tempo.

  He circled around her, careful to move quietly so as not to disturb her slumber. He considered her as she slept, piecing together the riddle of her past and present, seeing hints of enlightenment where before all had been dim.

  Her eyelids drifted open. She saw him and she smiled as if waking to a pleasing dream before promptly turning her cheek into her hand and closing her eyes again.

  His heart beat thickly in his chest.

  “Hello, Jack,” she murmured.

  “Hello.”

  “I was dreaming about you.” She sounded hazy and melodic. She was still half asleep.

  “Were you now?”

  “Umm-hm. You and I. We were standing on a ledge so high you couldn’t see the ground below. It was coming night and everything was turning black. You took my hand and told me to fly. I said I couldn’t.” Her voice faded away and for a moment he thought she’d gone back to sleep but then she began again in that drowsy voice. “I was afraid. But you took my hands and you drew me to your side and told me to look into your eyes. I did and I wasn’t afraid. And when I looked down I realized we were moving through a silver sky—silver like your eyes, Jack—and that we’d come all through the night into the dawn.”

  “And so we will,” he murmured, and, unable to resist, he sat down on the sofa by her side and brushed the silky hair from her temples.

  Her eyes opened. She reached up and cupped his jaw in her warm palm. There was no hesitation in the gesture. It was altogether unselfconscious. Her thumb lightly brushed his lower lip. “Jack, I do so—”

  A sudden disturbance in the outer hall interrupted her. Jack’s head snapped around and he listened. Griffin had probably fallen over pressing his ear to the door.

  “Grif?”

  “Aye!”

  Damn the man. He carried loyalty to extremes. Jack surged to his feet, strode to the door, and threw it open.

  Ronald Frost stood in the doorway, his eyes red and glittering
, his jaw clenched with fury, the primed pistol in his hand aimed straight at Jack’s heart.

  Who will take care of Anne? Jack thought in despair as he stared at the weapon. Who would guard her when he was dead?

  “Now you’ll see how it feels to have your own taken from you!”

  The meaning of Frost’s words penetrated Jack’s brain as the gun barrel swept by his chest and toward the couch.

  “No!” He leapt forward. The ball caught him in the head, knocking him back. Pain and light erupted in his temple. And then darkness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The explosion catapulted Anne fully awake. Her eyes flew open as the cat streaked away. A shadow moved in the hall. Her head snapped up. Jack lay on his back on the floor.

  She scrambled from the couch and dashed across the room to his prone figure, dropping to her knees beside him.

  “Jack?” Blood masked half his face, flowing thickly and pooling beneath his head.

  “Jack!” She slipped her hands beneath his head, cradling him. He did not move.

  “Griffin!”

  She crouched over him and pressed her ear to his chest. He still breathed. His heart still pumped. Tears sprang to her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She tore the lace inset from her bodice.

  “Griffin!”

  Footsteps pounded on the floorboards overhead. Anxiously she swiped the blood from his eye. He groaned, twisting about.

  “Dear God, please, Jack—”

  The door burst open and Griffin hurdled in, swinging the pistol in his hand around the room. When he saw Jack, a muffled curse sprang to his lip. He hastened over and knelt down. Snatching the blood-soaked lace from her trembling fingers, he began efficiently clearing the bloody sheath from Jack’s face.

  “Who did this?”