His body seemed to have decided on the latter, of its own volition. No one moved for several breaths.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said softly. “Why do I still wear the Jade? Why did you do this? Because we wanted to remember—that’s what we said when we were talking the other night. But why? Why did we want to remember? Why can’t we just let the past go?”
Because until you showed up on my doorstep, letting the past go would have meant letting you go. So I did the most permanent thing I could think of: I inked the past on my body.
And she didn’t even know the full extent of it. Closing his eyes, he muttered a curse, frustrated with the inadequacy of language to capture the coexistence of conflicting emotions. There they stood, his hand over Lucy’s hand, which was, in turn, resting on the tattoo over his heart. Two kids who escaped. Two kids who could never escape. Contradictions.
“How did we ever make it out?” she whispered, as if she could see inside him. She was right. It was a miracle, really, that they were together, all these years later, in a comfortable, warm hotel. Hell, it was a miracle that they were both still alive at all.
He didn’t know what to say to her. That was the problem. Everything was so mixed up that he didn’t know what to say. How to be. But maybe it didn’t matter. He’d been avoiding her, torturing himself over how to apologize, trying to think how to go on with her at the hotel every day. But perhaps he’d forgotten that Lucy knew him. They were the same in so many ways. She lived with the contradictions, too.
So he simply pulled her into his arms, lowered his head to her hair, and whispered, “I’m sorry.” For everything. For more than he could enumerate.
“It’s all right,” she said. And, as they stood there in a simple, almost chaste embrace, suddenly it was all right.
He wasn’t delusional. This unspoken détente didn’t mean it was going to be any easier to keep his goddamned hands off her, but at least he didn’t have to hide from her anymore. They could go back to being cordial colleagues. Friends, even, as he started pulling his weight at the hotel. And in less than six months, she’d be gone.
He took a deep breath, feeling some of the tension of the past few days melting away. She sighed, too, and shifted in his arms, burrowing the side of her face more deeply against his bare chest, and he was forced to revise that thought. There wasn’t less tension—it had just been replaced by a different kind of tension.
“I have a proposition.” Her voice was muffled as she spoke against his chest. It was probably some new scheme for the hotel—probably something that would work spectacularly well. Lucy had turned into quite the woman of business. He was flooded with a feeling of tenderness toward her, the girl who survived. But there was no room for sentiment on a mission—Blackstone had taught him that. Gently, he pushed Lucy away, giving her shoulders a final squeeze. “Can we talk about it later? I’ve got to go have a look at this address.”
She blinked. “Yes, of course. I’d like to come with you, because—”
“All right.”
He tried not to smile when she stumbled over the rest of her sentence. Clearly, she’d been marshaling for battle. He did chuckle a bit when she scrunched up her nose in confusion and repeated, “All right?”
“I’d rather have you with me than here alone when Mr. Jespersen returns.”
“He didn’t suspect anything, Trevor, and I’d hardly be alone. We’ve an enormous staff.”
“Are you arguing with me? I thought you wanted to come.”
“I do!” She made such an elaborate show of shutting her mouth that he couldn’t help but laugh. “When do we leave?”
“Now.” He gestured toward the door.
It was her turn to laugh, and that she did so unreservedly made warmth pool in his belly. He followed her eyes as they slid down his chest. Was he mistaken, or was there a spark of wickedness in those amber pools?
“I’m guessing rule number one in the espionage handbook is ‘don’t call attention to yourself.’”
“Right.” His shirt. His missing shirt, to be more precise. “I’ll be right back.” He turned for his dressing room, thanking the heavens that Blackstone couldn’t see him being so sloppy.
“I still want to see the fourth tattoo,” she called after him, her voice lower than usual.
He pretended he hadn’t heard her and buttoned his shirt with shaking fingers.
“This is…”
Trevor shot Lucy a glance she couldn’t read. He might have been amused, but then again, he might have been annoyed. He turned his attention back to the house they’d been staring at for well-nigh an hour. But, eyebrows still raised, he was clearly waiting for her to finish the thought.
“…less exciting than I thought it would be.” She shifted on the bench they sat on. When they first arrived, it had seemed an unremarkable bench in a serviceable little parkette across the street from the address they were meant to survey. Now, though, it had turned into an instrument of torture, its uneven slats digging into her back as the late summer sun beat down on them.
His face tilted more firmly toward amusement then, but he still didn’t take his eyes from the house. “That’s what Catharine said, too, when she started. And Emily, when she got unwittingly involved in a mission. Spying is boring, no question about it. It’s mostly tedium and drudgery.”
“I always imagined it would be exceedingly dangerous.” She refrained from adding that she’d panicked when she first found out Trevor was a spy, picturing him facing all sorts of nameless enemies, barely escaping any number of horrible fates. Not sitting endlessly on uncomfortable park benches.
“It can be, but those kinds of missions are rare. Probably the most dangerous thing about it is that one courts social ruin should one be outed as a spy.”
It was true. Spying was considered an ignoble profession. “I’ve never understood that. Why is it any different than being a soldier?”
Trevor shrugged. “More of this haute ton foolishness, I suppose. They can be rather nonsensical, these aristocrats.”
“Can’t they, though?” she agreed, seizing on the conversation to distract her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d simply sat doing nothing for more than an hour. On the rare occasions in the past she’d found herself idle, she almost always had a book to provide distraction. Here, there was nothing to do but sit and think—which apparently meant thinking about tattoos. Which really meant thinking about Trevor’s chest…and other locations that might play host to the mysterious fourth tattoo. Good heavens, had she really said what she’d said in his room earlier, blurting out that she still wanted to know where the last tattoo was? Even after he’d clearly deflected her attempt to talk to him about the…other project. What on earth had possessed her? He thought she was bored, but really she was just exhausted from having to repeatedly haul her mind away from the dangerous places it wanted to visit.
“Nonsensical and downright odd,” he said.
Right. She’d been craving distraction, and here was her chance. “One of my past employers—the lady of the house—used to squeeze the juice from six lemons into her bath every evening. Can you imagine? Her daily lemon budget could feed a family for months.”
Trevor murmured a noncommittal reply and continued to stare at the house.
Her agitated sigh caused him to quirk a small smile, even as he continued watching the house. He must have mistaken its strained quality for boredom. “See?” he said. “Tedious.”
“Is it possible no one is at home? That we’re staring at an empty house?”
“Considering the hour, it’s almost certain the household is at church.”
She wanted to throw her hands up in desperation and couldn’t prevent a small snort of frustration from escaping.
“But, all right, we’ve sat here long enough.” He stood and offered his arm, as if they were about to enter a grand ballroom.
“That’s it? We’re done?” she asked, disoriented. “How do you know when you’ve done enough?”
“Enough is an art.” She hadn’t moved, so he grabbed her hand and physically laid it on his sleeve. “And, no, we’re not going home. We have one assignment, and that is to find out who lives in this house. We’re not done until we do that.”
“We can’t just break in!” she exclaimed. “It’s broad daylight!”
Trevor smiled at the touch of hysteria in Lucy’s voice. “We’re not going to break in.” He had to tug a little to get her to start walking with him toward the house. “This isn’t like when we were kids. We don’t skip automatically to criminal activity.”
“We’re just going to knock on the door?” she practically shrieked as he lifted the heavy knocker. “What are you going to say? What am I going to say?”
There was one aspect in which this was like when they were kids. Back then, he had delighted in throwing Lucy into situations in which she had to improvise. But only because she always did so well. Better even than when she was given time to prepare. If she was playing a role she had practiced, she came off as stilted, stiff, whereas with ten seconds of notice, she could make anyone believe anything. But she always flew into a complete panic just before her theatrical triumphs. It was the damnedest thing. Send her to snoop in the room of a suspected murderer, and she was blasé because she didn’t have to act. Walk along a public street to knock on someone’s door and she was in a right tizzy.
“Trevor,” she whispered, her hand a vise on his arm. “What are we doing?” The heavy oak door swung open, and she sucked in a breath.
He smiled blandly at the butler’s questioning countenance and produced a calling card. “Good afternoon. Is Mr. Hammond at home?”
The butler glanced at the card and back at them. Trevor watched the man’s eyes land on Lucy, and he risked a glance at her, too. True to form, she appeared calm and utterly in control, a complete turnabout from the near hysterics of a moment ago.
“I’m afraid not,”—the butler glanced down at the card again—“Mr. Riley. Captain Hammond has gone to church with the family. I shall tell him you called.”
“Ah, of course!” Trevor cried, pleased with how easy it had been to glean that Hammond was indeed a military man—not that he had expected otherwise. He turned to Lucy. “You did try to tell me that we would likely not be lucky enough to catch Captain Hammond here at this time on a Sunday, didn’t you, my dear?”
“Indeed.” She smiled at him indulgently. “Captain Hammond is an old friend of my husband’s.” Good for her—Lucy was still a mistress of deception, it seemed. She shot a conspiring smile at the butler, playing her part perfectly. “And you’ll have to forgive him. He wasn’t aware that his old friend had ascended to the rank of captain. This one is terrible about keeping up with his correspondence.” She swatted Trevor’s arm and then graced him with a brilliant smile. He could almost believe the affection it contained was genuine. “My husband and I are newlyweds,” she added with a twinkle in her eye, “and I intend to civilize him, so you can tell Captain Hammond to expect a letter very soon.”
That last bit gave him pause. As children, he and Lucy would easily feed off and build upon each other’s lies, each inserted efficiently into the narrative in order to serve the story. But why would it matter if they were newly married or a longstanding couple? Whatever the answer, Lucy was using it as an excuse to stand very close to him and slide her arm through his. He cleared his throat. “Yes. My wife and I are only in town for a visit, which is why we thought to call upon the captain. Will you convey my regret that I won’t get to see him? We are for home this evening.”
The butler nodded.
“Thank you!” Lucy called as the servant began to close the door. Then she turned to Trevor, and while the door was still open a crack, said, “Really, darling, that lapse was positively mortifying. How could you not know he was a captain?”
They did not speak as Trevor led Lucy down the steps to the street. By unspoken agreement, they invoked the same rule that had governed their schemes as children, which was that they wouldn’t break character until they were a full two blocks away. As they strolled sedately, Trevor let the triumph surge through him. Objectively speaking, confirming that John Hammond resided at the address, and that he was a military man, was a small victory. Blackstone could have turned up the information easily had they returned home empty-handed. But there was something about watching Lucy play the butler so utterly that had him energized. Falling into familiar old patterns with her was an unexpected joy.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, and his arm tingled where her hand rested on it. Perhaps the pattern wasn’t entirely familiar. As children, they would have posed as brother and sister. Or as beggars—not that the latter required much artifice. But here, now, under the warm summer sun, he could almost imagine the beauty by his side was his wife. That he was a perfectly unremarkable gentleman unnaturally blessed with the good fortune to have earned the regard of someone like Lucy. An absurd fantasy composed of familiar, comfortable patterns overlain with something else that felt a little bit dangerous.
Her hand came off his arm, and he felt the loss. Called back to reality, he realized they’d reached the two-block mark, and had even turned a corner for good measure.
“Well,” she said through laughter. “That was ridiculous. Effective, but ridiculous.”
Right. Ridiculous.
A foolish fantasy.
Chapter Nineteen
The note the footman delivered to Trevor the next day in his apartment said only, “I’ve gone in.”
But he recognized the hand, and it was enough to catch her meaning. Enough to prompt him to bolt from his desk and tear out the door of his apartment.
Dash her! She was supposed to come to him first. When they’d regrouped with Blackstone after the trip to spy on Hammond, Trevor had reluctantly agreed that Lucy would begin making incursions back into Jespersen’s room to try to learn more. Of course, they’d had to talk him down from his idea, which was to evict the guests in the room next door and punch a hole in the wall through which to spy on Jespersen. Lucy had been aghast at the idea of doing deliberate damage to the hotel, and Blackstone had made the logical point that Jespersen’s suite was large, and the sitting area was in the middle, away from the walls, so acoustics might prove a problem. Lucy had agreed vehemently, protesting that it was challenging enough to understand the rapid-fire Danish being spoken right in front of her, and she doubted her ability to pick up much of anything if listening from the next room. Besides, she argued, being there in person would allow her to make visual observations of facial expressions and body language.
In essence, they had ganged up on him.
Trevor didn’t like it, but, setting aside his irrationality when it came to Lucy’s safety, he had to agree that the proposal was low risk and the potential return high. He had, however, won several concessions. One was that she would go in only once per day. Another was that she would come to him before going in.
Of course, he should have known Lucy better than to trust her word about this.
He ducked into the next room—and they should have known him better than to trust his, too.
He hadn’t even had to evict the guests in 205. Conveniently, they’d departed of their own volition—rather suddenly, too, before their originally stated departure time. This had caused Trevor to give a passing thought to whether there was any credence to Catharine’s tale of rumors about the Jade. Regardless, this particular departure had proven providential. All Trevor had to do was inform the staff that the room was to be closed off. Climbing the stepladder and putting his ear to the hole he’d bored in the wall near the ceiling, he had to admit that Blackstone and Lucy had been right. He couldn’t hear much of anything beyond the fact that men were talking. He tried his eye. Nothing to be seen through the marble-sized hole but light. He could hear voices, though.
He’d been annoyed that she’d gone in the room without telling him. But that she’d done so when the room was occupied had him near craz
ed with anger. Fists clenched, he had to hold himself back from punching the wall in frustration. Surrendering the peephole as futile, he moved to the door and cracked it open so he could at least hear what was happening in the corridor. As Blackstone said, this was an exceedingly straightforward mission. All they needed to do was watch Hammond, assuming he was Jespersen’s planned victim—which Blackstone had people doing—and try to learn what they could from Jespersen.
So why was it making him so crazy?
The door opened next door. It was her. He shot a hand out, grabbed her, and pulled her inside.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing?” She wasn’t pleased with him.
“I told you to come to me before you went into that room.”
“I’m not a child.”
He hadn’t realized he was still holding her arm until she yanked it out of his grip.
He responded by plucking the goddamn cap off her head. “You’re not a maid, either.”
She took a step back, putting her back up against the door, eyes flashing and jaw steeled. He had a sudden vision of the last time he had her backed up against a door. It was the door to the kitchen garden, and she’d been breathing heavily then, too.
And then she’d fallen apart in his arms.
“His name is Gunst,” she said, startling him out of his impure thoughts. “It’s probably spelled g-u-n-s-t.”
His confusion must have been obvious, for she said it again. “Gunst. The other man—the younger one. That’s all I could get.” Then she snatched her cap from his hands and said, “I have to go. I have some reading to do in advance of an engagement I have tonight.”
Lucy found it difficult to concentrate that evening at Mr. Lloyd’s house. She kept having to remind herself to attend to the conversation around her, and there was one mortifying moment when she looked up to find everyone regarding her intensely. She had panicked, thinking, quite irrationally, that they somehow knew she had been thinking about Trevor’s tattoos. Mr. Lloyd had had to prompt her, repeating a question about something she’d said the previous week that had come up again this evening. But she’d tried not to scold herself too terribly as she made a passable answer—she was mixed up in an intelligence mission and helping bring down a potential killer, for heaven’s sake. She was bound to be a little distracted!
The Likelihood of Lucy (Regency Reformers Book 2) Page 21
