The Spy’s Convenient Bride: The Macalisters, Book Five

by Taylor, Erica

  The ease of the lie bothered her. Either she’s become adept at convincing everyone she and Luke were in love, or she’d started to believe it herself.

  * * *

  Luke found his siblings awaiting him in Andrew’s study, or rather, only the married ones awaited him.

  Andrew appeared uncomfortable with the scene, but stood against the mantle of the fireplace, one arm braced against the marble. Susanna, Sarah and Norah all sat primly on a settee, and watched as he entered. Apparently, Nick, Charlie and Mara would not be joining them.

  Luke strode into the room, using his pet name for his older brother. “Ah, your graceness!” He was careful to keep his air of amusement light. It looked like he’d walked into an interrogation. “Do I get to be a part of the club now? The Married Macalister Club? Do we get secret coins and a pass code?”

  “Sit, Luke,” Sarah said to him, and nodded to the chair across from the settee they occupied.

  He did, his long legs stretched before him with an air of comfort, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Though he was anything if carefree now. He was alert and on edge, years of training and experience kicking in, though none of his siblings would recognize it.

  “What can I do for my favorite siblings?” He steepled his fingers across his chest and drummed them together.

  “We wanted a moment to speak with you,” Susanna began. “About your new wife.”

  “Vivian, yes. I remember her. Lovely chit, brown-red hair. Eyes like a shamrock. What about her?”

  Norah bit her lip to keep from smiling as amusement danced through her blue-green gaze, but Susanna and Sarah’s lips were pursed tightly, no amusement to be seen.

  “We are worried you married a title hunter,” Andrew said.

  Luke laughed. “Are you now?”

  “Your marriage was so sudden,” Sarah said. “We worried she might have married you for your fortune.”

  “I haven’t much of a fortune to hunt for.”

  “You must admit the timing is suspicious,” Susanna continued. “How soon after she learned of your title did she show interest in marriage?”

  “Oh, she was quite put out with me from the moment we met. Learning of my title likely made things worse.”

  “Yes, but—” Susanna began but Luke cut her off.

  “Have I nothing else to entice a wife than my title and supposed fortune? I happen to have a winning personality and a large—”

  “Yes, you have other attributes, I am sure,” Sarah interjected, holding up her hand to stop whatever he’d been about to say.

  “I was going to say sense of humor. But yes, my other attributes are large as well.”

  Norah turned her head to hide her amusement, but Sarah and Susanna looked outraged.

  “This is serious, Luke!” Sarah snapped. “Have you no concern for the wellbeing of the Kenswick earldom?”

  “The earldom is brand new,” he reminded them. “It doesn’t yet have a wellbeing.”

  “You need to be careful,” Andrew said. “All sorts of people will be angling for your favor, simply because you’re now an earl.”

  “It would seem you lot think it too late for concern if you’ve assembled the Council of Married Macalisters.”

  “Luke, we are simply looking out for your welling.” Susanna’s hand stroked her pregnant belly.

  Luke shook his head. “No, you lot don’t seem to trust me to make my own informed decisions.”

  “Yes, well-” Sarah shrugged.

  Andrew glanced at his sisters. “It’s not like you’re known for the most responsible behavior.”

  Anger flared in Luke, but he kept his emotions in check. “When have I ever behaved irresponsibly? And don’t include the time I lost Clara, because I found her all the same.”

  “We just haven’t seen much of you,” Susanna tried again. “These past years you’ve been a mystery to us.”

  “I’ve been a diplomat on the Continent. There is not much else to know.”

  Sarah’s lips pursed, no doubt disapproving of his detachment. “And then you were suddenly awarded an earldom, and for what no one really knows.”

  Luke met Norah’s gaze for a brief moment before he looked away.

  “And then you show up unannounced with a wife,” Susanna finished.

  Sarah nodded. “It was very jarring.”

  “I apologize,” Luke replied, his tone turning snide as his irritation grew. “But you lot need to trust that I am an adult and I can make my own decisions. I don’t need your approval for anything, least of all who I choose to take as a bride. And furthermore, do not even think about mentioning this nonsense to…”

  Luke’s voice trailed off; his gaze hardened as he realized what was happening. While his siblings had been interrogating him, their spouses were doing the same to Vivian.

  He jumped up from his seat and was across the room and out the door in a heartbeat, ignoring the calls from his sisters as they followed him.

  He found the sitting room where he’d left Vivian, and sure enough, his sisters’ husbands and the duchess were engaged in a similar conversation with Vivian.

  “Enough of this!”

  Vivian turned as she heard his voice, relief washing over her face as their gazes locked.

  Damn his meddling siblings.

  Andrew and his sisters were on his heels and he rounded on them.

  “The eight of you should be ashamed of yourselves,” he snapped and threw his full irritation into the vehemence of his glare. “You insist you want happiness for me, then doubt it the moment I find it?”

  “We do not doubt it,” Clara said.

  “You simply do not trust it.” Luke turned to stare each of them down in turn, not willing to appease their concerns. “I am going to say this only once, so listen well. Vivian did not marry me for my money, my title, nor my connections to any of you. I did not marry her for any related reasons. However, our motives are our own. Should we be in the throes of love or in a contractual arrangement, none of it is any of your business.”

  “Luke, please understand-” Sarah began but he cut her off.

  “I understand you lot do not trust me. I do not owe you— any of you— an explanation for my actions. Our marriage is between Vivian and myself, and she is the only person I owe anything to.” He slipped his hand into hers and enlaced his fingers with hers. “I never questioned the reasons for any of your nuptials, so do not doubt the reasons for mine.”

  With a last dark glare, he pulled Vivian out of the room.

  * * *

  Vivian didn’t say anything to Luke about his protective outburst, or the emotion she’d felt from him in that moment in the sitting room. She didn’t know what to believe was true and what was an act. Knowing what she now knew about him, how could she be sure what was real?

  Redley’s advice, scrawled into one of his leather-bound books, came back to her. Your mind will often deceive you, but your heart never will. Trust your heart, as it probably knows more than your head will realize.

  “Are you truly upset with them?” Vivian asked, having waited until he’d closed the door to their room. “They were only trying to protect you. And to be fair, they are not far off the mark.”

  “I did not marry you on a whim, Vivian,” Luke told her.

  “And I didn’t marry you for your title or fortune.”

  “No, you married me for a house.”

  “See?” She smiled, an attempt to bring some levity back to the room. “Completely different thing.”

  Slowly Luke’s lips quirked up. “Yes, my family clearly has no idea what they are talking about.”

  Her eyes dropped to his lips and suddenly she was aware of his proximity. His cinnamon smell flooded her senses. She should kiss him, make the effort to show him she was not upset with him. She understood why he had not told her about his true dealings with the government. State secrets and all that.

  She didn’t move, and neither did he.

  He’d held her before, outsid
e, and she’d felt the imprint of his interest clearly defined against her belly. His lips against her skin had been torment, the unfulfillment terrorized her senses, but they’d been outside, in plain view of the house.

  They were not outside now, and from the heat that burned in his gaze, he knew this too. Knew what it meant, what it allowed them to do.

  His gaze trailed over her face, down her neck and across the rounded tops of her breasts. She knew she was breathing a tad too fast, felt the rush of awareness thread through her at the mere anticipation of his touch.

  His eyes stopped their appraisal and his hand lifted, tracing a fingertip across her collar bone, down to the dip between her breasts, finding what he was searching for.

  The signet ring. Around her neck on a gold chain, tucked into her bosom.

  She tried not to feel annoyed as he tugged it from where she’d kept it safe. She tried valiantly not to be offended when he pulled it over her head and turned away from her to retreat to the desk. He wanted her, she could read that clearly in his face, in the evidence of his arousal. He also wanted to help Redley with whatever threatened them all.

  She moved to where he’d settled at the writing desk and, after a silent plea, helped him remove his coat, draping it across the back of the chair.

  “Much better,” he commented, stretching his arms. “Those coats can be so confining.”

  “Do not talk to me about confining until you’ve worn a corset.” She leaned against him slightly, pressing her breasts into his shoulder. If he insisted on working through their Redley problem, she could have a bit of fun distracting him.

  “How did you know to go to Canterbury?” She threaded her fingers in his hair and drew her nails along his scalp, his dark curls soft and effortlessly tousled.

  He’d pulled a paper from his pocket and smoothed it onto the flat surface of the writing desk but did not appear affected by her attentions.

  “His original message. Firstly, Redley and I developed a code years ago that only we would understand. For one, when he sealed the note, the seal was inverted. No one else would have thought anything of that, seals are stamped incorrectly all the time. But for us, it meant everything on the first line was to be read as false.”

  “The first line, I am a traitor, you knew to be false?” Vivian bent and kissed below his ear, like he had done to her.

  His breath hitched, but he continued. “Yes. His written message is more simplistic. If you ignore all the words with four letters or less, the first letter of each word isolated spells the actual message.”

  “Why words with four letters or less?”

  “There are four words in the first sentence, that indicated the number of letters to ignore.”

  “This is so confusing.”

  She moved behind him, her hands traveled down over his shoulders and chest and back again. She watched as he rewrote the message onto a clean page, crossing out the unimportant words. He circled the first letter of the remaining words, and they spelled CANTERBURY. She placed another kiss alongside his neck and his handwriting slipped as he wrote the Y.

  “If there was any doubt of where in Canterbury he was specifying, he used the word faith, therefore Canterbury Cathedral.”

  “That is a lot of information in so small a message,” Vivian acknowledged, intrigued but determined to continue her torment. He seemed to react most when her attentions were on his neck.

  “Also, his use of mon ami is curious. I think he means to convey this involves individuals loyal to France, and Napoleon. And then there are these ink spatters in the corner.” He pointed to five little dots where it looked as though ink had dripped onto the parchment. “Those indicate there is a hidden message on the paper. There is a message is invisible without heat.”

  He pulled the candle towards him and attempted to light it, but he was not as unaffected by Vivian’s attentions as he appeared and it took him four tries to light the candle. Once lit, he moved the paper across the heat from the flame, careful to not set the paper on fire.

  Slowly, cinnamon hued streaks began to darken on the paper, stretched from one side to the other as Redley’s scrawling handwriting became visible.

  “That’s incredible,” Vivian said softly, and paused in her attentions, mesmerized by the streaks reaching across the page.

  Redley’s handwriting was clear, but the message itself was not.

  “It’s just a jumble of letters,” she stated.

  “It’s a code,” Luke said absently, and peered at the message as he copied a clearer version onto a clean parchment. “Your ring is the key.”

  “You mean your ring.”

  “It’s still your ring,” Luke replied, and twisted it around in his fingers. He squinted at the letters etched into the gold. “You can have it back after we are done.”

  Vivian didn’t comment. She watched him count letters on the ring and assigned them to the list of letters he’d written onto the page. She didn’t nip at his ear or trail her hands down his strong chest as she wanted to, not wanting to distract him while he was code breaking. It seemed tedious work, but important. Each letter of the alphabet was assigned another letter, and he began to fill in the message.

  “How do you know which letter coordinates with which?”

  “The five ink dots,” Luke explained. His quill scratched against the parchment as he quickly deciphered the message. “The letters on the ring can be used in any order, but those five dots indicated how many to count between each letter.”

  Vivian understood only a bit of it, as it still looked like a series of scrambled letters, but she had faith he knew what he was doing.

  “Do you and Redley communicate like this often?”

  “Only a handful of times. Espionage is an intellect, intuition, and relationship-based service, fueled by a person’s instinct. There isn’t as much cryptic cyphering and sneaking about in the dark as you’d think.”

  “Have you ever had to pretend to be someone else for a mission?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you stolen something?”

  “Nothing as impressive as jewels or works of art. Mostly journals or messages.” He paused and turned to meet her gaze. “How much of this do you want to know?”

  Vivian hesitated, asking herself the same thing. Would anything he say change her opinion of him? Was there anything she would condemn him for, when she was so far removed from the situation?

  “I think I’d like to know whatever you feel comfortable telling me. I’m not sure I could run away from you now.”

  He kissed the back of her hand. “The things I’ve done sometimes seem like they were done by a different person, and I’ve often wondered if there was a line I wouldn’t cross. I’ve lied, intimidated, paid for information, seduced when needed. I’ve been tortured, and done the torturing myself. I’ve become different people, talked my way in and out of situations, snuck in and out of places I’d no right being. I’ve brawled, shot, stabbed, and endured the same things. I’ve walked away from people who cared about me, manipulated their affections for my own gain. I’ve seen the very best in people, and the very, very worst.”

  “And the line you wouldn’t cross?” she asked, absorbing what he’d told her, without judgement or fear.

  He looked back at the code he’d written on the paper. “Children. If children were to be harmed, I refused to be involved.”

  “Have you ever stopped an assassination attempt?”

  “No.”

  “What about a traitor to the Crown?”

  Luke didn’t answer. She took that to mean yes. A deed such as capturing a traitor and preventing them from sharing government secrets with the enemy would have won him a handsome reward.

  Vivian felt stunned as realization dawned on her. “You were awarded Kenswick for capturing a traitor.”

  “Yes, but my involvement was minimal. I shouldn’t have been awarded the earldom for work I did not do. I was forced to take credit for someone else’s efforts.”


  Vivian sat on the foot stool beside the desk, her torment of him forgotten. As the pieces started to fall into place from the bits of half stories she’d been told over the past days, a clearer picture of him formed. “Norah said she didn’t want her hard work to go to waste. You took credit for something Norah did.”

  Luke stopped working and regarded her. “Norah did not want her involvement known. When I agreed to take over her project and see the last part through to the end, I did not think the Prince Regent would respond as he did. Never did I think he would offer such a reward, but there was nothing I could do. Give up my sister and admit her participation? Denying the Prince Regent’s awards would only raise suspicions. So, I kept quiet and accepted the reward for something I was barely involved in.”

  “And it up-ended your life. He retired you and expected you to fully embrace Kenswick.”

  “Precisely,” Luke said, and looked back to the paper. “Here, I’ve decoded the message.”

  Luke,

  Present a unity of vision.

  Gather our resources explicitly against the troubled souls who control our hungering for absolution, and reluctantly together we expire at Runnymede.

  He tossed his quill onto the translation; a sigh of frustration filled the silence. “I haven’t a clue what that means.”

  Vivian pulled the translation towards her. “This sounds more like a call to arms than a confession.”

  “Nor does it sound like a statement of this is all about,” Luke lamented, and leaned back in his chair. He ran his fingers through his dark curls. “Runnymede? That seems a random place.”

  Vivian’s frown deepened as something tugged at her memory. “No, that wouldn’t make sense.” Present a unity of vision, she’d heard that line before. “I think you need to apply your previous cypher to this, counting these five words.” She tapped the quill against the first five words of the message, then began crossing out words with five or less letters. Those words, when the first letter was isolated, spelled GREAT CHARTER.