“No, it’s your berf-day!”
“My birthday’s not for another month yet,” Luke said, clipping his consonants. He spun the young man about, giving him a hearty pat on the shoulder as he pushed him towards his cohorts, all doubled over with drunken laughter.
“Here ye go, Mr. and Mrs. Potter,” the innkeeper said and plopped a heavy metal key down onto the countertop. Vivian jumped. “Last room.”
Luke smiled gratefully, and paid quickly, eager to get Vivian to the room. Her nerves were likely frayed, and she would need peace and quiet, as best as a rousing coaching inn could offer.
It was only when they were locked behind the door of their room that he took a moment to fully look at her. Her eyes were bright and wide, as though she was seeing more than just the room they stood in. Her breathing was steady, but her color was pale.
“We will be safe enough in here, as long as this inn doesn’t burn down as well.”
She didn’t laugh, or seem to find his comment amusing. It probably wasn’t.
He looked away from her, and wondered what he had done to her. None of this had been part of their agreement. The regrets she must harbor. If he was smart, he would deposit her in Herefordshire and never look back.
“Mr. and Mrs. Potter?” she asked.
He glanced at her again, and a wave of warmth and protectiveness washed over him. Her very presence brought a comfort to a trying evening. Things were different between them, now that she knew who he was— what he was. She’d seen the worst bits of him and was still by his side. Either she was determined to win her house in the end, or…
He looked away. Attachments would not suffice either one of them. Not when Redley’s life was on the line. Not when their lives were on the line.
“John Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1737 till 1747.”
She snickered. “Of course he was.” Her gaze found his. “Is your birthday truly in a month’s time?”
“What day is today?”
“It’s Sunday April 21st.”
“Then my thirtieth birthday is a month from Tuesday.”
It was a mundane detail, but she nodded. “Mine is in July. You know, you’ve never asked me how old I am.”
Luke shrugged. “I didn’t think it mattered.”
“Oh. Well, I will be five and twenty.”
He looked away, his nerves wound tightly with the day’s dramatics, though he knew from the outside he looked unaffected. Calm. Collected. As if nothing bothered him.
“Quite the old maid, then,” he quipped, but the jest didn’t really reach his eyes. It was second nature, to try and find the levity in the situation, but he truly didn’t have it in him tonight.
“That is what my cousins called me, last year when I was in London. An old maid. Had I had been presented at court and debuted when I should have, I might not be in this mess.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Vivian sighed. “When I was seventeen there was a bad crop, and funds weren’t as readily available. I was willing to wait a year. When I was eighteen, my mother was sick and it didn’t feel right to leave her. I thought I had time. I had four living brothers; there was never a thought they might not be there to take care of me, should I never marry. Five years later they were all gone. And I was an old maid.”
A knock on the door startled them both but it was simply a servant with a dinner tray. The maid brought the tray in and set it gently on the three-legged table near the fire.
“Is there anything else I can get for you?” the maid asked and turned towards him, her smile bright.
He did not return her smile. “No, thank you.”
Her brightness fell a tad, and she curtsied before quitting the room.
Vivian had turned away from him, her arms wrapped around herself. He tore his gaze from the sight of her trying to literally hold herself together.
“How are you? Hungry? Tired?”
“Both. What I’d most like is tea.”
“There is tea and stew.” He pulled the lid from the iron pot, and inhaled the familiar scent. “I think it is venison.”
“I appreciate you taking care of me,” she told him and moved towards the table. She rested her gloved hand gently on his arm, her gaze full of a tenderness that bit through to his bones. “But are you all right?”
It would be easy to turn to her, offer a bright, jovial smile and lie through his teeth. But he couldn’t do it. He’d never lied to her, not directly. Seemed wrong to start now.
But it was more than that. He simply didn’t want to pretend with her. He didn’t want to throw up his usual barriers, shrug off her concern and make light of the situation. She deserved better.
He took her hand in his and kissed her knuckles before setting her hand to his chest. His heart thumped hard beneath his ribs.
“I am worried,” he admitted. “I don’t like having you involved in any of this, but I don’t want you out of my sight. I am tired, and hungry, but for the most part I am all right.”
“You don’t think any less of me for shooting that man dead in the street?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Good,” she said with a deep sigh. “I’d worried you thought me deranged or something. I’ve not reacted as I should.”
He pulled her closer and wrapped his arms around her, an attempt to offer her comfort, but truly seeking some of his own. His thoughts normally spun in a multitude of directions, but somehow, she calmed all of the chaos inside.
She leaned into him and they stood together in the middle of the room for a long moment. Finally, he set her away from him with a kiss on her cheek, and held the chair for her as she sat.
“Where did you learn to shoot like that?” he asked as he dished out ladles of stew and a corner of the long baguette of bread.
She watched him work for a long moment, and it felt good to do something with his hands. A distraction almost. Something to focus on so he didn’t over-think their circumstances.
“My father,” she replied after a few long minutes of eating in silence. “It was a game of sorts. He’d set up little targets along a fallen tree, and we would have to go through a series of different tests. Shoot while moving, draw then shoot, shoot in quick succession.”
He watched her carefully. Something about these games she’d played with her father and brothers sounded an awful lot like the drills he’d been put through during his military training. And after he’d joined the Foreign Office as a spy.
“You said your father was a soldier?”
“He fought during the war of American independence,” she replied, and he could see her nod absently in his peripheral vision. “He taught my brothers and I all sorts of things. Or rather, he taught my brothers, and I insisted he teach me too. He didn’t want to at first, told me my place was not in the woods with a pistol in my hand. But eventually he came to see I was rather adept, more so than a few of my brothers. Lancelot outshone us all, but I picked up Father’s tricks and lessons faster than the others. I turned it into competition between my father and me. He would bet me I couldn’t learn something quicker than Owain or Percival and when I did, I won no chores for a week. That sort of thing.”
“It was invaluable training.”
Her voice was soft as she answered, her face laced with exhaustion. “I suppose so. When Bedivere went off to the war, I wanted to go with him. When Lancelot left, I tried to stow away in his trunk. When Percival left, I was adamant I would be next.” She laughed and shook her head. “I was such a silly little thing, thinking they were off on some grand adventure with Arthur and Merlin. It wasn’t until Bedivere came home that I realized it was something different. He’d been injured and lost his arm. Lancelot died during combat in 1810, somewhere in Spain. Percival followed him to the grave a year later. Bedivere never really recovered from his time in the war, mentally at least. The loss of two of his brothers in a war he could no longer engage in was too much and he took his own life in 1812. Owain died of a fever in 1813 six month
s before my father perished in the fire that destroyed the Abbey. That fire destroyed what remained of my family.”
The haunted look on her face was too much. “Goodness, Vivian. I thought I had a tragic backstory.” Levity, that’s what he was good at. Depth and depression and anything remotely serious were not in his realm.
Her lips tipped up into a light smile. “You don’t have to do that with me.”
He glanced up to meet her concerned gaze. Brow furrowed, she looked as though she had a great deal more she wanted to say but kept it to herself.
“Do what?”
“Make a joke.” Her tone was soft, full of empathy. “You don’t need to alleviate the unpleasantness with silliness to make it more bearable. My pain is my own, you needn’t take it onto yourself.”
He didn't like how she was looking at him, as if he was naked in a room full of debutantes, or flayed to the bone, his emotions raw and seeping out. As though she saw the terrified fifteen-year-old who watched as his father and brother were gunned down in a darkened roadway and there was nothing he could do about it.
“It seems levity is what I am best at, since I seem to fail at keeping you safe.” When she didn’t offer a reply he pressed on, the words tumbling out of him. “I am grateful for what you did, Vivian, but I feel terrible you even had to.”
“Are you above having a woman save you?”
“No, but I wish you didn’t have to do that. I should have…” He looked away, his jaw tightening in frustration with himself. He should have noticed the last assailant wasn’t completely knocked out. He should have seen what he was about before Vivian had to take it upon herself. He’d killed loads of times; a number he did not want to know for what it might do to his thoughts late at night when he could not sleep. It was for King and Country, as if that might explain away the guilt. But he knew what it did to a person, what bits it chipped away. It slayed him Vivian knew what that felt like now.
“You are incredible.” Vivian’s voice was gentle, her gloved hand warm on his arm, despite the layers of fabric between them. “Without you, we wouldn’t have gotten this far. You’ve done most of the work these past days, when I’ve merely dug my feet in and argued you at every turn.” She leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. “Thank you for putting up with me. At the very least, thank you for dragging me out of Herefordshire. The past week and a half has been extraordinary, but I wouldn’t trade it.”
“You’ve been extraordinary,” he insisted. “But Vivian, you have to know, something about these games you played with your father—these are some of the things I was trained in when I joined the Foreign Office. They are tricks and trades of espionage.”
Vivian sighed. “We won’t ever find the answer to that, I am afraid. My father isn’t here to ask what was behind those games.” She tilted her head to the side. “Peterson Place, for the house?”
He shook his head. “It would need to be Peterdaughter Place. Peter Person Place? Peter-was-my-father Place?”
Vivian snickered. “Still a work in progress.”
They finished their meal without further conversation. Her confession lightened his mood a fraction. She dressed for bed with his assistance but climbed into the bed with no indication she’d welcome anything else. Which was fine, as he needed to focus on keeping them safe and not the feelings she stirred inside him.
“You truly will not sleep?” she asked.
“You sleep. I will keep watch.”
“I doubt I could sleep a wink.”
“You can with me watching over you.”
“But truthfully, Luke, will someone find us here?”
They had taken the right precautions, he reasoned. Surely no one would find them despite Luke’s best efforts to keep them hidden. Vivian’s idea of avoiding his normal decisions was clever, and it made perfect sense.
“We are safe,” he said, but Vivian watched him doubtfully.
“You said you would not lie to me.”
“Fine, we are likely safe,” he amended. “We’ve triple-covered our trail; I can’t think of anything else to do.”
“And yet you keep watch.”
“Of course.”
“Maybe you’re over-thinking it?”
“I’m likely not thinking about it enough. The problem is, Poppins has my same training. He knows my tricks and knows how I will think and react to his pursuit. Yes, we’ve done what he would not expect, but that’s not to say he couldn’t figure it out nonetheless.”
The candles were extinguished, and she settled beneath the thick cover on the bed. Luke moved a chair closer to the window, the only one they had, and set up to watch throughout the night.
The courtyard below was dark, even the light from the moon was shadowed with clouds. These were not the best conditions to keep watch, but even Luke couldn’t change the weather. Without moonlight, he was comfortably shrouded in darkness and was not visible should someone glance up at the window to see if anyone was watching.
He slowly became aware that Vivian had not fallen asleep, and what was worse, she was crying.
The sound dug at his heart. He’d put her in this situation and it was no place for someone as gentle and good as Vivian.
Silently, he moved to the bed, scooped her into his arms and returned to his chair near the window. She didn’t protest and buried her face into his neck, her tears hot against his skin.
He murmured soothing sounds against her ear, and held her to him as she cried into the darkness. He moved his hand up and down her spine and hoped, in the end, she could forgive him for dragging her into this mess.
“What if he had a family?” Her query was a harsh whisper against his neck, and he barely heard the words, but felt their impact all the same.
“Don’t, Vivian,” he warned. “Don’t think of him like that. He would have likely killed me, possibly you. You saved us, Vivian. You could be here crying over me, but instead I get to hold you in my arms because you acted with incredible courage.”
“I doubt I will ever forget his face,” she said softly.
“You won’t. It will haunt you, and it will hurt from time to time. But it was self-defense, Vivian. Don’t forget that.”
Her tears turned silent, and she relaxed into his arms. And then, “Have you ever killed someone?”
He didn’t tense as he normally did to such a prying query, but pulled her closer, almost subconsciously. “I have.”
“Did you cry over them?”
He shook his head. “That’s not to say I wasn’t upset over what I’d done.”
“You were a man in a war and it wouldn’t do well to cry about it.”
“Precisely.”
Another long pause as her breathing returned to normal.
“I wouldn’t have cried over you,” she said.
He chuckled. “You would have sobbed.”
“Not likely.”
“For days,” he insisted.
“I might have given you one good cry and then moved on with my life.”
He rested his head against the top of hers, and breathed in her warm scent. “At this rate, I doubt I’m worth even that.”
She pulled away to regard him, her gaze shrouded in shadows, but the intensity was felt all the same. The same vulnerable sensation washed over him from before, as if she could see straight through to his very core.
After a long moment, she leaned back against him and rested her head in the crook of his neck.
“Where did you learn to move like that?” Her voice cut through the darkness. “You were so quick. I’ve never seen anyone fight like that, as if you knew how they were going to move.”
“Quan was an excellent teacher.”
“Ah, your mysterious quartermaster.”
“You should go to sleep.”
She sighed. “Tell me a story to distract my thoughts from roaming to all the distant possibilities.”
“What sort of story?” he asked. “Arthur and the knights of Camelot?”
“No
,” she said with a light chuckle. “Tell me how you became a spy.”
Luke paused for a long moment as the answer bounced around in his head. He’d never told anyone how he was recruited to work for the government, even Redley. Everyone had their own stories, their own paths to the service, and it was generally enough they were there. The how did not matter.
He decided he should share it with her. At the very least it would distract her from what she’d done earlier. From their situation, from those who likely hunted them across the countryside.
“It was a long time ago. I left Oxford to join the Royal Marines when I was twenty years old. I spent nearly a year aboard a ship in service to His Majesty’s Navy. After the first six months on ship, we were in port one day, on a rare day of liberty, and a gentleman approached my captain, requesting a sharpshooter. I was the best the captain had, and off I went with the gentleman. He called himself Templar. Not lord or mister, just Templar.”
“What did he need you for?”
“Are you going to allow me to tell the story?”
“Sorry.”
Luke grinned into the darkness and continued. “He needed me to shoot someone, if you must know.”
“And did you?”
Luke paused before answering. This was not the most positive aspects of his profession, one that began in death and lies. “I did. My father saw to it we each learned how to handle a weapon from an early age. I was an impeccable shot and the best Templar could have asked for. I did what he needed me to and he left me at my ship, disappearing soon after.”
He hadn’t thought about his time in the Royal Marines in a long time, as it was the end of his military career, but the beginning of his life of espionage.
“I didn’t see him again for another six months and by that point I was miserable on the ship. When he offered me a change in profession, I leapt at the opportunity. A way to serve the crown during the war, but I didn’t have to be at sea.”
“Do you not enjoy sailing?”
“I don’t mind sailing and was rarely sick. It was the endless time at sea, with land a fond, yet distant memory. I learned during that year I prefer dirt beneath my feet.”
The Spy’s Convenient Bride: The Macalisters, Book Five Page 24
