Stephanie Laurens - A Lady of His Own

She appeared as he remembered her, tall, lithe, and slender, a fair sylph who despite her outward delicacy had always had his measure. Little about her seemed to have changed, but he mistrusted that conclusion. As a gently bred nobleman’s daughter, the thirteen years between sixteen and twenty-nine had to have left their mark, but in what ways he had no clue, except in one respect. He would take his oath her quick wits hadn’t got any slower.

“I’m here on business.” True enough.

“What business?”

“This and that.”

“Estate business?”

“I’ll be attending to whatever’s on my study desk while I’m here.”

“But you’re here for some other reason?”

He could sense agitation building beneath her words; his instincts were awake, alert, and suspicious. His mission here was to be open, overt not covert. For once there was no reason he couldn’t cheerfully tell all, yet the very last person he’d expected to tell first—if at all—was her.

But if she was asking, then his most direct way forward was to tell her, and see how she reacted. Yet he wanted quid pro quo —what the devil was she doing traipsing about the countryside at midnight, let alone dressed as a male? And why the hell was she there and not at her home, Wallingham Hall, a mere four miles away? Come to that, why wasn’t she in London, or safely married and living with a husband? Oh, yes, he definitely wanted answers to all those questions, which meant the distance between them wasn’t going to work. If she lied…if he couldn’t see her face, her eyes, he might not pick it up.

Unhurriedly, he stood; his gaze on her, he walked, as unthreateningly as he could, to the bed and propped one shoulder against the post at its end. Her gaze hadn’t left him; he looked down into her eyes. “I’ll tell you why, exactly why I’m here, if in return you’ll explain to me why, exactly why you’ve arrived here at this hour, dressed like that.”

Her grip on the edge of the bed had tightened, but otherwise she hadn’t tensed. She stared up at him for a finite moment, then looked at the door. “I’m hungry.”

She rose, walked to the door, and without a backward glance went through it.

Lips lifting, he pushed away from the bedpost and followed, closing the door behind him.

He caught up with her on the stairs and followed her to the kitchen. She marched in and went straight to the kettle, left sitting to one side of the hob; taking it to the pump over the sink, she started filling it. Crossing to the stove, he hunkered down, opened the furnace door, and riddled the grate until the coals glowed red. He piled in kindling, then a few split logs, conscious of the sharp, assessing glances she threw him as she moved about the room.

Once the fire was blazing, he shut the furnace door and rose. Reaching across, she set the kettle to heat and placed a teapot into which she’d ladled leaves on the bench alongside. Glancing at the table, he noted the cups and saucers she’d set out, the plate of Mrs. Slattery’s almond biscuits she’d fetched from the pantry. Not once had she hesitated in assembling those things. She knew where everything in his kitchen was stored better than he did.

He studied her as she sank into the chair at one end of the table. Mrs. Slattery, the Abbey’s head cook and housekeeper, would never allow her to help herself, which meant she’d learned all she knew on forays like this, long after his staff were abed.

She’d set his cup and saucer halfway along the table, the plate of biscuits between them, beside a single candlestick. The plate was as far from her as she could reach, and equally far from his designated place. He drew up a chair to that spot without comment. The candle flame was steady in the well-sealed kitchen; he’d achieved what he’d wanted—he could see her face.

Picking up a biscuit, she nibbled, over it met his eyes. “So why are you here?”

Leaning back, resisting the lure of the biscuits for the moment, he studied her. If he answered simply, succinctly, what were his chances of getting anything out of her? “My erstwhile commander asked me to take a look around here.”

Where to go from there? He could see the question in her gray-blue eyes, could only wonder why she was being so very careful.

“Your commander…” She hesitated, then asked, “What arm of the services were you in, Charles?”

Very few people knew. “Neither the army nor the navy.”

“Which regiment?”

“Theoretically one of the Guards.”

“In reality?”

If he didn’t tell her, she wouldn’t understand the rest.

She frowned. “Where were you for all those years?”

“Toulouse.”

She blinked; her frown deepened. “With your mother’s relatives?”

He shook his head. “They’re from Landes. A similar distance south, so my coloring and accent were acceptable, but far enough away for me to be relatively safe from being recognized.”

She saw, bit by bit realized. Her gaze grew distant, her expression slowly blanked, then she snapped her gaze, now appalled, back on him. “You were a spy? ”

He’d steeled himself, so didn’t flinch. “An unoffocial agent of His British Majesty’s government.”

The kettle chose that moment to shriek. His words had sounded sophisticated, dismissively cynical, but he suddenly wanted that tea.

She rose, still staring, lips slightly parted. Her eyes were round, but he couldn’t read the expression in them. Then she turned away, snagged the kettle, and poured the boiling water over the leaves. Setting the kettle down, she swirled the pot, then left it to steep.

She turned back to him. Her gaze searched his face; she rubbed her hands down her breeches and slowly sat again. This time she leaned forward; the candlelight reached her eyes.

“All those years? ”

He hadn’t, until that moment, known how she’d react, whether she’d be horrified by the dishonor many considered spying to be, or whether she’d understand.

She understood. Her horror was for him, not over what he’d been doing. A massive weight lifted from his shoulders; he breathed in, lightly shrugged. “Someone had to do it.”

“But from when? ”

“I was recruited as soon as I joined the Guards.”

“You were only twenty! ” She sounded, and was, aghast.

“I was also half-French, looked completely French, spoke like a southern native—I could so easily pass for French.” He met her gaze. “And I was ripe for any madness.”

He would never tell her that part of that wildness had been because of her.

“But…” She was trying to work it out.

He sighed. “Back then, it was easy to slip into France. Within a few months I was established, just another French businessman in Toulouse.”

She viewed him critically. “You look—and act—too aristocratic. Your arrogance would always mark you.”

He smiled, all teeth. “I gave it out that I was a bastard of a by-then-extinct family on whose grave I would happily dance.”

She studied him, then nodded. “All right. And then you did what?”

“I wormed my way into the good graces of every military and civilian dignitary there, gathering whatever information I could.”

Exactly how he’d done that was one question he wasn’t prepared to answer, but she didn’t ask.

“So you sent the information back, but you stayed there—all that time?”

“Yes.”

She rose to fetch the tea, returning to the table to pour; he watched, soothed in some odd way by the simple domestic act. So distracted was she that when she came close to fill his cup, she didn’t seem to notice. As she leaned forward, his eyes traced the curve of her hip, plainly visible courtesy of her breeches. His palm tingled, but he ruthlessly kept both hands still until she straightened and moved away.