‘Maybe we should go inside, find some cool lemonade?’ Diana said.
‘Or maybe we should take you to the nurse?’ Alex asked, her tone full of her usual quiet worry. Alex always wanted to take care of everyone. ‘Too much sun can be dangerous.’
‘Of course I don’t need to see the nurse, I’m perfectly all right,’ Emily answered. She scooped up her tennis racket from where she had dropped it in the grass. ‘Let’s just have a game before we have to go in to tea!’
Alex and Diana exchanged another long glance, before they nodded. ‘Maybe Millie or Elizabeth could join us,’ Diana said.
Emily took a deep breath and made a couple of fierce practice swings with her racket. She imagined they were landing right on Chris Blakely’s golden, handsome head...
* * *
Chris was very much afraid that, when he looked back on this one instant years later, he would see his life divided into ‘before’ and ‘after’. Before Emily Fortescue and after.
He stood in the shadows of a grove of trees at the edge of the sun-splashed green tennis lawn and watched her play with her friends. She leaped into the air, her white skirts billowing around her, her racket wielded like a young Athena charging into battle. Her chestnut hair, red and gold and amber in the sunlight, was tumbling from its pins and she was laughing.
Her face, sharp-chiselled and angular as a cat, was usually so serious, so deep in thought and watchful, as if she saw deep into people’s thoughts and read their deepest secrets—and didn’t quite approve. But when she laughed, she was utterly transformed. The rich, merry, uninhibited sound of it would draw anyone closer. Like a siren.
But sirens drove men to their deaths with unfulfilled longings. They pulled men in even as they shoved them away. Chris feared that was definitely the case with Emily.
He raked his hands through his hair, leaving the over-long blonde strands he was always meant to trim properly standing on end—another disappointment to his parents. But he couldn’t dislodge the memory of that kiss.
That kiss.
What had he been thinking? Had he gone sun-mad in that moment? But he knew the truth. He had not been thinking. Just as his father always shouted at him, Chris never thought about what he was doing. Yet kissing Emily was hardly like missing his tutor’s lecture to go for a lark on the river or drinking at the Dog and Hare. Kissing Emily was...
Was the stupidest thing he had ever done. And the most wonderful. For just that one moment, when their lips touched and he tasted the tart sweetness of lemonade, felt the lithe grace of her under his touch, it was like breaking free and soaring. Like the drunken, sparkling magic of a Bonfire Night. Like he was just where he should be.
Only for a moment. Then it all crashed down again. This wasn’t a chorus girl, no matter what wild ambitions she proclaimed. Not a tart at the Dog and Hare. It was Emily. Emily Fortescue. His cousin’s friend. A young lady of education and wealth. Being involved with her would mean promises, expectations. Serious promises. And he was no good at serious.
Not that she would have him even if he was. She was far too good for him and everyone knew it.
He watched her now, laughing in the sunlight. She had picked up the ball from where it fell by the net and was casually tossing it high and catching it again as she chatted with her friends. Graceful, easy, her mobile, sensual mouth smiling. Her hair like autumn leaves, shimmering, heavy, enticing a man to pull it free from its pins and see how long and luxurious it was. Feeling it under his touch. She was so enticing, beautiful and smart and serious...
And he was someone in danger of being sent down from Oxford unless he mended his careless ways and started behaving like a Blakely, according to his parents. He was someone who excelled at making parties merrier and not much else. Emily was clever, beautiful, smart enough to run her father’s business one day, if she wanted. Smart enough to marry anyone she liked. His cousin Alex said Emily was sure to even expand her father’s already lucrative business and become an even more wealthy heiress one day.
He could certainly believe it, after how angry she became when he suggested marriage was her best option, a lady’s only choice.
Yet if she didn’t marry, he thought ruefully, it would be quite a waste. What a kisser she was. It made him wonder what else she would be brilliant at, in the privacy of a bedchamber...
Chris shook his head hard to dislodge a sudden image of Emily Fortescue dressed only in a thin silk chemise, laughing amid a billow of white pillows, her glorious chestnut hair spread mermaid-like around her. He had no business thinking about her that way.
And when they were together, they always seemed to argue. She was definitely not for the likes of him and he was not for her. Maybe they would have fun in the bedroom, if that wild kiss was any indication, but they would quarrel each other to death everywhere else. She was too strong-minded, too gloriously goddess-like, for everyday use.
And he was sure he would never quite measure up to her.
Yet, oh, she was so beautiful. He watched as she gracefully drew her arm back to serve, the long, lean line of her body. How had he never realised that before? Oh, he had always known she was pretty, that was impossible to miss. But she was actually incomparable.
‘What are you doing lurking out here, Chris?’ he heard his brother William say.
He glanced back to see Will walking towards him along the pathway between the trees, his brother’s dark suit and dark hair blending into the shadows. He looked impeccable, responsible, the always-serious one. ‘Just hiding for a moment before I plunge into all that Miss Grantley’s schoolness, I suppose. I have a newfound allergy to academia, even if this isn’t quite Oxford.’
Will gave a wry chuckle. ‘I’m rather surprised you showed up at all. It doesn’t seem like your sort of scene.’
Chris glanced at Emily again, her white skirts a blur as she dashed along the net. Her laughter floated back to him on the breeze. ‘Lemonade and deportment lessons? No, thank you. But I thought Alex might appreciate someone here besides the Duchess.’
Will smiled. ‘Yes. Poor, sweet Alex.’ He, too, studied the tennis game and for one awful instant Chris wondered if he, too, admired Emily. But then he realised Will watched Diana Martin, her hair a bright red in the light, waving her racket in mock-threat at Emily. Will’s smile seemed uncharacteristically—soft in that moment.
Interesting.
Will turned away from the sun-dappled scene and aimed his piercing blue gaze at Chris. Much like Emily, Will had an uncanny ability to see too much. Even when they were children, Chris could never pull off pranks on Will. And now Will had left university with a First in the Classics and worked for the Foreign Office, respectable and perfect.
‘Are you sure nothing is amiss, Chris?’ Will asked.
Chris shook his head, making himself give his trademark careless grin. It always seemed to throw everyone off. ‘Amiss? Whatever could be amiss on such a bright, sunny day, far away from any work at all?’
‘Yes,’ Will said quietly. Quiet with him was always a dangerous sign. When Will got quiet, it meant he was thinking even more than usual. ‘You want everyone to think all your days are bright and sunny, don’t you, Brother?’
Chris turned away. ‘Why should they not be? We are young, the world is open to us. Pretty girls, a drink at the pub tonight, maybe a horse race tomorrow...’
‘And that’s all there is?’
‘Of course it’s not,’ Chris said, feeling a strange anger rise up in him. Life should be more, should have some purpose. That was easy for someone like Will to say, or Emily. They seemed brimming with purpose, with serious minds that led them towards something greater. Chris searched for it, but where was it? So, he played the pleasure-seeker, the clown, the trickster.
He looked towards the tennis lawn. The game was over and Emily had put on her hat and was hurrying towards the house, arm in arm with Alex a
nd Diana, the three of them giggling together as if they hadn’t a care in the world. As if the world hadn’t been rocked with a kiss.
‘But that’s what life is for now,’ Chris concluded. ‘As to the future, who can say? Father declares I’m fitted for nothing. Maybe he’s right.’
Will frowned. ‘When has Father been right about anything?’ he said. ‘Listen, Chris, you’ll be done at Oxford soon. Why don’t you come talk to them at the Foreign Office? I can arrange an appointment time.’
‘And work with you?’ Chris thought of how he would come off next to Will and shook his head. ‘They wouldn’t take me. And I’d die of boredom there after a day at a desk, thinking about infinitely boring people at infinitely boring foreign courts.’
Will laughed, a rare, rich sound. ‘Not every job there is as tedious as formal diplomacy, Chris. There is a lot there that would suit you very well indeed. And I’ll be leaving for India soon; they need more men at the London office. You should think about it, anyway. Father will start making noises again about the church and Mother will find you an heiress to marry if you don’t head them off with a different plan.’
Chris grinned. Both of those were tacks their parents had taken with him many times. Both sounded like the depths of wretchedness. Maybe Will had a point. If he had a different job in mind, there could be no vicarages in his future. ‘We’ll see.’
‘Good, do think about it. Now, should we go in? Surely it’s time for tea and no one could ever fault Miss Grantley’s for their excellent cook.’
‘True. I’ve been thinking about those raspberry tarts all day.’ Chris followed Will towards the arbour where maids were setting up the tea service and he was glad the day was almost done. But he could swear he heard the echo of Emily’s laughter following him at every step.
Chapter One
London—spring 1891
Christopher Blakely was sure his eyes were crossing from the mounds of paperwork. He had been making his way through them for hours and still the piles of documents loomed high. This was by far his least favourite part of the job.
He pushed the papers away and sat back in his chair with a laugh. Surely he would be more useful at a party somewhere, drinking and laughing, drawing people in—and learning their secrets. Wasn’t that why the Foreign Office had hired him in the first place, after his useless years at university? His light-hearted ways, his charm, his genuine interest in people and their strange ways. Such charm drew people close, invited their confidences, in a way that cool professionalism, such as that possessed by his brother Will couldn’t hope to accomplish. At least not as quickly as Chris, with his dimpled smiles and endless bottles of wine, the way he seemed born to read people and situations and adjust his reactions accordingly, could achieve.
He sighed as he plucked the document off the top of the pile—a report from an operative in Berlin, where trouble always seemed to be brewing. Even though the Kaiser was Queen Victoria’s own grandson, he was a troublemaker of endless ambition and jealousy. It was certainly difficult work, there on the ground in the embassies, a tightrope of keeping secrets while ferreting out everyone else’s, especially in etiquette-ridden places like Berlin. Yet Chris found he rather envied those men. They were respected, known. His own work, once so exciting, now seemed rather—dim.
The parties, the laughter that hid so much behind the bright masks, the satisfaction of drawing out hidden dangers and using that information to help his country—it had been everything to him. It was all he could have wanted, using his own gifts to do some good, gifts so different from Will’s, from what his parents had always demanded. It gave him a deep fulfilment. Pleasure, even.
But he was not as young as he once was. Chris ruefully ran his hand through his hair and wondered when its golden colour would turn iron-grey. When his ‘light-hearted rogue’ act would no longer be useful. It was already dull to himself.
He glanced at a photograph in its silver frame, set on the edge of the desk as if to remind him that he did have a family, that he owed something to other people. Will and Diana Martin on their wedding day more than a year ago, all elegant morning coat and white satin, all joyful smiles. Even after all these months, the soft way they looked at each other, those secret smiles only for themselves, were still just as tender as they had been on that day.
It made Chris smile to think of them. And it made him feel discomfited. Nothing like that was on the horizon for him. He had become too good at his work. His reputation as a rake put him beyond serious marital consideration, even if he had wanted to marry. Society mamas let him dance with their daughters and flirted with him themselves, but he knew they did not see him as a good prospect. They only saw what he chose to show them.
Even if he did marry, he could never really be honest with a wife, could never be his true self. He wouldn’t put a person he cared about in a perilous position, not when his work included all manner of people and situations. Risking his own safety and reputation was one thing; he couldn’t do such a thing to a lady. Even if there was one out there who would have him.
Against his will, an image appeared in his mind as he thought of a lady he could care about—an image that came up too often sometimes. Emily Fortescue.
He saw her as she was at Di and Will’s wedding, her pale blue silk gown like the sky itself, her laughter as she caught the bouquet. Emily, with her sharply edged intelligence, her hazel eyes that always saw too much, her lips that tasted so sweet under his. So irresistible. She made him want to spill all his secrets to her, to tell her everything, and that was dangerous indeed.
Chris glanced again at the wedding image. Will and Di were Emily’s friends, too. Diana was practically her sister. He could never offer Emily, who meant so much to so many people, the kind of marriage she deserved; neither could he trifle with her. Not that he could imagine anyone trifling with Emily’s affections at all. She was too intelligent, too independent, and she had made it clear she did not intend to marry.
So, Emily Fortescue was the only lady he could imagine marrying—and the last lady he ever could. It was a prison of his own making and one he could never back out of now. His work depended on it; too many people depended on it, even if they would never know it.
He pushed away memories of Emily, as he so often had to do, and reached for the pile of papers again. Even the problems of Berlin were less complicated than romance.
Luckily, a knock at the door interrupted the tedious task. ‘Come in,’ he called in relief.
It was Laura, Lady Smythe-Tomas, another of the office’s secret agents and one of their most successful. A beautiful, redheaded young widow, she had a rare sense of style, a deep, husky laugh and royal connections to the Marlborough House Set. She and Chris had worked together often before and he always enjoyed her company, even if they were far too similar to ever be romantically involved. It was too bad; he wouldn’t have to hide his work from her.
‘Christopher, darling, are you ready for...?’ She paused in adjusting her kid evening gloves and sapphire-blue gown, her luminous green eyes narrowed as she took in his shirtsleeves and tousled hair. ‘I see you are not. Are we going to be fashionably late?’
‘Late for—what?’ Then Chris suddenly remembered. A gambling party at a very secret, very exclusive club, one which high-ranking German and Russian diplomats favoured.
Laura laughed and perched on the edge of his desk. ‘Too engrossed in all those fascinating reports, I see. Well, there is plenty of time. It’s better if we give them time to find the claret, then they’re easier to talk to. And we must appear to be carelessly late fribbles, anyway, yes?’
‘Fribbles we must be.’ Chris went to the wardrobe in the corner where he kept his extra evening clothes for just such emergencies. He glanced back at Laura, who was sorting through her beaded reticule and humming a little waltz to herself. She had been widowed for many years, left almost penniless by her titled older husband. Was
she ever lonely? Did she ever regret the work? ‘Laura...’
‘Yes, darling?’ she answered, tucking a strand of dark red hair into her beaded bandeau.
‘Have you never considered marrying again?’
She gave a startled laugh. ‘Why, Chris! Are you proposing to me?’ She laughed even harder when he was afraid he looked rather alarmed. ‘Oh, don’t look so frightened. I know very well you are not. If there is anyone who is less the marrying sort than I am, it’s you.’ She slid off the desk and planted her gloved hands on her hips. ‘Why? Have you met someone and are having second thoughts about this work?’
‘No, not at all. I was just—just thinking about Will, I suppose.’
‘Oh, William.’ Laura waved her hand. ‘He is different. He works above-board at an embassy, he must have a spouse. One would just get in the way of our kind of work. You know that.’
‘Of course I know that.’ He had always known that, that being rakish was part of the importance of what he did. It was only lately that he felt himself changing, changing in ways he did not understand. ‘But have you not ever felt, I don’t know—felt alone?’
‘Oh, Chris, darling.’ She gave him a concerned frown and stepped forward to press his hand. ‘I confess I do. My marriage was not all it should have been, but still it was nice to know someone was there if I stumbled. But I am so much better off now and so are you. We are too good at our work to give it up.’
Chris nodded. He did know the score, he always had. He just had to shake away those wistful feelings and get on with what he was so good at doing.
‘Tonight’s party should be just the thing to chase the glooms away!’ Laura said, handing him his silk cravat. ‘Just think of all the lovely ladies who will be there, ready and eager for you to sweep them off their feet and learn all their little secrets...’
Chapter Two
Emily was running...running down the same endless dark alleyway lined with towering bales of cloth stretching so tall and so out of sight that she was sure they reached up into the sky that was always night. She couldn’t even see the starlight, only splashes of hazy, haloed gaslight that came from unseen lamps. She heard voices, but they came from so far away they only seemed like an echo of mocking laughter.
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