“You are not yourself since you returned from the countryside, Kitty,” Lady March said, shifting closer on the couch. The countess had a quick mind and an air of quiet fashion that Kitty liked. Her crinkled gaze, however, was too knowing.
“Oh, I am as happy as a clam,” she replied perhaps too blithely.
The countess lifted a brow. “A clam?”
“Or what have you.” Kitty waved her hand about.
Murmured conversation mounted to a cascade of laughter across the drawing room for a moment, then quieted again.
“Tell me, what did you do while in Shropshire?”
She developed a bewilderingly desperate tendre for an inappropriate and untrustworthy man.
“I completed a lovely piece of embroidery. My mother has sent it to the cabinetmakers already.
You know the one on Cheapside. He will set it into a stool. Roses and cherries on a blush backing, with mahogany stain. I simply adore red.”
“Kitty Savege, you sound like a perfect nincompoop.”
Kitty’s eyes widened.
“What happened to the young lady everyone admired who could converse on politics, books, theater, and the like?” The countess’s lips pinched. “Does Chamberlayne’s courtship disturb you?”
“Oh, no. I quite like him.” Her mother’s beau was unfailingly kind to her. He had not entirely fulfilled Kitty’s hopes over the holiday, but she had cause to believe an offer forthcoming. She had returned to find her mother in possession of the loveliest necklace of silver and lapis lazuli, a gift from the gentleman. Kitty had clasped the piece about her mother’s neck earlier, praising its delicate beauty, and the dowager’s cheeks glowed. Kitty’s father had never given his wife baubles, reserving them instead for his mistress.
Now Ellen Savege stood beside Lord Chamberlayne across the drawing room, a spark animating her eyes.
“Then what on earth is the matter with you?” Lady March demanded.
“I am no doubt simply bored.” Or perhaps something more profound.
Certainly more profound.
“Bored? ”
“With the season still weeks away, entertainments are so thin and not particularly inspiring.” She sounded wretchedly wan. Really not herself at all.
The countess frowned. “Kitty Savege, you have never been rude a day in your life.”
“Oh, certainly not.” She had been horridly rude to Lord Blackwood. Then she had done to him exactly what he had been doing to her to justify her rudeness: she had held him for too long.
“You have insulted me and you do not even realize it,” the countess said without rancor. “I am concerned for your head, my dear.”
“What could possibly concern you about such a pretty head, my lady?” Lord Chamberlayne’s voice was warm as he stopped before them, her mother on his arm. There wasn’t a hint of false flattery about him. Kitty liked that. He seemed so honest, unlike a certain Scot who hid secrets and occasionally spoke to a lady in a rich resonant voice she wanted to eat with a spoon.
“I do feel a bit unstable these days,” she admitted.
Lady March peered at her. Lord Chamberlayne furrowed his brow and looked to her mother, who met her gaze evenly, as always.
“Perhaps a quiet evening of play will put you to rights again,” her mother suggested.
“Mama.” She stood. “I don’t wish to play. Cards no longer satisfy me.” They never would again after the game she had played Christmas Eve.
“Well, this is sudden, daughter.”
Kitty turned from her mother. “My lord, will you sit in for me at tonight’s card party?”
“I will be delighted.” He turned smiling eyes upon her mother, and her face lightened beneath his appreciative regard. They really were well suited, two people’s tastes never more similar. Why hadn’t he yet offered for her? Had Kitty thrown herself into a snowstorm and subsequently into the arms of a Scottish rogue all for nothing?
She turned to her hostess, despondency the size of a fist balled up in her stomach.
“My lady, I must take leave of your hospitality now. I have had a delightful time.”
“Boredom can be so amusing,” the countess murmured.
Kitty curtsied. “Good day, my lady. Mama, my lord.”
She fled.
Alex’s footman let her in through her front door, his black and gold livery neat as a pin. Kitty deposited her cloak, bonnet, and gloves with him, and climbed the elegant stair to the parlor.
The house was nearly empty. Over the holiday Alex and Serena had purchased a larger residence two blocks away, in anticipation of the baby. Kitty and her mother were to remove to the new house within the fortnight. For the time being that left Kitty without any company.
Perhaps she merely needed a good book. Distraction might help, although it had not in a month.
Clearly she needed a change. She could hire a companion and go to France. Everyone said Paris was pleasant in the spring. She could simply run away again, then again and again until old age or some tragic accident took her.
She opened the glass door to the bookcase and ran her fingertips along gilded bindings. Her hand arrested on a volume. She plucked it out. A History of the Fractious Clans of Scotland should be interesting reading. She would instruct the footman she was not available to callers and lose herself in the pages.
She set the book on a table, threw herself down into a chair much as Emily might, and draped an arm over her eyes. This simply would not do. She would never be cured of her infatuation if she continually fed it.
She squared her shoulders and grabbed up the book to reshelve. The footman appeared at the door.
“My lady, a gentleman is calling. I invited him to wait in the drawing room.”
She pressed the volume into its slot and closed the case, endeavoring not to notice the footman’s Meaningful Glance. Over the past few years the servants had all grown wretchedly familiar in the matter of her gentlemen callers. The housekeeper, Mrs. Hopkins, had taken to letting Kitty know of which gentlemen she particularly approved.
“Thank you, John. Please remain on the landing.” She smoothed her hands over her hair and down her skirts, then went through the short passageway into the adjoining chamber. The Earl of Blackwood stood in her drawing room.
Quite simply, she lost the ability to speak.
His eyes were not hooded. His hair was a bit long over the collar, but he was clean-shaven. His coat, waistcoat, and breeches were exceedingly elegant, of excellent quality and the finest cut, his boots shining, and his expression perfectly benign. There were no dogs in sight.
“Good afternoon.” He bowed, a graceful gesture without a hint of affectation. “I trust I find you well, ma’am.”
“You do.” She could manage no more. Not a curtsy or another word. She had never imagined he would come to her, and certainly not looking and sounding like this. He held his hat and riding crop in one hand as though he did not intend to remain long.
“May I inquire after your injury?”
Injury?
“The wound on your arm,” he provided.
Oh. “It is fine.” She could not think. But he allowed only a moment’s pause.
“I have come seeking your assistance. I can only hope that despite circumstances you will consider rendering it.”
“Circumstances?” The syllables required effort.
“The circumstance of my having withheld from you the truth.”
Kitty clasped her hands before her to still their shaking. “What is the truth, my lord?”
“That for several years I have been an agent of the crown in secrecy, playing a role to do my work.
I have recently given that up, save for one final loose end that must be knotted now. It is that task for which I seek your aid.”
She knew not whether to scream or laugh or cry. Emotions battered.
“You are a spy?”
“Were. And no. The organization of which I was a member sought out missing persons of great importance
whose retrieval required particular discretion. We gathered information only to find those persons.” He spoke as though discussing the time of day, while Kitty’s world spun.
“That is nonsensical. How would playing that role have assisted you in gaining information?”
He held her gaze steadily. “You trusted me.”
She had. With her body.
He was known as a flirt, an affable cretin, but a handsome one. How many women before her had imagined him to be perfectly innocuous? She understood. If he had asked, she might have told him anything.
“No,” he said quietly. “In Shropshire I was not seeking information from you, Kitty. I only maintained the pretense to avoid having to tell you the entire truth, which was not mine to share freely.”
Her heart thundered. But this did not explain why he had not made love to her at Willows Hall. If only she could still her foolish trembling. The deep, unsullied timbre of his voice sent longing into every crevice of her body. Being near him now…
She had dreamed it, foolishly, hopefully—that he would come. But not like this. She had not imagined this.
“I see,” she replied.
“Do you?”
“I suppose I should think it all fantastical. But you haven’t wasted any time in coming to the point of your call today, so I must believe you.”
He moved toward her.
Nerves racing, she pivoted, went to the door, and shut it on John’s curious stare. Leam halted in the middle of the room, his dark eyes darting to the closed panel, then to her face.
She lowered her voice. “I do not understand why for a sennight in Shropshire you did not tell me the truth, but now”—she gestured to the door beyond which the footman sat, then to his elegant clothing—“you seem to be perfectly happy to tell the whole world.”
“I am not at all happy about any of it,” he countered. “I have come to London for one purpose.
When that is settled I intend to return home and none of this”—he lifted his fine silk hat and gestured to the street through the window—“will mean a thing.”
She could no longer meet his distant gaze. She dropped hers to the carpet. Oriental design. Tears would not stain it irreparably. She might feel free to fall apart if he weren’t standing before her.
“Do you know, Leam, I think I preferred the poetry to this plain speaking.”
“It is who I am, Kitty.” His voice sounded taut.
“Then I am astounded to find that I liked the false you better.”
This time when he came toward her she had nowhere to go. She flattened her back to the door and he halted before her, so close it would only require the slightest movement to touch him. He bent his head and spoke quietly above her brow.
“Allow me to discharge the errand with which I have been commissioned, and I will leave you in peace.” He drew a tight breath, the movement of air in the sliver of space between them stirring the locks of hair on her brow. “I pray you, Kitty.”
“All right,” she whispered. “Tell me then. With what do you believe I can assist you?”
His hand fisted about the riding crop. She could not tear her gaze away from the sinewy strength that had touched her with such tenderness and possessive passion.
“You and your mother play cards frequently with the Marquess of Drake and the Earl of Chance. Is this true?”
“Yes. But anybody could tell you that.”
“Officials in the Home Office are seeking information about Chance. They believe you may have something useful to tell them.”
“Lord Chance?” She shot her gaze up. “Whatever about?”
“He is suspected of selling information to the French.”
She couldn’t help laughing. “Ian Chance? That is absurd.”
“My associates seem to think otherwise.”
“He is an inveterate gambler and something of a libertine, but not a sp—” Her tongue tangled, only partially because of the naïve words she had been about to say. His gaze had fallen to her lips, and quite abruptly she could think of nothing.
“The Home Office,” he said, his gaze slowly tracing her mouth and the line of her jaw, “has reason to believe the traitor is a Scot intent on rebellion. Chance’s grandfather was a Jacobite.”
“But he isn’t,” she said unsteadily. “I don’t think he even knows what a Jacobite is.”
He said nothing for a moment, then lifted his gaze to hers, and the hunger in it made her weak.
Now she might actually cry, from joy and pleasure and some fear. He was too changeable.
“Perhaps not.” His voice was rough. “And I think they are fools for suspecting him.”
“Then what are you doing here? And what are you doing here?” She could reach up and touch his perfect face and be in heaven. She could feel his heat, and pretend it was hers to own. “What do you imagine I can do about Lord Chance’s possibly Jacobite leanings?”
“Tell my associate what you know of him.”
“That’s all?”
He swallowed, his jaw hard. “That is all.”
“But you must know at least as much about him as I do. Don’t gentlemen do a great deal of gossiping in their clubs? And you play cards as often as my mother.”
“His close friend, Drake, talks excessively to ladies. You are likely to know more.” His hand moved, Kitty’s pulse leaped, and he placed his palm flat against the painted wooden door frame.
She shook her head. “Why are you trusting me with this?”
“The prince regent and the king’s cabinet members were grateful for the service you rendered England last summer.”
Kitty’s heart halted. “Last summer?”
He looked into her eyes. “In the matter of Lord Poole. The prince has great faith in your acuity.”
He might be speaking of any matter, as though he had not held her tightly and demanded to know if she had given herself to men other than Lambert.
Perhaps she should strike him. Or rant and rail. Or simply dissolve into tears. In a moment of vulnerability she had admitted to him that she had run away from the life she had lived before. Yet here he was forcing it back on her.
She turned her face away.
“That was a particular case.” She copied his impersonal tone, while inside she disintegrated as though there were no real Kitty Savege after all.
Silence met her. When she looked up again, she almost expected to see Lambert. But instead it was the dark-eyed Scot she had given herself to during a Shropshire snowstorm and who, it seemed, was using her only now for the first time.
“Was this your idea, to involve me?”
He shook his head. It was a small sort of relief to know.
“Then whose?”
“Jinan Seton did work much like mine. After he encountered you at Willows Hall he suggested to
—” She pushed past him into the center of the chamber, a sob trembling in her throat.
“I will consider it,” she said. “Or don’t I have a choice?”
“Of course you have a choice.” In his gaze she did not know what she saw. Determination. Solemn intensity. Perhaps regret. “Kitty, you can refuse. Please refuse. I will make your excuses and that will be an end to it.”
An end, another end with him, this time permanent. He had come to town to do this and when it was finished he would leave. If she declined, she would not see him again.
She knew nothing sinister of Ian Chance, only that he trounced her mother at whist every week and had a different stunning widow on his arm every month.
“If I can provide information that will convince you he is not guilty of treason, I will do what I may.”
He seemed to consider that. Finally he nodded. He took his hat into both hands as though in preparation to leave. “Come to the Serpentine at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Are you able?”
“Am I able? Am I awake, rather.” She tried to grin without much success.
“At that hour fewer will see you unattended by a chaperone.”
“No. Ride. Accompanied by your groom.”
“You sound as though you are giving me an order.”
His brow creased. “I am.”
Now she could not help smiling. “And yet I did not give you permission to.”
“The next time I shall make certain to ask first.” The corner of his mouth lifted. The deep familiarity was still there drawing between them, a silent, restless binding.
She tried to fight it with reason. “What am I to expect?”
“I will be there,” he only said. And that was all it required for reason to fly and the pleasure of two spirits attuned to each other to overcome her. A breath escaped her that might have been a sigh.
He crossed the space between them, took her hand, and lifted her fingers to his lips.
“Kitty,” he said softly, brushing the lightest kiss across her knuckles, sending her last shred of resistance to perdition. “I am terribly sorry. You cannot know how sorry.”
She struggled against the heady warmth of his touch, holding back the words she longed to say.
That sort of disclosure would not serve anyone well, least of all herself. And he did not want to hear it.
He had made that perfectly clear at Willows Hall.
She tugged her hand away.
“Thank you,” she managed. “I deserved an apology for your dishonesty.”
“I mean that I am sorry you are involved in this now.”
“That’s all right.” She spoke to cover her confusion. “It was only your delivery that lacked finesse.
But perhaps if you gave me orders in that horrid accent with your dogs at your heels I might be more inclined to submit to your authority.”
“You have already submitted, although I doubt it had anything to do with my authority.”
He seemed to realize what he had said at the same moment as she. They stared.
“I am sorry, Kitty,” he repeated very low, quite beautifully.
“You said that already. Several times.” Their brows nearly touched as he bent his head. Her breaths came short. She could still feel his touch beneath her clothing, on her skin, and inside her body. She wanted him there again more than she could bear.
“I am full of remorse, it seems.” His voice was rough.
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