Three Lessons in Seduction

by Sofie Darling

  Mariana took the twins, one in each arm, and pressed her lips to their wrinkled, red foreheads, back and forth between the two. Awed amber eyes met his, inviting him to share in the wonder.

  It was only then that Nick realized he stood apart. Carefully, he lowered his body onto the bed and snugged in close, but still not touching. He didn’t have the right to ruin the perfection of this scene with his hulking, unworthy presence.

  Mariana reached out, took his hand in hers, and pulled. Instinct guided him as he wrapped one arm, then the other, around this trio of perfection, his entire world encompassed within his arms. His fall complete, he was lost.

  Actually, that wasn’t true. His fall wasn’t complete. He kept falling, helpless, powerless to stop the feeling.

  Even so, his rational mind kept asserting itself. He may not be able to control his interior world, but the only world that now mattered was the world within his arms. He would stop at nothing to protect them, to keep them safe.

  And he’d managed it with success. Until two nights ago when he’d invited Mariana into his world.

  Nick looked up at a nondescript building whose dilapidated state even the darkest night couldn’t conceal and found that he’d arrived at his destination. He stepped inside and began the five-story ascent to the attic rooms.

  A casual glance down revealed a small family of three—a mother, or possibly an older sister, and two small children—nestled into the hollow crook of the staircase. He bent over the rail and dropped a gold sovereign into the eldest’s tattered overcoat pocket. He could acclimate to many of Paris’s dismal conditions, but never to the deprived lives of so many of its young.

  He took the stairs two at a time and soon found himself standing before a nondescript door at the top of a cramped landing. His knuckles struck a single knock, followed by a five second pause, then three muted taps in quick succession.

  A key turned in the lock, and he slipped inside a room lit by a solitary candle, the space dim and spare. The descriptors of his native world, words like gilded and lush, didn’t apply here. The beeswax candle sitting atop a small, rectangular table was, in fact, the only element in the room that suggested all wasn’t what it seemed. This single, white candle was luxury, the sort of luxury, for instance, unavailable to the building’s other inhabitants, who likely burned cheap tallow.

  This was the room of a British agent who passed not as French, but as a Spaniard with his dark, flashing eyes and lean, rangy form that appeared not to have encountered a decent meal in a number of years. The operative embodied the role of a revolutionary escaping persecution in his home country. It wouldn’t be a stretch to believe this man was looking to start a revolution in the name of democratic ideals. The Comte de Villefranche had certainly been drawn in by him over the course of a week’s worth of “chance” meetings inside cafés and coffee houses.

  If he hadn’t known this man continuously for well over a decade, Nick never would have connected him with the man he’d met in a crowded ballroom all those years ago. War changed men, and it had certainly done its work on this man. The thin, silvery scar running along his left cheekbone would be the most obvious ravage of war. One would assume such a distinguishing feature a deficit in the world of espionage. Not so. There were missions in which the scar conferred a measure of authenticity.

  The agent poured them each a glass of whiskey before settling into a rickety chair on the far side of the table. Nick chose to remain standing. “Bertrand Montfort arrived in Paris today,” he stated without preamble.

  The agent swallowed a finger of the amber liquid before replying. “Villefranche introduced me to his recruiter tonight.” The agent paused for an uncomfortable second before pushing the other whiskey across the table. “You might want to have a drink before I continue.”

  At the look in the other man’s eye, Nick downed the fiery liquid in one gulp and waited.

  “It was Bertrand Montfort,” said the agent, eyes carefully trained on Nick. “He’s running a rogue operation.”

  “It’s not going through the Foreign Office?”

  The agent shook his head.

  Certain elements began to make sense. “Villefranche is the perfect scapegoat. Get a member of the Orléans family to do the dirty work and take the fall, if necessary.”

  “No one would ever link Villefranche to Montfort. But to what end? The assassination will only incite revolution.”

  “Perhaps that is the intention.”

  “And how does another French revolution benefit Montfort?”

  The question hung in the air, unanswered, even as the revelation winded Nick like a blow to the gut. Bertrand Montfort . . . Uncle Bertie. A deep sense of confirmation settled inside him.

  It fit. Pieces that his biases had been too blind to see fell into place. Certain intricacies of the operation only he and Montfort knew now became clear. Nick’s brain rifled through the past fortnight piece by piece: the attack in his rooms; the note to Mariana; the visit to Mariana.

  Mariana.

  Hot blood turned to ice in his veins. Montfort had used her to draw him out. Even after all this time and distance apart from her, Montfort knew she was his Achilles’ heel, a fact that had likely been evident to all but him over the years.

  And he thought he’d created an insurmountable distance between himself and her. It was laughable how completely the last few days had proven the opposite true.

  The agent poured another two fingers of whiskey. Of course, Nick wasn’t the only man in this room with a connection to Bertrand Montfort. “Tell me he didn’t recognize you.”

  The agent allowed a long, assessing moment to pass. Nick alone hadn’t sacrificed in the name of England. Before him sat a man who had sacrificed everything.

  “It was dark. I was cagey. He didn’t recognize me,” the agent said, laying on a thick Spanish accent. “I’m not easily recognized these days.” A bitter edge laced his words.

  Nick had no interest in pursuing this line of conversation. He had a more urgent concern. “Was anything said about Mariana?”

  “Only that Villefranche would continue engaging her until King Louis expires.”

  Nick should allow the conversation to pivot toward their mission—the agent had given him the opportunity by mentioning the dying king—but he was fixated. “Montfort is playing Mariana against me. He thinks wherever she is, I won’t be too far away.”

  The agent lifted his eyebrows. “He’d be a fool not to.”

  “Blast.”

  Nick slammed back another round of whiskey beneath the agent’s passive gaze. If there was an agent better than him, it was the man sitting before him. Even with the scar, which could be minimized or maximized to effect, the man was a chameleon, lost inside every role, equal to every circumstance. All those years ago in England, Nick couldn’t have predicted such a frivolous youth would transform into the hardened man before him now—a man who had fought beside him in battle. This was the only man in the world he trusted with his life.

  A thought occurred to him. “How would you feel about a new assignment?”

  “You want me to follow her?” the other man intuited.

  Nick nodded.

  “I could do that.” The agent leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table, head cocked at a speculative angle. “Or—”

  “Or what?”

  “You could take her home.” The agent leaned back in his chair, surely testing every limit of its flimsy construction. “You go home.”

  Nick’s stomach tightened. “The assassination plot—”

  “Will resolve itself,” the man finished for him. “As these situations do.”

  “I hadn’t realized you’d become so cavalier about our work.”

  “I won’t allow you to redirect the conversation.” The agent paused, choosing his nex
t words. “Has it ever occurred to you that your marriage wasn’t doomed from the beginning?”

  A familiar sliver of dread snaked through Nick. “I don’t catch your meaning.” Although he did.

  And in the next moment, the agent confirmed it. “Just because your parents’ union combusted into a ball of flame—”

  Nick took an aggressive step forward, stopping the agent mid-sentence. Only their shared history prevented him from doing bodily harm to this man. Instead, he stated in a controlled voice, “This topic isn’t open to speculation or discussion. My family have naught to do with—”

  The agent held out his hands in a conciliatory manner. “You know better than I, to be sure.” Nick chose to ignore the hollow ring of disbelief in the words. The agent continued, “This is about you and Mariana. Go home. You’ve done enough for England. It’s time to reclaim your life.”

  “Ridiculous. She doesn’t want me in her life.”

  “Tonight, and last night, I saw the way you watched her. Shall I describe it for you?”

  “I think not.”

  “Anyone with eyes can see that you’re not as immune to her as you would like to believe,” the agent pressed.

  That showed how much this man understood. Nick understood on a fundamental level that he had absolutely no immunity from Mariana.

  Instead of correcting the agent, he tried a different tack. “Why don’t you go home and reclaim your life?”

  “I have no home and no life to reclaim. I gave up both when I followed this path. Don’t make the same mistake. There is a chance for you, Nick. That is what I saw in your eyes tonight.”

  “You don’t know Mariana—”

  “I know a bit about Lady Nicholas Asquith. I knew her when she was Lady Mariana Montfort, if you’ll recall.”

  Nick held his tongue. Of course, this man knew a bit about Mariana. He gave a single brisk nod. “If that is all for tonight.”

  The agent poured another whiskey and silently toasted Nick before tipping the bottom up to the ceiling.

  Nick vacated the room without a word of farewell and quickly found himself outside, bracing against a sudden north wind. Daggers of sharp, clean air were what his disordered mind needed at the moment. He must lay out his thoughts singly before they made a stew of his brain.

  Bertrand Montfort presented the most danger, well beyond the Comte de Villefranche. Blast the man. What was he playing at? It was Montfort who had recruited him to the Foreign Office in the first place. Now, Montfort was hiring thugs to attack him in his hotel? The two didn’t jibe together.

  And then there was Mariana, Montfort’s niece and Nick’s wife. Of course, it was through Montfort that Nick had met her. Oh, Mariana . . .

  All rivers led back to her. She was his inevitable destination, no matter how he tried to influence fate otherwise. He’d been running from it these last ten years.

  The agent’s words echoed in his mind. It’s time to reclaim your life. His insides had done a flip at those words. It was a reaction worthy of a green boy. It was a reaction born of hope. Hope? To what end?

  The answer lay hidden in the potential of the force connecting him and Mariana. It was a force he’d never squarely faced, because he’d insured that he never had to. How convenient it had been to convince himself that the Foreign Office suffered no competitors. That by abandoning his wife, he’d ensured her safety. He’d convinced himself that all these years were worthy of his sacrifice.

  Deep below that surface lay another reason for denying the connection between him and Mariana, one he’d carefully kept hidden . Until tonight when the agent had hinted at its root. Just because your parents’ union combusted into a ball of flame—

  Nick hadn’t allowed the agent to finish that sentence. It was clear the man had never watched a marriage combust from the inside.

  Nick had.

  He’d just reached his fifth year when his older brother, Jamie, had gladly abandoned the ancestral pile in Suffolk and claimed his rightful place at Harrow, the boarding school that had been educating Asquith sons since the reign of King James I.

  Left to his own devices, Nick spent the next five years mostly in the company of house servants and an ever-changing series of governesses. One after the other, the governesses replaced each other three or four times a year. The next was always the same as the last: young, pretty, and timid. Nick had blamed himself for their desertions and tried to be better, but better had never been good enough to make any of them stay. Only later did Nick understand about his father’s predilection for young, pretty, vulnerable girls.

  Worse than the parade of governesses had been holidays when his mother deigned to leave her beloved London and visit Suffolk. Unable to control their mutual animosity, his parents spent the entire time sniping at each other and attempting to rip each other to shreds over one or the other’s latest infidelity.

  And this was in the privacy of their home. Their public bouts were the stuff of legend.

  As soon as Nick came of age and was finally, blessedly, old enough to have himself shipped off to Harrow, he’d joined Jamie amongst the ranks of the student population, and he never looked back.

  Nick understood at an elemental level what came of love matches when the love went sour and curdled into a noxious, stinking heap of acrimony. And as much as he tried to convince himself and others that his and Mariana’s was a Society match, he knew exactly what sort of match they’d made.

  Shoulders hunched and braced against another gust of northern air, he dug his hands deep inside his overcoat pockets. The fingers of his left hand hooked a long chain and yanked from its depths a locket—Mariana’s locket. He clicked it open, expecting to find miniature portraits of the twins inside, when a different image met his eyes. It was the cameo.

  His pulse jumped in his veins, and his pace slowed. Yet another memory came at him—there seemed to be an endless supply of them tonight—and his thoughts flashed backward to that long-ago day when he’d claimed the cameo from Pistrucci. He’d held the carved sardonyx in his hands, awestruck by its beauty. Mariana’s alabaster profile underlain by a rich, dark red and encircled by a band of rose gold. The world-renowned cameo maker had surpassed his reputation in the execution of it.

  The man had asked Nick what words he would like inscribed on the back, and he’d gone mute. What sort of words?

  For the entire previous year, he’d struggled to find the words that captured his feelings for Lady Mariana Montfort. There were too many emotions to count and most of them conflicting. But that wasn’t to say he’d left the space blank.

  He clamped the locket shut and turned it over in his hand. The backing was nothing more than a smooth gold surface. She’d had the cameo set inside the locket for none to see. Only she and he knew the words he’d had inscribed. And she kept them close to her heart . . .

  Right.

  If he truly knew what was good for him, he would break his promise to Mariana and refuse her another spy lesson. But he wouldn’t break his promise to her. Too many promises had already been broken.

  Tonight, he would teach her one of the most fundamental elements of espionage, and in doing so give her the one thing she wanted in Paris. Never mind that he would be giving himself the gift of watching her face light up with joy when she beheld it.

  From a lone corner of his mind, he saw that his spiral out of control had already begun. His words from last night came to him: Men break laws, walk across flames, and start wars to give a woman like you everything she wants.

  Nothing he’d done tonight had come remotely close to any of those acts, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of each and every one. For her.

  This was what he’d fled all those years ago: the knowledge that there was nothing he wouldn’t do for this woman, to be worthy of her. It was absolute weakness, worse than opium
, and, despite ten years spent trying to outpace and elude it, it had caught him.

  Chapter 15

  Nack: To have a nack; to be ready at anything, to have a turn for it.

  A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

  Francis Grose

  Next Day

  Mariana crouched down into a dark, filthy corner and attempted to make her body as inconspicuous as possible. Nick’s instructions tonight had been as succinct and paltry as those from the previous two nights:

  Rue de Buffon. Small black door behind the iron railing.

  After skulking up and down the avenue a few times, she’d finally located the small black door behind the iron railing, but she hadn’t known how to proceed from there. So, she’d ducked into an unobtrusive alcove on the opposite side of the street where she could wait and watch. Now twenty minutes later, she was still waiting and watching. Tonight might be a complete failure—another one.

  On the bright side, at least, Nick had been wrong on one account: the absinthe hadn’t affected her head this morning, and she’d been able to call on Helene to collect the twins’ letters. All seemed right in their respective worlds with Geoffrey reminding her about the bon-bons and Lavinia buying new ribbons for her ancient mare’s mane. What a sweet, patient old thing Bessie was, and what a horse-mad, dreamy girl Lavinia was. To be sure, it was the perfect match of horse and girl.

  Mariana poked her head out and scanned the street up and down. Thankfully, she remained its sole occupant, save a few rats she’d spied scurrying along walls. She shifted her cramped bum from left to right and clutched her knapsack tight to her chest.

  Tonight’s note had been accompanied by a long, slender piece of metal resembling a hat pin and the set of clothes she now wore. Nick seemed to have developed a penchant for dressing her, but this time he’d gone beyond the pale. Of course, it didn’t escape her notice that these clothes were the reason she was able to blend with the shadows, dressed as she was in unrelieved black: black knit cap, black woolen sweater, black leather gloves, and snug, black . . . trousers.