by Ruth Owen
“Meg, what is going—” Her words died as she caught sight of the thick cloak that was still wrapped around her body—a cloak that did not belong to her. Memory flooded back. The office … the terrifying shadow … the overpowering scent that still lingered in the back of her throat. She struggled to sit upright on the bed, disturbing the blanket that had been carefully tucked around her. “Meg! Where—?”
“Hush now,” a soft voice nearby said calmly. A young woman moved into view, a pretty blond girl wearing a blue dress that matched her eyes. Juliana blinked, trying to focus her still-blurred vision. She didn’t recognize the girl, but there was something vaguely familiar about her.
“Do not try to rise yet,” the young woman cautioned as she laid a gentle hand on Juliana’s shoulder. “You must give yourself a few minutes to clear your head, and regain your strength.”
“Like … hell,” Juliana bit out as her mind cleared along with her vision. The soft-spoken girl might seem harmless, but she must be part of the kidnapping. Juliana struggled to rise, fighting against the lingering effect of the drug. “Where am I? Where’s Meg?”
“You are in a building near the wharf, in apartments over an old sailmaker. No, do not try to stand yet. Your friend is sleeping in the room next door. She is fine, I assure you.”
“You assure me? I’ve been kidnapped! I want to see Meg. I want—”
“Lie still.”
The quiet command from the other side of the room brought Juliana to a dead stop. Slowly she turned her head, her heart pounding so hard that she thought it would crack her ribs.
“Hello, Princess.”
A man stepped out of the room’s shadows. His ragged hair was damp and tangled, his face was in want of a razor, and his worn greatcoat and mud-spattered boots would have drummed him out of any gentlemen’s club. Fear and joy flooded through her. He was alive. He was safe. And he had kidnapped her. She gripped the covers, hating him, loving him, wanting him to hold her so hard that it hurt.
“Bastard!”
He wrapped his gloved hand around the bedpost. “Well, I see the drug did not affect your memory.”
“The magistrate will clap you in irons for kidnapping me,” she proclaimed as she struggled to a sitting position.
She opened her mouth to scream, but he spoke first. “In the past these rooms were used by press-gangers, and they have been well equipped to muffle any sound. But please, yell if you like.” He bent closer, his smile hovering dangerously close to a grin. “God’s teeth, you’re beautiful when you’re angry.”
Oh, he was despicable! She started to reply, but the girl stepped between them. “Connor, it is not fair to tease her. She needs to recover her wits.”
Juliana had wit enough to see the look that passed between them. Such a look happened only between old friends—or lovers. He’s brought me to the house of his mistress, Juliana thought, fury tempering the misery in her heart. Could any man be more loathsome?
“Rose is right. I’m sorry for this, but you left me no choice. I could not have you going to the authorities with what you’d found in the office. I promise you will not be harmed—”
“You promise.” Impassioned, Juliana rose to her feet—and dropped like a stone.
Connor caught her up inches before she hit the floor. “God’s teeth, will you never listen to me?”
She barely heard him. The feel of his arms around her was more intoxicating than any drug. Memories filled her, of the night in Portugal, when he’d held her, loved her, and promised not to leave her. But those words had been a lie, just like everything else. She pushed herself out of his arms and slapped him.
Lucky to the last, Connor thought as he watched her sink to the bed. If she’d put her full strength behind that punch, she would have likely decked him. He stripped off his leather riding gloves and worked his bruised jaw, knowing it was going to ache like hell in a little while.
Like his heart.
“I know you’ve no reason to trust me. God knows I don’t blame you, but you must listen to me, for your own safety. The truth is—”
She glared up at him, her eyes ablaze with indignation. “The truth? I will tell you the truth. You kidnapped us. And before that, you kidnapped me. At best you are a despicable spy, at worst a murderer. You lied to me about your past. You used my friendship and regard to further your plots, you deserted me and Jamie in Portugal. Tell me, is that not the truth?”
“Most of it,” he answered honestly.
He saw the pain in her eyes, and knew she’d been hoping for a different answer. For a moment he’d considered giving it to her, of lying to her one more time. But he couldn’t do it, not now.
“Rose, will you see to Miss Evans, and make sure that she is all right?”
“But Raoul is with her.”
Connor snorted. “That is what I meant. See to her. Besides, I have some things to … discuss with Lady Juliana.”
“There is nothing I wish to discuss with you,” she replied haughtily as the girl slipped out of the door. “Except possibly the dimensions of your coffin, for they shall surely hang you for what you have done. You are a black-hearted, traitorous, trespassing, kidnapping scoundrel!”
“I won’t deny that I am all those things, and more besides. God knows I’ve made mistakes in my life—too many for any chance at redemption. But there’s one thing I’ll not do, even if it buys me a prime seat on Newman’s lift.” His eyes narrowed and took on a deadly sheen. “I will not watch the woman I love sail a course that is likely to get her a prime view of the Thames from the bottom up.”
The woman he loved. For a moment Juliana forgot how to breathe. Joy raged through her like wildfire, bringing life back to all the cold, hurting places inside … until her common sense returned. He could say that he loved her until judgment day, but the facts proved him a bar.
She stood up and balled her hands into tight fists, seething with fury and shame. “The only danger I am in is from you. If you think that you will gain my trust with more of your lies, you are sadly mistaken. I know what you are. Traitor. Kidnapper. Murderer. The authorities will track you down and justice will prevail.”
“I only hope it does,” he replied cryptically. “You will never know how hard it was for me to stay away from you. All those weeks … when you were so very ill, and Dr. Fairchild feared for your life.”
“How did you know—?” She closed her eyes, the answer coming in a flash. “Jamie. No wonder he never seemed to miss you. You used him to spy on me.”
“To make sure you were safe,” Connor corrected. He stepped nearer, so close she could smell the scent of rain on his skin. “God, I’ve missed you. I’ve thought of you every day, every hour.”
With her vision fully cleared she could see the drawn, haunted shadows under his eyes. He looked on the edge of exhaustion, and it was all she could do not to reach out and cradle his weary head against her breast. But his words a lie, like all his others. “You are a black-hearted scoundrel of the worst sort. And as soon as the commodore and Grenville find that you have kidnapped me, they will—”
“Grenville.” Connor’s shadowed jaw pulled taut. “Your fiancé.”
“Y-yes, my fiancé,” she stated. She had already decided not to marry her cousin, but she had no intention of telling Connor that, or of confessing anything that might give him any hint that she was still monstrously in love with him. “Gren—that is, my dearest, darling Grenville, whom I love with all my heart, will come to my rescue. We’re going to be married in three days, you know. Three days—”
“Enough!”
Connor’s roar shook the room. He grabbed her shoulders with all the wounded hunger she’d imagined a hundred times in her dreams. For a moment she thought he might throttle her. Instead he cursed, and began to stalk the room like a caged animal. “God’s teeth, why did you have to blunder into his office, tonight of all nights? You could have ruined everything.”
“I hope I did. I hope I ruined all your fiendish plots. And whe
n the authorities catch you, I hope they throw you in prison for a thousand years.”
“Well, you might just get your wish. I suppose I should be pleased. You are the one person who once had complete faith in me, and now you think I am the blackest scoundrel in the world. Apparently Melville’s plan worked.”
“Vi-Viscount Melville, the first Lord of the Admiralty?”
His low chuckle rumbled through the room. “You never expected that card, did you? A posh lord seeking out a blackguard like me. But he did. He needed my help.”
He leaned closer and wrapped his fingers around one of the bedposts as he continued. “For years Whitehall’s secrets have been compromised by the Admiral’s spies. His duplicity has cost the country dozens of battles and the lives of hundreds of men. He keeps to the shadows, never showing his true face, letting his network of criminals and villains do his work for him. Few have heard his voice, and almost no one has seen his face. And everyone the War Office sent after him ended up dead.
“England was losing the war, so Whitehall decided on a new plan. Instead of risking their own men, they decided to use someone from the Admiral’s own class—someone who could walk into a den of thieves and call it home. They needed a man with a disreputable past—and God knows I had trouble to spare. Raoul and I were already privateers. We were already skirting the law—the Admiralty just arranged for our reputations to become a little more … colorful. It was the perfect solution by their standards—set a criminal to catch a criminal. Besides”—he gripped the bedpost so hard that his knuckles turned white—“no one would miss either of us if we ended up in the gutter with a knife through the ribs.”
Juliana’s hand flew to her throat, unable to hide her true feelings in the face of the vivid image. “I cannot believe the Admiralty would send two men into such danger.”
“Can’t you? To the members of your class I will never be anything but a wharf rat—” He winced, then shook his head. “Hell, you didn’t deserve that.”
He ran his hand over his tired face, and breathed a sigh that seemed dredged from the heart of his soul. “In any event, the plot worked. The Admiral took the bait and recruited us. All it cost me was what remained of my reputation and honor. A bargain by anyone’s standards.”
Connor a hero instead of a traitor? “But how can you expect me to believe you are working for the War Office? You are a wanted traitor. You stole Admiralty dispatches!”
“My orders were to deliver the dispatches to our operatives in northern Portugal. They were crucial to our forces in the Peninsula, and the only way to ensure their safety was to transport them on the ship of the one captain the Admiral trusted completely. That is why I could not let you leave my ship. If you’d gone to the authorities, the Admiral would have found out I was working against him, and the dispatches might never have reached their destination in time. You would have blown the plan to high heaven and cost countless soldiers their lives—not to mention getting both you and me killed in the bargain. The Admiral doesn’t like loose ends.”
“If this is true, then why did you not tell me when I saw the dispatches?”
Connor reached out and tucked a finger under her chin. Gently, he brushed the rough pad of his thumb across her cheek. “Because you would not have believed me, Princess. Any more than you believe me now.”
She jerked away from his hand, condemned by his words and seared by his touch. His eyes captured hers, ice-hard and wild, but clear of any duplicity. “And did the Admiral also order you to desert me?”
He winced as the barb struck home. She was surprised to feel his pain stab her own heart. “He learned that I was working against him. I suspected it when the French ships attacked so viciously, but I was not certain that the plan had gone sour until …”
He swallowed, taking a moment’s pause. “That morning in Portugal, I went up in the hills and delivered the dispatches to the Spanish guerrillas who were to smuggle them across the border. When I returned I saw the soldiers … and Grenville. I knew that I’d been betrayed. There was no way to help you and Jamie, and I knew your ignorance of my connection to the Admiral would keep you safe. Even then, it took two of the Spaniards to hold me back—”
“But the false dispatches. If you didn’t know the soldiers were coming, why did you put the blank paper in my pocket?”
Connor looked sheepish. “You never had the real dispatches. I gave you that packet to get you into the longboat when the French attacked. It was the only way I could think to get you off the ship. I would have done anything to keep you safe.”
Safe? He’d left her with her heart in shreds. But, if any part of what he was saying was true … She walked slowly to the other side of the room, her mind reeling. “If that is true, why did you not come to me after you had returned to London?”
“Because for the past few months Raoul and I have been one step ahead of the hangman. We’ve been setting traps for the Admiral’s men, gathering evidence against them, but it’s been a slippery task. The Admiral has set his entire organization against us. And since the War Office cannot acknowledge us without tipping their hand, the law is after us as well. Involving you in any way would have put you in danger. I couldn’t risk that—not again. It was hell not to be with you, especially when I heard you were so ill. Once I even started to go to your front door, but Grenville showed up—God’s teeth, of all the men in the world, how could you make such an idiotic choice for a husband?”
Because I am having your child. But she dared not confess it. He could be lying. So she gave the rote answer she had spoken so many times at so many social gatherings before. “Grenville is a fine and honorable man. It is a privilege to have engendered his affection.”
Connor’s eyes narrowed to a dangerous gleam. “Are you so in love with him that you believe that? Yes, I suppose you must love him. Otherwise, you would have never agreed to marry him so soon after we—” Cursing, he turned away. “Whatever you believe of him, it is a lie. He’s been using the Marquis Line to smuggle secrets and munitions to the French. And I’m all but certain that he’s the Admiral’s right-hand man.”
Juliana gasped. Grenville working for the Admiral? The notion was absurd beyond belief! And yet … of all the things Connor had told her, this one rang truest in her heart. It explained the dispatches she had found on Grenville’s desk, and why he sent the ships out with what appeared to be a less than full loads of cargo. And she had always wondered why her cousin was so reluctant to have her visit the Marquis Line offices, and why he’d been so quick to give up his commission and take over the business, and why he’d kept proposing to her, even after he knew that she was carrying another man’s child—
Perhaps Connor was telling her the truth. Perhaps he had never betrayed her at all, but was trying all along to keep her safe.
She bit her lip, finally beginning to trust the ashes of hope that stirred in her heart. “Have you proof of this? Anything that shows that you are working for the War Office?”
“Well, I did not expect I would have need of presenting it tonight,” he growled. “Besides, if the Admiral’s men found a commission on me, I’d have been dead in two minutes. And Lord Melville wasn’t about to put anything in writing. He’d deny me even now, to avoid revealing himself to the Admiral. If I’m caught now I’ll go straight to prison—if I’m lucky.”
“Then have you proof of Grenville’s duplicity?”
“I believe that proof exists on the Silver. I found papers in his office that show she’s set to sail in two days, even though her cargo hold is only half full. If I can board her in secret tomorrow night and if I find that the extra cargo space is full of—but no,” he admitted, hanging his head. “I have nothing that I can show you now.”
She wrapped her arms around her middle, feeling the same sickening devastation that she’d experienced in Portugal when she’d first learned he’d deserted her. “Then why should I believe that you are not trying to use my feelings for you to convince me not to go to the authorities?�
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His ragged words seemed torn from his soul. “I had hoped you would know I could never use you in such a way.”
“And how could I know that? You yourself told me I had no idea what you were capable of. You said as much that night in Portugal—” She swallowed a sob, realizing too late that she’d let her lifelong love for him cloud her judgment. When she looked at him, she still saw a shadow of the boy who had been her protector, the young lieutenant who’d won her heart, and the privateer captain she’d fallen in love with all over again. Even now she was willing to believe him, against all logic and reason.
But facts were facts, and all the hope in her heart couldn’t change them. “Can you show me nothing to prove you’ve spoken the truth?”
He swallowed, his eyes filled with misery. “After what I’ve put you through, you’d be a fool to believe me. I see that now. I’m sorry, Princess.”
I’m sorry, Princess. Another time he’d spoken those words came back to her, on the night he’d left the house after admitting to stealing her father’s money. Since then, nothing had been right in her life, nothing had made sense. She’d been half of a whole, enduring her life instead of living it, until Connor had taken her in his anus in Portugal and reminded her what being alive meant.
Liar. Villain. Traitor. She had ample proof that he was all these things. Yet when she looked in his eyes, she saw the ghost of the half-starved wharf rat who had jumped into the freezing Thames to save her. Men changed—but not that much. Connor had risked his life for her that day. He’d been her friend and protector, her champion in all things. He would have walked into hell to save her.
Perhaps it was time she walked into hell to save him.
She took a deep breath. “Connor, I believe—” She stopped as a flash of lightning illuminated the wall behind him, a place thick in shadows. Stunned, she barreled past Connor as if he wasn’t there. She stood in front of the wall, staring at the squares of fabric mounted with great care in a picture frame. Hardly daring to breathe, she lifted her hand and touched the glass. “My curtains. You kept them.”