by Shana Galen
She had been in his arms, and what they had shared was more than just physical. Something had happened between them, and she’d known he’d felt it too, even if he’d shied away from it. Dare she allow herself to think of what might be? What her life could be like once her father was safe again, once the nightmare of the last few months of her life was over. Could she and Rafe be together? Would he want to marry her?
Was she leaping far, far ahead?
The last was probably true enough. And she had better finish dressing.
She struggled into her stays and her petticoats, then began the laborious process of pinning her dress together. She had almost finished when she could have sworn she heard voices. She paused and listened. Yes, she definitely heard voices. Hadn’t Rafe said he didn’t have any servants living in the flat? Who could he be speaking to?
Suddenly the voices lowered as though hushed, and Collette told herself she was probably hearing things. Or there was a perfectly good explanation for a visitor at almost three in the morning.
Her fingers trembled as she tried and failed to secure the last pin of her bodice. Her skin suddenly felt cold and the blood pounded loudly in her temples. She had no reason not to trust Rafe. None. But the hair on the back of her arms prickled.
Still in stocking feet, she moved silently across the thick rug in Rafe’s bedchamber and to the door. The bedchamber opened into a small sitting room with a desk and a comfortable chair that had a stack of books beside it. Rafe Beaumont apparently liked to read. A quick glance at the titles told her all the volumes were fiction. She saw Emma and Waverley as well as poetry by Byron on the stack. Nothing that might edify the mind, as her father would have said in his mock-scolding voice. She smiled remembering his words and knowing that she and Rafe had similar tastes in literature.
She almost turned back to the bedchamber to slide on her slippers and return some order to her hair, but she heard the voices again. This time she was sure of it—Rafe’s voice and that of another man’s. Silently, she padded to the door of the sitting room, which had been left open but a crack. She inserted her fingers in the crack and eased it open farther. She had no wish to be seen by anyone and completely compromised. Collette Fortier’s reputation didn’t matter. As the daughter of an assassin, no one paid much heed to whether or not she was a virgin. Her character was already irreparably damaged. But Collette Fournay couldn’t be caught in Rafe Beaumont’s flat. She couldn’t afford for the ton to realize they had spent even a few minutes unchaperoned, much less hours.
“You have to go,” Rafe was saying. She knew his voice at least, low and melodic with just a hint of playfulness. Though he sounded less than playful at the moment.
“I see.” The other man’s voice hinted that he knew exactly why Rafe was sending him away. Collette could imagine Rafe often had female companionship, and the fact that she was the female here only made her feel cheap and tawdry. “I’ll come back in an hour.”
She couldn’t hear Rafe’s response, and she widened the crack. Rafe and another man were in the drawing room. Rafe had set the wine and a plate with cheese on a table near the door she had opened and presumably left it there to answer the door. If the man he was speaking to had called on him at three in the morning, the two must be good friends. And the way Rafe was speaking to the other man and attempting to guide him by the shoulder spoke of familiarity.
She couldn’t really see the other man. He was tall, slightly taller than Rafe, and thinner. She thought she saw dark-blond hair.
Rafe glanced back at the door and she pulled it closed silently, her breath catching in her throat at the near miss.
“Step outside with me,” he said, his voice low. She heard the outer door open. Collette thought about returning to her toilette. Not ten minutes ago, she had been in bed with Rafe, trusting him with both her body and her heart. Nothing had changed in a few minutes. Why shouldn’t she trust Rafe now? Why did her skin feel prickly and her heart beat faster? Her fingers tightened on the door handle before she cracked it enough to squeeze out, then ran across the drawing room to press her ear to the outer door. The men must have been standing on the other side.
“—after speaking to Neil. Your idea to send her a false note was brilliant. Much better than throwing her in front of the cart.”
“I’m not entirely inept,” Rafe said.
The blood thudding in Collette’s temples thudded harder, and she had to clench the door to keep standing. She didn’t understand the other man’s words. She didn’t want to understand.
“Did she believe it? Did you find out everything from the little spy you needed? If not, we had another idea.” The visitor’s voice lowered even further.
She couldn’t make out his words or Rafe’s low response. Not that she cared. Her mind had put it together, despite her heart’s refusal to believe.
Tonight, last night, probably every moment she’d known Rafe Beaumont had been a lie. He’d known she was a spy, and he’d seduced her to find out what she knew.
No, that wasn’t quite true. He hadn’t had to seduce her. She’d practically thrown herself at him.
Collette backed away from the door, but she didn’t hurry to return to the bedchamber. Her legs felt as though they were stuck in heavy mud, and she could barely manage to lift them to trudge through it. The latch on the door lifted, but Collette did not move. The door opened, and the visitor saw her first. She gasped reflexively. His face was horrible, disfigured. She couldn’t see very clearly, but the quick glimpse she had gave her the impression of skin too smooth and too pink stretched tight over the bones of what might have once been a handsome visage.
Both Rafe and the other man looked at her. She looked from the scarred man to Rafe and saw his expression turn from horror to guilt to resignation.
It was the look of guilt that made her snap. She didn’t care if all of London saw her. She looked at Rafe, only at Rafe, and refused to acknowledge the sting behind her eyes. “You must think I am the most foolish woman that ever lived.”
He shook his head.
“You must think me pathetic. How did you manage not to laugh at my complete gullibility?”
“Collette, I can explain—”
The scarred man looked from her to Rafe. “I should…” He didn’t finish his sentence. He pulled a mask over his face and then looked back to give her a last perusal. “Sorry we had to meet like this, Miss Fortier.”
“I’m not,” she said, voice steely. “Meeting you has been most enlightening. Not that I know your name, of course.”
“I’ll speak with you later.” Rafe closed the door and turned to her. Collette considered taking a large drink from the wine nearby, or perhaps lifting the bottle and hurling it at Rafe. Instead, she leaned back against the wall, her legs too shaky to be trusted.
Rafe came toward her, arms outstretched. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“Do you?” She arched a brow. “I very much doubt that.” She glanced at the bottle again.
“Throwing that at me won’t solve anything.”
Perhaps he did know what she was thinking. She put a hand to her belly, which had clenched tightly and painfully, and tried to slow her rapid breathing. “What will solve things, Rafe? Tell me, because I promise you I am anxious to hear, what will make all of this better?” She’d slipped into French, something she became aware of when he answered her in the same language, his speech fluid and his accent almost that of a native’s.
“You have to trust me, Collette. I know that seems ridiculous—”
“You’re right. Absolument! I don’t trust you. I can never trust you!”
“What you heard”—he was still walking toward her, slowly but steadily—“isn’t the whole story. You have the wrong impression.”
That statement was like a slap in the face. It cleared her head immediately. “Stop.” She held her hand out to keep him at bay. To
his credit, he did stop, not attempting to come any closer. “I have the wrong impression, do I? So you did not know from the first time we met that I was Collette Fortier, daughter of the notorious French assassin?”
“I didn’t know conclusively.”
“Weak, Monsieur Beaumont. An argument, but a weak one. What about this supposition—you became my friend in hopes of gathering damaging information about my father from me.”
He didn’t speak.
“And then when I didn’t reveal anything, you devised other strategies to…shall we say, persuade me to confide in you? A near-death brush with a cart outside the museum?”
He closed his eyes, his face looking pained. And still she could not stop the back of her mind from noting how beautiful he was standing there, sans shirt, his golden chest the epitome of strength and vigor, his perfect face and the hair her own hands had tousled just a few minutes before.
“And when all of that did not succeed, you—tell me if I have this right because I am a bit confused here—you wrote the note from my father’s jailer.” The note had been vague, she could see that now. The words had been generic, but enough for her to draw the conclusions Rafe had wanted. She gave a little laugh at her own naïveté. “And I believed it all. I fell right into your trap and told you everything. All you had to do was give me empty promises. And then what must have been your crowning glory, I went to bed with you. Not only did I betray my father, but I handed you my body to use as well.”
He flinched. “Collette, it wasn’t like that. You know it wasn’t like that.”
“I don’t know anything at all. I don’t even know who you are or who you work for.”
He raked a hand through his hair, his gaze downcast as though he at least had enough dignity to seem ashamed.
“I don’t expect you to tell me. And even if you wanted to, I don’t have time to hear it. It may not matter what I do at this point, but I’d rather not alert Lady Ravensgate to the fact that I’ve been telling her enemies all of my secrets.”
“I’ll take you home.”
“No. I cannot stand to see you for another moment. I’ll take a hackney, and you may secure that for me while I find my slippers.”
He didn’t argue. She watched as he went to the door and threw his greatcoat over his bare chest. Then he stepped outside.
Her legs wobbled, but she refused to fall apart. She knuckled the tears away and squared her shoulders. She didn’t care that she had just signed her own death warrant. She regretted that she’d failed her father.
Eleven
“Hell’s teeth! Christ! Bloody damn hell!” Rafe said to the empty flat after he’d seen Collette safely into a hackney. He hadn’t wanted her to go alone, but he’d paid the jarvey extra and threatened to come for the man and beat him to a bloody pulp if any harm came to the lady or she did not make it home without so much as losing a hair on her head. He understood why she didn’t want to see him. He understood that she hated him and would probably hate him for the rest of her life.
But she would have to put up with him a little longer because he wasn’t about to leave her to her own devices. At some point, this mission had become less about rooting out a spy as a service to the Foreign Office and more about saving Collette. He might not like her father, but Rafe was damn well prepared to do exactly as he’d said and bring the man to England. Draven wouldn’t like it, but Draven be damned. This was about more than who knew what, when, and where. This was about an innocent woman used as a pawn by two governments who couldn’t care less whether she lived or died.
Rafe cared. And Rafe would not abandon her.
No matter how much she hated him.
He heard a quiet tapping on the door and whirled. His first thought was Collette had come back. She’d forgiven him and come to tell him. His second thought was that he was a complete nodcock. She hadn’t forgiven him, and she would never forgive him. Which meant something must have happened and she needed help. Rafe threw the door open, practically ripping it from the hinges.
Jasper stood on the other side, the black mask he wore over the upper part of his face making him look rather menacing.
Rafe narrowed his eyes.
“I see from your expression it ended as badly as I feared.”
“It’s my own fault. I shouldn’t have risked speaking with you, even outside. I thought she was dressing and hadn’t heard your arrival. We’ve ruined weeks of work.”
“You call that work?” He gestured to Rafe’s bare chest. Rafe closed the door on him, but Jasper managed to wedge a boot in the opening. “Let me in.”
He hadn’t come to apologize. Rafe knew Jasper well enough not to expect anything of that sort. But Jasper might just be useful, and his aid would serve as apology. Rafe pulled the door back and stood aside. Jasper strolled in, but was it Rafe’s imagination or did the man look a trifle unsteady on his feet?
“Why did you come back?” Rafe bolted the door behind Jasper.
Jasper slid into one of Rafe’s chairs and propped his boots on another. “I thought I’d make certain you were still in one piece.”
Rafe shoved Jasper’s muddy boots off the silk upholstery. “I didn’t know you cared.”
Jasper looked around. “Do you have anything to drink?”
“By the looks of you, you’ve had enough. Go home.” But Jasper didn’t rise. Rafe lifted his brows. “Unless there was something else you wanted.”
Jasper seemed to consider, then he took a breath and held it, looking like a man diving into a deep pool. “You have nieces and nephews, don’t you?”
Rafe peered at his friend. Where was the Jasper he knew? That man had never asked a single personal question of Rafe. “I have them by the buckets. Why?”
“So you have experience with babies.”
What the devil was this about? “I don’t know that experience is the correct word, but I’ve been around my fair share and then some.” He paused. “You haven’t just found out you’re a father, have you?”
“No,” he said emphatically. “But my brother, the heir, just became a father. He asked me to be the godfather.”
“You?”
“I tried to tell him no.”
Rafe waved a hand. “Of course you are the right man to ask. You’re the uncle of the… Was it a boy or a girl?”
“Yes,” Jasper said.
“You don’t even know?” Rafe sat, his anger over the fiasco with Collette cooling slightly. No one had ever come to him about advice not related to a female before. And he’d never seen Jasper so flustered. “Listen, I’m godfather to at least six or maybe seven. You hold them at the christening and say whatever you’re told to say.”
Jasper nodded. “Sure you don’t have anything to drink?”
“Jas, you spend half your life in the rookeries. A half hour in a church is a walk in the park.”
“What if I drop it?”
“The baby?”
“What if I break it?”
“Treat it like a pistol and you’ll be fine. If that’s all, I’d like to discuss—”
“I can’t wear my mask into a church.”
So this was the crux of the matter. If he attended the christening, he’d have no protection. Everyone would see the damage the fire had wrought on his face.
“I don’t care about the people attending and my brother has seen my face already.”
“So?”
Jasper stood, paced, and turned on Rafe. “Don’t you understand? I’m worried about the baby! What if I scare it? What if it cries when it sees me?” He lowered his voice. “What if I scar it for life?”
“You really don’t know anything about babies, do you?”
“Why the bloody hell do you think I’m here?”
“Listen, Jas, babies don’t care about what you look like. They can’t even see that well. If it cries—and reall
y, we should determine the sex and quit calling the baby ‘it’—it will be because the baby wants its mother. Just speak softly and kind of rock it.” Rafe illustrated with a pillow. “Like this.”
“Babies like that?” Jasper sank into the chair again, propping his boots up.
Rafe pushed the boots off. “They like being jiggled. A little.”
“What else?”
“Soft voices, high voices, singsong, cooing.”
“Cooing? I draw the line at cooing.”
“If that baby starts to cry, you’ll coo.”
Jasper blew out a breath. “I owe you. Do you want me to talk to Draven?”
Rafe realized they were discussing Collette again and Jasper’s botching of Rafe’s mission. “I’m not five. I can take responsibility for my own missions.” He paused. “But I do have a job for you.”
“Of course you do.” Jasper looked resigned. “Between Ewan, Neil, and you asking me to traipse all over Town for you, it’s a wonder I track a single rogue.”
“I wouldn’t need your help if you hadn’t scuttled my entire mission.”
Jasper raised a hand. “Don’t blame all this on me.”
“Fine. If you hadn’t helped me scuttle the mission.”
“Better.” Jasper leaned back. “What do you need me to do?”
* * *
Nine hours later, Rafe knocked on Lady Ravensgate’s door. Her butler answered and gave Rafe and the flowers he held a snooty appraisal. “Her ladyship is not at home.”
Rafe knew her ladyship wasn’t at home. He’d been skulking in the shadows in the square across the street watching her town house. About twenty minutes ago, she’d left. Collette had not gone with her. He’d then gathered the flowers he’d bought this morning from one of the ubiquitous girls who sold them and put his plan into motion.
“I came to see Miss Fournay,” Rafe said.
The butler’s frown drew down farther. “Miss Fournay is not at home.”
“No?” Rafe slid an arm around the butler. “I’ll wait for her, then.”