I Spy a Duke (9 page)

James stalked down the hall, intent on completing another hour’s worth of work before bed. After he’d finished going over the mission assignments, he’d headed down to the tavern to meet Richard. That had been a mistake, for Richard was brimming with “suggestions” on who James’s new bride should be. After an hour of listening to his friend’s running commentary on every available chit—and some who weren’t—in the Beau Monde, James craved the solitariness of the secret room behind his library. Nothing but two desks and a wall of filing cabinets in there. No one to tell him who to be, or how to conduct himself. Or more importantly, who to marry.

It had been easier around Miss Loren. He’d sought her out in the garden because talking to her had made him feel...functional. Like finally, someone else understood—someone who hadn’t known Louisa. Someone he could talk to without feeling as if he had to apologize for her death.

Someone he could simply be himself around.

Whoever that person was now.

His Hessians made almost no noise as he stole silently through the dark hall. He had not bothered to have to the servants light the sconces, for after years of night missions, his eyes adjusted quickly to the black. Welcomed it.

He stopped dead in his tracks halfway to his library, the hairs on the back of his neck raising.

The door was ajar.
 

The door should never be ajar at this hour, so long past when the maids were due for their cleaning rounds.

Pressing himself up against the wall, he drew a knife from the slit in the inner lining of his boots, wrapping his hand firmly around the handle. With the blade in his hand, he immediately felt more in control, far more than he’d have been with the pistol in his waist holster. The pistol might misfire, but the knife was always accurate. Deadly. He could slit a man’s throat as easily as he could count to a hundred. The motions had become routine. Training and a decade of experience had solidified him into a killing machine, built for blood and pain and not much else.

Creeping forward, he kept his back to the wall. Light peeked through the crack. The Argand lamp had been lit inside. Damnation. That would limit the nearness, and the angle, of his approach.
 

He edged closer, thanking God for Elinor’s strange desire to stick foliage in every open space. The tall, capacious potted plant was next to the entrance to the library, and offered him cover while he looked through the small opening in the door.
 

There was a woman. She stood with her back to him, but that made no difference. He recognized her instantly, from the flaxen curls contained atop her head in a prim coiffure, to the subtle curves hidden by a dreary gray dress just a smidgen too big. His mind rebelled at the very idea, even as his body answered with the same fervor that began whenever she was around.

Miss Vivian Loren.

His
Miss Loren.

Possessiveness flooded him. He wanted to storm into that room, take her by the shoulders, and demand an explanation. God, he’d thought she was different. Untouched by the cruel spy game that had already taken too much from him.

He should have known better. He’d been made into a hardened spy. That life was all he’d ever have. Everyone, even his own bloody governess, would eventually hide an ulterior motive.

He pressed back against the wall, careful to keep out of sight. There was nothing to gain by acting now. He’d let her keep hunting. The more information he had, the better equipped he’d be to deal with the peril she now presented.

He forced the rage down. He needed to remain calm. Gather all the details,
then
make a decision. Through the sliver of open door, he could make out her movements. Her posture was rigid, her movements tentative as she flipped through the blueprints.
 

She was nervous.

Good.

That gave him a perverse flicker of pleasure. A trained agent would never exhibit such hesitance. A trained agent would move with efficiency, and a trained agent would not make the mistake of lighting the lamp. He’d bet a monkey that Miss Loren either had not been involved in covert activity for long, or more likely, she was a common thief.

Either way, she’d be no match for him.

She leaned over the cabinet where he stowed his plans for improvements on the village. Nothing incriminating there. Since her back was to him, he leaned a bit further into the room, scanning for further signs of upset. She’d moved the books on the low table. That was no issue either.

He held back a sigh of relief, for she bypassed the bookshelves on the back wall. If she’d pulled out a
certain
book on the wall and then pressed the far right volume on the third shelf, the back panel would be activated and the entire shelf would recede, revealing the secret room where he kept the records for the Clocktower.

Instead, she stepped to the right. As he watched, she tugged his ledger from the bottom drawer. His eyes narrowed as she flipped through the pages, finally getting to his financial records. All this searching, yet she hadn’t removed a single thing from his office. Her being a thief was becoming more and more unlikely.

As she turned, he was forced to retreat from the doorway back to the shadows of the potted plant. He dare not risk being seen through the crack in the door when she faced him. Though he couldn’t ascertain exactly where she was, the creak of wood moving against wood told him she’d found the window seat. In a minute, she’d closed it again.

She hadn’t found what she was looking for.
 

He heard her approach, then stop. From the length of her strides, he guessed she’d paused in front of his desk. He remained in the shadows, not daring to emerge, for her position would bring her directly in front of him. A loud squeak broke the relative quiet. She’d opened the top drawer of his desk, and she wouldn’t find anything there but writing supplies. For a few minutes, the room echoed with opening and shutting drawers, shuffling paper, and finally a muffled curse.

That sealed it—she was no thief. A thief would have seized the gold paperweight on his desk; the ancient Chinese vase on the low table, worth more than four times her annual salary; or the small red chalk study known as the “Three Graces” by the Italian painter Raphael, framed above the filing cabinets. The gilded gold frame alone was worth a mint, even if she did not recognize the value of the sketch.

Not to mention the fact that she was a bloody bad sneak. In all his years with Clocktower, he’d never seen anyone conduct such an inefficient, noisy search. Her strengths laid clearly in handling his rambunctious brother, not in stealth. So why in the devil was she searching his library? Had someone sent her here? Wickham had checked her background, but something must have been missed.

None of this made a damn bit of sense.

All he knew was that she’d betrayed his trust. If she didn’t have a damn good explanation, he’d make sure she paid for that mistake.

A shaky light appeared at the end of the winding hall, coming toward him. His fingers tightened against the handle of the knife. The beat of his heart quickened as his other senses sharpened, readying for attack.
 

But as the figure advanced, he discerned the hazy features of Mrs. Engle, his housekeeper. She held a candle in her hand, accounting for the moving flicker. His heartbeat returned to a steady rhythm. Though he did not fear Mrs. Engle, he tucked further between the wall and plant, taking refuge in the darkness. He couldn’t chance that the housekeeper would acknowledge him, thus alerting Miss Loren to his presence.

The housekeeper headed toward the stairs. When the door clicked shut, Miss Loren sighed in what he imagined to be relief. To her knowledge, no one had seen her. James held his breath as she came out from the library, willing her to pass by without noticing him.
 

As Miss Loren strode in the opposite direction, James inched after her. When the hall forked off, she took the right turn, heading toward the nursery. Her room was located beside the nursery, so that she could tend to her charge at all hours, if need be. Stopping at the entrance, she glanced over her shoulder. He ducked behind another potted plant. Never again would he question Elinor’s purchases of more plants.

She went inside the room, shutting the door behind her. Yet it did not close all the way, as Abermont House had heavy oak doors, and hence an extra tug was needed to seal the lock. James nudged the door with the tip of his boot, enlarging the gap enough so that he could watch her.

The oil lamp sputtered to life as she lit the wick, casting a shadow away from the candle’s flame. She faced him as she sat down on the bed, sliding off her slippers and lining them up neatly at the foot of the bed. In the lamplight, her hair looked even more golden than normal, reminding him of the softest satin. God, how could he still want to run his fingers through her hair when he didn’t know if she was an enemy or not? His body refused to listen to reason, ruled instead by primal urges.

She stood, facing him. For a second, he wondered if she could see him. But her nimble fingers plucked at her fichu, untucking the cloth from the neckline of her gown. His mouth went dry at the revealed expanse of porcelain flesh, the swell of her breasts. His cock hardened as she tilted her head back, rubbing her hand in a circular motion against her neck.
 

Bollocks.

If only he’d known how traitorous she could be when she’d offered to bandage his wound.
Demanded
to bandage his wound was more like it. He would have told her just what he did to people who betrayed him...or so he wanted to think. Because even now, watching as she strode to her jewelry box, a small voice in his voice sounded. Claimed this was not who she really was, that she’d been forced to spy on him. The woman who had listened to him talk about Louisa without pity could not be an enemy agent.

Please, Lord, not her.

He couldn’t explain how in such a short time this woman had come to mean so much to him. It lacked logic, and it certainly was dangerous. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by what he
thought
he knew of her.

She pulled open her jewelry box, dropping in her earrings. His eyes zeroed in on that jewelry box—there was a piece of parchment inside the bottom drawer. A letter, from how it was folded. Had there been more papers in that drawer? He’d have to investigate it further.

Closing her jewelry box, Miss Loren proceeded to the wardrobe in the far corner of the room. He could not track her movements in his small window of light, but he marked the swish and sway of fabric. She emerged from the wardrobe, and made her way to the bed, pushing the sheets down. Selecting a book from the bedside table, she crawled into bed.

He wouldn’t risk trying to find answers tonight. He’d wait until tomorrow when she was in the schoolroom and complete a thorough sweep of her room, starting with that note. He’d planned on staying in Kent for a few days, as the Clocktower was headquartered in London, but he’d write Deacon in the morning that he was extending his stay.
 

Miss Loren might have secrets, but she was about to find out that in a house of spies nothing remained unknown for long.
 

The following morning, James reviewed the notes he’d received from the housekeeper on Miss Loren’s schedule. Mrs. Engle was one of the few servants who knew the family’s secret—she’d grown up in service at Abermont House, as her mother had been their cook until her death. James had not given Mrs. Engle a reason for his enquiry, and the housekeeper had not asked.

James appreciated that about her. Mrs. Engle understood the importance of “need to know” far more than his sisters ever had.

He reviewed the note one last time as he stood in the hall outside of the nursery. From down the hall, he heard the clock chime eight times. Miss Loren awoke with the sun. At six, she would prepare herself for the day ahead. From the hours of seven to eight in the morning, she breakfasted with Thomas in the nursery. From eight until teatime, she was in the schoolroom with him as well. Then she’d go on a walk with Thomas, and eat dinner with him.
 

 
Outside of Thomas, he doubted Miss Loren had regular communication with anyone. Mrs. Engle had informed him the servants did not like her, for they considered her too highbred to be one of them.
 

What a lonely existence. Here in Kent, she had no family, no friends, no one who would understand her grief.