Reese turned his face to look at the firelight flickering on the wall. For a moment, he felt like a fly that had accidentally flown into a spider"s web from which there was no hope of escape.
But then Reese realized as he turned to look at Karl"s handsome face once more that perhaps he didn"t mind. This soft, sticky web was quite a delightful place to land.
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Cohen"s knock came soon after they"d donned their clothes again. Karl"s cheeks were rosier, but other than that and the faint, musky scent of their sexual intimacy in the air, there was nothing to signal what had taken place in the room. Reese knew better. His life had been transformed.
Karl.
Good God. Reese now thought of him by his Christian name and had for some time, another sign that he"d been turned upside down in one day. He wasn"t sure he trusted this man—hell, he barely trusted himself—but unless Karl came at him with a pistol, Reese wouldn"t act against him.
He wished he knew why Toole and the others wanted him to follow the erbgraf. Were they trying to catch him in an illegal act? Reese winced as he realized he"d participated in at least some of Karl"s illicit acts.
There was the hint that danger lurked.
Provide minimal protection
. They wouldn"t tell him what to look for, perhaps because they didn"t know themselves.
More likely they still didn"t trust him. Unwilling to kill for his country, part of the team led by the disgraced captain—Reese knew it would be a long time before his employers would entrust him with important secrets again.
He said farewell to Karl and strolled out of the suite, aware of the erbgraf"s company watching him cross the room and step out the door, which he closed very softly behind him.
He went down the stairs to his much smaller room, where he would wash, shave, and change, and then trail the party to Lord Merridew"s house.
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As he stared into the mirror, he thought of everything he"d done with Karl—the erbgraf. Reese had been insane. Remembering that heavy body on top of his and the hot, deep kisses made his cock twitch. Insanity still ruled him. The fever hadn"t abated. Very well, it was like an injury. One simply functioned the best one could and did one"s best to ignore the symptoms. He would focus his mind on other matters. Except the only matters that he faced pertained to Karl. And he couldn"t help grinning at himself at that thought. He was a bloody fool.
Perhaps his time would be better spent researching the men accompanying Karl: Cohen, Smelter, Greber, Villiars, and Sechsman. But then he recalled the other shadow. He decided to arrive early to keep watch over Lord Arthur Merridew"s residence.
When he left the hotel, the evening was drizzly with fog rolling in. He"d have a harder time spotting the other spy, but he"d be better hidden himself. Reese dressed in shabby, worn clothes and a cloth cap. After slipping out the back of the hotel, he walked to Karl"s uncle"s house rather than hunt down a hack for hire.
He waited for some time, his feet slowly turning to ice, before Karl"s carriage arrived. Four men got out. Reese watched the indistinct figures from the doorway he"d settled into opposite the Merridew residence.
The rain let up, but still he heard no foot traffic, and only the occasional carriage or dray rattled slowly down the street in front of him.
At last he decided to give up and grope his way back through the soupy night to Claridge"s. But just as he pushed his cap down over his eyes to start his long walk, a small orange light sparked. Someone lighting a pipe or cigar, Reese judged from the way the flame rhythmically brightened before the lucifer was dropped to the ground. The other watcher stood less than fifty feet away, also facing the Merridew house.
Reese slipped closer to the man, so close he could smell the smoke—from a pipe, it seemed. Was he a member of the erbgraf"s staff that Karl hadn"t bothered to mention?
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Reese drew nearer but stopped when he heard the sound of footsteps echoing oddly in the fog. Reese pushed himself tight into a recess between two town houses.
The footsteps stopped close by, and a man"s soft voice called out a word Reese didn"t quite hear.
The watcher with the pipe answered, but he faced away from Reese, and the thick fog muffled their voices. At last Reese caught a few phrases. “Not tonight.
Three days hence, during the party.” The man spoke German.
“And the money?”
“You"ll get it afterward.” The other voice dropped, and he only heard bits of the conversation. “Do not forget you… And then… Volkovsky.”
Volkovsky. Sounded like a name, not a verb. Reese waited. One of the dim shapes moved away, the footsteps retreating quickly, returning in the direction of the Merridew town house.
Reese leaned against the wall, deeper into the shadows. A few minutes later, the dark shape of the other man appeared in the murk, and almost silently, the other watcher slipped away from his post. He was apparently done shadowing Karl for the night.
Who"d come from the house to speak to the spy? Not Karl. Reese would have known if it had been him. The energy of the man"s walk would have given him away. Someone from his entourage seemed quite likely. Or perhaps it had been a member of Merridew"s staff, an Englishman with a grudge against the German nobleman.
Reese walked back to the hotel slowly, thinking of all the reasons he had to contact Karl again the next day. The mysterious conversation, the intuition of dread that he"d learned not to ignore over the years.
But he knew there was no real reason to speak to Karl. He could take care of the matter on his own. He simply wanted to approach Karl again, talk to him and…more. So much more. Oh God, that couldn"t be right. He quickened his pace, trying to run away from the need that had flared and wouldn"t die way.
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“
Keep your distance, or you’ll be guilty of unprofessional, sloppy work
.” He could hear the captain"s harsh reprimand. “
More than a threat to your career, my
lad, any sort of familiarity could threaten your country
.”
And the captain had been right. Once upon a time, Reese hadn"t kept his distance. Worse, he"d become gullible and hadn"t questioned the source of the captain"s sudden wealth. By the time the whole of the wretched affair was over, at least two coastguard sailors and an exciseman had died at the hands of the North Kent smugglers. And the captain lay dead too, killed by Reese"s own hand after he"d tried so hard to stay out of the matter.
It hadn"t been his duty to watch his superior, but even after he"d grown suspicious, he hadn"t said a thing. Odd that those foreign agents and assassins he and the captain had tracked after the war hadn"t created a threat nearly as dire as some grubby smugglers.
He removed his shabby coat and cap and strolled through the doors of Claridge"s, determined not to allow himself to think about that night again. He"d concentrate on the present and went to the hotel clerk, hoping he"d find some annoying note from Toole or Gilley, but alas, no messages waited for Mr. Baker. He walked up to his room, wondering if he should go to the office and demand to speak to Toole. If he walked away from Binder, he"d be safe.
Reese had lost his ambition years ago, but he wasn"t about to toss away his life or risk his soul with an enemy again.
He pulled off his shirt and winced at the pain in his shoulder, an injury he"d barely noticed during the sexual activity with Binder. Reese studied himself in the mirror and saw the scar he"d got that windswept night on the coast. The last death.
The others no longer haunted him. For a time, in his dreams he saw the forms of the men he"d killed in battle, and then—so much more vividly—the faces of the three men he"d hunted down in peacetime.
The killing ended during an assignment they"d conducted in Spain. Reese had been up all night keeping watch on the men they"d followed from England. During 68
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the afternoon, Reese had dozed off while lying under a tree. The captain had nudged him awake with the toe of his boot. “
You were sobbing like a baby in your sleep
.” The captain had dropped down to a squat and put a hand on Reese. He"d given Reese a rough shake and declared, “
No more killing assignments for you, lad. You’ve earned
a rest. Others must take those duties
.”
Reese hadn"t truly believed he"d cried in his sleep, but he didn"t protest. As the days and weeks passed, he"d learned that the promise the captain made had lightened his heart to an astonishing degree.
The dreams had ended—until that night the captain had joined the fight, but on the wrong side, and Reese had been there to defend the excisemen. The weight of the pistol in his hand. The scuffle in the raging storm. He hadn"t known who attacked. If he had seen one of the men was the captain, would he have turned and run rather than fire a bullet into him?
No, not this again
. He pulled on a nightshirt, dismissing the memories and the old questions with an impatient growl.
He readied himself for bed, determined once more to do his job from a greater distance. It might be difficult now that Karl knew his face, but he wouldn"t succumb to the man"s allure.
Reese lay between the hotel"s unaired sheets. Determined to vanquish the images of the captain"s death, he tried to summon something more pleasant and immediately recollected the physical pleasure he"d felt with Karl. That was hardly better for bringing on sleep.
Karl… The fucking was glorious. Reese imagined he could slake his hunger, then walk off without a backward glance, but the rest of it unnerved him. The way the man had called him Jonathan, the name he hadn"t heard since Susan"s death.
His own fault for not giving one of his usual false identities. He"d signed the hotel register with one of his standard pseudonyms, Mr. Baker. What was he doing giving a name so close to the truth? Reese punched the pillow savagely, but it would not The Nobleman and the Spy
69
yield to a better shape for sleep. He"d slept soundly on the dirt and in squalid hovels, so it wasn"t the bedding making him restless now.
If only he could have enjoyed that body in peace, he thought as he pictured Karl"s magnificent muscular form. But the dratted nobleman was too curious about the drab, ordinary Mr. Reed and seemed determined to peel back and inspect the layers he found. Dangerous, even if Karl meant no harm, and there was no way Reese could know that.
One day with Karl, and he knew he"d played long enough. Time to back away and become a professional again.
* * *
“This belongs to the erbgraf,” he explained.
“Indeed. I know. And it came into your possession how?”
“He should always carry it,” Reese said.
The manservant gave him a long unpleasant stare, but Reese merely ducked his head and walked away without another word.
He decided to spend the morning tracking down the history of Karl"s family.
Reese called in a favor from Gilley, an acquaintance now at the Home Office. He was particularly interested in the notes about the ambitious activities of Karl"s father, the reigning count.
“This doesn"t seem up your street at all, Reese,” said Gilley, who"d also served in the Crimea and with the captain. Now he had an office with a good view of the Thames. “You hate political intrigue.” He put the file in the thin leather binder on the edge of the desk. Apparently his conscience didn"t bother him as much if he didn"t hand the file directly to Reese. “I know the count"s brother-in-law well. A fine man, Lord Merridew. First-rate gentleman. And now I remember hearing the son is in town. Did you know that?”
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“Yes.” Reese touched the file, then hesitated. Gilley was an excellent source of information. Reese wasn"t usually interested in gossip. He had to know the habits of the people he followed, but the feelings and tangled lives? That way danger lay. But he found himself asking, “Do father and son get along?”
“Like cat and dog. Water and oil. From what I understand, young von und zu Neuschlosswold-Binder was an idealist and his father took advantage of family friends, using his son as a weapon of sorts. Not sure what he did, but it seems Karl the erbgraf has developed a reputation for being a man without a heart.”
“What does that mean?”
Gilley shrugged. “I expect he is never interested in a woman for long. No real depth to the man, I hear. There"s also the fact that he had a difficult time in the war, as we all did.”
Gilley fiddled with his impressive desk display, rearranging the blotter, gold pens, and gold-and-ivory ink-holder to line up at the edge of the well-polished mahogany surface. Reese supposed the thought of battles he"d witnessed in the Crimea still affected the man. “Will you tell me why you want the Neuschlosswold-Binder file?” Gilley peered at him through his monocle.
“No.”
“Well. At least you"re still honest.” Gilley grinned for a moment. “You"re working for the, ah, special section, I take it?”
Reese didn"t bother to answer. He wasn"t allowed to speak of his employment, not even with Gilley, who knew the group existed within the War Office, ostensibly to gather intelligence about foreign nations.