The man pulled a watch from his waistcoat and looked at it. There was no wasted motion with this one, no fumbling or twitching. Karl hoped that meant he was a professional rather than a crazed ex-soldier out for vengeance for old war pains.
“It"s nine o"clock,” his onetime enemy said.
Enough speculation; he"d find out the answer. “May I buy you a cup of coffee?
Or tea? Have you breakfasted?”
“I could do with a cup of tea.” The man sounded almost jolly, but those eyes remained cold. “There is a pleasant restaurant not far from here.”
“I don"t want to walk into a trap.”
The man seemed to tighten. Did he hold back anger or surprise at Karl"s bluntness? Karl continued. “We will go downstairs to a place here in this establishment, shall we?”
They walked in silence, side by side but keeping their distance in the broad corridor and down the wide staircase. A uniformed bellboy trotted in their direction, The Nobleman and the Spy
13
slowing and touching his cap respectfully as he passed between them. The British ex-soldier twisted to watch the boy disappear. Another who suspected traps everywhere.
The man didn"t lead him to the quiet reading room as he expected. Instead they went to the foyer. Four musicians played quietly at the far end of the room.
The open room was decorated with huge mirrors, thick carpeting, and chintz chairs.
In the middle of the room, a fat stone cherub stood atop a series of marble bowls, and water splashed down the sides of the fountain.
A few tables dotted the back of the foyer. The man walked past more comfortable armchairs to a table in a far corner. The space had a few tables of hotel guests and other visitors.
The music, the splashing fountain, and the low murmur of male and female voices would cover their conversation. Karl reassured himself—certainly the man wouldn"t harm him before so many witnesses.
Before they pulled back the chairs to sit, he spoke. “Are you simply following me, or do you plan to kill me? I am difficult to eliminate, you know.”
The man met his eyes and didn"t move. Karl had to look away from the steady, unflinching stare. He shifted his gaze to his own fingers resting on the bow-backed chair. No more pretending for either of them, then. Karl slowly moved his other hand toward his inside jacket pocket.
“Don"t bother to reach for your pistol, Mr. Binder,” the man said.
Karl looked up to see the man deftly reach into his jacket pocket and pull out Karl"s small pearl-handled revolver, flashing a glimpse of it before letting it drop back into his pocket.
“Ah. And how did you manage that?” Karl asked.
The slender Englishman sat in the chair, and with an exaggerated motion, folded his hands and rested them on the table. “We passed each other in the upstairs hall before breakfast.”
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Karl slowly pulled out the other chair and sat. “Apparently I am not always so observant after all. I thought I would remember you. Always.”
The man shrugged. His clear gaze searched Karl"s face before sweeping down his body. Searching out weapons? Or was something else going on here? That second possibility was intriguing.
Karl leaned back in the chair, feigning ease. “Why are you following me? And tell me why you lied about being at Sevastopol.”
The man splayed his strong, scarred hands. Ha! Those hands gave him away.
He was no businessman. And then, for the first time, he gave Karl a real smile. For a moment he looked almost shy. “Hell,” he said without malice. “I suppose I might.”
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Toole had told Reese to use whatever methods worked. It hadn"t occurred to Reese to simply state a portion of the truth, but why not?
He"d have to pick an answer that didn"t reveal too much, of course. After almost a week of following Binder, he could tell the man all sorts of truths. He might tell him that he"d spotted someone—a foreigner from Binder"s own country, perhaps—following the count"s son.
Or Reese could spill even deeper secrets. That his dried-up twig of a soul felt an unfamiliar flicker of life every time he saw Binder laugh. That he"d listened in on the conversations Binder held with his underlings and had grown to admire the way he treated his servants and staff. That he lay awake at night and thought of what it would feel like to put his mouth on Binder"s lips and other parts of his body. He might admit that, in a crowd, he"d drawn too close to Binder more than once just to see if he could smell the man.
Except Reese had excellent self-discipline. He"d released the guard on his impulses only once in his life and had lived to regret it. He sure as hell didn"t welcome this attraction to an enemy from the past, this very dangerous man.
Still, one truth would do no harm, and perhaps he"d be able to learn the answer to the question that had nagged him for years. “You"re right. I was at Sevastopol. Why do you think you remember me?” He didn"t add
for I recall you too.
Binder"s blue eyes glowed, and he smiled as if Reese had admitted something wonderful. “I don"t understand it myself. That day of the battle. God.” He shuddered, and Reese felt a ghost of that same response in his own body. “There 16
Bonnie Dee & Summer Devon
were hundreds—thousands of us—and it was a blur of bodies and pain and fear. My horse was slain under me. I was injured.”
Reese shook his head. He hadn"t known.
“Much of it comes back when I close my eyes. I expect it does for you too,” Karl went on. “But one of the most vivid images of that day, of that whole bloody, pointless war, is of you. You"d lost your cap, and you were covered in blood. I was looking for more…” He cleared his throat. “For the next to kill. I was filled with that lust. You know the feeling.”
Reese couldn"t answer. He knew and loathed the primal killing instinct that overtook him whenever he"d had to dispatch another man. He shrugged.
“And then I saw you watching me.”
Reese leaned forward, his entire being at attention. At long last it seemed he was going to receive an answer to the intolerable question—
why me
? Of all the men in the field that day, why had this stranger passed him over like the angel of death in Egypt?
“Yes, I admit I recall seeing you. What of that?” he asked with feigned casualness. Amazing he could sound so nonchalant when his heart was racing. “Tell me this. Why did you spare me?”
Binder inclined slightly toward him too and lowered his voice as he answered, his throaty rumble sending lust spearing through Reese. “Because I saw your eyes. I saw…” He shrugged broad shoulders.
Reese tilted his head to show he listened, and Binder went on. “I saw so many things. I saw myself when I watched you. So self-centered, eh? Angry, passionate, and ready to die. But I also saw a man who"d suffered too much. And, well…” He rubbed a blunt finger over the lace tablecloth. Reese watched those hands, large with golden hair on the back of his wrist, and he was almost too distracted by the sight of them to hear Binder"s next words. “I saw what a bloody monster I"d become.”
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He stopped speaking, and for once, Reese wasn"t patient enough to let silence linger. “We were all bloody monsters in war.”
He should not allow his thoughts to venture in that direction. Curse the man for rousing the emotion of unwelcome memories. With one long, deep breath, Reese suppressed the ripples of disquiet disturbing his calm. He looked straight into Binder"s face, but the other man didn"t appear to notice. His blue eyes seemed sightless as he gazed at something else, those days in Sevastopol, probably.
Reese could examine him at leisure, a pleasant task. Even with Binder"s large, Germanic features, there were touches of grace—the way his throat rose from the high collar, the line of his jaw, and the well-brushed, gleaming, wheat blond hair.
His enemy"s low voice woke Reese from a fantasy of touching that hair, stroking it, seizing it, and gripping it while he drove into the heat of the man"s mouth. His carnal fantasies about this man were getting out of hand.
“Ah. But your face, your eyes.” Binder at last met Reese"s stare. “Do you know the word
tzadik
?”
Reese knew German, but this word was unfamiliar. He shook his head.
“It"s Yiddish. It means „one who acts righteously." Back then I didn"t know the word. I"m not Jewish.”
Reese knew that. He"d read the details of the man who"d been born to an English mother and a German Catholic father and who had been brought up in the Church of England.
“After the war, I heard a bit of the definition—just a little—and at once I imagined you. That day on the battlefield, your eyes sent a burning arrow into me.
If a man"s eyes could do such a thing, you would have killed me—a part of me—with that look. I saw the righteous judge who"d witnessed my failure as a human. I couldn"t face you, and I certainly couldn"t kill you.”
His explanation was weighty and far more truthful than Reese would have expected.
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Bonnie Dee & Summer Devon
“All that from a look,” Reese said sardonically, though he felt slightly dizzy.
Through all these years, he"d also vividly recalled Binder, as if that scene were a fresh memory.
A moment later, Binder grinned suddenly, and his laugh lines showed Reese the man"s natural face—lighthearted, almost mischievous. Reese had already seen evidence of his mercurial nature, but this jump from grim to delighted was sudden, even for Binder.
“You are amused?” Reese asked.
“Now that I consider the matter, I wonder if I simply liked your appearance, blood-smeared and all. It was an impulsive decision to spare you. Shall we call it that?”
Jesus God, was this man admitting to physical attraction? Reese suppressed the urge to look around and see who might be listening. He was no green lad who would blush at bawdy suggestions—even those of forbidden practices—but this was no place to mention them. He smiled blandly but didn"t answer, as if he"d heard no suggestive meaning—and perhaps one had not been intended.
“So, tell me why you are following me,” Binder demanded, abruptly changing the subject.
Now he understood Binder"s game. The man was trying to confuse Reese and throw him off guard. “I might ask the same of you, sir. You turn up every place I go.”
“Oh, I am not following you. But never mind. Let us begin again. What is your name?”
On impulse, he gave his real first name. “Why don"t you call me Jonathan?” No one alive called him that.
Binder tilted his head. “I am to call you that, eh? At least you"re honest. You don"t say it is your name.”
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Reese almost smiled. Ironic that when he told his true name to someone at last, he wasn"t believed.
Binder rose to his feet, and with shoulders back and stiff, executed a perfect bow, clicking his heels together. The man certainly had Germanic blood and the proper formal training of an erb-pfalzgraf, the son of a reigning count, in him. “Herr Jonathan. I am Herr von Binder. But since it appears we are exchanging Christian names, you may call me Karl.”
Reese stood and held out his hand. Karl examined it as though puzzled, then gave a peal of that deep, rolling laughter. “Yes, of course.” He reached and pressed his warm, hard palm to Reese"s hand. For such a long moment they touched.
Neither wore gloves, and Reese should not have played this game. He flinched, surprised at the jolt of desire that passed through him.
A speculative gleam entered Karl"s eyes. Nonsense, Reese chided himself. It was foolish to believe the other man had felt his reaction to their touch or interpreted it correctly.
Karl von Binder was broader and bigger than he, although he wasn"t a huge man physically. Reese estimated he was a couple of inches taller than his own five-eleven, but the count"s presence had a vigor that took up even more space.
He might be a polyglot, able to speak languages without a trace of accent, and he certainly could shift from the formal to the casual with ease, but Karl was too alive to be stealthy, while Reese could disappear into a crowd without problem. He supposed that with his average brown hair, nondescript brown eyes, and quiet manner, people simply weren"t aware of him—a fact that made Binder"s memory of him that day in battle even more unbelievable.
He pulled his hand away and reminded himself he wasn"t here for his own entertainment. Time to scan the room for threats. Yet even as he looked for the man he"d spotted following the count, most of his attention was centered on Karl.
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Bonnie Dee & Summer Devon
A man like Binder would be noticed anywhere he went. He radiated life; his face was too expressive. Although now Reese remembered hearing that von Binder was a fine diplomat, so that must mean that handsome, lively face could lie.
“Who pays you to follow me?” Karl asked. He sat again, and after another quick look around, Reese did too.
“I am a British citizen.” He gave a vague reply that didn"t answer the question at all.
“Of course. A soldier for his country still.”
Reese didn"t bother to correct him.
“And your attempt at stealth has been careless.”
“I"m not required to remain hidden, merely to keep an eye on you.” Christ, why was he telling the man anything about his assignment? He"d always been able to keep his thoughts clear, even when he felt lust. His cock never affected his thinking.