It was the plea of a desperate man, but he no longer cared how he sounded. Only a fool kept silent when he was drowning.
She presented him her stubborn profile. “I need a deep breath. Now.”
Shaky fingers felt for the knot holding the stays together, and his mouth went dry. No longer could he ignore her effect on him. Blood ripe with anticipation raced through his veins, pervading his body with a specific craving that demanded to be assuaged in the specific ways only he and she had known.
Did he remember? How could he forget? His cock, hard and ready, certainly hadn’t.
It would be nothing to reach down and gather up her dress, one silk fold at a time, exposing the long length of her legs inch by irresistible inch until—
No. He must resist. Who was he asking her to seduce anyway?
“About Villefranche,” she began. Her voice held a matter-of-fact quality that served to stabilize the moment. “Have you considered that he will suspect I’m getting close to him at your behest? You and Iaremarried after all.”
“Society is well aware that we are estranged,” Nick replied. His fingers began working at the knot again. He needed to finish this task. “Villefranche and his conspirators may think to play you against me, but it’s an opportunity we mustn’t pass up.”
At long last, Nick’s fingers tugged the knot free and loosened the stays. Task complete, nothing prevented him from stepping away from her and collecting himself before he ruined the entire mission. Except his eyes lingered on the transparent swath of muslin that did little to protect the supple, ridged line of her spine from his gaze.
Like nothing, the flimsy scrap of fabric would rend in two. His tongue would trace that exposed line all the way up to the sensitive, fine hairs of her neck . . . That was another sort of opportunity before him. But it was one he must pass up.
“You will answer me one question before you have my reply.” She swiveled around to face him. Her dress draped forward ever so slightly, and he caught a glimpse of black lace peeking above chartreuse silk. She was a picture of womanly dishabille of the most delectable sort. “Why are you dressed in this manner?”
“I have gone underground.”
“And this has to do with someone in the Foreign Office declaring you missing and presumed dead?”
“That makes two questions.”
“Humor me, Nick. It seems that you could uncover the details of the assassination plot dressed as Lord Nicholas Asquith, alive and well. Yet you’re not. What aren’t you telling me?”
She leaned against the bedpost and crossed her arms in front of her breasts to prevent her dress from slipping to her waist. His eyes had no choice but to drop and follow the movement. In a slow blink, his gaze returned to meet hers and held steady. “Before your arrival in Paris, I was assaulted by two men in this suite. I managed to turn the dagger around on one of the assailants while the other fled the scene.”
“You killed a man?” she asked, eyes wide, but lacking any trace of hysteria or fear.
“This can be a dirty business. Clearly, my investigation into the assassination plot has touched a nerve with the wrong people. I thought it best that I not be myself for a time.” Frustrating Nick was that he’d told only therightpeople of this mission. This led to a single, unavoidable conclusion: his operation was compromised.
“How is Hortense connected to your mission?”
“After the attack,” he began, “she was put in place as a maid to watch for suspicious activity around this suite in case anyone returned.”
“You instructed her to spy on me?” Mariana asked. Her eyes held a mutinous light. Nick felt her slipping from him. He must tread with care.
“That was a stroke of luck.” Truth would best serve the moment. “Once Hortense saw you check in to the hotel, she took it upon herself to become your lady’s maid.” He hesitated before making his next request. Mariana had never responded well to being told what to do. “I would ask that you keep her on. She would be useful in an unsavory situation.”
Mariana’s amber eyes searched his, and the distance between them became insignificant. The only world that mattered was the world he saw in there, threatening to reach beyond the carnal and into a realm he never did understand and never wanted to understand. In this intimate space lay the ingredient for his undoing, yet he couldn’t resist its pull, even as he understood its potential for destruction. “If we are to work together, there is something you should know,” he found himself saying. “Ten years ago—”
A forestalling hand flew up, and her eyes hardened into flat, brittle stone. Cold distance instantly dispelled any false sense of intimacy between them. “Don’t,” she commanded.
“Don’t?”
“Apologize for your affair,” she continued, her tone matching her eyes. “Or is it affairs? The gossip rags do so love to have a field day with your exploits. All done in the course ofinformation collecting, I now see.”
Even after all these years, her words hit him squarely in the solar plexus. Yet he would press on. “Mariana, the opera singer—”
“I shall do it,” she cut in.
“Pardon?” She was turning him into a simpleton.
“I shall collect information for you.” She spoke the words as if she was as surprised as he to hear them emerge from her mouth. “But not if you insist on dredging up the past. It’s done. It has no place in Paris. Isn’t that the way you’ve conducted your life this last decade?”
