“Yes,” she stated simply, boldly.
“Yes?” An amused light entered his eyes. “But I haven’t asked you a question.”
“You asked a year ago.” She wouldn’t let him go. Not ever. “And now you have my answer.”
With that, she snatched the cameo out of his open palm and sprang to her feet. She trotted down the embankment, her pace increasing with each step. When she reached the edge of the clearing, she couldn’t resist one last look back to confirm he was real.
There sat her future husband, the very model for Adonis.Powerful.Confident.Thoughtful.Considerate. Those were words for him.Beautifulwas another.Olderwas yet another. But not too much older. He was experienced older, not aged older.Just perfect older.
In that instant, her fall was complete: she was headlong in love.
“And Nick”—She decided that very moment he would be Nick to her—“you must make haste to London and ask my father for my hand. I won’t endure another Season on the marriage mart.”
Then she’d whistled for Horace and hastened down the trail before Lord Nicholas,Nick,could contradict her and say his proposal a year ago had meant nothing. With every step she took, she felt not the earth beneath her feet, but clouds. Her feet might never touch terra firma again.
Even now in Paris, with so many years between that day and this one, what she’d felt then—the desire in her belly, the confirmation in her heart—echoed within her when its memory beckoned. She could hate herself for it.
Nick broke her heart once; she wouldn’t allow it to happen again.
His first love was espionage. She didn’t figure into the equation, never had really, and she’d never known why. Now that she did, she wasn’t certain knowing was any better. Along with knowing came understanding. And she didn’t want to understand Nick because close on the heels of understanding could follow sympathy.
She must protect herself from that insidious feeling, a feeling that could lead her nowhere good or safe. It might lead her to believe in the possibility of perfect moments again. And possibility was a delusive feeling to pair with Nick.
Tonight’s second spy lesson needed to remain a business partnership. She was his spy. Any other partnership was unthinkable.
Last night, she’d mastered duplicity and guile. In the coming days and lessons, she would use them to her advantage, not only for the mission, but for her heart.
Her fingers slid along her clavicle and traced a path down to the place where the locket usually lay. She no longer believed in the hollow lure of possibility, but a small part of her, a part secured inside a lost locket, was grateful for proof that it once existed.
Chapter12
Tackle: A mistress; also good clothes. The cull has tipt his tackle rum rigging; the fellow has given his mistress good clothes. A man’s tackle; the genitals.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Francis Grose
“His inner circle is certain King Louis will not rise again from his bed,” the agent spoke from the shadow of a shuttered patisserie. “We must discuss the plan.”
“Later,” Nick murmured. Through late-evening mist he watched a figure step down from a hackney two blocks in the distance. He stole a glance at his pocket watch, the only remnant of his recently abandoned genteel life that he kept on his person. A few minutes past the hour. A dash late. She was, as ever, a dash late.
“Are you certain about involving her?” The agent jutted his chin in her direction.
“She stays for now.” Nick valued the agent’s judgment, but he had the final say in this matter.
The agent nodded, conceding the issue. “I’m meeting with Villefranche two hours hence. You and I can discuss the outcome later in my rooms.”
The agent melted away into the sodden night while Nick’s gaze remained trained on Mariana’s brisk figure.
Even wearing the dress of a low-born, Parisian trollop, Mariana, with her efficient, determined stride, retained an ability to be purely Mariana. It never failed to inspire a measure of envy within him. To be purely oneself was pure luxury—a luxury he couldn’t afford. He wasn’t certain he even knew how anymore. Except . . .
He could still taste the salt of her skin on his tongue. He hadn’t entirely lost the ability to be himself.
Last night, he’d lost control and forgotten the first rule of this game: he must view her with professional dispassion, like any of his other agents. Which meant he mustn’t lick her spine all the way up her elegant neck. Never before had he come close to licking one of his agents. Of course, none of his other agents were Mariana.
It was a truth he continued to repress, because he needed her. Whoever had sent her the note from a Whitehall address was the key to the assassination plot. She was his opportunity to draw this person out, and he wouldn’t give it up lightly. He mustn’t forget that his primary role was agent of King and Country.Notas lover to his wife.
Now a city block’s distance away, her gaze locked onto him. A niggle of uncertainty persisted. Mariana . . . aspy? What was he thinking?
