“But what of your memory?”
“It came to me at night, in my sleep, but nothing I could hold onto in the light of day.”
“Then how—?”
“Do you know of Lord Nicholas Asquith?”
“I’ve heard the other ladies speak of him.”
“I had been doing Montfort’s dirty work for about a year when I traveled to Vienna during the Congress. I was there to keep an ear out for what was being negotiated in the shadows. It was only by chance that our paths crossed. Nick knew me in an instant, as we were brothers by law. Our wives were sisters.”
“Is there no one in England who isn’t related?” Isabel asked, exasperation in her tone. It was charming.
“Not in theton.”
Her seriousness returned, and she plucked out another stem of straw. “Lord Nicholas Asquith helped you recover your memory?”
Percy nodded. “Montfort had been keeping me secluded from anyone who would know me.”
“Oh, what a cruel thing.”
“Nick concocted a plan to stage my death for Montfort’s benefit.”
Isabel’s brow lifted to the ceiling. “How . . . how bold.”
“Aye, that it was. In truth, I didn’t think it stood a chance of success.” Percy shook his head, still in wonder at the luck of it all. “But it did.”
“And it freed you from Montfort. Yet—” A tense beat skipped past. “Yet you didn’t return home immediately?”
At last, they had reached the moment, the one where Percy would reveal his true self to Isabel and sweep that soft look from her eye. “Before I hied off to Spain, I was a terrible husband. Did your source tell you that?”
“I believe it was implied.”
“I caroused every night. I placed reckless wagers on anything that moved or breathed. I had a mistress.”
“Oh.”
Had she flinched? He should warn her to brace herself, for there was more.
“By the time I left England, I had a wife who couldn’t stand the sight of me. And when Nick told me I had a daughter, I knew I’d make a terrible father. Olivia certainly didn’t need me, so I stayed on the Continent and embedded myself in the small network Nick had formed, which operated without Montfort’s knowledge. I could protect England and my family, and not trouble them with my continued existence.”
“I can see a nobility in that reasoning.”
“There is but one problem.” Still, she didn’t understand. Well, she would. “It was a lie.”
“Alie?”
“I stayed in that life for one person. Myself.Notfor England.Notfor my family. I’d formed an addiction to the life of espionage.”
Isabel opened her mouth to speak and hesitated. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“It seduces you in. Gets your brain moving and your pulse jumping. I’d become a necessary man. For the first time in my life, I was useful. I didn’t know the first thing about mattering in England, but on the Continent, with my memory fully returned and as part of Nick’s network, I did.”
At last, he’d arrived at the essential truth of the choice he’d made. The truth he’d never spoken aloud to anyone. The truth that filled him with shame every time he saw his daughter. “I stayed away because it was the easier path.”
Isabel’s eyebrows crinkled together. “Easier?I would think the life of a spy a sight more difficult than the life of an entitled lord in England.”
“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. Staying on the Continent was much easier than returning to England and attempting to forge a useful life here. And it was much easier to stay away than to return and right the wrongs I’d done to my father, my wife, and my daughter when I’d abandoned them for the glories of war.”
