“Buttercup.” He pressed a fervent kiss to her brow. “Thank God.”
Her hands fluttered to his shoulders, tentative at first as she became lucid once more. Then she clutched him, her fingers digging through the fabric of his shirt. “Who are you?”
Christ if he knew. Right now, in this moment, he was a man who loved the woman before him. A man who had wronged her in the name of duty. A man who very much wanted to atone for his sins.
He lowered himself onto the bed alongside her, framing her face in his hands. Somehow, he needed to unburden himself to her. He owed her his honesty. Owed her so much more. “Sebastian Fairmont, Eighth Duke of Trent, Marquis of Sunbury, and other lesser titles.”
His attempt at levity met with a frown that furrowed the smooth expanse of her forehead. “That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it.”
Could he do it? Did he dare reveal the truth to her? A great, gaping fear paralyzed him for a moment. He had been a spy his entire adult life. He traded in secrets. He deceived everyone he knew. He couldn’t recall when his life had been his. When he’d been free. He lived and died by his oath. He was bound to the League.
But now, here, in the woman at his side, was a different form of bond altogether. The sort that transcended everything and everyone. As much as she was his, he too was hers.
“Sebastian.” Her voice prodded him, ate at him, forced its way through the indecision. Those moss-green eyes plumbed his. “What I want to know is whether or not you’re a spy.”
A spy.
All he needed to say was one word. One response. The truth.
He closed his eyes, whispered the answer. “Yes.”
Silence stretched between them in the wake of his crippling admission. She stiffened. He kept holding her face because he couldn’t bear to release her, stroking his thumbs over her cheekbones with tender care. Such delicate bone structure, so refined. Regal as a queen.
“You’ve been spying on me, haven’t you?” she asked at last, a shimmer of unshed tears glistening in the light, making her eyes all the more vibrant, mossy green.
He wanted to lie. Christ, it would be so much easier.
“The truth, Sebastian,” she demanded when he hesitated again. “It’s why you were following me when we first met. It’s why you married me, why you disappeared. How you knew that I was betrothed to Padraig, how you knew he’d called here. I’ll wager you didn’t earn those scars in a childhood fire, did you? Don’t lie to me any longer.”
He’d spent nearly half of his thirty years keeping the truth guarded, locked away from everyone who wasn’t part of the League. Unleashing it made his chest go tight, as if the air was being knocked from his lungs by a sound punch to the gut. “You are… my mission,” he allowed at last.
She pushed at his shoulders, dislodging his gentle hold on her. A gasp tore from her, and it was the raw sound of grief, and he was its cause, and that wracked him all the way to his bloody bones. “Was any of it true?”
Fuck. He swallowed around the bile rising in his throat. This was not how he’d intended to tell her. Her pain was like a knife to his chest. “You and me, Daisy and Sebastian. That was true. Is true. What I feel for you is as real and true as the roof over our heads and the stars lighting the night sky.”
Her hand rose to her mouth as if she attempted to contain the sob shuddering from her. “My God. Was… just now, making love to me, was that part of your mission?”
“No, love.” Feeling like the world’s biggest rotter, he touched her shoulder, seeking to comfort her.
But she didn’t want his comfort.
She shrugged away from him and scooted across the bed, not stopping until she threw her feet onto the floor and stood on the opposite side of him, a pale goddess, brave as ever. His heart ached for her. And he hated himself for the deceptions he’d perpetrated against her. He should never have consummated their marriage, not while he’d been dishonest. Not without giving her the choice of knowing who and what he was.
He recognized it now as she faced him with the look of a woman whose world had just been torn asunder. “Do not dare to call me that. And do not touch me. Is our marriage even binding, or was that a part of your lies as well?”
“It’s binding. You are my wife, and I’m your husband.” It hadn’t been meant to remain that way, his conscience needled him. Damn it, he had to tell her everything and hope that he could somehow regain her trust. He skirted the bed, going to her again, taking her cold hands in his. “Do you want the full truth, Daisy?”
“Release me.” She tugged at her hands fruitlessly. He wasn’t letting her go. Not now. Not ever.
“The truth,” he continued, lacing his fingers through hers and forcing her to meet his gaze, “is that I was meant to annul the marriage at the conclusion of my assignment. Your father is deeply involved with the Fenians who are setting bombs throughout England. He is funding them, running ships with his guns and supplies, but he’s a clever bastard, and no one has been able to furnish absolute proof of his guilt. I was assigned to get closer to you, glean as much information from you as I could.”
“Glean information from me.” She jerked her hands from his grip and stalked around him in such fury that her robe billowed out around her. Halfway across the chamber, she stopped and spun back to face him. “And you intended to learn my father’s secrets by following me into a moonlit garden? By marrying me? By consummating the marriage you were meant to annul?”
“It is complicated.” Damn Carlisle to hell for what he’d forced him to do. Damn himself for doing it. He followed her, stopping only when the hem of her robe brushed his trousers and her sweet scent wafted over him. So near he could make out the flecks of gold in her eyes. “I wasn’t meant to do half of what I’ve done. My mission was to marry you, keep you close, get even closer to your father, and gather enough evidence against him to see him thrown into prison. But from the moment I first saw you, I couldn’t stop wanting you. I tried my damnedest to keep from consummating the marriage, but you were no longer a pawn to me the moment I brought you here as my wife.”
She gave a bitter laugh, crossing her arms over herself in a defensive posture. “How honorable you were to refrain from consummating our marriage for the span of one whole day.”
Well, Christ. When she put it in those terms… he was a bloody beast, and he knew it. How had this golden angel come to earth, entrusted to him, and he had forsaken her? He passed a hand over his face, trying to gather his thoughts, to marshal them into something worthy of her listening. “I’m not an honorable man. When I should have placed my duty first, I followed my own selfish desires instead, and when I should have placed you first, I answered the call of duty. The truth is stark and ugly, but if you must know one thing, buttercup, know this. I married you out of duty, but I fell in love with you somewhere in between you taking me to task for turning up half-inebriated at breakfast and that morning we lay in bed laughing and making love. Do you remember it?”
