“Thank you for meeting with me,” the spymaster said. “Given the pressing situation, this will necessarily be brief.”
“Yes, it will,” she said with disdain. “For Jack’s sake, I am cooperating with you. But my tolerance of your presence does not signify trust or respect, and I think you know why.”
“The diary.” Sir Lancaster’s craggy features showed no remorse.
Maria is right. The bounder has no conscience or care for anything but his mission.
“I admit it was a mistake,” he said.
“Yourmistakenearly destroyed my relationship,” she shot back. “If not for your poison, Jack and I would not have fought. He might have been in a better state of mind—perhaps he would not have been taken. But that is not the only reason why you’ve earned my hostility, sir.”
Sir Lancaster waited with the patience of a cat preparing to pounce.
“You knew what happened to Jack, and you didn’t help him.” Her voice throbbed with emotion she couldn’t, and didn’t want to, hold back. “Instead, you used his situation to manipulate him and make him into your soldier.”
“That is untrue,” Lancaster said rigidly. “I gave him a chance atredemption.”
“He did not need redemption!” Tears blurred her vision, and she was too angry to care. “I know Jack, and I don’t believe he did anything to Lady Judith Fayne. The accusations of rape, murder…she made those up for her own gain, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” Lancaster said with distaste. “Lady Judith Fayne was a vile, self-serving female. Granger, however, bears fault as well. He had the poor judgement to have an affair with her. For years.”
“He was anadolescentwho was preyed upon by a woman sixteen years his senior. A woman with power and wealth who coerced her teenaged servant.”
“No woman could physically force Granger, even at that age?—”
“Coercion has many forms, not just physical force,” Charlie retorted.
It is not what you think,Jack had said.She made me…it wasn’t what I wanted.
Charlie’s heart clenched with remorse. “I would wager this house that Jack tried to end the affair, but Judith used emotional manipulation to trap him. And instead of helping him, you blamed him. To suit your purposes, you gave him a new identity because you knew he despised himself enough to go along with your plan. You, sir, are as much a predator, a monster, as Lady Judith Fayne.”
Her chest heaving, she was glad to see animosity spark in Lancaster’s dark eyes. She wanted to do battle, to draw blood from this bounder who had hurt her Jack.
“That is bloody nonsense,” Lancaster snapped. “I saved Granger. Even if he was less experienced than that woman, he should have exercised better judgement. A man must take responsibility for his actions. For his mistakes. If he allows a woman to manipulate him, then he must accept the consequences. The only way for him to redeem himself is by correcting his mistakes, by whatever means necessary. Whatever it takes, he must do it.”
Despite her fury, Charlie noted the flush on Lancaster’s jowls, the balling of his hands.
And she knew.
“Are you speaking about Jack,” she said coldly. “Or about yourself?”
Demons surfaced in Lancaster’s gaze. The next instant, he locked them away.
“I helped Granger,” he said in clipped tones. “If it weren’t for me, he would be a nobody—a servant who’d stupidly swived his own mistress. Because of me, he is a man of wealth and skill. I showed him his true calling as a spymaster.”
“Because of you, his life is in jeopardy,” Charlie retorted. “When this case is over, know that I will do everything in my power to protect Jack fromyou. If he wishes to continue working as a spymaster, that will be on his own terms. Not because he is manipulated and coerced into it.”
Lancaster sputtered, “I never coerced?—”
“I do not have time to argue with you,” she said. “I have to find Jack.”
He glared at her; she returned his look with a steely one of her own.
She knew she won that battle when he stalked out, slamming the door behind him.
Thirty-Eight
Jack awoke in suffocating darkness.
