“I am not a spy at all!” she insisted, beating upon his chest. “While you, milord, are a—”
He caught her wrists and his eyes sizzled as he stared down at her. “Yes, yes, I know. I am a traitor. What happened with Damien’s horse, Amanda?”
She lowered her eyes quickly, tugging to free her wrists. She did not want to tell him that Damien, and he himself, stood in line to die in the same agonizing manner as the horse.
“I’m tired, Eric.”
“Amanda—”
A lie came to her lips, one she would live to regret, one she abhorred even as she whispered it. “I’m not feeling well. I think that I might—that I might be with child.”
His fingers instantly eased their hold upon her. He lay her back upon the bed, his eyes glowing, his features suddenly young and more striking than ever. His whispers were tender, his touch so gentle she could barely stand it.
“You think—”
“I don’t know as yet. Just please…please, I am so very tired tonight!”
“I shall sleep across the hall,” he said instantly. He touched her forehead with his kiss, then her lips, and the touch was barely a breath of the sweetest tenderness. He rose, and her heart suddenly ached with a greater potency than it thundered as she watched him walk across the hall.
She lay there for long hours in wretched misery, then she rose, and quickly dressed. With trembling fingers she reached for her jewelry case and found the map that had been in the botany book. She needn’t tell anyone where she had found it. On the floor of some tavern, perhaps.
Silently she crept from the room and down the stairs, and then out into the night.
She brought her hand to her lips, nearly screaming aloud, when a shadow stepped from behind a tree, not a half block from the house. Nigel Sterling his arms crossed over his chest, blocked her way.
“You have something for me, daughter? I was quite sure that you would.”
She thrust the map toward him. “There will be no more, do you hear me? No more!”
“What is it?”
“I believe that it points out stashes of weapons about the Tidewater area. Did you hear me? I have done this. I will do no more.”
“What if it comes to war?”
“Leave me alone!”
She turned to flee.
Sterling started to laugh. Even as she ran back toward the town house, she heard him wheezing with the force of his laughter.
She didn’t care right then. She had appeased him for the next few months at least. And God alone knew what would happen then.
She hurried back up the steps of the town house, opened the door, and closed it behind her. Her lashes fell wearily over her eyes with relief, then she pushed away from the door, ready to start up the stairs.
She paused, her throat closing, her limbs freezing, the very night seeming to spin before her. But blackness did not descend upon her now. She could see too clearly, she was too acutely aware of the man who stood on the stairs, awaiting her. He wore a robe that hung loosely open to his waist, his sleekly muscled chest with its flurry of dark hair naked to her view and strikingly virile. His fingers curled about the bannister as if they would like to wind so about her throat. His eyes were like the night, black with fury, and his words, when he spoke, were furiously clipped.
“Where were you?”
“I—I needed air.”
“You needed rest before.”
“I needed air now.”
“Where were you?”
“A gentleman, even a husband, has no right to question his lady that way!”
