She’d had the very same expression on her face the first time she had watched him undress. One of awe mixed with embarrassment and mayhap a dose of fright.
“Navy?” she guessed as her gaze followed his movements. He bent to lift his breeches from the floor before draping them over a chair and then made his way to the bed. His manhood, only partially erect, jutted out from a nest of dark curls.
“I wasn’t in the military,” he said as he lifted a hip onto the edge of the bed. He lay down and stretched as he inhaled deeply. A chuckle erupted as he pulled the bed linens up and over his naked body.
“What is it?” she asked as she moved to join him. She didn’t remove the wrapper as she climbed onto the bed and slid beneath the covers.
“This bed is more comfortable than anything I’ve slept in for a very long time,” he said in a quiet voice. He slipped an arm beneath her shoulders and pulled her so she was half atop him. The wrapper still hid most of her from his view, but at that moment, he was glad she wasn’t naked. He needed to think. Needed her to remember.
“I don’t think I’ve ever slept in this bed,” she murmured.
He grunted. “Castlewait didn’t share this bed with you?” he asked in surprise.
“He always came to mine,” she replied.
“Was he good to you?”
Persephone gave a start, surprised by the query. “He wasn’t a bad man. Not at all,” she said in a whisper. “If he ever took a mistress, I never learned of it. He was a good father, too.”
Jack jerked. “Wherearethe boys? You had... you had two, did you not?”
She hummed her initial response. “They’re away at university, and my daughter is spending this Season with her grandmother in Kent,” she explained, waiting for his reaction.
“You have a daughter?” he asked with a grin, wondering how he had missed learning about her.
“She’ll start finishing school this autumn,” Persephone said on a sigh.
“Who is seeing to the earldom?”
Persephone hesitated before saying, “I am, along with a man of business. At least until Robert is finished with university,” she said, referring to her oldest son, the new Earl of Castlewait.
“You’re probably doing a better job of it than he did,” Jack murmured.
Furrowing a brow, Persephone sighed. “It’s given me something to keep my mind occupied this past year,” she admitted. “And it’s really no more difficult than running the household.”
Jack scoffed—he had worked in service to the Crown in order to avoid running his own earldom. Between a man of business and his solicitor and regular reports on the matter, he had to trust that the Wilmington earldom was in good stead.
“What about you?” Persephone asked. “I never heard if you married... and if you weren’t in the military, what were you doing on the Continent during a war?”
Jack considered her queries and decided to answer them in order.
“Still haven’t married,” he replied sleepily. “Because you were the one that got away,” he added before he kissed the top of her head. He grinned at hearing her soft gasp. “As for war, I worked for Chamberlain,” he murmured, referring to the head of the Foreign Office. “For Crown and country and all that rot,” he added.
As he expected, Persephone lifted her head from his chest to gasp, this time more forcibly. “You were a... you werea spy?” The last two words were barely audible. Her eyes suddenly rounded. “Do you suppose that has something to do with how you ended up in my coach this evening?”
His gaze darted to the dark fabric of the canopy above the bed. For some reason, her shock at learning he had worked for the Foreign Office had him amused. “I was.” He considered her other comment. “I rather doubt my ending up in your coach has anything to do with my assignments in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, though,” he murmured. He paused before he asked, “Who the hell is Lord JW?”
Still holding herself up on one elbow, Persephone ignored the curse as she stared down at Jack. She shook her head. “You mean...you’renot?”
He rolled his eyes and winced when it caused his headache to worsen. “I am not. I mean, I am a ‘Lord JW’, but I am nottheLord JWThe Tattlerhas been writing about,” he claimed.
Her gaze drifted down the counterpane as Persephone considered his words. “You’re right,” she murmured. “If you were on the Continent until a few weeks ago...”
“I was. When exactly did these mentions of a ‘Lord JW’ start appearing in print?”
Persephone didn’t respond right away, her gaze on her mind’s eye. “It’s been a few months now, I think,” she finally said.
“What was the most damning incident they wrote about?”
