“No more running, Cecilia.”
The breeze cooled my face, but I stopped chasing it.
My boots dug into a pile of leaves. Then I stood with eyes closed, imagining the blur of scenery when I ran—the golds and the red, the emerald of an evergreen pine. I’d save this moment for a canvas.
With his hands lighting to my shoulder, Felton caught me. “You have failed this lesson.”
“Wouldn’t be the first. My tutors could tell you stories.”
“Cecilia, I don’t think you have what it takes to be an assassin. You haven’t the discipline for it. You should abandon course and let Gladstone live.”
“Failed your test? What are you talking about?”
“The carriage. That was an example of how you’re not ready.”
I rotated to see if my befuddlement would affect him. “So, because I’m not allowing you liberties, you don’t think I can seek revenge.” I kicked leaves at him. “I’m not going to be seduced by you. That wasn’t part of our bargain.”
“A side benefit perhaps, but it was all a test.”
“Being sweet, helping with my art, keeping me warm, feeding me, that’s how you always did it, twisting me up, pulling me back to the moments I needed and wanted you. We don’t go back to the way things were because you now have time to love me.”
He pulled his hands behind his back. “You’re feeling, not observing. An assassin needs to feel nothing and observe everything. You must be numb to everything. That’s how you get to your target.”
I pulled at the collar of my redingote. “So, I’m your target?”
“Yes.”
His arms slipped to my waist and he spun me until my back was too him. “You tremble in my arms. That’s feelings. What you haven’t observed is where the carriage is, where Watson or the footman stand. Have they unhitched the horses? Or if I have a weapon in my hand.”
“You don’t have—”
His arm lifted, and a straight as anything, small pistol was in his palm. It was ready to fire.
A rumble of laughter tumbled. The breath of it swept along my neck. “I’m listening.”
“Cecilia, I’ve studied you. I know how to get to you emotionally and physically. I do use it to distract you. Look at how flustered you are. You can’t be like this. Your target can say or do something that will cause you to react.”
Dropping my head back against his chest, I heard his heart raging. “You’re just as excited. Why is it that I fail?”
He looped my arm about his forearm. Mine shook a little, his never quivered.
“Because I can still shoot and kill, no matter what’s going on. Getting emotional means you die.”
I turned in his arms and looked at his face. A flush of our passion still stained his cheeks.
“Tell me now what Gladstone will say to make you angry.”
“Felton?”
“Tell me what he said last December that put you in my father’s arms.”
There was no running this time. Not from the warm arms that held me, or the gun I longed to use to smite Gladstone between the eyes.
He fired the gun. He loaded and fired it again. The noise ripped through me.
The wind whipped my face. My salty tears tangled in the curls falling from my chignon.
I could barely see, but I could bear no more.
