Page 97 of Give Him a Chance

But she intruded on almost every hour of his life, waking or sleeping. Bernard rubbed his eyes, as though that could rid his mind of the memory of the woman. But no. She was intrinsic to him now, woven in the pattern of his life, the very fabric of his being a part of her.

And that meant he would never be whole again.

Bernard’s jaw tightened as he forced himself to look at the next letter. This handwriting he did not recognize, but the letter was almost as short as Hovell’s.

My lord,

I respectfully request that you return to your estate andmeet with me and your steward to discuss the next five years’ management.

Yours respectfully,

Charles Vesner

Bernard muttered an oath. Yes, his man of business. Or rather, the Viscount Moray’s man of business. Mr. Vesner had to have been about seventy years old yet knew those hills and moors better than anyone. This being his safest property and alias, he’d given his father’s man the address some years back. He had to wonder if Mrs. Emmerson had questioned the “The Right Honble. the Viscount Moray” on the front of the envelope, though.Someonehad had to have read it to her for her to deliver it. Or maybe she just recognized the apartment number and had shoved it under the door with the others.

Guilt gripped his stomach as he thought of the estate he had not seen for years. He would have to go back, he supposed. At some point.

The trouble was, a part of him had started to hope, perhaps even plan, a return that was not alone. He could take Lucy up there, show her the hills upon which he had roamed as a boy. It was perhaps a landscape as far from the beaches of Brighton it was possible to get, but it was his, not just because he owned it, but because he had been raised there.

Spent years wandering those moors, desperate not to be in that house, with a man who’d said nothing but had glared at any small noise…

The knock at the door disrupted his thoughts and prevented him from moving onto the next letter. “I said I didn’t want a cup of tea, Mrs. Emmerson!”

Another knock, this one more insistent.

“No tea, thank you!”

The knocking returned, this time urgent.

Bernard rolled his eyes. That was the trouble with landladies who actually cared about their tenants. She did always want to make sure he was comfortable. It made lying to her all the more difficult.

“The door’s open, Mrs. Emmerson.”

He did not bother to look around as the door screeched open, Bernard putting all his attention to the third letter, which appeared to be a bill for something he had not bought. Now how had that happened? Ah well, perhaps it was delivered to the wrong address.

“You mustn’t get into the habit of feeding me, Mrs. Emmerson,” Bernard said vaguely as he turned to the fourth letter. “I’ll be gone soon anyway, for… Well, for my work.”

“Back to Brighton?” came the quiet words of most definitely not Mrs. Emmerson.

Bernard moved in an instant. There was always a knife secreted down the side of his armchairs and he pulled it out in an instant, darting about and lowering himself on his haunches, giving him the best chance of—

His eyes widened as he straightened up. “Damn it, man, you’ve taken your time.”

Hovell clamped his lips together a moment, barely suppressing a smirk as he shoved the door shut behind him. “I could say the same about you.”

“Well, I wasn’t the one abandoned in Brighton, was I?” shot back Bernard, pulse starting to calm now that he could see it was merely his handler, not another assassin. Or worse, a Frenchman. “Where the hell have you been?”

He gestured at the seat he had just vacated, confident in the knowledge that the knife had been removed so Hovell could not use it against him.

At least, not Bernard’s own knife.

It was not that he did not trust the man, Bernard observed as said man dropped into the opposite chair and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. It was more that there were few people in the world he could entirely trust, and a man who lied for a living, like himself, was probably not one of them.

Hovell eased himself onto the seat with an easy grace that was disarming.

The man isn’t usually this suave, is he?

Bernard cast his mind back to the last time he had seen Hovell. It had been just like normal. The man had been wearing workman’s clothes, a little oil on his hands that hadn’t quite been wiped off. Bernard had always wondered if the man used it as a cover or was perhaps actually an engineer.