Page 69

Alec had to laugh. “You say that, as we lie naked in bed together?” He turned onto his side, facing her, and brushed her hair over her shoulder. His hand lingered at her cheek, and her eyes half closed with pleasure. His body, already primed in the usual morning way, sprang to full arousal. God, how he could get used to this. “I would say we’re rather intimately acquainted.”

She looked away, blushing. “Yes, in that way. But that’s not the same as knowing each other. Believe me, there is a difference.”

He dropped his hand. “Of course,” he murmured. “You’re right.” He touched his thigh, where his oldest scar was. “This one came in Portugal, after Vimeiro. I came upon a French foot soldier who had stayed behind his regiment to loot. It’s hard to say which of us was more surprised to see the other, but he panicked first, leaping at me like a madman and slashing out with his sword. I was too dumbstruck to do more than shout, and the scoundrel got away.”

He touched the faint line down his left forearm. “This was courtesy of a Spanish guerrilla whose aim wasn’t all it ought to have been. He was drunk as a lord.”

“Did you shoot him then?”

He shrugged. “Had to. The ball went off my arm into my horse’s neck and killed the poor beast. I wasn’t sure I could outrun even a drunk Spaniard with blood streaming down my arm.”

She gave a shocked gasp. “No!”

Alec grinned wryly. “It’s dreadful, isn’t it? I didn’t kill the fellow. My hand was shaking so hard—from fury that he’d killed my horse, mind you—it was all I could do to pull the trigger. Fortunately for me, just returning fire was enough to send him running.”

“Good,” she said in a low voice.

Alex touched the star-shaped mark above his hip. “Waterloo. A French lance.” He craned his neck to look at it. “I don’t remember getting it.”

“This is also Waterloo, isn’t it?” She touched the longest slash again. The sword that made it probably would have severed his neck if it hadn’t hit his collarbone. Alec knew how ugly it was. The flesh had knit, but not smoothly at all. Still, the light pressure of her finger over each bump and pucker seemed to send sparks across his skin. He hadn’t been a monk, certainly not in the army and not even in the last five years, but he’d never been to bed with a woman who seemed so intrigued by every scarred, maimed inch of him. In fact, after Waterloo, he’d never taken off his shirt to make love to a woman.

But then, he had never really wanted to know them. It had been a hunger to slake, nothing more. This was something else, and he found he wanted to tell Cressida about his deformities.

“Yes,” he said in answer to her question. “Nearly the last thing I remember about the battle itself. I had command of a brigade of dragoons under General Uxbridge. We took the French utterly by surprise when we charged, and Bonaparte's men threw down their guns and fled in front of us. The charge was so successful, many dragoons overshot the objective and wound up directly under the French guns. I was attempting to turn them back into position when a cuirassier caught up to me.” And for just a moment, he could feel again the icy burn of steel slicing his flesh and see the contorted face of the Frenchman who slashed him. He’d thought it might be the last sight he ever saw.

“It must have been dreadful,” she said.

“It was,” he agreed flatly. “Everything about Waterloo was dreadful.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“There's no reason to be. It's done and over with." Alec shook off the memory, sinking back into the soft seduction of her touch and interest. “I never dreamed it would so fascinate you."

She smiled slowly—almost shyly. "You fascinate me." She shifted, inching nearer. “What else?”

“Bloodthirsty wench,” he said with a chuckle. “That’s the lot.”

“What about your back?”

He stiffened. His back was covered with the marks left by the splinters of a town coach blown apart by anti-government radicals. He was glad the scars of his spying were on his back, where he never had to see them.

Cressida recoiled at his expression. “I’m sorry,” she said hastily. “I shouldn’t have⁠—”

“No.” He sat up and twisted to turn his back to her. He’d seen them in a mirror. There were dozens of scars, but they were small, shallow ones, nothing like the others. “I got those in London,” he said, watching her over his shoulder. “Last spring.”

She gasped. “In London! But how⁠—?”

He’d already told her the worst of it, and saw no reason to hide the rest. “Spying is little better than the army, in that regard.” He shrugged. “I had supposed there was less chance of being blown up, but then I was caught in an assassination attempt and nearly didn’t escape. If not for another agent shouting a warning to me, I would have been standing right next to the powder keg when it exploded.”

“What?” she cried, horrified.

“I was assigned as a footman to an earl’s household. Some radicals wanted to kill him—and they nearly did so, not fifty yards from Carlton House.” She gaped at him. Alec smiled grimly. “So you see, perhaps you’ve not been sent the most successful agent. They ought to have sent Sinclair to help you. He unraveled that whole plot, and saved the earl’s daughter in the bargain.”

“But you⁠—?”

“When he shouted a warning, I dragged the earl down the street as far as I could and then fell on top of him when the keg exploded. There’s a bloody lot of wood in a coach. I thought it would never stop falling, and finally a bit of it caught me right on the head.” He rubbed one hand over the spot. “Or so they told me later. I seem to have a knack for getting in the way of anything dangerous.”

She rose up on her knees and put her arms around his shoulders before pressing a long kiss to the nape of his neck. “I’m glad they sent you. I would have shot that Sinclair man on sight in my stable.”