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To tell the truth, she might have already done so.

But he didn’t know how to tell her that, and she gave him no opportunity anyway. As she outlined plans for luring Dixon into the open where they could abduct him, other plans for sneaking into the hotel and spiriting Dixon away from his own room, and still other plans for waiting it out until Dixon chose to leave, Nate could barely keep up with her. No matter how hard he tried, part of his mind kept returning to her—her particular scent, what her hands felt like on his skin, the way her eyes would gleam at him with private amusement when she caught him not paying attention. It was the closest she came to evidence of affection, until they went to bed at nights and she was once again his unrestrained lover, with no talk of plans or Dixon.

Perhaps it was the dark, he thought, holding her as she slept. At night she was his, while in the day she remembered she was Stafford’s. He listened to her soft breathing in the darkness and wished the clock would stop, that he could have her like this always. This interlude was a waking dream he never wanted to end.

But the dawn came, and when the rain finally stopped, the interlude ended.

The Pulteney Hotel was in Piccadilly across from Green Park, where they could stroll unremarked and study the hotel. It was reputed to be one of the finest in London, famous for hosting the Czar of Russia a few years earlier. To Nate’s eyes it looked like any other large English mansion, even when Angelique pointed out the broad balcony where Czar Alexander had waved to the crowd some years before. He wondered if Dixon, who had an affinity for fine things and powerful people, had contrived to stand on that balcony.

“Tell me more about Mr. Dixon,” Angelique said, as if she could hear his thoughts. “What sort of man is he?”

“He likes luxury.” Nate turned his gaze away from the bow-fronted, pillared hotel. “I suppose that’s why he stole such an enormous sum. At first glance he’s clever and capable, with handsome manners and completely unprepossessing. He appears the perfect head clerk, in other words.”

“And that is how he embezzled from your government?”

“Yes. The man who was appointed Collector of New York—responsible for collecting all the duties due at the biggest port in the country—lost an arm in the War for Independence. He needed a capable clerk, a secretary, to assist with the running of the port.”

“The War for Independence,” she repeated. “That was decades ago.”

“Yes, he’s an old man,” Nate conceded. Ben Davies was old, nearly eighty. That was no excuse for leaving so many of the port duties to Dixon, not to mention overlooking the absence of almost half a million dollars from the accounts, but General Davies was an honorable man. His fault was one of trusting too much, not one of duplicity or corruption. “He thought he was doing the right thing by hiring Dixon, and for years it seemed to be true. Jacob Dixon is an able administrator, a quick thinker, and adept with numbers.”

“He will have secreted the money securely away, then.”

“He’s also a thief who must know he’s not going to just walk away with a stolen fortune. He’s clever enough to have known he might have to flee at any time. I’ll wager he’s got most of the jewels close by, ready to be snatched up at a moment’s notice. He’d be a fool to sell them all at once and call attention to himself. It’s a truly impressive collection.”

She pursed her lips, thinking. “It must have taken him some time to commit such a fraud.”

“At least five years,” Nate admitted. The fault for that was also General Davies’s. Ben had stopped even cursory examinations of the books after a year or so of Dixon’s demonstrated competence. “I didn’t examine the accounts, but it seems Dixon must have started siphoning off small amounts within the first few years of his employment.”

She turned to him thoughtfully. “That was very lax on someone’s part.”

“It was.”

Her perceptive eyes saw past his curt reply. “You are motivated by more than duty to your country, aren’t you?”

Nate drew in a deep breath. “Dixon’s theft ruined a good man—a man who risked his life and lost his arm for his country. Yes, he was responsible, but he was not complicit. He’s horrified by his clerk’s actions and has pledged his every possession to repaying the debt. It will never be enough, of course. If I can recover even part of the money, it will go some way toward restoring his peace of mind, and save him from living the rest of his days in disgraced penury.”

“You respect him.”

“I do,” he replied.

“Even though he was lax in overseeing this clerk for years?”

“Yes,” he said firmly.

She was quiet for a moment. “It takes a great deal of respect to overlook that lapse.”

“It didn’t happen because he was corrupt or incompetent. He’s a soldier, not a businessman. I admit he wasn’t well suited to the post, but it was what the president offered him, and he tried to do it well.”

They crossed the street and turned into the park. Even if Jacob Dixon walked right out the door, there was nothing else they could do at the moment, and truthfully, Nate would rather walk in endless circuits of the park with Angelique than sit and watch for Dixon. He knew they were living on stolen time already. The sooner he got Dixon and the money, the sooner he would have to leave; his first duty was to his country, to his parents, to Ben. It would take weeks to return to New York, and even if he turned around and got on the next ship to London that same day, it would be months before he saw Angelique again—and he wanted very much to see her again, without any unpleasant business distracting them.

She said she was quitting Stafford’s service after this, but that could change. Stafford might persuade her otherwise. Or she might give up spying but retire to a quiet, hidden life somewhere he couldn’t find her. And there was always the risk that someone else like Barings would recognize her and retaliate for some long-ago action of hers. He was caught between promises he had made before he knew her, and the bone-deep determination to stay with her.

“How did Mélanie escape France?” he asked, turning his thoughts to something more appealing.

“Smugglers,” she said briefly.

“I thought it might be instructional,” Nate said, thinking quickly. “One can never know too many tricks for avoiding trouble. It was quite a feat, slipping out during the Terror with a small child.”