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She flinched, just the tiniest bit, but she feared Nate saw it. “I remember,” she told Ian coolly. “You may go back and tell him so.”

Ian’s gaze darted to Nate. “Am I not welcome to stay to dinner?”

“Of course,” said Nate at the same moment Angelique said, “No.” Nate glanced at her, then inclined his head. “Perhaps I should leave you to discuss that privately.” He turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

“I see Staff’s fears were justified,” said Ian after a moment.

“What fears?” she snapped. “What did he tell you about this mess?”

Startled, he threw up his hands at her aggressive tone. “Nothing! He told me almost nothing, except that he wished he’d been able to prevent the American from coming along. I guess he thought the chap would slow you down—although not, perhaps, in quite this way.”

“He has not slowed me down,” Angelique bit out. “What do you mean by ‘quite this way’?”

“An exotic knife as gift? Ready to kill a man in your bedroom?” Ian shook his head. “That’s a man guarding what he views as his. Has he tried to get in your bed yet?”

The blood rushed from her head and she felt lightheaded with outrage. “You forget yourself,” she said tightly. “What do you suggest?”

He looked puzzled as he searched her face. “That he wants you—not that he’d be the first, o’ course. What’s afoot here?”

He didn’t know; it wasn’t written on her face, or apparent from the way she and Nate looked at each other. Angelique sighed and pressed her fingers to her temple, where a dull ache was taking hold. “We have been looking for this man Dixon,” she murmured. “I do not like it, though.”

“Let me persuade Avery to let you handle the rest alone.” Ian got to his feet and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Or better yet, with my help, aye?” He paused as she tried to rein in her roiling emotions. “Are you not well, lass?”

Better than she’d ever been in her life, in some ways. And at the same time, terribly, terribly unwell in other ways. “He will not go. He is determined to see this through, for personal as well as patriotic reasons.”

“I can be awfully persuasive when I set my mind to it.”

“No,” she said sharply. “Leave him be, Ian. He is not the source of my unease.”

It was quiet for a moment. “What is, then?”

She heard the wariness in his tone, and gave a hopeless laugh. “Nothing I can tell you. I need to think.”

“You can always confide in me.”

Could she? She didn’t know anymore. Ian said Stafford hadn’t told him much about what she was to do, but if Stafford really feared she wasn’t keeping to the task, he might have instructed Ian to stay silent. To test her. She thought of Ian as a friend—as much of a friend as she had—but he was in Stafford’s pay, and she would be an idiot to trust his affection for her over whatever loyalty he had to their employer. Everyone who worked for Stafford had his own reasons, and she didn’t know what Ian’s were.

Angelique smiled bleakly and rubbed her temples. Now she couldn’t trust anyone, it seemed—except Nate. And she was lying to him already.

“Thank you,” she said, shaking off her thoughts. “I will keep it in mind.”

He nodded. “Do. And keep your eye on that American. He doesn’t look like the trusting type.”

He was—when it came to her. When he was wrong to trust anything about her. Would she find that same little knife of his at her throat, when he learned what she was supposed to do to Dixon? “No,” she said quietly. “He is only wary.”

And he shouldn’t trust me at all.

* * *

When Nate closed the connecting door between his bedroom and Angelique’s, all was quiet for a moment. Then the murmur of voices started again, just as he’d heard before slipping into her room to see who’d been lying in wait for her. As then, he stood very still for a moment. If he stepped right up to the door, he could probably hear every word they were saying…

With a disgusted huff he tossed his knife onto the bureau, then went to the bed and sat down to pull his boots back on. He wasn’t going to eavesdrop on her conversation, even if he didn’t trust that Scot one bit. Ian Wallace turned out to be a giant of a man, with flaming red hair and arms like a butcher’s. No wonder Stafford hadn’t wanted to send Ian on this case; Dixon would have taken one look and run for his life.

But now Ian was here, to Angelique’s unhappy surprise, and Nate didn’t know what to make of that.

He went downstairs, no longer bothering to quiet his steps. In the hall below he encountered Lisette. The woman made no secret of her loyalty and service to Angelique alone, which Nate respected. Normally he let her go about her way with a polite nod, but today he stopped her. “Mr. Wallace is here, up in Madame’s room,” he told her.

She sniffed. “I know.”