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“Your plan has a major flaw. Lavinia Malcolm hasn’t seen me in twelve years.”

“Lavinia Parkem,” said Sir Newton.

“Malcolm, Parkem, it doesn’t matter. She won’t trust me,” he said.

Nor do I trust her.

Over the course of his career he’d been nearly drowned, whipped, starved, and beaten several times over. None of those experiences came close to the sheer agony of returning home unannounced to the gaping expression of the citizens of Eyemouth only to find out that their shock lay not in his survival, but in the fact that he would shortly learn the truth: that his bride-to-be had wedded another.

And the things he’d said to her . . . He shifted on his feet, ashamed even now of the vitriol he’d spat when he saw her betrayal for himself. Even if it had been justified, he couldn’t shake the memory of her face crumpling before him. It had haunted his nights for longer than he wished to admit.

“Captain Colter,” said Sir Newton, taking off his spectacles and leaning heavily on the arm of his chair, “you are a valued asset to naval intelligence. You have been trained by the very best, and your experience in the field is unparalleled, if your reports are anything to judge by. I should think you would be able to persuade one widowed dressmaker to follow your lead, no matter what’s come between you in the past.”

“Find her pressure point. Every recruit has one,” said Rickman.

“What’ll it be, Captain?” asked Sir Newton. “You or McKenzie?”

He wanted so badly to tell the three of them to go do unspeakable things to themselves in fourteen different languages. He could just refuse to cooperate, walk out the door, and let them take care of their Scottish problem. Yet the idea of sending any untested civilian out into a potentially dangerous situation with McKenzie as her handler was untenable. No one deserved that. Not even Lavinia.

“When is the prince’s visit?” he asked.

A glint caught Sir Newton’s eye. “In less than three weeks.”

“If she hasn’t made any headway by then, I’m pulling the whole operation. No exceptions,” he ground out.

Sir Newton snapped the dossier shut. “Excellent. I believe you’ll find there’s a sleeper train to Edinburgh leaving tonight that will get you in Sunday morning. Our Scottish liaison, Gibson, has been instructed to make arrangements for you in the way of a new identity and rooms. The address for the operation headquarters is in the dossier.”

“What is it?” he asked with a sigh, scrubbing his hand over his face.

“A notions shop,” said Rickman with a grin. “You offer the finest buttons to be had in Edinburgh.”

He raised his brows. He looked like many things, with his sunburned face and sun-bleached hair, but a notions shop owner wasn’t one of them. Still, at least it would give a good cover and explain away why he and Lavinia would have to be in direct communication.

“With some persuading, I’m certain Mrs. Parkem will see fit to switch her loyalty from her current supplier,” Rickman continued. “Plan to make contact with Mrs. Parkem on Monday morning. There’s no time like the present, Captain Colter,” said Rickman. “If you see my clerk, you can pick up your ticket for the journey. And you’ll be wanting to see a tailor. I’m given to understand that dressmakers have an astute eye for the fashions of both the sexes.”

Andrew looked down at his shore clothes. It had been eighteen months since he’d spent any significant time in Britain, and while his current attire had been good enough for ports across the world, it apparently wouldn’t do for Edinburgh.

“Thank you, sir.” He clicked his heels together and bowed reluctantly to the lot of them.

He strode past the clerk’s desk, slowing only long enough to snatch the train ticket that waited on the corner for him. He stuffed it into his jacket pocket, ready to roar at the next person who looked at him the wrong way. Except no one did. He must’ve looked like such a bear that everyone steered clear of him all the way out into the street in front of Cumberland House.

That was not how that was supposed to have gone. He wasn’t supposed to have been pulled in for one last assignment, and he was definitely not supposed to be barreling toward the one woman he loathed more than the doldrums, scurvy, and the last batch of hardtack after a hundred days at sea. Combined.

It had been years since he’d let himself think of Lavinia, and he’d happily have gone years longer if those three geniuses hadn’t come up with this idiotic scheme. Who was to say that just because Wark flirted a bit with one of his tenants, he’d fall for a woman’s sudden change of heart and begin spilling all his secrets about weapons caches and plots? The War Office must be desperate to stage an operation with as little to go on as this.

Three blocks from Cumberland House, his heart stopped trying to pound out of his chest. He pulled up on the side against a building and breathed deep. It wasn’t just that he’d intended never to run another mission or that Lavinia would be his recruit. It was that her safety would be in his hands. He had to be able to think clearly and assess the mission with the cold, rational mind of a trained spymaster. If he couldn’t do that because their past blinded him, it could be her blood on his hands.

She’s only an asset. Just like all the others.

He set his jaw. She might’ve once been Lavinia Malcolm, but that had been years ago. She’d changed, but so had he. No longer a love-blind boy, he could do this. No. He would do this and he’d do it well.

Her life depended upon it.

Chapter Two

Edinburgh, two days later

“OH DRAT, IT’S the first of the month,” Lavinia muttered as she bent over her shop’s appointment book. That meant her rent was due, and once again she would have to prepare herself for the elaborate, defensive dance that was being Harold Wark’s tenant.