Beauty and the Spy (8 page)

John's smug grin confirmed this. "More specifically, her bed."

"Congratulations," Kit said in all sincerity, and they lifted their glasses to each other again. Lady Barrington had been John's particular quest for some time now.

John bolted the last of his brandy and plunked it down, gestured with a jerk of his chin for Kit to fill it again.

"What
are
you doing here, Kit?" John asked, as if the thought had just occurred to him. "I had no idea you'd even left town."

"Thought I'd work on my folio."

"Your what?"

It
was
rather amusing to spring that word on people. "I thought I'd take some time away from the noise and bustle of London to document the flora and fauna of Barnstable."

He was rewarded when John's jaw dropped.

Kit allowed his voice to drift philosophically. "Nature is endlessly exciting, John. All that death and sex and violence…"

John clapped his mouth closed. He looked worried. "But… you're a
spy
. And you… you
love
London. I mean… the countess."

Kit burst into laughter and gave the table a hearty slap.

John scowled at him. "Tell me the truth."

"All right. The truth is… my father sent me here to work on the folio project. Under threat of Egypt if I don't complete it in a month."

"So you've been exiled," John guessed.

"One might say that. In a manner of speaking."

"Hmmph."

" '
Hmmph' ? "
Kit repeated indignantly. "What the devil do you mean by that?"

"Well… you have seemed a bit… off, Kit."

"
Off
? And what the devil do you mean by
that
?"

"You drink too much," John said, and it sounded unnervingly like the beginning of a list. "More than I've known you to in the past, anyhow. You're argumentative… more so than usual. You're irritable. You've spent an inordinate amount of time in pursuit of a married countess, which seems to me an elaborate way to avoid matrimony."

" '
Avoid matrimony'?"
Only John Carr could get away with saying such a thing. "And what about
you
?"

"I am saving myself."

"For
what
?"

John smiled enigmatically. He allowed Kit to glare at him for a moment.

"I suppose I've been a little… bored," Kit finally muttered.

"We've all been 'a little bored.' But only one of us called Chisholm an idiot, and that was you."

Kit admitted the truth of this with silence. For a man who prided himself on control, his behavior had reflected little of it lately. His restless mind craved challenges, his restless body craved action.
Purpose
. He took a deep breath, released it, confused, irritated. He was not, in other words, happy.

John looked up toward the ceiling. "I suppose the countess will be… lonely now that you've gone."

At this, Kit laughed an oath. "You wouldn't
dare
."

He wasn't terribly worried, however. John might very well be the handsome one, but they both also knew Kit was, and always had been, just slightly better at everything else—shooting and running and riding and swimming and… well,
at fascinating
people. Simply by virtue of being his own idiosyncratic, stubborn self. Perhaps it was because he tried a little harder.

No
, he decided cheerfully.
I'm just better at everything else
.

Detente regained, another companionable quiet passed.

"You can trust me, John," Kit said, finally, a little gruffly. "I won't say anything to my father about what you've told me. Or to anyone else."

"I know," John said after a moment. His words were shaded with something peculiarly like sadness. "If you hear from Caroline…"

"I'll tell you straight away, John. And now that your glass is empty… you'll see yourself out?"

"You're tossing me out?" John Carr feigned incredulity.

"I want my sleep. And visit your mother while you're in Barnstable, or I'll tell her you were in the neighborhood and didn't stop by. And go out the door."

"Bastard," John muttered glumly. Kit laughed.

When John was gone, Kit resumed his chair, poured another brandy, then thought about what John had said and poured it back into the decanter. He stared out the window into the darkness, listening, thinking. How silent it seemed here; within a few nights, he knew he'd realize what a racket nature could make, birds, cluttering squirrels, crickets. The sounds would come in through his flung-open windows, as lively as London, in its way. His chest was already sticky from the night's heat; he absently rubbed the back of his neck, where a bead of sweat trailed.

And then Kit crouched next to the bed and pulled out a chest he'd kept here since he was a boy. He lifted the lid, and ruffled through the strata of his past—rocks and bones and leaves and books, his first pistol—until he'd found the letter.

" 'I'm sorry,'" was all it said. But he would have known the writing anywhere. He'd exchanged secret notes with her for two feverish years; they'd hidden them in the trunk of a tree near the clearing where he'd aimed a pistol at his best friend. Caroline had been a terrible speller, Kit recalled. But "I'm sorry,"
that
she'd spelled correctly.

He remembered the morning of the duel vividly: the bruised dawn sky, the tribunal of birds, a half dozen or so, clinging to the winter-stripped trees, staring down at them. John's white breath hanging in the air, a ghost of the words he had just spoken: "She's not worth it, Kit." It had been both a plea… and a taunt.

Oh, but she had been. At least from a seventeen-year-old's perspective. She'd encouraged Kit to touch her bare breast, and sometimes he thought it was the single most important experience of his life.

And so Kit, who had always been the better shot, had aimed for John's shoulder, and their fathers had packed them immediately off to the military, where their friendship and John's shoulder had recovered nicely in the absence of the fever that was Caroline.

The letter had been posted from a town called Gorringe about seventeen years ago, shortly after his duel with John. A town, legend had it, named by a poetry-minded duke who'd apparently gone mad from searching in vain for a rhyme for "orange."

And now she was in trouble. This was no surprise, really, as Caroline had
always
been in some kind of trouble. She'd
courted
trouble. And everyone in Barnstable had known and disapproved of her.

Or known and wanted her.

And she'd disappeared the night she'd met Thaddeus Morley at a party held by Kit's father.

Why had he kept the letter? Proof that he
had
won her, he supposed. At least insofar as Caroline could be won. And, he thought, no doubt John would have found it, if Kit hadn't been asleep in this room tonight.

In short, John might very well be keeping things from Kit. But Kit had also kept things from John. Again, Caroline's legacy.

Caroline couldn't remember a time when she didn't…
want
. Like an itch she could never reach, like a word that lived forever on the tip of her tongue, like a burr clinging to her soul, an indefinable want had driven her from the cradle, and every decision she'd ever made had been in an attempt to appease it.

Consequently, her life had been anything but dull.

For instance, she was fairly certain that Thaddeus was trying to kill her, a result of… well, a perhaps not very good decision she'd made a little while ago. She'd needed money; Thaddeus had buckets full of the stuff, some of which one might fairly say she'd helped him acquire. So she'd dashed off a sentimentally worded letter of blackmail.

Shortly after that, someone had tried to stab her, and she'd just barely squeaked away with her life.

She'd moved on to another town, her money dwindling.

And then someone had
again
tried to stab her. Thank heaven she had good vision and reflexes. She'd been moving from town to town ever since.

Ah, well. She should have known that Thaddeus would never do anything by halves.

She peered at the teeming crowd in the coaching inn, awaiting her tea. She was dressed all in black as befitting the widow she wasn't, but the discreet little veil clinging to her hat only heightened her mystique, she knew. The veil bared only her lips. Those red, inviting lips.

And then, out of desperation, she'd even dashed off a letter to Kit Whitelaw, telling him she was in trouble.

Telling him she was coming to him. But she'd run out of money, and she hadn't been able to reach London, so she might never know if Kit had grown into the sort of man he'd promised to become when he was seventeen.

At eighteen, Caroline had raked up a rivalry between Kit and his best friend until it blazed like a cheery autumn bonfire, and she'd warmed herself over it. It had eased that everpresent want in her, much the way her father lifted his war-wounded legs up onto the stool in front of the fire every night to soothe the ache in them. That and a bottle or two each night had always seemed to take the edge off the pain for him. Swinging a heavy hand at his daughter seemed to help, too. She'd learned to dodge him.

And she'd been dodging most of her life, it seemed, from the results of her decision and impulses, which ensured that she didn't need to think or feel any one thing for very long, because that would be uncomfortable, indeed.

And now… and now she couldn't seem to stop moving.

When she was younger, Caroline would sometimes look in the mirror and wonder at the cruel joke of her face: that flawless white complexion, lips so naturally red, huge dark eyes like pools that might be either treacherously deep or innocently shallow; to find out, one would have to risk wading in. Waves and waves of silky dark hair. What was the use of such a face when her father was a drunkard who'd sold off all their belongings; when she hadn't any decent clothes; when she was trapped in Barnstable, wild with boredom, reminded daily of her social inadequacy. God knows she wasn't about to marry the son of a farmer or mill owner, and God knows she was never deemed fit to marry the sons of the gentry, let alone the son of an earl.

But oh, how willing they were to dally with her. Given a little encouragement. Kit had needed a good deal of encouragement, he had a very defined sense of right and wrong. But not even Kit would resist her, in the end.

Kit's ardor in particular had been dangerous. She'd almost felt something in her thawing when she was with him, and it had hurt, hurt, as though she'd been clawing her way through ice to get to him. She'd enjoyed handsome John Carr's attentions, too, but he wasn't nearly as dangerous as Kit. In part, because his father was only a baron. But mostly because he'd never really come close to touching her in any way besides physically.

Oh, but Kit had. Kit was another one who never did anything by halves.

And then one evening, at the annual party the Earl of Westphall held to demonstrate his largesse to the locals, Thaddeus Morley had appeared. Twenty years her senior, powerful in a quiet way that gave her shivers, she'd made another of her decisions: She'd cast her fate into his hands. And for a time, life had been exciting and interesting. And oddly comfortable. They'd suited, she and Thaddeus.

"Thank you," Caroline said softly to the innkeeper, accepting that cup of tea, stealing another glance about.

Men either looked at her with awe, with fear, with desire, or some combination thereof. The ones who had tried to kill her hadn't really looked at all. This being hunted business wasn't pleasant, but then danger and controversy kept the want at bay, too.

But now she was out of money, because she'd spent the last of it on these widow's weeds—her disguise—and a small pistol. And she needed money, since her blackmail scheme had failed. Thaddy had loved her once, or as much as he could love anything besides a cat, but she should have known he wouldn't let something as impractical as love interfere with ambition. Especially given how he'd come to be who he was. The blood and sacrifice involved. His own, and that of others.

Often Caroline wanted things simply because other people had them. For instance, that handsome, fair-haired young man having supper with what must be his wife and her mother at the table in the corner, who'd glanced at her more than once—the last time lingeringly. The wife was a blond thing, bland as blancmange, and her mouth had moved almost continuously, yap yap yapping while the husband's eyes drifted… and found Caroline's.

He froze, stared. The way they always did. She allowed him a moment of feasting before she returned her attention to her tea.

He was probably bored with his wife. But he'd married her no doubt because she was respectable, and they no doubt enjoyed a comfortable life. Possibly he even loved his wife, or at least tolerated her.

Caroline decided then that she wanted him.

And since she also wanted some money rather desperately, perhaps she could kill two birds with one stone.

Luck was on her side; the young man rose, and walked in the general direction of her table, heading toward the bar. Caroline casually stood just as he passed her.

"Second room to the right. In five minutes. Five pounds," she murmured.