While You Were Spying (Regency Spies Book 0) (26 page)

Whatever powers she possessed, they obviously worked on humans as well. He was certainly bewitched by her, and he had yet to find a way to break her spell. Even now, he couldn’t take his eyes from his petite enchantress, and he could still taste her—magic, dark and sweet—on his lips.

One of the grooms darted from the stables carrying a brown cape, and Shepherd took it to wrap around her shoulders. Ethan frowned. Over the past few days, Ethan had noticed that the exasperating woman never remembered to bundle up. She was definitely a free spirit—as unbound and wildly ravishing as the idyllic Hampshire countryside she so adored.

Even her hair refused to stay confined to its topknot. She threw back her head, bursting into laughter at something Shepherd said, and it blew about her like swirls of chocolate dancing across the caramel of her cape. Ethan wanted to wrap his hands in that hair, inhale its scent, her scent. He could still smell her on his fingers...

Magic.

Pocket
tsk
ed. “Far too good for you, my lord.” The valet stood next to him now, observing Francesca from the window.

Ethan scowled. “Thank you, Pocket.”

Pocket nodded and waved the tailcoat under Ethan’s nose. “I shall come back to the tailcoat issue later, my lord.” He fingered Ethan’s limp cravat with a grimace. “Now, about the cravat situation.”

“Cravat
situation
?” Ethan spared a last glance out the window before turning his attention back to Pocket. “I’d hardly call it a situation.”

“I agree, my lord. Crisis is a better term.”

Ethan gritted his teeth and eased into the wobbly chair behind the desk. With half a dozen servants yet to interview and an apparent cravat crisis on his hands, it would be a long, long—he eyed Pocket wearily—long afternoon.

“D
amn.”

He wanted her. Wanted her as much as he could remember wanting any woman—more. And he couldn’t have her. Not without a price, and that price was marriage.

Ethan stared into the black, storm-ravaged night. Shards of rain hit the window’s thick glass, and the wind pushed restlessly against it, making his elbow cold and damp where it rested against the French doors.

Swearing again, he turned from the window and threw himself into Brigham’s chair. Marriage. Would the idea have been so abhorrent to him if he hadn’t witnessed, daily, the pain of his mother’s second marriage? Marriage was nothing without loyalty and constancy, and Ethan didn’t believe in women’s constancy, didn’t have much faith in most men, either. Given time and opportunity, lovers would stray. Victoria had taught him that lesson well.

Victoria—a shining example of his immature and misguided belief in love’s capacity to conquer all.

He’d loved her. Loved her with heart and soul—body burning with unfulfilled desire for the mere touch of her. She’d been beautiful. All shimmering gold hair and blinding alabaster skin, so stunning it had pained his eyes to look at her. He’d wanted her with a passion that, at four and twenty, was unparalleled. But he’d done no more than offer her chaste kisses and promising glances. She was a lady, and he gave her every courtesy, every consideration.

He needn’t have bothered. The roiling rage he’d experienced when he’d found her in Leigh’s arms—not talking innocently, as his detractors claimed, but with Leigh’s hand fondling her bared breast and her skirt hiked practically to her neck—had almost consumed him. He could have, cheerfully and without regret, killed them both.

But he hadn’t. He’d shown remarkable restraint, escaping into his work for the Foreign Office and the terrors of the Revolution in France. It wasn’t until he’d returned to London that he’d heard the lies about him almost killing his—
former
—best friend.

No doubt Leigh had spread the rumors. He had been angry and humiliated when Victoria had refused his offer of marriage. Apparently, she’d realized just how modest Leigh’s income really was. Victoria’s final marriage to a lowly Irish peer did nothing for her status in the eyes of the
ton
. Guilty or not, she would always be tainted by scandal.

When he’d returned from France, Ethan had seen no need to plot revenge. Victoria and Leigh were their own punishments.

But even now, sitting in Brigham’s desk chair and staring into the Hampshire night, Ethan felt a wrench from the old anger, the humiliation. Francesca was nothing like Victoria, he told himself, except that Francesca too was beautiful.

No, not beautiful, he corrected. If she’d been beautiful he would have noted her when they were first introduced. She wasn’t at all classically beautiful, as her sister was destined to be and as Victoria was.

Something else in her attracted him. Something more. Something wild and untamed in her face and eyes and hair. She wasn’t merely beautiful. She was ravishing. Violently ravishing—a hard beauty, like the harsh rocky hills and moors of his home in Yorkshire, tempered with the softness of Hampshire’s sloping green knolls and stately meadows.

She was like the fabled lodestone rock he’d heard sailors discuss when his work had demanded he sit for hours in seedy dockside taverns. Her magnetism drew him in, and he saw himself surrendering, one by one, the defenses he’d erected since Victoria.

Witchcraft, he decided. Chalk it up to witchcraft. He didn’t want to consider any other possibilities, though one in particular came unbidden to his mind more frequently of late.

He was falling in love with her.

Even as the idea entered his mind, he shoved it aside with a violence that should have crushed it. But somehow the notion continued to survive the assault and return when he least expected the attack.

Ethan scanned the stack of papers he’d laid on the viscount’s desk and extracted one. He perused the missive then flicked his gaze to the clock. Three and a quarter. Outside the wind began to wail again, but the knock on the French door was sharp and peremptory. Ethan rose to open the door.

F
rancesca brushed at a wayward curl and pressed her ear to the door again. She bit her lip. Squinted. But all she could hear were muffled voices. Men’s voices.

The storm had woken her, and she’d gone down for a glass of milk. Then she’d heard sounds in her father’s library. She was silent as a mouse as she moved. At half past three in the morning, the last thing she wanted was to be seen eavesdropping.

“Both your and Grenville’s theories can go to the devil!”

The voices on the other side of the door rose in argument, and Francesca caught her breath, pressing her ear firmly to the smooth wood.

“You have your list of suspects. While you and the secretary run off at the mouth and waste time investigating half the peerage, I’m sailing for France. I’ll get my hands on the real bastards.”

Francesca frowned. She knew the speaker wasn’t Ethan or her father, but there was something familiar about the man’s voice, the tenor and the cadence.

“It’s the leader that’s important, and that man is here in England.”

The last speaker was Ethan. She was sure of it. Clasping her hands together, she tried to temper her excitement.

Ethan was a spy. A spy! Why else would he be discussing suspects, France, and the Foreign Secretary? She’d actually guessed correctly. Now she had the proof.

“—and you don’t have the experience to go alone.” Ethan’s muffled voice pulled her attention back.

“The devil I don’t—” the other man began loudly.

There was a muted curse, and the voices lowered. Francesca huffed in frustration, pushing her ear so tightly to the door it ached.

“London!”

Francesca almost clunked her head against the wood when the voices rose again.

“What the hell am I to do in London, Ethan? Sit on my arse at Drury Lane?”

“I told you. I want a complete report on each of these men,” she heard Ethan answer, voice tinged with warning. “Begin with Ashton and work down the list.”

Francesca bit her lip. Ashton. He was a respected member of the House of Lords and had been to her family’s town house in London on occasion. Did Ethan suspect him of some wrongdoing? She’d heard the other man speak of traveling to France. Could Ashton be a traitor, aiding the French in the ongoing war? It was almost unthinkable that an Englishman, a peer, would stoop to such treachery.

“It’s a waste of time. I won’t do it.”

“Yes, you will.” The command in Ethan’s voice was undeniable. “You’ll do what I tell you to. And if I tell you to go to South Walk at Vauxhall and sit under the ruins of Palmyra from two to five each afternoon, humming ‘The Jolly Young Waterman,’ you damn well better do it.”

Francesca sucked in her breath. Whoever Ethan’s companion was, she could tell he wouldn’t like being ordered about.

“The South Walk,” the man answered, his voice tight.

“That’s right. Under Palmyra.” Ethan was definitely not backing down.

“The hell I will.”

Francesca winced, lifting her ear from the door a fraction of an inch to brace herself for the coming explosion.

“Now if you’d said the Dark Walk at Vauxhall, I might consider it.”

Francesca frowned and leaned in again. The tenseness in the other man’s voice was gone. She wouldn’t have called his tone affable, but he didn’t sound angry anymore. And what was he talking about? The Dark Walk? Where all the lovers met? Were the two men
joking
?

“Oof!”

The door swung open, and Francesca tumbled inside. Two strong hands caught her before she skidded to the floor, and she looked up into Ethan’s molten eyes. “Miss Dashing.”

She winced as the blade of his voice cut her pride. “Ah—” She tried to remember the excuse she’d formulated for just such a moment, but her mind went blank when she glanced down and saw the gap in Ethan’s open robe, revealing his chest.

His bare chest.

He still wore his trousers and boots, but under that gaping robe he was bare to the waist. Heat, warm and fluid, rushed to her face, and for some reason she couldn’t explain, she yearned to run her fingers over that expanse of flesh.

And so much flesh! Her fantasies hadn’t accounted for the hard, flat planes of his abdomen or the line of dark, curling hair that disappeared into a V below his waistband. Like a hooked fish, she gulped great bursts of air in an effort to dispel the wave of dizziness threatening to overwhelm her.

“Is this she?” The voice came from behind her, and belatedly Francesca remembered they weren’t alone.

Still glowering at her, Ethan released her shoulders. “Who else?”

She heard a chuckle and turned to glimpse Ethan’s fellow spy. He wore a greatcoat, a bicorn hat, and a sensual half-smile on his lips. He removed his hat, and Francesca blinked. There was definitely something familiar about him. Something about the careless arrogance with which he held himself, the negligent tone of his voice, the shadowed eyes. With a start, she realized he reminded her of Ethan, and then knew why.

Selbourne. Ethan’s half brother.

“Miss Dashing,” Ethan said, moving to stand beside her. “May I present my brother, the Earl of Selbourne, and your neighbor from Grayson Park.”

Francesca curtsied. Selbourne bowed and took her hand. It was all very formal for the middle of the night. She ignored Ethan’s mocking formal tone and smiled into his brother’s cool gray eyes. She’d seen Selbourne before, but now, face-to-face, the resemblance between the two men became even more apparent. Selbourne was still smiling, but his eyes, unlike Ethan’s, held no warmth, no hint of burnished fire. They were steely gray mirrors that seemed to reflect more than they absorbed. His gaze on her was unnerving.

“My lord,” she murmured.

“Selbourne, the Honorable Miss Francesca Dashing.”

“Miss Dashing,” Selbourne said, kissing her hand coolly then releasing it. “This is an unexpected pleasure.” The expression on his face told her he considered it more unexpected than a pleasure.

He glanced at Ethan, and there was a silent exchange between the brothers, the kind, having two siblings herself, Francesca understood well.

Ethan cleared his throat. “I’ll see you at the ball next week, then?”

“I’ll come in from...London for it.” Selbourne ran a hand through his hair, and Francesca didn’t fail to notice the pause and the tightness in his voice around the word
London
.

Selbourne lifted his hat to her. “Goodbye, Miss Dashing.”

She hadn’t expected him to offer his felicitations on their betrothal as she was certain he knew it to be a ruse.

“And don’t trust him.” Selbourne cocked his head at Ethan. “He’s the black sheep of the family.” His gray eyes were almost blue with the warmth of his affection for his brother—warmth that had been missing before.

Francesca couldn’t help but smile at him, seeing now why so many women found Selbourne attractive.

“Thank you for the warning. I must admit—” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I’ve heard he’s a bad man.”

And she would know, after the firsthand experience she’d had with his debauched ways not twelve hours before.

Beside her, Ethan chuckled, and she prayed he wasn’t remembering her behavior in the tack room.