A Dangerous Deceit (Thief-Takers) by Alissa Johnson (4)

The maid retrieved the tray without complaint and led the way upstairs.

Jane followed in silence…all the way to the second door on the first floor.

Of course it had been the first floor. She’d been standing mere feet away from it when she’d waved Gabriel off. No doubt he’d left with the assumption she could manage the remaining fifty-two inches on her own.

And why shouldn’t he have assumed? Most peoplecouldmanage it. Just nother, she thought dully as she stepped inside.

Her first, useless thought upon entering was that the room looked rather cozy. It had a large bed on one wall, a table and chairs set before a window that looked out onto the street, and a pair of comfortably worn armchairs facing the fireplace. She shuffled closer to the beckoning glow of coals smoldering on the grate, but if it delivered on the heat it promised, she didn’t notice. Her fingers felt like ice, and they shook when she held her hands out to warm them.

She was dimly aware of Gabriel talking to the maid behind her.

There was a scuffle of feet, the sweep of skirts, the jingle of coins. It figured that now, when she didn’t need to hear them, every sound seemed amplified.

When the door shut, it sounded like canon fire. And the silence that followed was deafening.

***

Gabriel stared at Jane’s rigid back and, quite possibly for the first time in his life, found himself entirely too angry to speak.

And everything had been going so well.

During his quick visit to the station, he’d learned that Kray’s men had arrived by rail the day before, but had disembarked only long enough to speak with the young man at the ticket office. They’d offered him a reward in exchange for sending word to the town of Surcombe should anyone fitting Gabriel and Jane’s description appear at the station.

In explaining this, the young man had been quick to mention that he had not been made aware that it was Sir Gabriel Arkwright of the Thief Takers that he was being bribed to betray. He’d been more than eager to make up for the near mistake, agreeing to wire the address in Surcombe the next morning with the news that he’d seen Gabriel come through town on a train headed southeast.

Gabriel had returned to the inn feeling satisfied with the current state of affairs. As Kray’s men had come through only the day before, they were unlikely to check back during the six hours he and Jane had to wait for their train.

The only remaining threat was the possibility of one or two deserters in town, but Jane would be safe hidden in the hotel.

All   in   all, things looked promising.

He’d been imagining a hot bath with an entire bucket of soap if he could manage it, a change of clothes, and a nice long nap.

But first he would head up to the room and check on Jane.

Only he’d not had to go up to their room. He’d seen her through the window.

Every bloody soul walking down the street could see her, sitting all alone three feet from the glass and framed in like a damned portrait. A pretty picture she’d made, too. Even in his hurry to get inside, he’d noticed more than one man pause to take a second look. Any one of them might have been a straggler from Kray’s group.

“What happened, Jane?” He was surprised by how calm his voice sounded when there was so much anger boiling beneath the surface.

Still, she jumped a little at the sound of it and turned only halfway round to look at him. She’d taken a small candlestick from the mantle, and was nervously rubbing her thumbs over the brass. “I… Um…”

“Peckish, were you?”

“No, but…” She trailed off and shook her head.

“Butwhat?” he demanded, his temper breaking through. He couldn’t help it. She could have been taken. She might have been killed. “For God’s sake, what thehell were you thinking? Of all the foolish, idiotic—”

She turned to face him fully. “Don’t call me that!”

“Don’t…?” He swore and jabbed a finger in the general direction of the tavern. “The windows in that room looked out onto the street. We don’t know where all of Kray’s men are now, and you were sitting alone and exposed for everyone to see. What am I supposed to call—”

“There were no drapes or shutters. I couldn’t hide. I tried—”

“You should have tried coming to the room. I explicitly told you to come upstairs and lock yourself in this room. Any particular reason you decided to ignore me?”

“I didn’t ignore you.”

“Then what the devil were you doing, because I could have sworn I made my instructions simple and clear. Go upstairs and stay there. How bloody hard was that?!”

“Stop yelling at me,” she snapped.

“Explain why you didn’t do as you were told,” he shot back.

“I am not required to follow your orders, Gabriel. I’m not a child—”

“Youagreed to follow them. You promised to stay in the room. I watched you walk up here. Are you telling me you lied to me—”

“No—”

“—the way you lied to me about being able to seat a horse? What else have you been dishonest about?”

“Nothing,” she cried and went from rubbing the candlestick to twisting it in her hands as if she were wringing a handkerchief. “I’m not lying to you. Not—”

“We both knowthat’s a lie.”

“It’s not! Not the way you mean,” she insisted, her voice catching. “I don’t want to receive you. I just—”

“Receive me?”

“What? No… I… Did I say…?” Suddenly, she scrunched up her face in acute frustration and made a sound that was half growl and half groan. “Damn it! I’m not trying to receive you! I didn’t hear you properly.”

Deceive, he realized, notreceive. “Didn’t hear me? You answered me. You answered a direct question.”

“I know, but—”

“I asked you if you were comfortable waiting in the room, and you saidyes.”

“Idid, but—”

“So what is wrong with your hearing that you can answer my question, make a promise to me, and then completely fail to—”

“I don’t know!” She all but screamed at him. All at once, she lost all composure. Like a lit powder keg, she simply…exploded. “Idon’t knowwhat’s wrong with it! I don’t know why I can’t always hear you, or understand you, or remember what you said! I don’t know why I forgot where I was supposed to go! I don’t know what’s wrong with me, and I don’t know why I can’t fix it! I don’t know why I can’t have a life like everyone else! Idon’t know—”

He rushed forward and caught her wrist before she could hurl the candlestick across the room. “Jane, stop. Stop.”

She was pale and trembling, her breath came in gasps, and, to his everlasting horror, there were tears brimming in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s all right. Take a deep breath now. Why don’t you—”

“Don’t patronize me. Don’t talk to me as if I’m stupid.”

“No. I mean yes.No, I won’t.Please don’t cry.”

“I’m not.” She sniffled then and shoved the candlestick at him. “Fine, I am. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“There’s not. Nothing at all.” He just really, really didn’t want her to do it. “Please stop anyway.”

She produced a small, watery laugh. “At last, something that frightensthe Sir Gabriel Arkwright besides teeth.”

He let that pass. He wasn’t afraid of tears. He simply wasn’t any good at making them go away. That was Samuel’s forte. His friend had a knack for comforting or soothing or…what have you. Gabriel, on the other hand, always felt like a blind bull in a china shop, stumbling about, frightening people, and generally just making everything worse.

Still, he had to try something. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper,” he said gently. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

Jane opened her mouth, clearly intent on delivering a scathing retort. But then all the fight seemed to just drain out of her. Her shoulders sagged, and she let out a long, shuddering breath. “I shouldn’t have yelled back,” she said at length. “I apologize.”

“There’s no need. I did yell first.”

She swallowed hard and her gaze tracked to the candlestick in his hand. “I wasn’t going to throw that at you. I meant to throw it at the wall.”

“I know. But I’ve seen your aim. It could use improvement.” Her lips curved up in a weak, obligatory smile. It wasn’t much, but it gave him the courage to reach out and wipe away a tear. “It’s all right, Jane.”

When she gave a small nod, he set the candlestick aside, then began to untie the ribbons of her bonnet.

Jane blinked at him as he lifted the bit of straw and satin away. “I forgot I was wearing it.”

He tossed it on a chair, then cupped her face with both hands. “Will you tell me what that was all about?”

“I’d rather not.”

“I know.” He brushed his thumbs along her cheeks. “But will you?”

She worked her bottom lip with her teeth for a long time. “I was going to tell you some of it. I said I would, but then Kray’s men came to the stable…”

“I know.”

“I’m not insane,” she said firmly. “And I am not stupid.”

“I’ve never thought otherwise.” He’d thought her delightfully odd and mysterious, but there was no question she was sane and, her decision to sit in the dining room notwithstanding, quite clever.

“But other people do, and youknow they do. Haven’t you wondered why?”

“You’re referring to the villagers in Ardbaile,” he said and dropped his hands to her shoulders. “And no, strictly speaking, I haven’t wondered why. What Ihave wondered is why you’ve isolated yourself at Twillins, leading the villagers to form inaccurate assumptions about you out of ignorance. Assumptions that would be corrected if they had the chance to know you.”

“How do you know they’re inaccurate? How—”

“Because I know you, Jane. Even if I don’t know all your secrets, I know you.”

“You say that now.”

“And I’ll say it again.” He couldn’t stop himself from leaning down and pressing a kiss to her temple. “Give me the chance to say it again. When it matters.”

He pulled back a little and watched her close her eyes.

“Come here,” he murmured. Taking her hand, he led her to the foot of the bed. “Sit down.”

“I don’t—”

He took a seat and tugged gently on her hand. “Sit with me. Please.” She complied with a sigh, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Do you really have trouble hearing?”

She stiffened again, and there was a long pause before she replied. “Sometimes.”

“And you jumble your words,” he pressed. “But not, I think, the way Eliza does.”

“No, not like Eliza. It’s not a quirk. It’s not a matter of speaking too quickly. I might confuse words at any speed. I mean to say one word but use another. I know the difference. I do. But it’s the wrong word that comes out. Sometimes I’m aware I’ve done it, but not always.”

In his estimation, it was still just a quirk, only of a different sort. But his opinion on the matter was irrelevant. Jane obviously considered it a significant problem. That was what mattered.

“You heard a bee in your parlor window,” he said, letting the subject of mixing words go for the moment. “And the nightingale in the woods.” Those had been soft, distant sounds. “How could you hear those, but not me when I’m standing right beside you?”

“It’s…” She briefly pressed the heels of her hands against her eyelids. “It’s difficult to explain. It’s not that I can’t hear soft sounds, though that can happen. The trouble is that I don’t hearcorrectly. That is… Oh, this is impossible,” she groaned. “I don’t know why I thought I could tell you part of this and not all.”

He didn’t know why she’d felt shecouldn’t tell him all of it, but he kept that question to himself as well. “Why don’t you try telling me from the beginning.”

“The beginning. Right.” She nodded, twisted her skirts in her hands, opened and closed her mouth several times, but didn’t manage to produce another word.

“Jane—”

“This is very hard. I…” Her gaze flicked in his direction and away again. “It’s hard. I wish we had some whiskey.”

“Whiskey?”

“Mr. Harmon keeps it in the house. I find it soothing when I’ve had a nightmare.” One shoulder jerked up slightly. “And other times.”

He rose from the bed. “Wait here.”

“Oh, you don’t have to—”

“I’ll be right back,” he promised.

He fetched a bottle from the tavern and returned in short order. Jane hadn’t moved from her seat in his absence, but she appeared a little more settled. Her hands were still gripping her skirts, but the knuckles were no longer white, and her cheeks had regained some of their color.

“I can’t answer to the quality of it,” he told her as he poured a finger of drink into a glass and handed it to her. “But it should get the job done.”

“Like a good lie,” she mumbled, staring down at the amber liquid. She took a sip as he resumed his seat next to her. Then she took another and sighed heavily. “You asked me why I was sent to Twillins Cottage. Do you remember?”

“I do.”

She gave a jerky nod. “When I was eight, I snatched a cane away from my governess, Mrs. Lineker, and struck her with it. Right across the cheek.” She released her skirts to draw a finger above her jawline. “It did her no permanent damage, but it was a perfectly horrid thing to do.”

Eight was a bit too old, he thought, to be lashing out in temper. “Why did you strike her?”

“Because she kept asking me the same question over and over again. What is forty minus ten? And I would answer, and she would cane me across the knuckles for getting it wrong. I’m sure you know how that feels.”

“I took a few raps across the knuckles at school.”

“But never, I imagine, for giving the correct answer.” She shook her head, and a line formed across her brow. “She would say forty minus ten, and I would say thirty, and then the cane would come down. Again and again. Forty minus ten. Forty minus ten. She never wavered from her question, and I never wavered from my answer of thirty.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither did I,” she said, a wealth of sadness in those three words. “I couldn’t figure out why all my governesses seemed to hate me. She was not the first I ran off. There had been a number before her. They all reported the same thing to my father—that I was a completely ungovernable child. They said I refused to listen, refused to follow instructions, and sometimes even refused to acknowledge them when they called my name. They told my father I failed at my lessons just to be contrary, that there was no reason I should struggle to sound out a word I had read quite well just that morning, or forget lessons I had learned only hours before. By the time Mrs. Lineker arrived, I was unbearably tired of it, of listening to them malign me in front of my father, of the names some of them would call me in private. And I was even angrier with myself. Every time I made a mistake, or forgot something, it felt unforgivable, as if I was proving all of them right. I couldn’t stand it anymore. The constant anger and frustration. My behavior became unpredictable, my temper more and more volatile. In the end, Mrs. Lineker’s insistence that forty minus ten was not thirty was the last straw. For everyone.”

“What happened?”

“My father sent for a specialist who concluded that I…” Her gaze skittered away, and she took another drink. The tips of her ears turned pink. “He said I was feebleminded and morally deficient. I needed to be removed from the home for my own benefit and the safety of others. At least that’s what I was told later.”

He swallowed a thousand curses, battled back the sudden, burning urge to hit something,anything. “You arenot—”

“Fourteen minus ten,” she cut in. “That’s what she’d been asking. Not forty.Fourteen. I’d been wrong all along. It took me years to figure that out.”

“You didn’t hear her correctly.” And for that she had been labeled feebleminded. It was grossly unjust.

“I often don’t hear things properly. I confuse words that sound similar. Occasionally some words, or even whole sentences, sound entirely nonsensical to me, and I can’t understand what’s being said no matter how many times it’s repeated. There are times noises seem too loud, even small ones like a bee in a window, or the breeze in the pines. When that happens I can’t hear anything else. I can’t even think about anything else. Loud noise is even worse. And sometimes—”

He took her free hand and gently unwound the stiff fingers from her skirts. She was breathing too fast again, her agitation all but palpable. “You don’t have to tell me everything at once.”

“I think it might be easier if I do.”

He brushed his thumb along her knuckles. “All right. But before you continue, let me be clear about something.” Bringing her hand to his lips, he pressed a kiss to her palm. “Nothing you’ve told me leads me to believe you are now, or have ever been, mad, feebleminded, or morally deficient.”

Her father, on the other hand, had obviously been all three. And a bastard to boot. Who could do that to his own child? Any child? Who could do that toJane?

She gave him a look that somehow managed to be both sheepish and angry. “We have had entire conversations in which I’ve had no idea what you were saying.”

That gave him pause. “Entire conversations?”

“Maybe not entire,” she admitted. “But parts. Important parts. I don’t remember telling you I can’t ride. When you asked I must not have understood, so I just…pretended otherwise.”

“Ah. So your mind hasn’t been wandering to a lost husband or a dead man in your garden.” Her lips trembled briefly at the small joke. It wasn’t much, but he’d take it. “Is that what happened today? Is that why you went to the tavern? You didn’t hear me?”

“Not exactly. I did hear you, and I understood what you were saying at the time. It’s just…” She winced, and her voice grew soft again. “It was so loud downstairs and… Sometimes I concentrate so hard on hearing and understanding what’s being said that I…I forget to remember it. I know that sounds mad, but—”

He squeezed her hand. “You’re not mad.”

“I couldn’t remember if you’d said the first door on the second floor or the second door on the first floor. I listened, but I wasn’t sure afterward. I tried to ask a man in the tavern to show me to my room, but then he asked me something in return that I couldn’t understand, and everything just sort of spun out of control. If I had just written it down, or even repeated it once or twice to help me remember, everything would have been fine, but—”

“It’s all right.”

“It’s not. It’s…” She let out a short breath, finished the last of her drink and set the empty glass on the mattress beside her. “Earlier, at Twillins, you said I should relocate somewhere I wasn’t welcome. Thatanimosity was liberating?”

“I’m certain I didn’t.”

“Well, of course you didn’t,” she said, throwing up a hand. “That’s the point. But it’s what I heard. Animosity. I don’t know what you meant by that.”

“I don’t either. I… Oh, yes. I remember.Anonymity can be liberating.” He shook his head. “I don’t know about the welcomed bit.”

She closed her eyes and sighed again. “Anonymity. That makes more sense.”

“If you didn’t understand me, why not ask me to repeat myself?”

“Because repeating the same thing doesn’t help me to hear it. I did try, you’ll recall. All I heard was animosity.”

“But you heard me correctly now.”

“Yes. But not the first two times.” She pressed the heel of her hand against one eye. “What sort of idiot needs the same word repeated three times?”

He captured her wrist and brought it down. “You’re not an idiot.”

“No, I’m not, but it is difficult to convince others of that when I respond inappropriately, or not at all, or ask them to repeat the same thing over and over again. And I still get it wrong.”

“That’s why you stay away from the village.”

She nodded and looked away. “I tried to visit a few times. It didn’t go well, and then I felt so guilty because I’d broken my promise to Edgar to stay away from Ardbaile.”

“Hang Edgar.”

Her gaze snapped back to him. “What?”

“I said…” He paused as realization dawned on him. “It helps you to watch me speak, doesn’t it?”That was why she stared so intently. When she nodded, he gave her a rueful smile. “You’ve dealt my vanity a significant blow.”

“Yes, well, imagine how mine feels at the moment,” she muttered.

Hecould imagine it, and it squeezed his heart tight. “Can I say it now?”

“Say what?”

“That I know you.” He released her hands and took her by the shoulders, turning her to face him fully. “I know you, Jane. I know you to be a clever, loyal, loving, kind, and courageous woman. I know you are neither mad nor dimwitted. I knew all of that ten minutes ago, and I know all of that now.”

She studied him for a long time, her expression both hopeful and suspicious. He let her look her fill, willing her to see the truth.

“I think you mean that,” she said softly.

“Of course I mean it.”

“I hope so, because—” Her throat worked in a difficult swallow. “The reason I didn’t want to come into Lansville is… There was an asylum here once, just outside of town. Brackmer’s. That’s where the specialist…”

“Your father sent you to anasylum?” He’d assumed Jane had been exiled to the coast, not locked away in a bloody asylum. He brought her closer and pressed a kiss to her temple. “I’m sorry.” God, how insufficient that word was. How ineffectual. And still he couldn’t stop himself from offering it. He moved his lips to her brow, kissed her again. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s closed now,” she said, as if that somehow made it better. “It could have been worse. I’ve heard of far worse places than Brackmer’s. And I think, in their way, they were trying to help.” She shook her head. “They didn’t, of course. It was the Harmons who really helped me.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

“Have you ever taken the water cure?”

“No, but I understand that if it’s properly done, it can alleviate a great many ills.”

“Is there a proper way to douse a terrified child with ice water? Or wrap her in freezing, wet sheets and tie her to a bed, or—”

“No,” he said quickly. “None.” And the thought of Jane young, afraid, and hurting turned his stomach. “I’m sorry.”

She took a shaky breath and shook her head. “It wasn’t all bad. It was usually only in the mornings for me. I was almost always locked back in my room before eleven.”

“And then what?”

“And then I ate, if I was still hungry. The staff left food in my room for the day. Books, too, if I’d behaved. Despite my trouble with words, I do like to read.”

“You stayed in the room all day?”

“It was certainly better than the alternative.”

“Did you not have any company?” He brushed his thumb along the very edge of her hairline. “Staff? Other residents?”

“No. We weren’t allowed to fraternize. I could hear the other girls sometimes. When they were being taken for the cure. And I could always tell when a new girl came in. They fought the hardest.”

She said it with both sympathy and the cold, deadened air of a veteran. And suddenly he remembered how long Jane had been away at the coast for her health. Surely she hadn’t been at the asylum that whole time.

“How long were you there, Jane?”

Don’t say it. Don’t say it.

“Two years. More or less.”

More or less. As if an extra week hardly signified. As if every single day, every single minute wouldn’t have been an eternity. As if it didn’t matter.

It mattered. Gabriel remembered from his research exactly how long Jane had been away at the coast. “Two years, four months.”

Her brows lifted. “And two weeks, two days. And it was half past noon when Edgar came to fetch me. How did you know?”

“I looked into your past some, remember? That’s how long you were gone from Fourgate Hall for your health.” He hadn’t been aware of the exact weeks and days, however.

He was no longer confused as to why she’d become a recluse. He was amazed she was willing to step a foot out of her door. She’d spent two years afraid to leave a room, and seventeen more afraid to leave her home lest she be sent back to that same room.

At least in that, he could help.

“You’re not going back. I promise you.” He couldn’t go back and rescue a frightened, lonely, and abandoned child. Nor beat the men responsible for it into the ground. But he could do this for her. He could give her the security she’d been denied for far too long.

“You can’t promise that. It’s not under your—”

“I can,” he said firmly. “I’mtheSir Gabriel Arkwright.” He waited for the reminder, and the implications, to sink in. “I have influence that men like your father and his specialist couldn’t begin to imagine. So long as I live and breathe, you will not step foot in an asylum, or any variation of such an institution, ever again. And so long as I am still living and breathing, I’ll see to it you’re protected after I’m gone. You willnever go back.”

Her breathing quickened as she stared at him unblinking. “You promise?”

“I swear it.”

He felt a tremor go through her, and her lips trembled. “Never?”

“Never.”

“But what if I—”

“Never. No, please don’t cry.”

Still trembling, her mouth curved up at the corners. “Will you sign a contract stipulating your intentions and provide—”

Her laughter blended with his own, echoing in the small room.

“I’ll sign as many as you like,” he offered. In fact, he quite liked the idea of it. Trust was all well and good, but nothing stole fear away like the luxury of certainty. He brushed the backs of his fingers along her cheek. “I don’t think I could deny you anything, Jane Ballenger.”

A pretty blush crept over her skin, right under his fingers. “It feels strange to have told you this. I thought I would always keep that secret from everyone but the Harmons. I assumed I would simply hide or lie to everyone else for the rest of my life.”

God, he hated the thought of that, hated that she’d been forced to live with the deceit for so many years. He knew what that felt like. “Lies like that, old lies, they’ll eat at you over time.”

“It doesn’t have to now.” She lifted a hand and brushed the tips of her fingers along his jaw. “Because of you.”

The atmosphere shifted in the room, or maybe it just seemed that way to him. Her fingers were soft and warm, barely a whisper against his skin. But he felt the touch everywhere.

She leaned closer, her intention clear.

He held still, even as he told himself to pull away; he didn’t move a muscle except to say, “Jane, I promised not to—”

“I didn’t,” she whispered and pressed her lips to his.

He let himself sink into the kiss, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close.

It was sweet. Sweeter than any kiss he could remember ever sharing with a woman, even in his youth. He explored her mouth with gentle sweeps and brushes. He tasted her with slow, indulgent strokes of his tongue. Her arms twined around his neck, and he let himself enjoy the simple pleasure of holding Jane close, feeling the soft weight of her arms resting on his shoulders.

He kissed her the way he wished he had on the train. The way he should have in the stable. He kissed her without artifice or guile, without holding any part of himself back or pushing either of them for more.

It was a kiss for the sake of a kiss. Romance for the sake of romance. It was tender and selfless and genuine. It was perfection. From the second Jane touched his cheek to the moment he gently pulled away, it was the most perfect kiss he’d ever known.

“That should have been the one,” he whispered.

Her lids lifted slowly. “The one?”

“Your first kiss. That should have been it. I’m sorry it wasn’t.”

She made a noncommittal noise at the back of her throat, and her amber eyes dipped to his mouth. “Gabriel?”

“Hmm?”

She looked up at him again with a new, determined glint in her amber eyes. “I release you from your promise not to seduce me.”

***

Jane felt Gabriel stiffen against her. She might have taken offense at that if his arms hadn’t tightened around her at the same time.

She knew her decision might seem rash to him. And maybe it was. Maybe she was being reckless and foolish, setting herself up for terrible heartache down the road. But at that moment, she couldn’t bring herself to care. She never got to be reckless and foolish. She was always cautious, always careful, always afraid. She had denied herself both risk and its promised rewards for far too long, had been reconciled to a life half-lived for too many years.

Today, she would live fully. She would throw caution to the wind and do exactly as she pleased. Because she could.

And just then, nothing would please her more than to stay in Gabriel’s arms.

Gabriel lightly cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t want it. Your promise. I’m sorry I asked for it. Initially, I thought that once everything was done, if I had the opportunity, I might try my hand at it. Seduction, that is.” Well, she’d indulged in a brief fantasy or two, but that was essentially the same thing. “And then I realized how foolish that would be—”

“I strenuously disagree.”

“But why ask an amateur when there’s a master on hand?”

“Master of seduction?” He laughed softly. “Is that what I am?”

“That’s what they say.”

“They being the papers a decade ago?”

“Well, yes,” she conceded. “I suppose the information is a bit out of date.” She hadn’t really thought about that. “If you’re out of practice…”

“I still manage to muddle my way through.”

Excellent. Battling back nerves, she gathered her courage and pressed a little closer. “Will you show me?”

He shook his head. “I can’t, Jane. I promised.”

“But I released you from that promise.”

“It doesn’t matter.” One hand left her waist and settled at the back of her head. “You’re under my care.”

“And that would change if we…?” Her eyes flicked to the pillows on the bed.

“No. I swear to you, no.”

“Then I fail to see the problem.”

He bent his head toward her protectively. “You’re not in a position to say no.”

“That’s not true.” She leaned in closer, narrowing the distance between them. “I would say no if I wanted to.”

“Then I’m not in a position to say yes.”

“Then I’ll say it for you.Yes.” She took his face in her hands and pressed her lips to his. “Gabriel, please. Say yes.”

And say it now, she thought, when she was feeling brave—freed by his promise that she would never return to the asylum, and emboldened by the knowledge that there were no more lies, no more secrets standing between them.

When he didn’t immediately respond, she wondered if she would be forced to make a stab at seduction after all. She hoped not. Her notions of what constituted seduction were vague at best. Her brief imaginings had involved nebulous images of music, dancing, a pretty dress, and candlelight. She may have batted her eyelashes and giggled behind a fan.

In retrospect, it seemed a little unrealistic.

She opened her mouth to ask once more, but he spoke before she could.

“There’s no great mystery to seduction,” he said softly, his voice a little rough. “All one needs is a little time, patience, some experience, and, most important, an understanding of one’s partner.”

“What sort of understanding?”

“Her likes and dislikes. Different people find pleasure in different things. For example…” He leaned down and softly touched his lips to the corner of her mouth. “Did you like that?”

“Yes,” she breathed. “Very much.”

“And this?” He brushed the tip of his tongue ever so lightly over her bottom lip.

She shivered from head to foot. “Yes.”

His lips curved up in a slow, and decidedly seductive, smile. He took her wrist, brought her arm up, and pressed a kiss on the inside of her elbow. “And that?”

She considered it. “Not as much, no.”

“Fair enough.” She felt the rumble of laughter in his chest a second before he dipped his head and found the crook of her neck. “How about this?”

“Oh, yes.”Definitely, yes.

And so began Gabriel’s long, slow, and thorough exploration of Jane’s preferences. He kissed her everywhere, slowly and lightly, cataloguing her reactions one inch of skin at a time. His lips found her jaw, her ear, her shoulders. He tasted her bottom lip, her top lip, the corner of her mouth. His mouth brushed against each cheekbone, found a sensitive spot at her collarbone, another on the inside of her wrist.

At first, each feather-light touch of his lips elicited a single, discernible response. A flick of heat. A passing shiver. A lovely sense of warmth. And she waited with baited breath in anticipation of each new sensation.

But soon the pleasure from one began to bleed into the next. He wasn’t moving any faster, or touching her for any longer, and still the impressions blended into each other, one right over the other, covering her senses like a thickening fog.

She wasn’t certain when she’d closed her eyes, or when Gabriel’s clever fingers had found the buttons on the back of her gown. She wasn’t aware of either until she felt cool air seep through her chemise and chill her overheated skin. Her eyes fluttered open. Gabriel had removed his own coat and necktie. His shirt was open at the collar, and she reached up to touch the exposed skin.

He caught her hand and held it there, just above his heart. “I want to give you someplace better. Not an inn, under assumed names—”

She shook her head. “Stop talking, please.”

“Sweetheart,” he said in a most seductive voice. “You’ll like the talking.”

Shedid like the talking.

He murmured to her as he finished undressing her—standing her up to let her loose gown slip down to the floor, unhooking her corset, sliding her chemise over her head, unlacing her boots, and unrolling her stockings. He whispered wicked promises in her ear, offered her lavish praise and naughty suggestions. Even when she didn’t understand him, when he spoke too softly for her to hear, just the sound of his roughened voice against her skin sent the most delicious waves of heat racing through her blood.

He lifted her into his arms and settled her on the bed, his long, hard form coming to rest on top of her. And with a courage she never realized she possessed, she ran her hands over him in blatant exploration.

Gabriel didn’t seem to mind. Dark lashes swept shut as her palms stroked down the expanse of his chest. It was fascinating, the male form. She wanted to learn every inch of him, every ridge of bone and curve of muscle. She discovered scars, old ones faded with age, and injuries so new they were still pink. She kissed the one she found on his shoulder, a jagged half loop, and let her fingers dance lightly over a straight, raised line at his waist.

He was more than fascinating. He was beautiful. Everything she’d dreamed…

He brushed his knuckles over the top of one breast and she sucked in a breath. Her eyes closed of their own volition.

Over her head, Gabriel’s voice was low and warm. “Like that, do you?”

Before she could answer, he bent his head and tasted her in the same spot, softly, just as he’d kissed her everywhere else. But he didn’t move on as he had before. He lingered, layering one kiss over another until she began to shift beneath him, drenched in pleasure but still desperate for something more.

She felt the wet flick of his tongue against her nipple and heard herself moan.That was what she wanted. Only more. She wanted more of everything.

His hands roamed over her, touching her everywhere, and she followed suit, wanting to feel him, eager to give him the same pleasure he offered her.

He shifted over her, and his hand glided down her belly and between her legs, discovering an incredibly sensitive spot. He played with her, toying and teasing until her hips lifted off the mattress of their own accord. She felt as if she were being wound tighter and tighter, and she didn’t know if she wanted it to keep going, or be released, or both, or…

“Gabriel, I—”

He hushed her with his mouth, even as he moved to settle more firmly between her thighs. One hand hooked beneath her knee, pulling it up to his hip. He pressed into her, and she stiffened against the sudden pressure and accompanying pain. For a brief moment, she considered informing him that she didnot, in fact, like that.

But the discomfort quickly faded, and she looked at him, hovering over her, his eyes closed and his jaw clenched. He was breathing hard through his nose. His arms were trembling beside her. And she felt herself go soft all over, even as a small, secret smile curved her lips.

She did that to him.

“Are you all right?” Gabriel rasped, his lids lifting. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I—” He blinked at her. “You’re smiling.”

She gave a small nod and brushed her hands down the hardened muscles of his back.

He closed his eyes again on a groan. Then he pulled back a little, and returned in a short, smooth glide.

“Oh.” Her own eyes fluttered shut. “Oh, I like that.”

“Thank God,” he whispered, and began to move. The strokes were gentle and slow at first, reviving the sweet, gripping sensation of earlier. She couldn’t stop her hips from lifting to meet each thrust, nor hold back the little gasps of pleasure slipping from her lips.

As she wound tighter and tighter, he altered the pace into something more purposeful, more demanding. She gasped his name, and his hand returned to that spot between her legs where they were joined. His fingers danced over her lightly, teasing her into ever-constricting coils. She struggled to somehow get closer to him, to reach whatever peak her body was so desperate to ascend. She hitched her knees up higher. Her fingers dug into the sinew of his shoulders.

“Gabriel.”

He muttered something she didn’t understand and pressed firmly against her core. His mouth descended on hers at the same time, and she cried out as the tension finally gave way to a blinding pleasure that rolled through her in swamping waves.

It was overwhelming, beautiful. Gabriel thrust once more and held still, a deep, masculine groan emanating from his throat, she knew he felt it, too.

And she thought, perhaps, she liked that best of all.

After a moment, Gabriel rolled to his side, bringing her along with him. He clasped her close, tucking her head beneath his chin. She listened to the hard pounding of his heart as his hand stroked leisurely over her hip.

A part of her wanted to say something, not to fill the silence, but to somehow draw out the moment, as if she could make the wondrous glow she felt last longer if she talked about it. But the rest of her was too exhausted, too content to even try. Instead, she closed her eyes and let Gabriel’s hand and heart lull her to sleep.

***

Gabriel left the inn again and brought back a change of clothes, including a pretty gown of deep blue for Jane. It was her first new gown in years, and by far, her most elaborate. It had dark satin trim, mother-of-pearl buttons, sweeping skirts, and a row of ruffles along the hem.

She’d always eschewed ornamentation and fripperies. A lady put on finery to be noticed, and she’d wanted to be ignored.

But not now. Not with Gabriel.

She glanced at the door and wondered how long he would be in the bath.

She’d watched him carefully for the last few hours. After she’d woken from her nap and found him dressing to go back out again, she’d felt a momentary niggling of doubt. She’d not given either of them very much time to think before…well, seducing him into seducing her. She’d been worried that once the heady glow of lovemaking had dimmed, he might begin to view her in a different light—as someone other thanjust Jane.

But she’d seen nothing in his demeanor to indicate that his opinion of her had altered.

Granted, he spent two hours sleeping, a half hour running errands, and what now seemed to her to be an inordinate amount of time in the bath, but in the moments in-between, she saw no change in him except a new—and much appreciated—tendency to make certain he was facing her when they spoke.

Also, he seemed fond of kissing her whenever he had the chance. Little pecks and tender kisses that made her toes curl in her shoes.

Grinning, Jane donned the new gown, fixed her hair with care, and took great pleasure in seeing Gabriel’s eyes widen when he returned already dressed in his own new clothes.

He crossed the room to press his lips to hers. “You look exquisite.”

The gown wasn’t tailored to her figure, and she’d been short on hair pins. At best, she looked quite nice. But she wasn’t going to argue with him.

Shefeltexquisite. Or perhaps a better description would be to say she feltalive.

Also, rather unexpectedly, a little bit shy. Not in an unpleasant sort of way. It was more like how she’d felt right after their walk in the woods when Gabriel had kissed her hand and promised to return the next day. She’d been happy, worried, excited, and fearful all at once.

That was how she felt now, only it was all intensified because what had been a daydream before suddenly had possibility. There was hope, and not thewouldn’t it be lovely if only things were different sort that came from an overactive imagination. It was real. It had potential.

With hope came a new set of risks, but she was willing to take them. In part because she could finally afford to take a few chances, but mostly because she knew they were worth it.

Gabriel was worth it. And so was she.

When it was time to go, she walked downstairs arm-in-arm with Gabriel. This time, however, she kept her head up as they passed through the tavern. She was tense and uncomfortable, but not afraid.

No one seemed to notice her. She was a stranger here, she realized, just as she’d been a stranger in the first town they’d visited. Nobody recognized her, and now that her mind was free of the terror clouding her judgment, she could acknowledge that it had been irrational to believe someone might expose her secret. Years ago, she had been but one child among many to pass through the town and asylum. Even Mrs. Fitz of the cutting nails, who’d seen her every day, had probably forgotten her completely within a week of her departure.

And even if that wasn’t the case, even if Mrs. Fitz suddenly popped up in front of her and exposed Jane’s past to everyone within earshot, the world would not end. She would be humiliated, but she would remain safe, and the Harmons would remain safe, and life would go on.

Because Gabriel promised she would never go back.

She took a deep, cleansing breath as they stepped outside, and slid a glance up at Gabriel’s profile.

Anonymity was lovely, she decided.

But a Thief Taker was better.

 

Chapter Thirteen

 

Jane boarded the train in Lansville under the impression that they would travel west only for a time to throw off Kray’s men, then change directions and head north to Edinburgh.

It was with some surprise, then, that she found herself ushered off the train two hours later and bustled into a waiting carriage.

“Where are we? Are we not going to Edinburgh by train?”

Gabriel took her hand in an absent manner and shook his head. “We’re going to one of Sir Samuel’s holdings for now.”

Jane wanted to argue, but the hour was growing late. The light would be gone soon, and the idea of sleeping in a real bed for a full night and traveling again tomorrow by day held considerable appeal. “How did Sir Samuel know to send a carriage for us? I thought he was out of the country.”

“He is. I sent a wire to his staff from Lansville.”

Accepting the explanation, she let her gaze travel back to the window. The small village was quickly left behind, giving way to open land spotted with clusters of wooded acreage.

In time, the carriage turned up a long drive leading to a stone house. It was a pleasantly short and squat structure, reminding Jane a little of Twillins. But only a little. Sir Samuel’s home was at least half a dozen times the size of her cottage, and it had lush gardens and a manicured lawn. She counted eight chimneys visible from the front alone, and spied a large stable and three smaller buildings around the side. This was a manor house, a proper estate, not a cottage in the woods.

As they drew closer, her eyes were drawn to the glowing front windows of the house. She saw movement there and swallowed hard at the reminder that, while the owner of the home might be away, there was still staff in residence.

Excluding the empty home from the previous night, she’d never been a guest in someone else’s house before. Not once. Not for a house party, a dinner, or even a cup of tea. What if she did something to embarrass herself? What if the staff reported back to Sir Samuel and his wife that their home had played host to a lunatic in their absence?

What if Sir Samuel demanded an explanation for this from Gabriel and expressed concern over his choice of company and…

All the what-ifs evaporated when they came to a stop at the front steps and Gabriel assisted her from the carriage. She could hear voices inside. They were muffled and distorted, but clearly excited. And much too loud to be staff. No servant would be so foolish or poorly trained to make such a racket upon the arrival of a guest. 

She whirled on Gabriel. “There’s someone here, isn’t there? You said they were out of the country, but there are people here.”

“I sent for Renderwell.”

“Lord Renderwell?”

“I mentioned I asked for a rendezvous with him, remember? This is it. Also—”

Before he could finish, the front door flung open, and to Jane’s astonishment, the Harmons came rushing outside.

“Janey!” Mr. Harmon reached her first and caught her in a crushing embrace that lifted her off her feet.

Mrs. Harmon wasn’t far behind. Laughing gaily, she swatted at Mr. Harmon’s arm. “Oh, put her down, put her down.” She swept Jane into her own arms the second Mr. Harmon complied.

Jane returned the embrace, patting Mrs. Harmon’s back dazedly while the older woman sniffled. “You’re safe,” she heard herself say. “You’re here. You’re safe.”

“Of course we’re here. And so are you.”

Jane pulled away, but couldn’t quite make herself let go. “Butwhat are you doing here? You should be in Edinburgh.” She looked to Gabriel. “They’re supposed to be safe in Edinburgh.”

“Change of plans.” He cleared his throat. “As it were.”

“Edinburgh?” Mrs. Harmon echoed, pulling back. “I’m sure you misunderstood, dear.”

“I didn’t.” Not this time. Gabriel had said Edinburgh. More than once.

“Well, it hardly signifies,” Mrs. Harmon said, accepting a handkerchief from her husband. “We’re all here now, aren’t we? All together again.” She wiped her eyes and beamed at Jane. “And where safer than the home of a Thief Taker?”

Before Jane could respond that it did, in fact, matter that she had once again not been made aware of a change in plans, Mrs. Harmon took her by the hand and led her inside.

A perfectly enormous, bearded man with a friendly smile and a pretty blond woman with sharp blue eyes greeted her in the front hall.

Jane threw Gabriel a startled look when he introduced the couple as Sir Samuel and Lady Brass. Feeling disoriented, she watched him greet his friend with a jovial slap on the back. Her eyes narrowed when he greeted his friend’s wife by bending over her gloved hand and kissing the back of it like an old-fashioned gentleman. Or rogue, as Jane thought was rather more the case.

“Lady Brass,” he murmured. “I didn’t think to find you here.”

“We live here,” Sir Samuel reminded him.

“You were in France.”

“Esther was homesick.”

Lady Brass shot her husband a look that was either annoyance or affection. Jane couldn’t quite tell which. “That’s a dirty lie.” She looked back to Gabriel and smiled pleasantly. “Lottie missed me.”

“I’m sure she did. And how is your sister?”

“She’s—”  Lady Brass broke off as an attractive dark-haired couple strolled into the front hall. “See for yourself.”

She’d stumbled into a house party, Jane realized as she was introduced to Lord and Lady Renderwell. Gabriel had brought her to a damned party—with a viscount and a knight, and their very pretty wives.

Lord and Lady Renderwell greeted her politely before falling into conversation with the rest of the group.Everyone was having a conversation. The noise of words buzzed all around her, making her nerves jump. She caught snippets here and there, enough to follow at least part of what was being said. The Harmons had arrived only that morning. Mr. Fulberg had remained in the local village to keep an eye on the roads and railway.

At some point, it was decided that the ladies and Mr. Harmon would take refreshments in the parlor while Lord Renderwell, Sir Samuel, and Gabriel would adjourn to the study for a glass of brandy.

Gabriel settled a light hand on her arm. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he informed his friends. “I need a word with Miss Ballenger.”

Jane smiled pleasantly at the group until they’d split up and moved out of earshot. Then she whirled on Gabriel. “You saidEdinburgh. And you saidout of the country. Iknow I heard you correctly.”

“I wasn’t expecting Samuel and Esther. I believed them to be out of the country.”

Esther? He called his partner’s very pretty wife by her given name? Not that it should matter at that moment, when there were so many other problems to consider, but it irked her anyway.

“The Harmons were supposed to be safely hidden away in Edinburgh,” she said. “Why did you lie to me?”

“For their own safety, and yours. The fewer people aware of their ultimate destination, the better.”

“Whom did you imagine I would tell?”

“No one, if you could help it. Limiting the spread of information is just procedure. There was no insult intended. I held information from Fulberg as well, and he kept information from me. I was aware the Harmons were coming here, but I had no idea of the path Fulberg meant to take. It was better that way.”

Somehow, the knowledge that she’d been treated no differently than a man with whom he worked was both mollifyingand insulting. “I thought we were done deceiving each other.”

“This wasn’t a deception, Jane. Not like—” He glanced over his shoulder at the sound of laughter in the parlor. “Why don’t we continue this discussion later?”

Jane followed his gaze and felt her stomach tighten into knots. Lady Brass was giving instructions to a maid, and Mr. and Mrs. Harmon appeared to be engaged in a lively discussion with Lady Renderwell. There were too many people, too much noise. She’d not been in a room with that much activity since…well, since the tavern several hours ago. And that had not gone altogether well.

“There’s too many people,” she told Gabriel. “And they’re all talking at once. I won’t be able to understand them.”

“You don’t have to understand. Not if they do. Why not tell them the truth?”

A fine bit of advice coming from him, she thought sullenly. “I can’t just…tell them.”

“The Bales sisters are in no position to pass judgment on someone else’s eccentricities. Believe me.”

“Why not?”

“That’s not my secret to give away. But I can promise you, you’re not the most unusual character they’ve met, and they’d not think less of you if you were.” Stepping closer, he lifted a hand and gently stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “You’ve nothing to be ashamed of, Jane. Tell them.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I can. I’ve never tried to explain it to anyone but you before, and I don’t… I don’t want to…”

“Perhaps the Harmons have already explained?”

“No, they wouldn’t. They’d not presume.” And if for some reason they’d had to, Mrs. Harmon would have mentioned it straightaway.

“Would you like me to do it?”

“I don’t think that would be any easier, listening to someone else describe my affliction.”

“We’ve discussed this. It’s not an affliction. It’s a quirk.”

“One can be afflicted with a quirk,” she muttered.

“That’s an argument for another time. I know these ladies well, Jane. Trust me?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“Well you don’t always make it easy, do you?” She gave him a hard look. “Edinburgh?”

There was a pause before he asked, with a clear hint of worry, “You do trust me to keep the promise I made to you at the inn?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Good.” He nodded once. “That’s good. We’ll talk about the rest tonight. For now, trust me to handle my friends.”

“Are they particularly good friends of yours?”

“I suppose they are. I’ve known Lady Brass since she was fifteen.”

Since she was a child? Good heavens. “You’ve known me for considerably less time.”

“And yet I know you better and like you more than either of them.”

“Really?” How lovely.

“Really,” he affirmed, and then bobbed his head once to the side. “Although, to be fair, there was an eight-year period when the Bales family wouldn’t speak to us.”

“I… You’re being funny. That’s not helpful.” She took another look at the group in the parlor. “What if the ladies say something funny and I don’t realize it? What if I offend them?” And embarrass herself, the Harmons, and Gabriel?

“These women can’t hurt you, Jane. And after this is done, if you wish to never see them again, you don’t have to.”

“But they’re your friends.”

He reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “It doesn’t follow that they have to be yours. I have a number of friends that don’t get on. I enjoy their company separately, simple as that.”

She considered that, and the fact that she had precious few options at present. She could stand in the hallway indefinitely, or try to bluff her way through the evening.

Or she could try honesty.

She swallowed hard. “All right. You can tell them.”

And tell them Gabriel did. In four quick, concise sentences.

“Jane has some trouble with her hearing,” he announced after ushering her into the room and into a large leather chair. “Don’t repeat things if she asks for clarification. It won’t help. Just reword them.”

That was it. That was all he offered.

Jane stared at him, aghast. Some trouble with her hearing? That wasn’t an explanation. How could Lady Brass and Lady Renderwell possibly understand if that was all the information they were given? How could he sound so dismissive? As if it were nothing, really.

Jane glanced about the room. Mr. Harmon’s bushy brows were raised, but he didn’t appear displeased. Mrs. Harmon’s expression was one of guarded curiosity, as if she were reserving judgment. And the ladies appeared…curious.

“She mixes up her words on occasion, as well,” Gabriel added.

Five sentences. A veritable speech.

“Like Eliza?” Lady Brass inquired.

“A bit like Eliza, yes.”

If Lady Brass had a response to that, Jane never heard it. Lord Renderwell’s head popped in the doorway. “Arkwright.”

“In a minute,” Gabriel replied without bothering to look at him. He kept his gaze focused on Jane. “All right, Jane?”

“Er… Yes,” she returned, because what else could she say when every eye in the room was focused on her?

Gabriel’s hand settled on her shoulder for a moment, then he turned and left. Jane wanted to watch him go, if for no other reason than to stare daggers at his back, but she couldn’t risk taking her eyes off the ladies.

“You have trouble hearing?” Lady Renderwell inquired.

Jane blinked at the woman’s casual tone and wondered if perhaps Gabriel’s tack hadn’t been theabsolute worst he might have chosen. Maybe starting out with a simple, straightforward announcement was preferable to a long, drawn-out explanation. Better a molehill than a mountain, she thought. And one could always fill in the details as needed.

“Yes, I’m afraid I do, but it’s…” Out of habit, she looked to Mrs. Harmon for assistance. But before the woman could intervene, Jane gave a slight shake of her head, turned her attention back to Lady Renderwell, and answered for herself. “It’s not quite as simple a matter as Sir Gabriel indicated.”

“Does it help if we speak up?” Lady Brass asked.

“No. Well, sometimes. It can be difficult to hear someone in a noisy environment.”

Lady Brass nodded at her sister. “Like your mother-in-law.”

“There is nothing wrong with the dowager’s hearing. She just likes to ignore people who displease her.”

“Really?” Lady Brass’s mouth fell open. “That horrible woman. I’ve been repeating myself all this time.”

“I know,” Lady Renderwell replied with a rather wicked smile that made Jane want to laugh despite her terrible nerves.

Lady Brass gave her sister a good-natured scowl before returning her attention to Jane. Only she didn’t return it quickly enough. Her face was still half turned away when she said, “A magician you tackle intrepid.”

“I…” Jane’s first instinct was to try to decipher what she’d heard, rearrange the sounds and words into something that had meaning. But she ignored the impulse. She wasn’t going to find sense in that statement. More important, there was no point in telling the truth if she was just going to lie right after it. “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that.”

“I said a magician you tackle intrepid.”

She wanted to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry. “I’m sorry, I—”

Mrs. Harmon looked to Jane and opened her mouth, clearly intending to reword the comment for her. But at the last second, she seemed to think better of it, and turned back to Lady Brass. “Repeating doesn’t help. I’m sorry. If you would be so kind—”

“Oh, yes, of course. I apologize, Miss Bales. I asked…” Lady Brass paused briefly. “I assume an ear trumpet is something you’ve tried in the past.”

Jane nodded, relieved. “Thank you. Yes, I did for a time. They’re not consistently helpful, and not always practical.” They worked somewhat like sitting close to Gabriel on the horse had worked. The amplification of the speaker’s voice helped to minimize other distractions. But in her experience, it also had a tendency to distort sound a little, increasing the likelihood she would hear words incorrectly. She found being able to watch an individual’s mouth more useful.

“Some of them do look as if they would be unwieldy to carry about,” Lady Renderwell commented. “But quite interesting to look at. We had a neighbor once who used a trumpet made with the likeness of her favorite poodle carved into the side.”

“Mr. Stanway,” Lady Brass laughed. “Lovely, peculiar woman. She had animal heads carved into everything. I think you would have liked her immensely, Mrs. Harmon. She adored a well-told story.”

Mrs. Harmon blushed at the praise and neatly complimented Lady Brass in turn.

And that, it would seem, was that. Jane consciously loosened the death grip she had on the arms of her chair. She was fine. Everyone seemed to be fine. She had stumbled in front of strangers and righted herself again with no one the worse off because of it. At least not as far as she could see.

As the conversation progressed to other topics, Jane kept alert for signs of annoyance or derision from the ladies, but she found nothing of the sort. If Lady Brass was put out by having to repeat herself, it didn’t show. And if Jane confused her words on occasion, no one made mention of it.

It became evident very quickly that the sisters were not typical ladies. They were unusually bold in their speech, liberal with their opinions, and took an interest in topics that even Jane knew were considered by many to be too vulgar for well-bred women to discuss. Also, they didn’t seem particularly perturbed that they were hosting a family of strangers running from a murderous spy.

In fact, Lady Brass appeared to relish the idea.

“He made you jump off a moving train?” She rubbed her hands together in glee. “Oh, I should like to try that.”

“Whatever for?” Lady Renderwell demanded.

“To say I have, of course.” She looked back to Jane. “What was it like?”

“It was terrifying.”

“Well, yes, naturally it was that. But wasn’t it exciting as well?”

“Not at the time, but…” Jane gave it some thought. She’d leapt from a moving train. Surely there were very few people who could say the same. It wasn’t exactly an achievement, but it certainly held an element of adventure. The sort she’d only read about in books. “I suppose, looking back, itwas a little exciting.”

“Iknew it.”

Yes, definitely not typical, well-bred ladies. But ladies nonetheless. And she wasconversing with them.

It was a difficult reality for her to accept. Jane had always assumed that, somewhere in the world, there had to be more people like the Harmons. People who were not so quick to judge and condemn those who were different from themselves.

But she’d never thought to actually meet them. It had always been too great a risk to seek them out.

But then Gabriel had come, and now here were the ladies Brass and Renderwell. And she would hazard to guess that their husbands were much the same in temperament, else they’d not be such good friends of Gabriel’s.

This afternoon she had shared her darkest secret. Then she had slept with Gabriel. Now she was taking refreshments with a pair of actual ladies in a strange parlor an unknown number of miles from her home. And she was enjoying herself.

It was astonishing. It was liberating.

It was life, Jane thought, and she had to bite back the sudden urge to grin like a fool.

Jane Ballenger, the recluse of Twillins Cottage, was living in the world.

And it feltglorious.

***

The atmosphere in the study was somewhat less festive.

Renderwell finished pouring drinks at the sideboard and handed one to Gabriel with a scowl. “You took a risk, sending Fulberg and the Harmons here. They might have recognized Lottie and Esther.”

Gabriel used his free hand to point at Samuel. “You, I didn’t expect to be home, and you—” he pointed at Renderwell. “I expected to come alone.”

“Change of plans,” Samuel said simply.

Gabriel threw a look over his shoulder in the direction of the front parlor. “I’d not have brought any of them here if I’d known Lottie and Esther were in residence. You know that. Why the devil did you bring Lottie along?”

“I didn’t. She heard Esther had returned and came of her own accord.”

“Couldn’t either of you be bothered to find biddable wives?” Gabriel inquired.

“Someone like your Miss Ballenger?” Renderwell asked. “She’s a shy one, isn’t she?”

“Not once you get to know her.”

“And have you…” Renderwell took a sip of his drink and looked over the rim of his glass. “Known her?”

“I fail to see how that’s any of your—”

“God damn it, man.” Renderwell’s face took on the hard-bitten expression Gabriel imagined he once used to cow the soldiers under his command. “She’s under your care.”

“I beg your pardon, Lieutenant Hypocrite.”

“That was different,” he snapped. “My intentions toward Lottie were honorable. I wouldn’t have…” He trailed off, his eyes narrowing in speculation. “Whatare your intentions toward Miss Ballenger?”

“Good of you to ask,” Gabriel said dryly. “I’m—”

“He’s smitten,” Samuel answered for him.

“I am not bloody smitten.”

“Besotted, then. Enamored. Gone over.”

He was all those things and more. But a man did have his pride. “Do you know what I’m enamored of right now, Brass? The prospect of breaking your teeth.”

Samuel merely grinned at him. “The only question is: marriage or mistress?”

Gabriel opened his mouth to issue a scathing reply, then snapped it shut, gave up, and sagged back in his seat. If he couldn’t talk to his friends about a woman, what was the damned point of them?

“Yes,” he said simply.

“Yes to which?” Samuel asked.

“Either. Both. However I can have her.”

Renderwell set down his drink. “Youare besotted.”

“What of it?” Gabriel snapped.

“You mean to offer for her?” Renderwell pressed.

“Yes.”

“When?”

He resisted the urge to shift in his chair. “Soon.”

“Any particular reason to wait?” Renderwell inquired.

Samuel’s grin broadened. “He’s afraid she’ll say no.”

“I’m beginning to regret coming here,” he muttered, and was roundly ignored.

Renderwell took another sip of his drink. “Any particular reason she would?”

“There are some obstacles,” Gabriel admitted. She was fairly put out with him, for one. And there was her attachment to Twillins. But the reasons Jane might refuse him worried him less than the reasons sheshould. He would be asking her to spend her life with him, to share his world. Which would be all well and good if that life, and that world, had not been built on a lie.

Samuel shrugged. “You’ll find a way around them.”

“Thank you,” Gabriel drawled. “That’s exceedingly helpful.”

“Did you help me with Esther? Or did you enjoy watching me squirm like a landed trout?”

Gabriel barked out a laugh at the memory. He’d not spent a good deal of time with them, but the little he had… “God, that was fun.”

“Arse.”

Gabriel raised his glass to him. “Vindictive bastard.”

“If you’re done,” Renderwell cut in. “Perhaps we should proceed to the business of not being murdered in our sleep by an army of convicts and their deranged keeper.”

“If you insist,” Gabriel replied, though he was in no hurry to alter the course of the conversation, such as it was. Nothing relaxed him quite so well as the familiar exchange of barbs and threats with his closest friends.

Nonetheless, he nodded and pulled the list Kray was after from his pocket and handed it to Renderwell. He spent the next quarter hour explaining what he knew of the situation, which wasn’t a great deal more than what Fulberg had been able to tell them, except for the fact that Kray had taken to conscripting prisoners.

Renderwell swore at that bit of news. “What was the Foreign Office thinking, allowing Kray to bring in men like that?”

“Do you know Mr. Jones well?” Gabriel asked.

“No one knows Mr. Jones well,” Renderwell replied, before his expression took on a hard edge. “But I know the men to whom he answers. I can wire them tomorrow.”

“Do you trust them?”

“With this? I’m not certain. There’s no telling how far the treachery extends. It might be best if we focus on Kray and Mr. Jones first and move up from there.”

“We need to fetch Esther before we begin making any decisions,” Samuel said, setting down his drink.

Renderwell stayed him with a hand. “I’ll do it. Lottie will want to help as well.”

“Jane, too,” Gabriel said after a moment’s hesitation. Jane would no doubt prefer not to be dragged from one group discussion to another. On the other hand, she was unlikely to appreciate being excluded any better. He would keep an eye on her and, if need be, make excuses for both of them to leave.

Renderwell shook his head and strode from the room mumbling something about when there had been only three Thief Takers.

Gabriel turned to Samuel the moment their former commander was gone. “How did you know?”

“Know what? About your feelings for Miss Ballenger?” he asked when Gabriel gave him a pointed look. “How did I know that you’re smitten?”

He swallowed an oath at the word. Women were smitten. Young boys were smitten. Grown men were…something else. Captivated, maybe.

“Yes. Is it the way I look at her?” That’s how he’d known Renderwell and Samuel weregone over. They’d walked around with appallingly lovesick expressions on their faces. Like lost puppies. He sincerely hoped he didn’t look like that.

“No. Well, there is a bit of that. But mostly…” Samuel raised his glass to gesture. “Your shirt cuff is caught on your coat sleeve.”

“What?”

“It’s been there since you walked into the house. You didn’t notice. And the only time I’ve ever seen you fail to notice something like that is after you’ve drowned your vanity in a vat of scotch.”

“I’ve been preoccupied.”

“Never made a difference before. Not without the scotch.” He waited for Gabriel to fix the problem. “There’s a spot on your shirt as well.”

Gabriel glanced down and swore at the small stain near his waistcoat. When the devil had he spilled…whatever the hell that was. Its origins were a complete mystery to him.

“And your hair,” Samuel added, “is just an embarrassment. Honestly, I am ashamed to know you.”

“Go to hell, Brass.”

Samuel was laughing when the ladies entered and took their seats. Jane looked a little confused as to why she was there, but while he saw the nerves in her eyes, he saw pleasure as well. The sight had him fighting back a smile. Things must have gone well in the parlor.

She said very little as the group settled in to discuss their next move. Renderwell was of the opinion that a trap should be set for Kray and Jones in London, but Esther argued against it.

“London is so chaotic, and there are too many unknown variables. The sheer number of people and level of activity creates challenges we could eliminate by bringing Mr. Jones here instead.” She scooted forward in her seat, apparently warming to the idea. “We’re not familiar with all the players in this scheme, are we? Or even how many players there might be. And there are so many people in London. We wouldn’t know if the well-heeled gentleman taking a stroll in front of your house is a neighbor’s guest or—”

“Or just pretending to be,” Lottie finished for her.

“Exactly. We’d have more control here.”

Samuel shook his head. “We’d lose the element of surprise. He’ll plan ahead, bring men along— ”

“We’ll do the same,” Esther returned. “Isn’t there anyone in London you can trust? Someone who can bring reinforcements of their own?”

Gabriel looked down at his drink thoughtfully. “I sent word to the handful of men I trust most before all of this began. Only Fulberg managed to make it to Twillins. Either the messages to the others were intercepted, or the men were.”

“So contact them again, or pick the next handful,” Esther responded with a shrug. “Surely there are more than a half dozen men in all of London we can be relatively certain aren’t traitors.”

“There may be one or two,” he replied dryly.

“Excellent. Bring them here. If Mr. Jones comes along and with good intentions, then no harm done. Plus, he can help us with Mr. Kray. If he doesn’t, or if Mr. Kray comes with his men, then we’ll be prepared.”

Gabriel shook his head. Bringing more men—inviting potentially dangerous men—to the house put Lottie and Esther at increased risk of being recognized. “There are other considerations…”

Renderwell threw him a meaningful glance. “They can be dealt with.”

Understanding that to mean they would discuss the problem later, Gabriel shrugged. “It’s a sound plan, then.”

He hated the idea of bringing danger right back to Jane, but there was no way to avoid it. He couldn’t very well send her off somewhere else while Kray was still searching for her.

“Agreed,” Samuel said, then looked to Renderwell, who gave a single nod. Lottie and Jane followed suit.

“Are we going to tell him we have the list?” Lottie enquired. “Or allow him to assume?”

“Are we tosee the infamous list?” Esther asked. “Finally?”

Gabriel tensed, waiting for Jane to ask why Esther had not been able to see it before. But she made no comment, perhaps assuming that Fulberg had kept the list to himself for the safety of the people on it.

He gestured to the papers, which Renderwell had left on the edge of his desk. Esther rose and picked them up. The rest of the group followed suit, gathering around her to stare quietly at the long list of names, numbers, and notes.

After a moment, Esther cocked her head to one side and said, “There’s something not quite…right about this.”

Gabriel nodded in agreement. “I thought so as well.”

“There’s no one on there of particular rank,” Jane offered, and shrugged a little nervously when all eyes in the room turned to her. “It seems odd, but I know little of espionage—”

“You’reright,” Esther cut in. “It is odd. Stable hands and valets and the like, and from the amount Edgar paid them, their secrets weren’t worth much.” She tapped the paper. “This is what Kray has gone to such lengths to obtain?”

“An informant is an informant,” Samuel said, “regardless of occupation or class.”

“Yes, but…” Her eyes trailed down the list. “A baker? He’s not likely to be the keeper of significant state secrets, is he? And look, Mr. Ballenger rewarded him with a pittance. I can’t imagine anyone willing to pay a fortune for this. Not unlessthey were on the list.”

“Or someone important to them was.”

“There’s a mistress to a prince on the first page,” Samuel pointed out. “She might have been in a position to learn a secret or two.”

“Maybe she’s the only one of importance,” Lottie mused aloud. “Perhaps Kray knows her. He could be after blackmail.”

“Or he could be in love with her and trying to protect her,” Renderwell countered and threw his wife a pitying look. “Cynic.”

Gabriel shook his head. “A woman who could afford to pay the sort of money Kray seems to be after could just as easily book passage out of Russia. Kray could certainly afford to get her out.”

“She may not want to leave her home,” Jane said softly, causing a knot of tension to form between Gabriel’s shoulder blades.

“If staying means living with the constant threat of exposure…” Lottie said with a shrug.

Jane nodded just as Esther shook her head. “It still doesn’t fit. She’s just one woman ofpossible note. Her name might be worth something to someone, but how could she be worth enough to let loose a band of criminals and openly take on one of the Thief Takers?”

“The likely reward doesn’t match the risk and effort,” Gabriel ventured. “But onlyif we’re right in assuming the individuals on the list are of no great importance.”

“It’s not that much to assume. Although there are other explanations…” Esther turned to her sister. “Lottie, do you think there’s a chance—”

Lottie had already scooped up the pages for a closer look. “Could be. There are several possible encryptions he might have used…” She trailed off to study the pages in silence.

Jane glanced at Gabriel, looking entirely confused.

“Lady Renderwell has a rare talent for cryptology,” he explained.

“I…” She blinked twice and a faint blush crept across the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

“She’s looking to see if there might be a code hidden in the list. She’s quite good with ciphers.”

“Oh,” she said, visibly relaxing. “That’s—”

Ah!” Lady Renderwell said suddenly.

Renderwell’s face lit with a small but very proud smile. “You’ve found a pattern, haven’t you?”

“Possibly. Look.” She laid out the list on the desk, all three sheets in a row, and waited for the group to gather round. “See the left margin on the first column? It isn’t entirely even.”

Samuel frowned a little. “So he didn’t use a straightedge.”

“He was never all that tidy,” Jane commented.

“But he was. He did.” Lottie placed her finger on the first letter of the first entry in the column of names and quickly drew it down the page. “You see?”

To a man, they did not.

“Oh, for—” Lottie held her hand out and wiggled her fingers at her husband. “May I have a straightedge, please? And a pencil?” As her husband fished in the desk, she looked to Gabriel. “May I mark on this?”

“With pencil?” He shrugged. “If you think it will help.”

Gabriel handed her the straightedge, which she carefully set against the very edge of the first letter in the first entry of the column. Then she used the tool to draw a perfect line to the bottom of the page.

When she pulled away, Gabriel could see that most, but not all, of the entries in the column fell perfectly along the line. Every third or fourth entry, however, shifted just a hair to the left. At first glance, it looked quite natural, as if Edgar had simply not been habitual in his use of the straightedge.

Gabriel leaned closer, already beginning to see what Lottie had been talking about. Next to him, Jane gasped softly. She saw it, too.

Moving to the first name that fell to the left, Lottie placed the straight edge up to the first letter and drew another line to the bottom of the page. It immediately became clear that Edgar’s entries weren’t just uneven, they wereperfectly uneven. Every single entry on the list fell either directly on the first line, or on the second. Edgar had, in effect, created two columns in one.

“Now do you see?” Lottie asked, and the group nodded.

“The other pages look to be the same,” Renderwell said. “It couldn’t have been done by accident.”

“No,” Lottie agreed. “But the question remains,why was it done?”

Esther leaned around her sister and drew her own finger down the offset line, listing off the first letter of each name. “R. D. P. C.” She looked up from the page. “Is this meaning anything to anyone?”

“A puzzle within a puzzle,” Lottie murmured when everyone shook their head. She scooped up the pages again for a closer study.

“How long will it take you to decipher it?” Gabriel enquired, momentarily forgetting how much Lottie disliked being pressured for time.

“Well, if you had given Mr. Fulberg the list as you made him believe,” she said smartly, and Jane stiffened next to him, “I might have been done already. As it is, you’ll just have to wait. In the meantime, I suggest you send to London for your men. And Mr. Jones.”

“Gabriel and I will see to it,” Samuel announced.

Gabriel opened his mouth to argue. He didn’t want to see to it. He wanted to speak with Jane, but she’d already turned away from him to address Esther.

“If it’s not too much trouble, might I be shown to a room? It’s been a very long day, and—”

“Of course.” Esther took her arm and began leading her from the room with Lottie close behind. “You must be exhausted. The Harmons are already settled, and they’ve had all day to rest. If you’ll excuse us, gentlemen?”

Gabriel took a step toward their retreating backs. “Jane—”

Although both Lottie and Esther threw a questioning look over their shoulders, Jane didn’t respond. She didn’t even acknowledge him as she walked out the door. Possibly because she’d not heard him. But probably not.

Bloody hell.

“She didn’t know you kept the list,” he heard Renderwell say from behind him.

Gabriel turned and scowled. “No.”

“For the best, I’d say. But you’ll pay for the deceit.”

Because it was true, Gabriel shoved his hands in his pockets and said nothing.

“I’d suggest you wait until her temper cools before you attempt to explain yourself. In the meantime, I believe you have concerns about bringing the fight here rather than to London?”

Gabriel flicked one last glance at the empty doorway before forcing his attention back to the matter at hand. “I do. I can send for men we know have no connection to Lottie and Esther’s past, but that won’t completely mitigate the risk to them.

“They’ll stay out of sight.”

“Easy enough if everything goes well, but if Jones brings trouble, Esther won’t hesitate to jump in the middle of it. There’s no telling if he might recognize—”

Renderwell shared a look with Samuel. “Jones is fully aware of our wives’ identities. His help was instrumental in relocating the family after Will Walker died, and he’s been kept apprised of their whereabouts since.”

“You trust him?”

“I’ve required his assistance in the past, and trusted in his discretion. The man can keep a secret. Before this business with Kray, I’d have said Jones kept his mouth shut on principle, or at least out of a sense of duty to the Crown. But now…”  His expression darkened. “We need to know where his loyalties lie.”

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

Jane didn’t come down for dinner. Nor did Gabriel see her at breakfast the next morning. Nor did she respond when he finally managed to slip away from Samuel and Renderwell that afternoon to knock on her door. Loudly.

Her disappearance made him nervous. He’d always known it was only a matter of time before she learned how much he’d been keeping from her. But he had hoped her delight in seeing the Harmons safe and sound would dampen the worst of her anger. And he had planned to tell her about the list during a moment of privacy. He could apologize, explain, and reassure her. She would probably yell at him. Then he would apologize, explain, and reassure her some more. Eventually, she would come to forgive him.

It was a sound plan. Unfortunately, it was entirely dependent on Jane agreeing to speak with him to begin with.

He pounded on the door again, uncaring of the egregious breach of etiquette he was committing. Heneeded to speak with her. “Jane, I know you’re in there. You can’t—”

“She’s not, actually,” Esther interrupted, opening a door behind him. “She’s in the library with Mrs. Harmon.”

Damn it. “Excuse me.”

“Not quite yet.” Esther waved him closer. “Come in. I wish to have a word with you.”

“I don’t have time—”

“It will only take a minute.”

He gave her a bland look. “If I step one foot in your bedchamber, your husband will eviscerate me.”

“It’s not my bedchamber, it’s my sitting room.” She swung the door open wide. “And Lottie will protect you.”

Esther’s sister gave a little wave from her seat by the window.

“Fine. A minute,” he grumbled and followed Esther into the room. He took a chair across from Lottie as Esther settled next to her sister.

“Any word from London?” Esther inquired.

“Nothing new.” The men he’d reached out to in London had arrived late that morning, and were now strategically placed about the grounds to guard the house. Mr. Jones had not replied to his telegram.

“Well, we’ll learn the truth of Mr. Jones one way or another.So—” Esther scooted forward in her chair, obviously eager to discuss something entirely different. “Your Miss Ballenger. Is she like you, or like us?”

What Esther wanted to know was whether or not Jane had a criminal past as she and Lottie did.

“She’s never broken the law.” Aside from briefly hiding national secrets, but she hadn’t really been aware of it at the time, so he didn’t think that counted.

“Hmm.”

“She’s not wanted for a crime.”

“Oh, I believe you. She doesn’t have that”—Esther waved her hand around—“criminal air about her.”

“You don’t sound as if you believe me.”

Lottie shrugged. “We just think there’s more going on than what you’re telling us.”

“More what, exactly?”

Lottie cocked her head at him. “You’re taken with her, aren’t you?”

“Oh, for… Am I wearing a sign?”

“Near enough,” Lottie replied with a glance at his shirt, which he only then noticed was unforgivably wrinkled. “Also, our husbands are terrible gossips. Can she be trusted?”

“With your secrets? Yes.” He scowled down at his shirt for a second. When had he stopped noticing such flaws in his appearance? “Unequivocally, yes. You’ll not find a more loyal friend than Jane. But whether she learns of them or not is obviously up to you.”

“She’s not a friend yet,” Lottie said simply.

“I quite like her,” Esther commented. “She’s an interesting mix of traits, isn’t she? Shy and plainspoken, a little lost and rather bold all at once.” She tapped her finger against her leg and her expression turned sharp—much, much too sharp. “She has secrets of her own, I think. Something to do with her hearing, perhaps?”

“Esther,” Gabriel said coolly. “Take care.”

Something flashed in Esther’s blue eyes, though whether it was insult or challenge, he couldn’t say. But almost as quickly as it came, it was gone again. Her features softened into a mix of pity and humor. “Youare smitten, aren’t you? Poor lamb.”

“Esther—”

She held up a hand. “I mean her no harm. As I said, I quite like her. Miss Ballenger’s secrets are her own to keep. I’ll not go in search of them. I give you my word.”

Gabriel immediately relaxed. Esther could be a damned sneaky creature, but her word was good.

“Thank you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there is something I need to do in the library.”

***

“You can’t avoid Sir Gabriel forever, Jane.”

Settled in a comfortably oversized chair in the library, Jane stifled a sigh at Mrs. Harmon’s unwelcome, albeit not unexpected, comment. Her friend had been making similar remarks all day.

“I don’t wish to avoid him forever. I simply do not want to speak with him this very moment.” She carefully flipped to the next page of her book. “I am otherwise occupied.”

Mrs. Harmon huffed, reached over, and snatched the book right out of her hand. “Give me that.”

Jane made a grab for it but missed. The woman was damned quick. “Mrs. Harmon—”

“You’ve not read a single word on these pages. You’re not occupied with anything other than a good self-indulgent pout.”

“I’m not…” Oh, what was the use, Jane thought, and slumped back into the chair. “Very well, I am, and I have every right to be. Gabriel lied to me. He’s lied to me a great deal. Do you know that the only reason I boarded the train in Ardbaile is because he led me to believe you were on it? The only reason I jumped off was because he lied again and told me Mr. Kray would be waiting for us at the next stop and he would use me against you.” She straightened up again, her mounting anger making her restless. “And he told me you were on your way to Edinburgh. I believed that until the moment I saw you here. And he made it look as if Mr. Fulberg had taken that blasted list with him. And he never told me he was expecting to see Lord Renderwell here. He slept in our stable that first night when he should have been at the inn, and I’m not actually angry about that, but it was another deception. And…” Her voice cracked, startling her. “And…” Her hand flew to her lips. “Oh, Mrs. Harmon, I’m afraid I may have made a terrible mistake.”

Her friend’s expression softened, and her voice turned gentle. “Love is rarely a mistake, dear. Even when it hurts.”

“I don’t… I’m not in…” Oh, God,was she in love? She let her hand fall to her lap. “Maybe it’s not love. It could be infatuation. I’ve never experienced love before, so how can I be certain what it feels like?”

“You leapt from a moving train to keep Mr. Harmon and me safe. You know perfectly well what love feels like.”

Jane let out a long, heart-felt sigh. It was a different kind of love, but Mrs. Harmon was right. She knew how love felt, and she knew she was in love with Gabriel. Deeply, desperately, undeniably in love with him. She felt it every time she looked at him, every time he smiled at her, every time he touched her.

“Has he lied about himself?” Mrs. Harmon asked.

She threw her hands up in the air. “How should I know?”

“You might ask him.”

“Does it make a difference, thekind of lies a man tells a lady?”

“As a rule, I would have to say no. But you must admit that the circumstances have been unusual.”

She could admit it, but it didn’t make her feel appreciably better.

Mrs. Harmon tipped her head at her. “Is there one lie in that—I will concede, very extensive—list, that troubles you more than the others?”

“Well, no.” It was all of them put together. It was the fact that he’d pressured her into sharing her deepest, darkest secrets, while hoarding all manner of secrets himself. And not even big, life-changing secrets that might have been difficult for him to surrender. She could sympathize with that wholeheartedly. He’d kept relatively small things from her. Lots of them. And that made everything about their relationship feel terribly one-sided, as if she’d been taking all the chances, all the risks. As if he expected her to trust him with everything, while he would trust her with nothing.

“I’m very afraid I may have misjudged the extent of his feelings for me,” she admitted. “I’m so bad at reading people. I can never tell—”

“When it comes to this sort of thing, we are all novices. Even the most perceptive woman will find herself at sea when faced with the prospect of unrequited love. Believe me. I’ve been through this particular gauntlet six times.”

“Six? You’ve only been married four times.”

“Not every man I’ve loved returned my affection.”

“That’s not at all reassuring.”

Mrs. Harmon reached over and covered Jane’s hand with her own. “Six times, Jane. And I don’t regret a single one of them. I think you should talk to him.”

Jane nodded reluctantly. She wasn’t ashamed to have avoided Gabriel for the day. She’d needed time to think. But Mrs. Harmon was right. It couldn’t go on forever. “I’ll speak with Gabriel tonight.”

Or possibly right now, she amended when Gabriel appeared in the doorway. “I’d like a word, Miss Ballenger, if you don’t mind.”

Jane briefly considered inviting him to sit with her and Mrs. Harmon, but her friend dashed that idea by leaping from her chair and spouting some nonsensical excuse before hurrying out of the room.

Gabriel gave her a small, cautious smile as she rose from her chair. “I’ve wanted to speak with you all day, Jane.”

“I didn’t wish to see you.”

“I understand.” He caught his hands behind his back. “I apologize for not telling you I held on to your brother’s list.”

“Are you sorry?”

There was a long pause before he answered. “I am sorry it had to be done.”

Her temper flared. “That is not the same thing.At all.”

“Jane—”

He moved toward her, but she sidled away, determined to keep some distance between them. “You lied about where we were headed, about where the Harmons were going, about the list. About so many things. You havedeliberately kept me in the dark this entire time, haven’t you?”

“I have kept you safe,” he said gently. “If Kray had captured you, he could have used what you knew against you, the Harmons, Lord Renderwell’s involvement—”

“Or I might have used it to my advantage.”

“You couldn’t have used the list,” he replied, his voice patient and tender. “Knowing of it would have done nothing but make you a target.”

“I was already a target,” she pointed out. “You made me an ignorant one. I should haveknown it was in our care. I should have been made aware of the respectability.”

“The what?”

“The…” She stammered a moment. “The respect… No, the…”

“Responsibility?”

“Yes. Damn it. The responsibility. It should have been mine as well as yours. You should not have lied to me. About any of it. At least, not after…” Not after they had come to know each other. After he had caught her from the tree, and picked flowers for her in the rain. Not after he had kissed her in the stable loft and made love to her in the inn. She wanted to say all that, but she didn’t know how to do it without giving away too much of herself.

“Not after I told you my own secrets,” she said instead.

“That wasn’t very long ago, Jane. And you kept your own secrets from me for most of our journey.”

“That was different.”

“I fail to see how.”

“I wasafraid. But I told you anyway. I could have made excuses or simply told you to mind your own business.” Not easily, and probably not well, but she could have done it. “I didn’t. I confessed everything to you while you told me nothing. You’ve let your lies carry until the very end. Until the job was done.”

“That job was to keep you safe. Sweetheart, we’re going in circles.” He moved closer to her, stopped again when she shook her head at him. “I know you’re angry, and I’m sorry for it. If—”

“But you’re not sorry you did it,” she cut in, and grimaced. Theywere going in circles. “Your intentions may have been good, Gabriel, but you’ve made me feel like a fool.”

He swore softly and reached for her before she could slip away. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he pulled her tight against him. “You’re not a fool. Nothing you’ve done—”

“Don’t.” She leaned back, needing to put some distance between them. “Don’t coddle me, or charm me, or try to cajole me into smiling. That’s not what I want. I don’t want words from you at all.”

He seemed to stumble with that, releasing her with a shake of his head. “Whatdo you want?”

“For you to trust me. The same way I’ve trusted you.”

***

Gabriel opened his mouth, spread his hands, and…nothing. He had nothing.

He was a man of words, of charm if need be, wit and charisma if the situation called for it, and threats and dire warnings if it came to that.

It was what he did. It was how he navigated his way through the world. It was how he conquered it.

What the devil was he supposed to do without the words? How could he fix things if she wouldn’t let him apologize and explain? How could he make her feel better, make her understand?

At a loss, afraid of the distant look he saw in Jane’s eyes, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her.

He put everything he had into that kiss, every promise of passion, every whisper of devotion, every word he had to swallow for her. If she wouldn’t let him speak them, then he would show her. He would show her everything.

He wanted the kiss to be enough. For the both of them. But even as he felt Jane lean against him in surrender, he knew it wouldn’t be. He wasn’t showing her anything new. She already trusted him with this. This was the wrong way. He knew it even before she pulled away.

Her amber eyes tracked over his face, still distant, and infinitely sad. “Perhaps…Perhaps a little time spent apart would—” 

“My real father is Mr. Edward Mitcham,” he blurted out, shocking even himself. Releasing her, he took a full step back. “Christ, I’ve never told anyone that.” He hadn’t meant to tell her. The words had just popped out. “Not even Samuel.”

She looked as surprised by the sudden admission as he felt. “I don’t understand. Did you say—”

“Edward Mitcham was my father.” It was easier to say the second time, less jarring to hear. But it still jolted his heart into a painful rhythm.

She gave a small shake of her head. “But Captain Arkwright…”

“Captain Arkwright was my mother’s husband. She married him a month after meeting Edward at a country fair. According to both my mother and Edward, it was love at first sight. But he was a common laborer, and she was a well-bred young lady already engaged to the captain. They had a brief affair before her wedding.”

“I don’t know what to say.” A furrow appeared across her brow as she studied his face. “Are you afraid I’ll judge you for the circumstances of your birth? Gabriel, I would never—”

“No, that’s not it.” He wished it could be that simple.

“Then what is it? I can see you’re afraid.”

“I don’t know where to start. I’m not sure why I—”

When he broke off, she hesitated a beat, then took his hand and led him to the settee. He followed her, feeling lost and stunned as she sat him down.

“Start at the beginning,” she suggested, just as he had the day before in the inn.

He nodded, but it was long time before he was able to talk. It was so strange, so unfamiliar to speak the truth.

“I barely knew the captain. When I was a young boy, he would be at sea for months at a time. During his brief trips home he was distant and aloof. He always seemed more like a stodgy old uncle who’d come to visit than he did a father. He provided well for us, I can’t say he didn’t, but eventually my mother decided that being the wife of a cold and absent sea captain was not enough for her. She wanted Edward Mitcham. And when I was seven, we ran off in the dead of night so she could be with him.”

“Seven years after they’d met?”

“After my mother passed, I found a stack of love letters exchanged between them over the years they were apart. They managed to see each other only twice, but the distance did nothing to stem their affection. They were extraordinary letters.” Watching them turn to ash in a fireplace had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

“What happened after you left?”

“At first I was dumbstruck by the sudden change in my life. One moment I’d been comfortably tucked up in bed, and the next thing I knew my mother was introducing me to this strange man at the railway station two villages over. She told me we were all going to Leeds where Mr. Mitcham, who was my new father, had just taken a position. I was to call myself Gabriel Mitcham from then on, and never mention my old life in Cornwall again.”

“GoodLord.”

He smiled a little at the shock in her voice. “She wasn’t as blunt as all that. They both took great care in explaining the situation to me during our journey. First her, then both of them together. Still, that first month was an adjustment. We sold our fine clothes, and used the funds my mother had saved to let rooms over a shop. I practiced calling myself Gabriel Mitcham, and I memorized the fictional story of our family’s past.”

Her hand tightened over his in sympathy. “That wasn’t fair to you.”

“Perhaps not, but I have no complaints.” He looked up, caught and held her gaze. “Not one. The first few weeks might have been overwhelming, but it was worth it in the end. We were poor. There were no servants or tutors, no money for toys and games. But I never went cold or hungry. There was coal when we needed it, and new clothes and shoes when I outgrew my old ones. And there was love, Jane. Tremendous amounts of love. My father worked himself to the bone for a pittance. When he came home at night, exhaustion was etched into every line of his face. But he would smile and laugh and ask after my day at dinner. And at the end of every meal, he would pronounce my mother the finest cook in England, and she would blush like a schoolgirl. Every time. And then he would sing in this magnificent bass that would shake the rafters. About halfway through the song, he would leap from his chair, sweep my mother into his arms, and they would dance.” The memory brought on a bittersweet ache. “Every night, no matter how tired or worn, he found the energy to dance with his wife. He always found time for his family. When the other boys at school took exception to my fine speech and manners, he taught me how to mimic their accents, and how make a proper fist and use it. He taught me how to fish and how to shoot. We couldn’t afford a weapon, of course, but he convinced the factory foreman to loan us his rifle now and again. He found a way, my father.”

“He loved you,” Jane said softly.

“He’d always loved me. Those letters he sent to my mother? They weren’t just love letters to her. They were tous. For seven years he had asked after every detail of my life. He worried over my illnesses, rejoiced in my childhood accomplishments. No part of my life was too insignificant to interest him. There was more love in those letters than I’d ever known from the captain. And there was more love in those three years we spent in the little rooms over the shop than there had been in the seven I lived in the fine house in Cornwall. No one has ever loved me with the same fervor as my father. Not before, or since.”

She was quiet a moment, before asking, “Only three years?”

“My father was killed in an accident at the factory.”

She sucked in a small breath. “I’m so sorry.”

“My mother was lost without him. For a time, grief robbed her of her senses. She bought a headstone for him, an enormous, ghastly affair fit for a duke. We didn’t have the funds for it. Within a month, we’d lost our rooms and had to take up nightly lodgings in common boardinghouses. Filthy places with people packed in like cattle.” He’d learned quickly that there was a difference between a school yard brawl over insults, and a fight with a hungry man for the coin in one’s hand. “My mother died in a cholera outbreak that fall, but before she passed, she gave me the last of our money, scarcely enough to eat for another day, and instructed me to return to Cornwall. The captain was dead. He’d died at sea mere months after we’d left him, having never even known we were gone, but his parents, she was certain, would care for me.”

“They did, didn’t they? I remember reading of them in the papers.”

He gave a small nod. “They scarcely recognized me when I showed up on their doorstep. I was thin and dirty, my hair had grown long, my clothes had gone to rags. But I was bundled up in blankets and set before the fire. They plied me with warm broth and endless questions. They had no idea where I had been for the last three years, and…” And as he’d sat there in that immaculate little parlor, warming from the inside out, the most hideous fear had washed over him. “I didn’t know how to answer their questions. I wasn’t their grandson, Jane. The captain wasn’t my father. I was sure that if they so much as suspected the truth, they’d turn me out. And I had nowhere else to go. I knew I had other relations scattered about the country, but I had no idea where to even begin looking for them. So I lied. I concocted a fantastical story right on the spot. I told them my mother had left her husband on a whim. She’d wanted an adventure, and we’d had one. Just the two of us…until she’d died unexpectedly in Scotland. Her last act was to pay a local woman to see me home, but the woman had taken the money and left me to fend for myself. I’d sold my fine clothes to pay for passage partway to Cornwall, and begged rides along the road the rest of the way. Hence my ragged appearance.”

Her fingers moved over his, brushing lightly against his knuckles. “Did they believe you?”

“All too well, in fact. But my lie as their truth wouldn’t do. They couldn’t let it be known that their son’s wife had left him and gone traipsing about unattended. They created a fictional story to hidemy fictional story.” He laughed without humor. “Christ, what a farce. They decided my mother and I had gone to France at Captain Arkwright’s behest. We’d traveled in the company of some distant relative who’d since left for a new life in America. That was the story I brought with me to school a few months later. And that is the story that still stands today.”

“You sound so angry,” she whispered.

Anger was too easy, too tame for what he felt. “Edward Mitcham was the best man I’ve ever known. He was myfather. And I denied all knowledge of him. I stood in that fine parlor in my filthy rags and told a lie that completely, utterly eradicated his existence from my life. I can’t stand the memory of that day. I can’t stand being dirty because itreminds me of that day. Of that filthy, cowardly boy.”

“It wasn’t cowardice.” Jane’s hand tensed over his. Her voice was firm, but soft. “It was the act of a grieving, desperate child.”

He shook his head at her and would have pulled away if she’d let him. “I’ve been a grown man for some time now, and I’ve never fixed it. I meant to. I thought, after school, once I’d established my career and could fend for myself, I would fix it. But I couldn’t do it. By the time my education was over, I knew I couldn’t tell the people who had taken me in, paid for my education, cared for me like their own, that I wasn’t the child of their dead son. It felt selfish.”

“And so it would have been. You might have felt better for it, but it would have wounded them deeply.”

He nodded, grateful for her understanding. “I decided, out of respect, I would wait until they were gone. But then I helped rescue a kidnapped duchess, and suddenly, I was famous. Suddenly, every familial relation in England, no matter how distant, was touting their connection to me. They told their stories to the press. They used my reputation to secure business deals and invitations to the homes of some of England’s wealthiest families. Their sons were admitted to the best schools. Their daughters met peers. They built lives on my good name. My reputation was no longer my own. Tainting it would taint them all.”

She twisted her lips in annoyance. “It’s not your fault they chose to appropriate your reputation.”

“It’s not their fault they believed my lies, and I’ll not judge a parent for doing everything in their power to secure their child’s future, nor will I punish the child.”

“No, of course not.”

“I felt I had no choice but to keep the lie going. When the press insisted on details of my time in France, I provided them. Vague ones, of course, nothing they could verify or refute. I’d been a child, after all. I couldn’t be expected to remember specifics. I offered anecdotes instead—silly little stories a child would remember. All of them fabricated. They were just lies built upon lies built upon lies. There have been so many now, so…” He ran his free hand through his hair. “The weight of them all is staggering. I don’t know how to rid myself of them. I don’t know how to fix it.”

“But youare fixing it.”

He paused with his fingers still in his hair. “Beg your pardon?”

“You want to claim Edward Mitcham as your father, and so you just did.”

“Only to you,” he pointed out, dropping his arm. And he wasn’t yet sure if it had been a wise course of action. A part of him felt better for having told her, for having acknowledged Edward Mitcham aloud at long last. In doing so, it seemed as if some part of the weight he’d carried since that fateful day in the Arkwrights’ parlor had lifted. But the rest of him feared what his honesty would cost him. What did Jane really think of his lies, and the world he’d built upon them?

“I count,” Jane said evenly. “So, yesterday there was only one person in the world who knew what an extraordinary man your father was. Today, there are two. You trust Sir Samuel, don’t you?” She waited for his nod. “Perhaps, one day, you’ll tell him. And then there will be three.”

“I don’t—”

“The truth can grow in the same manner as a lie, Gabriel. Slowly, over time. You might tell Lord Renderwell someday. And then there will be four. With their wives, it could be five or six. You could tell your father’s story to your children when they’re grown. And they can share it with their own. And so on, and so on. By the time your great-grandchildren hear the tale, who knows how far the truth will have already spread. Yesterday there was one. Today there is two. In the future, there will be more.”

“My great-grandchildren,” he echoed. “That is a long time for my father to wait for his due.”

“Edward Mitcham waited seven years to be with his only son and the woman he loved. I’d say he was a patient man. And he loved you. I think he would understand.”

“Do you?” He asked, his heart tripping his chest. “That is…doyou understand?”

***

Jane studied Gabriel’s face. She could see the worry in his blue eyes, see the tension in his jaw and in the way he held himself so stiffly. “Before I answer that, I have a question of my own. Why have you told me this?”

He frowned and fumbled a bit with an answer. “I… Because I could. Because you trusted me and I wanted to give something back. Because you were going to walk away, and if we’re hell-bent on being honest, I have to tell you that I would have said anything to make you stay. Because…” He came to a stammering stop and threw up a hand in frustration. “Devil take it, Jane, I don’t know. Because I wanted to. For the first time in my life I wanted someone to know the truth, and I wanted that someone to beyou. Only you.”

Jane wasn’t entirely sure what sort of answer she’d been expecting to hear, or even what she’d wanted to hear. She’d only hoped she would know if he said the right thing.

And he did. Oh, he did. “I’m glad you told me. Your secret is safe with me. I promise.”

“You don’t have to promise. I already know.” He leaned forward and lightly rested his forehead against her own. “Can you forgive me now, Jane? Please.”

“Do you mean to keep things from me going forward?”

He straightened. And rather quickly, too. “I’ll not apologize for doing what was needed to keep you safe. And I can’t promise not to do it again. But how’s this? In the future, if there is something I feel you would be safer not knowing, I will tell you that you are safer not knowing, and we’ll go from there.”

It wasn’t entirely what she wanted, but she was willing to compromise so long as he was being honest. “I will try to change your mind.”

“Noted.”

“Is there anything else you’ve kept from me in the interest of my safety?”

“No. Nothing.” His lips twitched just a little. “Is there anything else you need to confess to me?”

“Yes,” she said, and he started in surprise. “I want to tell you that you were wrong earlier, when you said no one had loved you as much as your father.”

He went still. So still and stiff she wondered if she was making a mistake. But he wasn’t looking away. People looked away when they were uncomfortable, didn’t they? When they didn’t want to hear what came next? Gabriel was staring at her as if the fate of the world rested on her next words. She didn’t know what that meant, but she was going to take it as a positive sign.

“I love you, Gabriel.” She said the words carefully and clearly. If ever there was a time when she couldn’t afford to jumble them, this was it. When he still didn’t react, a tiny bubble of nervous laughter escaped her. “I amin love with you.” And still he was silent and staring at her. She wet lips gone dry. “I’ve frightened you.”

“No.” He shook his head, and slowly but surely, a dazed smile began to spread across his face. “No, you have not.”

“You’re pleased, then?” she asked hopefully.

“Pleased does not begin to do justice to how I feel. Jane—”

Lord Renderwell’s head suddenly popped around the library door. “Arkwright.”

Gabriel didn’t move, didn’t take his eyes off Jane for a second. “Not. Now.”

“Fulberg says two of his men are missing. He’s making another sweep of the woods where they were stationed.”

Fear leapt, quick and sharp. Gabriel was off the settee and dragging Jane to her feet in the space of a heartbeat.

“Is it Mr. Kray?” Jane demanded as he pulled her toward the door. “Or Mr. Jones?”

“We expected Jones first, but there’s no telling for certain.”

“Could be either or both,” Renderwell agreed. “Or it might be two men who left their post for a drink. We’ll find out.”

When they reached the stairs, Gabriel threw a look over his shoulder at Renderwell, who stopped on the bottom step. “Where is everyone?”

“Lottie is upstairs with the list. Esther and Samuel are gathering the staff, then they’ll take guard here.”

“I’ll help search the woods.”

Gabriel kept a firm grip on Jane as he led her upstairs. With his free hand, he reached inside his coat and retrieved a pistol.

“Where is your gun?” he asked her.

“In my room. Upstairs.”

“I want you to grab it and go and wait with Lottie and the others in her bedroom.”

“Yes. All right.”

“We’ll meet at the kitchen door,” Renderwell called out to Gabriel. “Three minutes!”

***

The upstairs hall was buzzing with activity as staff hurried toward Lottie’s bedroom.

Gabriel saw Jane to her door, then headed for his own room in search of extra weapons. He swung open the door, and found Kray standing in the shadowed far corner of the room, pointing a silver pistol at Gabriel’s head.

“Step inside. Quietly. And put your weapon on the ground, or I’ll put a hole through you and the next person who comes through that door.”

Gabriel considered the order. Kray had to know a gunshot would bring everyone running. If he were rational, he’d do everything he could to avoid drawing attention to his presence in the house. But a rational man wouldn’t have snuck into the house to begin with. It was a tactical error one step removed from suicide.

Kray might very well take the shot, Gabriel decided. And Jane might be the first person to reach the room.

Slowly, he set down the gun and straightened again.

“Kick it here,” Kray hissed.

“You know I won’t.” He sent it sliding across the carpet to disappear under the bed instead. “It’s a compromise,” he said easily when Kray snarled at him.

“Leave it,” Kray hissed when Gabriel turned to close the door. “Leave it open and step farther out of sight. Let’s not give anyone reason to be suspicious.”

Gabriel nodded but took his time walking to the side of the room. As he moved, he calculated how long he would have to keep Kray occupied before Renderwell came looking for him. He estimated that he had a minute left before he was due in the kitchen. Renderwell might assume he’d been briefly waylaid by someone in the hall and give him another thirty seconds or so. Then he’d be suspicious, make his way upstairs—quietly and carefully. He’d fetch Samuel first. Esther would want to come as well.

Two minutes, he decided. All he had to do was stall for two more minutes.

“I thought you were smarter than this, Kray.” He kept his voice low as someone raced by the door. The hallway was rapidly emptying, everyone making their way to safety. He had to believe Jane was already with Lottie and the others. That she was out of harm’s way. “You won’t get out of this house.”

“Got in, didn’t I?” He smiled smugly as a final, brisk set of footsteps passed by. A moment later, the door at the end of the hall shut decisively, and the house was still and quiet. Kray visibly relaxed and stepped out from the corner. “Did you really think a few hired police officers would stop me? I’m a spy, Arkwright. I’ve built a career working in the shadows. I can go anywhere, anytime, do anything, and disappear again without leaving a trace. No one sees me unless I will it.”

“That’s a very pretty way of saying you had your men create a diversion while you slunk inside like a thief.”

“And caught a Thief Taker. There’s a sort of justice in that. Where’s the list?”

Gabriel shrugged, saw no reason to lie. “In the house, guarded by at least a dozen people. You have no chance of getting to it.”

“Guarded by a dozen women and servants while the men are busy in the woods,” Kray scoffed. “I’ll manage.”

“They’re armed.” He thought of Lottie and Esther. “They’ll kill you.”

“Over a list? I doubt it. Not if they’re given a peaceful alternative.”

“You mean to trade me for the list,” Gabriel guessed.

“I’ll admit, I’d hoped to find Miss Ballenger instead,” Kray said, sending a cold chill down Gabriel’s spine. “But you’ll do well enough. You should have kept our deal, Arkwright. You could have had the money, the girl, and your life.”

“There was never going to be any money. If I had taken the deal, you would have shot me the moment I put the list in your hand. You don’t want to sell it. You want to destroy it.”

Kray tipped his head to the side. “What do you know?”

“I know there’s no one on that list whose name is worth anything approaching a fortune. I know that by coming here you’ve lost any chance you may have had to hide, or at least deny, your involvement in treason. Which means you know someone on there, don’t you? Someone you’re willing to sacrifice your own freedom, even your life, to protect.”

“Think you’re clever, do you?”

He lifted his hands to indicate his current predicament. “Not at the moment.”

Kray smiled at that, baring all his oversized teeth. “You should have known I would find you.”

“I wanted you to find me. Why else would I have sent a wire to London that you could so easily intercept? What I don’t know is why you’ve not simply brought whomever you’re trying to save out of Russia.”

“I have my reasons.”

“I don’t suppose you’d care to share them with me?”

“No, I don’t suppose I would,” Kray replied almost genially. “You’re likely to die a curious man, I’m afraid.”

“No, he’s not.”

Gabriel’s blood turned to ice at the sound of Jane’s voice in the doorway.

Kray whipped around to face her, and Gabriel knew the memory of seeing Kray turn his gun on Jane would haunt him for the rest of his life.

“Jane,get out.”

She didn’t react to his barked order, didn’t spare him so much as a glance as she entered the room. The gun he had given her days before was clasped in her hands and pointed directly at Kray. “Put down your weapon.”

Kray let out a mocking laugh. “Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary. You forget, Miss Ballenger, I saw you in the alley in Ardbaile. You nearly fainted when Arkwright had you aim at Fulberg. Put your gun down before you embarrass yourself any further.”

“You forget…I had no quarrel with Mr. Fulberg.”

Kray’s laughter faded. “You won’t shoot me. It isn’t in you.”

“You threatened the people I love.” She braced her feet apart and took very careful aim. “I can shoot you. And I will.”

Her face was pale, her eyes unblinking. And her hands were shaking. But she meant what she said. He could see it.

Courageous, loving, unbendingly loyal woman.

He was going tostrangle her.

The first real signs of hesitation showed in Kray’s face. “There’s no real need for this, is there? No one has been hurt yet. No one needs to be. Just give me the list and I’ll be on my way.”

Gabriel took a step toward Jane, desperate to draw Kray’s attention from Jane. “Who the bloody hell is on that list?”

“He is,” Samuel announced, strolling into the room with Renderwell and Esther behind him. All of them were, naturally, armed to the teeth.

“About bloody time,” Gabriel snapped. “Jane, come here.” Without waiting for her to comply, he strode to her, plucked the gun from her hands and pushed her behind him.

“Mr. Kray isn’t protecting an English spy,” Esther said. “He’s protecting a Russian one.” She pointed the tip of the silver dagger she was holding at the man. “You’re a traitor, and Mr. Ballenger knew it. It’syour name hidden on the list—Oscar Kray.” She shot a quick glance at Gabriel. “Lottie figured it out. It was a simple substitution cipher.”

Panic flashed over Kray’s face, and a heartbeat later, turned to cold resolve. “So it is, and so I am.”

No, he wasn’t, Gabriel thought. He couldn’t be. A man didn’t attempt to cover treason by openly engaging in more treason. There was no logic in that. Either Lottie was wrong, or Esther was lying.

“You’re outmanned and outgunned,” Renderwell said calmly. “It’s time to surrender.”

“It would appear that way, wouldn’t it,” Kray replied. “But, no, I believe I’ll wait until the cavalry arrives.”

“Jones,” Gabriel guessed. The man was expecting the support of his superior at the Foreign Office, along with whatever men he was bringing.

“Not quite.” Kray tilted his head and gave him a pitying smile. “You didn’t think I’d be foolish enough to waste all my men, mybest men, on a simple distraction, did you? While my pawns are keeping yours occupied in the woods, and I’ve kept you occupied here—” He broke off at the sound of a gunshot close to the house. Much too close. “Ah, and here they come. Not quite as stealthily as one might hope, but what can one do? I do hope the lads you left to guard the eastern lawn weren’t particular friends of yours.”

Samuel’s hand clenched into a fist. “You son of a—”

A shout came from the direction of the front hall. Seconds later, three men Gabriel recognized from Ardbaile came crashing into the room. The red-headed man Fulberg had pointed out entered first, training his pistol on Renderwell. A second man, short and stocky, came in behind him, gripping a knife. The last man, who rivaled Samuel in size, carried a stout club at his side.

Gabriel tensed and automatically reached back to make certain Jane was well hidden behind him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Samuel do the same with Esther. Renderwell subtly shifted his weight in preparation for a fight.

It wasn’t the change in numbers that had all three men bracing for an attack—they’d faced worse odds—but the agitated state of Kray’s men. Breaching the house was a mistake and, from the looks of it, they knew it. They were breathing hard and sweating profusely. Their eyes jumped nervously around the room. The man with the gun was twitching.

They were wound too tight, teetering on the very edge of panic. One wrong move might set them off.

Gabriel eyed the distance to the door and calculated how long it would take to get Jane through it and out of harm’s way.

Too bloody long.

“Excellent timing,” Kray crowed. He looked around the group. “Well now, what a merry party we make. Where are the other two?” he asked the redhead. “Waiting outside, I presume?”

The man wiped a sleeve over his brow. “They ran.”

Kray’s expression darkened. He opened his mouth to respond.

But he never had the chance to make a sound.

***

In the days and weeks to come, Jane would piece through her memory of the next few minutes in an ultimately vain attempt to make sense of it all.

She’d been aware of an awful stillness that had settled over the room as Kray’s men came inside.

Gabriel had reached for her and then…

A distant shot rent the air, followed by a shattering of glass.

And then all hell broke loose.

Everyone moved at once. Gabriel shoved her to the ground behind an upholstered chair with enough force to knock the air from her lungs. Gunfire exploded around her. She heard shouting, the pounding of boots on the floor and thud of fists against flesh. Legs raced past her line of sight beneath the legs of the chair. She automatically followed them with her gaze and saw Gabriel aim and fire at a target on the other side of the room.

Terror ripped through that first moment of shock, and she dragged in her first full gasp of air. Scrambling up to her knees, she blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of the chaos in the room. She’d lost track of Gabriel. There was fighting all around her, figures lunging and grappling, while broken glass from the windows littered the floor and the tangy smoke of gunfire filled her nose.

Grabbing a sturdy brass candlestick that had been knocked to the floor, she launched to her feet with no clear plan except to find Gabriel and help any way she could. Her gaze shot across the room and landed on the gleam of a gun barrel aimed at Sir Samuel’s back. Without thought, Jane lunged, swinging her makeshift weapon at the gunman’s head with all her might just as he pulled the trigger.

The man tumbled forward, his shot going wide of Samuel’s back, striking the edge of the fireplace instead.

“Jane!”

She whirled around at the sound of Gabriel’s voice. Even above the din and wild confusion, she could hear the fear in it.

She took two running steps toward him, then spun about again and dodged left when a dark shape leapt toward her from the side. She caught a flash of blade and heard her own abrupt cry of pain at the sharp, biting sting on the back of her arm.

And then Gabriel’s arm wrapped around her waist. He yanked her clear off her feet, hauling her backward, before spinning her around and crushing her to his chest with one arm. His hand wrapped protectively around her head just as another shot rang out, close to her ear. She felt the report reverberate through Gabriel and into her.

Jane tried to shove away from Gabriel, her instincts screaming at her to fight. But Gabriel only pulled her close again.

“It’s all right. It’s done. It’s done, Jane.”

She noticed it then—the stillness in the room. There was no more fighting or shouting, only the muted sounds of harsh breathing, muffled groans, and the roar of blood in her ears. Beneath her cheek, Gabriel’s heart pulsed strong and fast.

“First man to move will be the next man to die,” she heard him announce to the room at large. “Understood?”

She turned her head, looking out from the shelter of his arms, and saw that Mr. Kray and his men were on the ground, some of them groaning and twitching. Lord Renderwell was divesting them of any remaining weapons. He had a gash over his right eye, a rapidly swelling lip and a blackened tear on the edge of his coat that looked suspiciously like a near miss with a bullet.

Sir Samuel was equally bruised and bloody, but Lady Brass appeared to have escaped visible injury. Her gown was torn at the sleeve and hem, but there were no cuts or blood that Jane could see. Sir Samuel, however, appeared unconvinced as to her general health. He ran shaking hands over his wife, swearing all the while.

Jane looked back to Renderwell as he crouched next to Mr. Kray, then shook his head at Gabriel.

At Jane’s shiver, Gabriel shifted, placing himself between her and Mr. Kray’s body. He ran his hands up her arms in comfort. “You don’t need to be here. Let’s get you—” She flinched when he reached her shoulder, and his face paled when he snatched his hand away and saw the stain of blood on his fingers. “Christ, you’rebleeding. Where is it? How bad—” He spun her none-to-gently to get a better look at the injury on her upper arm. “Why the hell didn’t you say something?”

“I forgot,” she murmured, twisting her neck for a better look. “It only hurt at first.” And even that first sting had been more surprising than painful. “Damn it, that’s twice. That’stwice I’ve been pricked in two days.”

“It’s not a prick, Jane. You’ve been stabbed.”

“I have not.” She frowned at the injury as Gabriel quickly unknotted his tie. It was difficult to tell from her viewpoint, but it didn’t appear to be more than an inch in length, and it didn’t feel particularly deep. “It’s a slice at most.”

“By all means,” Gabriel ground out, “let’s be technical.” He tightened the makeshift bandage round the injury, then began to inspect her in the same manner Sir Samuel had his wife. “Where else are you injured? What hurts?”

“I’m not. Nothing hurts.” She was shaking, out of breath, and her knees felt weak, but she was certain at least half of her symptoms stemmed from sheer relief. “I’m all right. What happened? Who shot?”

“Mr. Jones happened,” a new voice offered from the doorway, and Jane turned to see Mr. Fulberg stride into the room.

“Bloody traitor,” Samuel snarled. 

“No, he came to offer help. Such as it was. He brought a half dozen men of his own. We routed Kray’s little army quick enough, but one of Jones’s men saw the standoff through the window and either panicked or imagined himself a hero. He took a shot at Kray. And missed, the idiot.”

“Our men?” Gabriel asked.

“Perkins and Sizemore are injured, but they’ll recover. Knife wounds, mostly. Kray’s men were poorly armed, and trying for a sneak attack.” His eyes roamed over the men on the floor. “I’m sorry to say they were partially successful.”

“Not your fault,” Renderwell replied. “Where is Jones?”

“On his way in.”

Mr. Jones arrived seconds later, timing his entrance with that of Lady Renderwell and the Harmons. As Lottie flew into her husband’s arms, Gabriel rounded on Mr. Jones, a middle-aged, diminutive man with thinning hair and round spectacles that sat loosely on a thin blade of nose.

“You set Kray on us.”

“On the contrary,” Jones replied evenly. “I sent Mr. Kray to retrieve Mr. Ballenger’s effects from his sister’s cottage.” He spared one disinterested glance at Kray’s lifeless form. “Obviously, I was unaware Mr. Kray was familiar with the very traitor whose identity I’d hoped to discover by searching those items.”

Jane looked to Lady Brass. “You said it was Mr. Kray’s name on the list. But it couldn’t have been. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It was his name,” Lottie replied. “And it wasn’t. Esther and Samuel left with Renderwell before I’d finished the last bit of deciphering. The name on the list is Oscar Kray the second.” She looked to Mr. Jones. “I assume he had a son?”

Mr. Jones blinked twice at the information, then gave a single nod. “He’ll be dealt with.”

Without thought, Jane found Gabriel’s hand and clasped it in her own. “He was protecting his child.”

“If you expect me to feel sympathy—”

“I don’t,” she replied softly. “It’s just sad, that’s all.”

“It was damn near disastrous for all of us. Why did you bring Kray in on this?” Gabriel demanded of Mr. Jones.

“He requested the assignment. I saw no reason not to oblige him.”

“You saw no reason to refuse his request to dismiss the men I’d chosen, and bring a small army of convicts to a lady’s isolated cottage?”

There was a slight, meaningful pause before Mr. Jones responded. “Mr. Kray never failed to perform the services requested of him in the past.”

“And you’re not in the habit of questioning the tactics of successful agents, is that it?”

“It is the nature of the work, I’m afraid. Miss Ballenger, you have my apologies. Had I known of Mr. Kray’s torn loyalties, this could have been avoided.”

Renderwell gave him a hard look. “You need to get your house in order, Mr. Jones.”

“And teach your men how to frigging aim,” Fulberg grumbled.

“Indeed.” He spared one more glance for the men on the floor. “In the meantime, I’ll have them deal with Kray and his lot.”

“I presume you’re still eager to have Mr. Ballenger’s list,” Lady Renderwell said. “It’s just down the hall, if you care to follow us.”

“Wait,” Jane called out when Jones moved to follow Samuel and the ladies from the room. She pulled away from Gabriel. “Mr. Jones, did Mr. Kray—either of them—kill my brother?”

For the first time, Mr. Jones’s expression and tone softened. Just a little. “No, Miss Ballenger. By all accounts, your brother died of influenza. I am sorry for your loss.”

She offered a stiff nod before Samuel led him from the room.

Lady Brass followed, but paused at the door frame. After the briefest hesitation, she turned around and took Jane’s uninjured arm in a firm grip. Her voice was urgent but quiet, meant for just the two of them. “I saw what you did for Samuel. I couldn’t get to him in time. But you did.” Leaning over, she kissed Jane on the cheek and gave her arm a quick squeeze. “I am in your debt, Miss Ballenger. I won’t forget.”

***

In less than two hours, Mr. Kray, Mr. Jones, and all their men were gone from the house. Jane thought that were it not for the odd bang and scrape that arose from the repairs in Gabriel’s room, it might have seemed as if the violent events of that day never happened. Well,that,and the wound of her shoulder. And also the fact that Gabriel was standing in her room alternating between fussing over said wound and snapping at her for stepping between him and Mr. Kray in the first place.

“I was the last person in the hall,” she explained as she dropped onto the end of her mattress. “And I heard you and Mr. Kray. What else should I have done?”

Gabriel stopped in the act of pacing between the window and the fireplace to scowl at her. “You should have fetched Samuel.”

“And Mr. Kray might have shot you in the meantime.”

“He wasn’t going to shoot me that quickly. He needed me to get the list.”

“Well I didn’t know that, did I? Stop poking.” She slapped at his hand when he tried to reach for the bandage on her shoulder again. “It’s perfectly fine. Mrs. Harmon knows how to fasten a proper bandage. It’s little more than a scratch, at any rate. Look.” She waved her arm about, ignoring the slight twinge and pull of the cut. Unless she proved her arm wasn’t one soft breeze away from dropping off, he’d never stop fussing over her.

“Stop. For God’s sake, you’ll make it worse.”

“I’ll stop if you promise to cease your hovering and tell me what else you learned from Mr. Jones. Did you ask him about the lamp, and why Edgar—”

“I asked him about everything,” Gabriel cut in. “According to Mr. Jones, your brother meant to return to England and deliver the identity of the traitor in person, but in the days leading up to his trip, he began to suspect he was being followed. Fearing assassination, he created the list and had his man of business, who was familiar with his work, send it to you. Then he telegraphed Mr. Jones informing him of the lamp, but to be safe, he made no mention of its location. Edgar’s plan was to have his man tell Mr. Jones where to find the lamp only in the event of his death. After your brother’s passing, the man intended to disappear for a time, wait until things settled down, and then send the message. But first, he saw to it that you received your brother’s effects. Originally, he shipped them to the Foreign Office, as would be expected of him. But he used a personal contact along the way to secretly reroute the shipment to Twillins Cottage. When Edgar’s things failed to arrive in London, Mr. Jones began a search for them in the hope they might have been sent to the same individual who received the lamp.”

“And they were,” she murmured thoughtfully. “Mr. Jones told Mr. Kray of the lamp, I suppose.”

“He did, but it’s likely Kray was already aware of its existence. It wouldn’t have been particularly difficult for his son to have discovered the contents of that first telegram to Mr. Jones.”

“And this man of business, he must have been found if Mr. Jones knows all this—”

“He was, and is now safely on his way to London.”

“Good. That’s good.” She let out a long, slow breath. “It’s really done, then. All of it.”

“It’s over,” Gabriel agreed and reached up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “You and the Harmons are out of danger.”

“We can return to Twillins.”

His hand hesitated a beat. “If that’s what you want.” He let his fingers linger on her cheek, stroking across her skin. “Is it what you want, Jane?”

“I don’t know,” she said carefully. “That depends…” She cleared her throat, and suddenly found something on the cuff of her robe intensely interesting. “That depends on you. I’ve told you how I feel. What do you want, Gabriel?”

He remained quiet until she finally found the courage to look at him again. “I’ll be honest. It’s not to live at Twillins. It’s a perfectly lovely home, and if you’re there, I’ll be happy. I’ll do everything in my power to see that you are as well. But I’d rather be happy with you someplace else.”

With her, Jane thought. He wanted to be someplacewith her. It wasn’t a declaration of love, not yet, but it gave her a thrilling jolt of hope. “Where?”

“Someplace warmer, to start.”

“And not so isolated, I imagine. You want to live in London.”

“I like London. I don’t need to live there. And I’m not sure I’d categorize it as warmer.”

“But you work there.”

“Most of my clients live there, but it isn’t necessary that I do. Commissions and contracts can be negotiated on visits and by telegram. It’s what Samuel and Esther do, and it works well enough for them.”

“I… The Harmons…”

“May wish to stay on at Twillins, but I rather doubt it.”

“They can live with us?”

“Whatever you like, Jane. Whatever makes you happy.”

“I’d like… Well, I’d like to know exactly what it is we’re discussing. Are you suggesting we—”

“Wait.” He threw a hand up quickly. “Don’t. Don’t ask.”

“Why not?”

“Because I bungled our first kiss, and our second kiss, and made love to you for the first time above a tavern when I had no business putting my hands on you at all. I’ll be damned if I can’t muddle through this part in the proper fashion.”

He shuffled his feet for a moment and muttered something she didn’t catch. Looking as embarrassed as any fully grown man might, he finally dropped down to one knee in front of her.

“Jane Ballenger. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

In the past, when Jane had succumbed to the temptation to dream what a normal life might be like, she’d envisioned friends, parties, trips to town. Not even in her wildest dreams, her most romantic fantasies, had she imagined a future with a man she loved. Never had she hoped for a moment like this. “I’ll be of no help to you in society. Dinner parties and balls…”

He smiled at her. That wonderfully secret, rakish smile. “I don’t need help. I’m not interested in ascending the social ladder. I needyou. Marry me, Jane. Say you’ll be mine. And say it quickly because I feel like a prize idiot.”

“Iam yours.”

“Yes, but I want a contract.”

“And references?” she said on a laugh. “I think Lady Brass might oblige.”

“She thinks you hung the moon and stars now. And she’s right.” He took her hand and brought it to his lips to press a kiss to her palm. “God, I love you. Say yes, Jane. Say I can fall asleep every night with you in my arms, and wake up to your smile every morning. Tell me you’ll always be here to keep my secrets. Let me catch you when you jump from trees. Let me show you the world you’ve been missing. Let me protect you from it, too. Let me be your husband. Let me be yours.”

“Yes.” With tears filling her eyes, she pulled Gabriel to his feet and pressed her mouth to his. “Yes, please. Always.”