Judging by the mutinous look on Claire’s face, he shouldn’t have been surprised when she yet again answered him with a question of her own.

“Oh, let’s do,” she said. “Tell me…just how did you end up in charge of England’s crack group of code breakers?” Syrup practically dripped from her voice.

Hell, he didn’t intimidate her at all. Not that he ever had, but damn it, his scowl could cow an entire regiment of men.

She raised her eyebrows in sarcastic anticipation.

He sighed. Apparently Claire was made of sterner stuff than even Britain’s finest.

Irritated as he was, he did have to admire how deftly she’d turned his words back on him.

“That’s not something you need to know,” he said. In truth, he wasn’t entirely certain himself. Having recently escaped captivity in Paris, he’d expected to rejoin Wellington, who last month had marched over the Pyrenean passes into southern France after his victories on the Peninsula. But Andrew’s years gathering intelligence had made a name for him in the War Department, it seemed. When Marston was killed, someone deemed that he was the right man, in the right place, at the right time, and he was sent to Abchurch instead.

Claire, however, was not to be put off. “Lord Marston never once mentioned you in connection with his department,” she prodded, “much less as a possible replacement.”

Andrew shifted in his seat. He wasn’t accustomed to playing from behind and the feeling didn’t suit him. He also didn’t care for the superior look on Claire’s face.

“Privy to all of the thoughts of one of England’s great spymasters, were you?” he snapped.

Claire’s eyes widened, then narrowed into a sly gaze. “More than you were, since you didn’t know Clarence was dead. Or that Uncle Jarvis had insinuated me into his place.”

He winced inwardly. Her jab struck true.

Wait. Uncle Jarvis? That’s right. Clarence had once mentioned that Lord Marston and his father were friends. That explained some of how Claire came to be here. Still, she knew more of what was truly going on here than he did, and perhaps more than his own superiors, who surely would have mentioned her presence had they known of it.

Fighting with Claire would get him nowhere.

Andrew tunneled his fingers through his hair, steepling them behind his neck as he took a deep breath. “Pax, Claire. Pax.”

A dull throbbing beat a tattoo behind his eyes. This damned day had taken a beastly turn. First, he’d been conscripted to go undercover with very little to go on. That hadn’t bothered him. He’d been in such situations before, and he’d had little doubt he could make short work of it.

But then he’d had a year of his life shocked out of him by finding Claire there. He’d experienced the exquisite joy of holding her in his arms once more, only to learn that his childhood friend was dead. And Claire, rather than feeling the same pleasure at their reunion as he, instead seemed to hate his guts…or at the very least, resent his presence.

Oh, and his dead friend had apparently been murdered, which complicated things all the more.

Not one of his best days, indeed.

After another calming breath, Andrew removed his hands to his knees and his feet to the floor. Then he shifted on the bench so that he faced Claire, laying his right arm along the back of the squab. He tried to make his voice soothing, persuasive.

“Let’s not fight. If I’m going to have any chance of discovering who murdered Marston and your brother, I need to know everything you do.”

Claire’s tiny gasp echoed through the cramped carriage. Andrew frowned as her normally robust complexion went ashen in the candlelight, the color leaching from her face in slow degrees.

“Uncle Jarvis was murdered?”

Andrew felt the blood drain from his face, too. She hadn’t known. He nearly kicked himself. Of course not. How would she? The official story had been a heart ailment.

“I wondered, of course, given our subterfuge, but…” Claire swallowed audibly, and her eyes turned glassy. She wasn’t looking at him, but off into the darkness over his shoulder. “But I went to Uncle’s house myself, and had it straight from his valet that his death had been natural. Not like Clarence.” Her eyes found his, and the sorrow he saw swimming in their cerulean depths stole his breath. She firmed her lips. “You’re certain?”

Andrew nodded, once. “Poison.”

Claire blew out a breath, then straightened her shoulders. She returned a clipped nod of her own. “Right, then. What are we going to do about it?”

* * *

“We aren’t going to do anything,” Andrew said, his lips pulling down into the affronted-male frown Claire recognized all too well.

She’d seen it on the faces of men her entire life, right before she was told to stay out of male business. She’d seen it on Uncle Jarvis’s face, too, when she’d first presented her plan to assume Clarence’s identity.

“You are going to tell me everything,” Andrew went on, “from the beginning, and then I am going to handle it from there.”

And there it was.

“So we’re back to that, are we?” Claire could give an affronted frown right along with the best of them. “Tell you everything, and then what? You’ll pat me on the head and send me on my merry way? I think not.”

“Claire…” he warned, but she didn’t let him finish.

“No. Uncle Jarvis tried to tell me he would take care of things, too, but he finally saw reason—”

“Good God!” Andrew snapped ramrod straight in his seat and Claire thought he looked a bit green.

“Are you all right?”

He narrowed his eyes on her. “It has just dawned upon me that if Clarence has been dead since November, and no one has noticed, then you have been masquerading as him all that time.” His voice had gone from startled to deadly calm.

“Well, yes—”

“What the hell was Marston thinking?” Andrew nearly shouted. His body seemed to vibrate with leashed tension. Claire bet that if they weren’t cooped up in this hackney, he’d have exploded out of his seat.

Not so calm after all.

“Somewhere out there is a killer who thinks—” Andrew stopped abruptly, his expression sliding from outrage into one of puzzlement. “Who thinks what? That Clarence has come back from the dead?” He tilted his head slightly as he looked to her for an answer.

Claire wilted a bit inside, the ever-present ache of losing her twin shriveling her heart another painful degree. “Not exactly. Clarence was knifed, you see. He…he was able to make it home alive. Barely.” She took a shuddering breath. “He died in my arms. But for all the killer knows, he could have pulled through.”

Flashes of that night invaded her mind. All that blood. The ghostly pallor of Clarence’s skin. The horrid rattle of his breathing.

The death grip he’d kept on her hand as she begged him not to die. Not to go where she couldn’t follow. Not to leave her alone when they had always been together—even in the very womb.

But Clarence had been unable to keep his grasp on life, and she’d lost a part of herself irrevocably.

“Don’t cry, dearling,” Andrew murmured, a scant moment before his arms closed around her and he pulled her to his chest.

Was she crying? Blast it all.

Hot tears spilled down her cheeks as his comforting presence enveloped her. The fresh warm citrus-y scent of him, the familiar strength in his embrace, the connection that came from knowing that once upon a time, she and her brother had both loved this man, albeit in different ways.

So she let herself be consoled by him, just for a little while. She welcomed the pain, rather than shutting it out—let it flow through her into poignant relief as she sobbed, something she hadn’t allowed herself to do since that awful night.

And all the while, Andrew held her close.

After she’d cried herself out, Claire found herself loath to leave the protective warmth of Andrew’s arms. How easy it would be to stay here. To forgive past betrayals. To forget her fears for the future. To not have to go back to that lifeless townhouse alone.

Wait a minute…

She lifted her head from Andrew’s chest, looking up at the underside of his strong jaw, now lightly dusted with evening stubble.

“We’ve been in this hackney quite some time,” she murmured. “We should have reached my residence long ago.”

Andrew’s head bobbed and his chest rumbled beneath hers as he answered. “Actually, I instructed the jarvey to drive us around the park until I gave him leave to continue on to your destination.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I had no intention of letting you escape this carriage until we’d hashed things out.”

Claire huffed and pulled away from him. He tightened his grip for a fraction of a moment, but released her. Part of her regretted the loss.

As she scooted away from him, she used the backs of her hands to dash away the remnants of her tears, and sniffed. “There’s nothing to hash out, Andrew. Uncle Jarvis and Clarence have both been killed, and it has to be because of something they were involved with for the War Department. They were the only people I had in this world, and they were taken from me. I will do anything and everything within my power to find justice for them, with or without you.”

His lips pressed together hard and he shook his head. “It’s too dangerous for you, Claire.” Andrew’s voice was raw, gravelly, as if he were holding back a torrent of words that burned to get out. “If the killer thinks Clarence survived, he’ll want to finish the job. Only he won’t get Clarence this time. He’ll murder you.”

“I’ve been counting on it,” she said, turning her lips up in a grim smile at the look of appalled horror that crossed his face. “How else did you think we were going to catch the man? I’m the perfect bait.”