Dangerous to Hold (30 page)

Catherine’s eyebrows were flexing eloquently. Marcus sighed and held out an olive branch. “I’m not sure if there will be time to see everything, but I would enjoy a tour of the manor, if you can be spared from your duties.”

The austere expression gradually softened. “I can be spared. Now, how may I help you, Lord Wrotham?”

Marcus came straight to the point. “You may begin by telling me all that you remember of the English soldiers who were with me at your headquarters.”

What
El Grande
had to say added very little to what Marcus already knew. He had been on a mission to Madrid, he said, for almost the entire time that Marcus and his comrades were marooned in the monastery, and when he’d returned, he’d escorted them to British lines almost at once. There had been very little opportunity to get to know the English soldiers even if he had wanted to, which he hadn’t. He was the leader of a group of partisans. He didn’t want to be known and recognized by outsiders. It was too dangerous.

At one point, Marcus said, “It always comes back to the mysterious Rifleman who got away. I don’t suppose there’s any way of discovering who he is and what happened to him?”

“I’m not in a position to say. Perhaps you should ask …”
El Grande
looked up to see Catherine, standing behind Marcus, vigorously shaking her head.

Marcus swiveled in his chair, and Catherine stared down at him. “Should ask whom?” said Marcus, still looking at Catherine.

El Grande
said, “What do you think, Catherine?”

“Oh, I think we’ll never find out anything about that Rifleman. Too much time has passed.”

After a long reflective silence, Marcus said, “Why did you want Catherine to play the part of Catalina?”

Catherine said quickly, “I’ve already told you all that,”

“I’m asking
El Grande
”

El Grande’s
eyes never wavered from Marcus’s face. “I suspected you of murdering the English soldiers who were at my headquarters. By asking Catherine to play Catalina, you gave us the perfect opportunity to keep you under surveillance.”

“Good God, man, if I had been the murderer, think what might have happened to her!”

Catherine addressed her remarks to
El Grande.
“Marcus doesn’t see me as a crack agent. He thinks I’m a helpless female.” Then to Marcus, “You may find this hard to believe, but in Spain the French put a price on my head. No one forced me to play the part of your wife. It was my own decision. I never
really
suspected you,” she added, not quite truthfully, “but even if I had, I still would have done it. I know how to take care of myself.”

“You know how to take care of yourself!” said Marcus savagely. “What about the accident you say was a deliberate act of violence against you?”

“What accident?” asked
El Grande.

“Marcus thinks it was an accident,” said Catherine. “I don’t know what to think any more,” and she went on to describe what had taken place.

“Perhaps,” said
El Grande
, “we are making mountains out of molehills. I was attacked, too, when I was walking with Amy, but it was nothing more sinister than young ruffians looking for trouble.”

“Amy?” asked Marcus.

El Grande
looked at him coolly. “Mrs. Spencer,” he said.

“Mrs. Amy Spencer?” Marcus was frowning. “Not the Mrs. Spencer who lives on Pall Mall?”

“I see you know her too,” replied
El Grande.

Catherine turned away and fussed with the hem of her pelisse. Her brain was reeling.
El Grande
and Amy? She was bursting with questions, but she swallowed them while she waited in pent-up silence for what would happen next.

Marcus said, “I’m acquainted with Mrs. Spencer.” He paused. “But I’m surprised that a man who has embraced the religious life should be acquainted with her too.”

The transformation in
El Grande
was remarkable. His body tensed. His eyes flashed then cooled to ice. Marcus had seen that same look many times in his rake-hell days, but it was always before some gentleman had challenged him to a duel.
El Grande
flicked a glance at Catherine, and Marcus sensed the tension gradually go out of him.

El Grande
shrugged. “I don’t spend all my time in the monastery. My work as a lay brother takes me to the city. During the course of my work, I met Mrs. Spencer. Is there anything else you would like to know?”

“Yes,” said Marcus. “I want to be quite clear on one thing. Were you and Catherine acting on your own in this? Was British Intelligence or the War Office involved?”

Catherine said nothing.

El Grande
said quietly, “You must understand that I have not been involved in intelligence work since I left Spain.”

Catherine added, “I told you, Marcus, I wanted to do it.”

When he did not reply, and then went on to something else, she released the breath she had been holding.

After a while, a white-robed monk brought them mugs of hot, spiced cordial to ward off the chill. Outside,
a light snow was falling and it was evident there would be no time left to tour the monastery. The horses would be chomping at their bits.

“Of course,” said Marcus, taking a swallow from the pewter mug he’d been handed, “I haven’t had as much time to think about this as you. As you know, I was working on the assumption that you were the villains and I was your victim. Now that I am more enlightened, it occurs to me that we must be witnesses to something.”

“But witnesses to what?”

“If we knew that, we’d know who the murderer is.”

“I still have my journals and sketches from that time,” Catherine said. “Maybe you’d like to have a look, though I haven’t found anything significant in them.”

Marcus looked at her incredulously. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? Sketches? Notes? Of course I want to see them!”

Catherine glared at him. “I couldn’t tell you before because then you would know that I was Catalina. Anyway, if anything unusual had happened, I would have reported it. Besides, I never met the English soldiers. As I already told you, I kept well out of their way for fear they would recognize me if ever we met again. I would have done the same with you, if you had not been so badly wounded and I had to nurse you. The only sketches I did were of partisans.”

“Reported it to whom?”

“What?”

“You just said that nothing unusual happened or you would have reported it. Reported it to whom, Catherine?”

There was a heartbeat of silence, then she said, “To Major Carruthers. In Spain, he was my liaison with British Intelligence.”

Before Marcus could respond,
El Grande
said, “I think it would be a good idea if you went through those journals and sketches. You might see something that Catherine has missed.”

They left soon after that. But in the carriage, it was instantly obvious that she and
El Grande
had not fooled him for one minute.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The look he gave her was so cold that she shrank into the folds of her warm pelisse. Not a word passed between them on the way home, but when they entered the house, his fingers tightened around her arm and he did not let go of her until they entered her bedchamber.

“Listen to me very carefully,” said Marcus, “I don’t want to repeat myself. You are going to start at the beginning and you are going to tell me the whole story. No more lies. No more evasions. I want to hear about Major Carruthers, and I want to hear about Amy Spencer and your connection to her.” The slow, precise diction suddenly gave way to a ferocity that made her shiver. “Make no mistake, if you don’t tell me everything, every last insignificant detail, I shall call your
El Grande
out, or I shall horsewhip him to within an inch of his life.”

He knew his words had been effective by her sudden pallor. Threats to herself would have been useless. But he had known that she would never see any harm come to her precious
El Grande.
For him, as she’d already told him, she would be willing to lay down her life.

She said in a shaken voice, “You can’t mean that, Marcus.”

“Try me.” When he saw that she believed him, he went on, “Begin with Major Carruthers, or whoever is now your liaison with British Intelligence.”

There was a moment of silence while Marcus sat down. He didn’t invite Catherine to take a seat, and as she stood there before him, she felt like a prisoner in the dock, looking into the eyes of a judge who had already made up his mind to condemn her.

She felt herself shrinking before that look, not in fear, but in shame and guilt. He’d never once lied to her, not once, in all the time she’d known him, and she had tricked and deceived him from the very beginning, going back to their forced marriage in Spain. There might be
some excuse for her accepting Major Carruthers’s mission, and her subsequent masquerade, but that ended the night Marcus found her out and she became a true wife to him. She couldn’t think why she hadn’t told him everything then except, perhaps, that she’d been trained to think like an agent. But she was a woman, and this was the man she loved. She would never lie to him again.

Lacing her fingers together, she looked down at them, and stared long and hard at the wedding ring he’d given her, then she began to speak, beginning with the night he had asked her to play the part of Catalina.

As she spoke, fragments of memories flashed through Marcus’s mind. Even then, when he’d put his proposition to her, he’d been taken with her. He’d trusted her, believing her to be honorable. But she’d been deliberately cultivating his trust. More than that, she’d made him fall in love with her. She’d used his need for her to blind him to her true purpose.

When she fell silent, he said, “Now let me see if I have this right. Major Carruthers is your superior. He ordered you to play the part of Catalina. You are an Intelligence agent and you were given the mission of spying on me because Major Carruthers suspected me of murdering my comrades. You communicated with him through other agents who had been placed in my household, except for when we were at Wrotham. Then Father Granger became your liaison with Major Carruthers. Have I left anything out? Oh yes,
El Grande
had no part in this. Is that the substance of what you’ve just told me?”

“Marcus, there’s a lot more to it than that.”

“Answer my question.”

She nodded, feeling sick inside. This catalogue of her sins made her sound like a coldhearted, scheming adventuress who had been trying to trap him at every turn. “Marcus, I wish you would believe that I wanted to prove your innocence,” she said quietly.

“I’m waiting for an answer to my question.”

Her eyes dropped away. “
El Grande
played no part in it,” she replied.

“So you believe. But I’m not convinced that he wasn’t in this up to his neck.”

Her head lifted and she said incredulously, “You can’t suspect him of murdering all those men!”

“Why can’t I?”

“Because—Marcus, I
know
him. Besides, what possible motive could he have?”

He couldn’t prevent his bitterness from showing. “What possible motive could I have, but that didn’t stop you suspecting me. But let’s go on now to Amy Spencer. What is your connection to her?”

“Amy is my sister,” she said simply.

For a moment, he was at a complete loss, then enlightenment dawned. “The one who eloped when you were just a girl?”

“Yes.”

His eyes narrowed as he digested her words. “And how does she fit into this?”

“El Grande
met her at my house. I was as surprised as you when he said that he’d been out walking with her. They must have agreed to meet again. I can’t think why, unless she’s helping him with his work among the poor.”

Her words registered, but only just. Marcus was still trying to come to grips with this new development. Amy Spencer was Catherine’s sister. He didn’t know that he’d risen to his feet, and was leaning against a bedpost with one hand wrapped around it. “Your sister,” he said. He had a vision of a little house in Chelsea, and Amy wearing nothing but some trinket he’d given her, disposed provocatively on a yellow sofa while he was tearing his clothes off.

His eyes flew to Catherine’s and he blushed like a guilty schoolboy.

Catherine read everything in his expression, and for the first time since entering that room, she didn’t feel like the guilty party. “Yes,
that
Amy Spencer,” she said.

He immediately went on the defensive. “I can’t deny that she was my mistress at one time, but that was a long time ago.”

She went on the offensive. “As I recall, the first night we met in London, you were going into Amy’s house.”

“She gives parties, for God’s sake. There’s nothing in
that. Since she left my protection, we’ve been friends, nothing more.”

“Parties where gentlemen meet ladies of a like mind. Loose women, to be precise.”

He combed his fingers through his hair. “I was a single man. I didn’t know you then.”

“You were married to me. I was Catalina.”