Agent of the Crown (30 page)

She spun around. Morgan. Her heart raced as
if it alone could propel her out of the tower, out of danger, but
he had her trapped against a pile of crates, his tall,
broad-shouldered body filling the doorway. His face was in shadow,
but she could see the dark arch of his brows outlined on his pale
face. Acting innocent wasn’t going to help her this time. She tried
it anyway.

“You caught me,” she said with a wry smile,
holding up the iron key. “I found out this opens all the towers,
and I couldn’t resist taking a peek.”

“Somehow I think milord Baron won’t accept
that as an excuse.” He took a step toward her. She felt that feline
smile tugging the corners of his mouth. “I wonder what he’ll do if
I tell him where I found his pet Deviser?”

Telaine couldn’t think of anything to say.
She hadn’t spent eight years charming the noblemen of Tremontane
without knowing how to tell when charm simply wouldn’t work. This
was one of those times. And begging Morgan for anything would be
suicidal. She took a step back and her foot bumped the nearest
crate.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell him. A secret you
and I can share.” Another step closer. She couldn’t go any farther
back. “But you know, don’t you, that it’s a secret with a
price.”

“What price?” She managed to keep her voice
steady.

Now that he was no longer backlit by the
watery evening light from the doorway, she could see his face
clearly, his pointed, cruel smile, and it terrified her. “A kiss,”
he said. “Only a kiss.
”

Remember the game he likes to play. First
awareness, then fear, then submission. And then he has you.
It
was past time for pretending not to understand; he needed to see
her fear. That wouldn’t be hard. She had started to shake from his
nearness. “One kiss?” she asked, letting her voice tremble. She
gripped the edge of the crate she was backed up against to keep her
hands from shaking as well.

He stepped close, only inches separating
them.
“one kiss.”

Before she could register the lie in his
voice, before she could scramble away, his hand was behind her head
and his lips were fastened on hers, hard and hungry. She whimpered,
unable to control herself, and he put his other arm around her
waist and pulled her close enough to feel every inch of his body
pressed against hers.

Terrified, she pushed ineffectually at his
shoulders. He released her, grabbed her hands and pulled them down
to her sides. “Fighting back entitles me to another kiss,” he
whispered.

He pushed her back against the crates, making
her cry out as an edge cut into the base of her spine, then took
both her wrists in one hand and slid his free hand up her waist,
her torso, up until his hand covered her breast. She struggled like
a panicked animal in a cage as he kissed her forehead gently, in a
parody of tenderness, then squeezed her breast and chuckled as she
cried out again.

“Don’t fight me,” he murmured in her ear. “We
both know this is what you want.” His hand moved from her breast to
the front of her trousers, and now she fought with every ounce of
strength she had. Everything she’d ever learned about fighting,
every technique of self-defense, went out of her head in her panic.
She tried to kick Morgan or knee him or anything that would get her
away from him, but he leaned against her, pinioning her lower body
while his hand worked at the buttons of her trousers.

“No—” she screamed, but his mouth was on hers
again, hard and pitiless, and mindlessly she struck out the only
way left to her, sinking her teeth into his lower lip and biting
until blood flowed.

He jerked away, released her hands and struck
her hard across the face, making her bite the inside of her cheek.
The taste of his blood mingled with the taste of her own. Morgan
stepped backward, pressing the back of his hand to his bleeding
mouth. He was breathing heavily, but his face had returned to his
usual mocking expression.

“Afraid, but still a fighter,” he said.
“You’re not ready, after all.” He bowed to her. “I look forward to
our next encounter.” He backed out of the tower, bowed again, and
vanished.

Telaine shook so hard she couldn’t control
herself.
It’s the cold, just the cold
, she told herself. A
wonder her inner voice never echoed with the lies it told her. She
touched her cheek; it was sore and hot and puffy. It took her
several tries to refasten the buttons he’d—she remembered the feel
of his hands tugging at them and had to sit down to keep from
passing out, her hand clutching the front of her trousers
together.

Then she wrapped her arms around herself,
rubbing her breast as if she could rub out the memory of his touch,
and waited for the shaking to subside enough that she could return
to her tower and retrieve her coat. Her heart wouldn’t stop
pounding. She saw Morgan in every shadow. Wrapped in her coat, she
hurried down the mountain in the gathering dusk.

She couldn’t keep herself from reliving
memories, Morgan’s hands, his lips on hers, until she was shaking
again from more than the cold. She clenched her fists and made
herself think about what she’d discovered. Storage rooms full of
exactly what they were supposed to be full of. A fort full of
slovenly troops—no, that was wrong, a fort barely staffed by
slovenly troops. Captain Clarke killed because he was in the
Baron’s way
hard lips, hands pulling her too close
—

The whole time she’d been in Longbourne,
she’d never seen a single soldier come through town on his way to
the fort. Mistake with paperwork or not, they were sending soldiers
away and not replacing them
a hand, squeezing her—

Why did they need so many supplies if the
fort wasn’t even half full? Hardy’s information told her the fort
was supposed to have three hundred men, but based on what she’d
seen there was barely a fifth that many stationed there. That was
ridiculous. They had enough weapons and supplies stored to outfit
an army.

An army.

Telaine stopped, her heart now pounding for a
different reason. Enough to outfit an army that wasn’t there. At a
fort sitting across the only pass from Ruskald through the
mountains, a back way into the kingdom.

He’s not a smuggler. He’s a traitor. He’s
going to let the Ruskalder in, arm them, and set them loose on
Tremontane.

Telaine began to
run, tripped in the growing darkness, then slowed as reason
asserted itself. She couldn’t get the message through until
tomorrow at the earliest, when Abel Roberts drove into Ellismere.
She shouldn’t get herself killed tripping over things in the dark
before then, because she was the only person aside from the Baron
and Jackson and probably Morgan (
don’t think about him!)
who
knew what the Baron planned.

She walked quickly down the road to
Longbourne, lost in thought. The snows would be here soon. The
Baron couldn’t implement his plan before then, because the
Ruskalder army would be stuck in the valley until the main pass
cleared in spring. That gave her an advantage.

She didn’t know how long it took Thorsten
Pass to clear, but if she got the message to her uncle in time, he
could have the army ready to march up the mountain and make the
fort defensible before the Ruskalder came. Thorsten Pass had a
northern exposure, and the main pass faced south; the army would
have plenty of time.

She wished she could fly down the mountain to
Ellismere, break into the telecoder office and send her message
right now, today, this instant. Waiting until daybreak was torture.
Riding in silence with Abel would be torture.

“Lainie! There you are!” Jack Taylor called
out, startling her. She’d been so preoccupied she hadn’t realized
she’d entered Longbourne and walked all the way down the main
street to the tavern. “You’ve got to need a drink, long day of work
like you’ve had. Come on in.”

“I don’t know, Jack,” she began. Socializing
after what she’d learned, after what Morgan had done to her, seemed
impossible. She wanted to crawl into her warm bed and hide.

“Oh, come on, Lainie, you can’t be
that
tired, nice quiet job like that. Ben’s going to sing
for us.” Jack had his hand on her elbow now, and she nearly yanked
it away, but remembered in time that he was her friend and not
going to shove her up against
a stack of crates—

“Just one drink, Jack, it’s been a long day,”
she said, and followed him into the tavern. Noise and light greeted
her, and laughter, and she put on a smile and hid her confusion and
misery away where she could take them out and indulge them later,
in the privacy of her room. Ben, leaning against the pianoforte,
smiled when he saw her and came to greet her.

“You’re late,” he said, and raised his hand
to her cheek. “And you’ve got something on your face.”

Too late, she remembered Morgan hitting her.
She put her hand up to cover her cheek and Ben’s hand brushed
against hers. He looked puzzled, then took her hand away and looked
at the bruise. “What happened?” he said.

“Nothing.” It sounded false even to her.

“It can’t have been nothing. Did you
fall?”

“I—” She was so tired. “Yes. I fell.”

Ben looked at the bruise again, then into her
eyes. She looked away, feeling guilty and stupid. What kind of
agent couldn’t come up with a good lie?

He touched her face again, gently, then his
hand went still. “Morgan,” he said in a low, rough voice. “I’ll
kill him.” He strode to his chair and picked up the coat he’d slung
over it.

His movement brought her out of her stupor.
“No,
no
, stop, please, don’t do it!” she cried, grabbing his
arm.

“What’s the problem?” Jack asked.

Ben ignored him. “I warned you,” he told her.
“You knew he was dangerous. You thought you could keep out of his
way. I warned you he was more than you could handle.”

“Ben, let the rest of us in on this,” Liam
said.

Telaine shook her head, pleading with her
eyes. She couldn’t let him leave. Her imagination supplied her with
a dozen scenarios in which Ben confronted Morgan, all of which
ended with him dead, most of which ended with Morgan flinging his
body at her like some sick trophy. She shook her head again. If she
could show Ben how much this mattered to her, maybe he would let it
go.

Ben looked from Telaine to Liam. “Morgan’s
been harassing her,” he said, his voice flat. “Today he went too
far.”

Liam looked at Telaine in puzzlement. “Why
didn’t you say something?” he asked. “We could’ve found a way to
keep him away from you.” There was nodded and verbal agreement from
the crowd.

“Lainie, let go,” Ben said.

“No. You promised you wouldn’t go after him.
You
promised
me.”

“Happen I lied. Not going to let him get away
with this.”

“He’s going to kill you. I couldn’t bear it
if he did.”

“You think I—we—could bear it if he did
anything to you?”

Telaine looked around the room at her
friends. Every face was filled with concern for her. Tears
threatened to spill over her cheeks.
No one in Aurilien would
care if the Princess dropped dead
, she thought irrelevantly,
and then she really was crying.

Ben stopped trying to reach the door and
removed her hands from his arm. “Morgan needs to know you’ve got
people ready to defend you. Needs to stop thinking you’re helpless.
You know he won’t stop unless someone makes him.”

“I’m not helpless. I can handle it,” Telaine
said, trying to sound assertive through her tears. “Stay out of
this, Ben. I don’t need your help.”

The room went quiet. Ben took a step back, as
if she’d slapped him, then he went expressionless in a way that
frightened her more than his fury had. “Happen you don’t,” he said.
He slung his coat around himself and pushed through the crowd to
the door. The sound of it closing behind him was barely audible in
the silent room.

Telaine stared at the door.
What did I
say?
She looked around. No one met her eyes; the floor and the
ceiling and the furnishings were apparently far more interesting.
“I didn’t mean,” she began, took a deep breath, and said, “I just
wanted to keep him out of this.”

“Why?” asked Maida from behind the bar.

“Because I don’t want him to get hurt,” she
said.

“Looks like you did a fine job of doing that
yourself,” her friend retorted.

“But I didn’t mean…” Her hands were shaking
again, and she took hold of a chair to steady herself.
I don’t
need your help
. Those sounded like words you couldn’t take
back.

Liam cleared his throat, drawing her
attention. “Lainie, we all know you like to do for yourself,” he
said, “but nobody can do
everything
for herself. And when
you tell the man who loves you that you don’t need him, well…” He
shrugged.

Telaine’s mouth dropped open, and she was
grateful she was already hanging on to the chair, because without
it she would have fallen over in shock. “Loves me?” she said in a
tiny voice.

Everyone started speaking at once, their
words jumbling together in the confusion, a few voices cutting
across the noise.

“Never seen any man so swept off his feet by
a woman,” said Liam. “Never in all my days.”

“Don’t know how you didn’t know. Everyone
else did,” said Isabel.

“He looks at you like you’re water in the
desert,” said Maida. “You can’t have missed that. Or I guess you
can.”

Telaine was dazed, as if all the noise was
happening somewhere far away and she could hear only echoes. “I
didn’t know,” she said. She let go of the chair and found she could
stand unsupported. “What do I do?”

The noise diminished. “Ben’s a proud man,
Lainie,” said Jack. “You—he won’t get past that in a hurry. Might
want to give him time.”