Beauty and the Spy (11 page)

A shadow, like a flying platter, darkened them briefly, and was gone.

"A kestrel. Looking for a meal," the viscount murmured.

Susannah was tempted to throw her body over the nest.

He looked up from her drawing into her face then, his expression thoughtful. For a brief, giddy moment she thought he was about to compliment her bonnet, or at the very least, her drawing. She smiled softly, in case he needed a little encouragement.

"You don't appear to be terribly grief-stricken over your father's death, Miss Makepeace," he said.

Susannah's breath left her in a cough of shock.

But the viscount's eyes remained on her levelly, for all the world as though it had been a perfectly reasonable thing to say. Granted, there hadn't been a shred of accusation in his words; he simply wanted to
know
, and so he had asked.

She supposed she could be missish and protest the question. But again, she found it oddly liberating, this forthright way of his. This… reckless… brand of honesty. She
wanted
to answer his questions. She wanted to know the answers to them as much as he did.

"I grieve for my father," she kept the words cool, because he deserved the coolness, she decided. Her voice was still a little unsteady from shock. "But we weren't close, Lord Grantham."

He said nothing for a moment. And then:

"Kit," he corrected. With a crooked half-smile.

Susannah frowned at that, which made his smile complete. He waited, his blue gaze steady. Confident she would say more.

And she couldn't help but say more into that silence. "I saw him seldom, as he was away so often for his business. I wanted very much to know him, but he was nearly a stranger to me, which I shall always regret deeply. So, yes, I do grieve him. But perhaps not to the degree I would have should we have enjoyed a warmer relationship. And perhaps not to the degree
you
find appropriate."

A droplet of sweat made the meandering journey from the back of her neck to the crevice of her bosom while the viscount took this in. She watched something shift in his expression, something difficult to interpret.

And then he gave a short nod, as though she'd given the correct answer.

Susannah felt pique. Both for him, for what seemed to be condescension. And for herself, for feeling gratified by his approval.

"He was difficult to know, your father," Kit offered mildly, surprising her. "I liked him, but I believe he invited very few people into his inner world. So he wasn't a stranger only to you, Miss Makepeace. It was, in feet, difficult for me to imagine how he acquired a daughter at all."

What a fascinating thing to say. "Do you suppose he had an inner world? My father?"

"Don't we all?" The viscount sounded surprised.

She glanced around them, at the little tree-ringed meadow they occupied, home to the voles. No houses were visible from where they crouched, nor was the pond. It occurred to her that they were very alone, she and the viscount, and yet she'd been far too absorbed in work to worry about impropriety. What on earth would Mrs. Dalton say?

"What of your mother, Miss Makepeace? What became of her?"

Susannah was still feeling lightheaded from the abrupt questions and her own ascent into bold honesty. But this conversation seemed to have acquired its own momentum. "My mother died when I was very young, Lord Grantham. I remember only…"

She stopped. She'd never before told anyone of that night. Partly because the memory was so faint, like something from a dream rather than an actual memory; she'd jealously guarded it, as though sharing it would somehow wear it away further. And partly out of pride: she didn't want to be pitied for having only one paltry memory.

But his voice and demeanor were easy. Not probing, or demanding, or sympathetic; rather, conversational, as though nothing she could say or do would ever shock him.

And suddenly it seemed safe to tell him.

She took a deep bracing breath; oddly, her heart was knocking. She turned away from him to speak. "I remember… oh… waking in the dark. A lot of rushing about and whispering. Someone… crying. A woman leaning over me… she had long black hair that tickled my cheeks." Susannah gave a short laugh; self-conscious, and rubbed the back of her hand against her cheek. "Her eyes were dark. Her voice was…" she cleared her throat. "Her voice was soft."

Susannah risked a glance back at the viscount. His expression was abstracted; he seemed to be picturing this along with her. "This woman with the dark hair was your mother?"

"This may seem odd, but…" Susannah hesitated. "I'm not certain it was. I have a miniature of her, and she didn't look like that at all. She looks like me. I look like
her
, that is."

"What was your mother's name, Miss Makepeace?"

"Anna."

"Anna," he repeated softly. "Rather like Susannah, isn't it? Perhaps you'll show the miniature to me one day."

This suggestion puzzled Susannah. Was he flirting, now? It was entirely possible, since the viscount didn't seem to flirt in any of the ways she recognized. "Perhaps," she agreed, cautiously.

His mouth twitched a little at that. And then, abruptly, he lowered his head to the voles again.

Finished with one specimen and on to another
, Susannah thought acerbically.

She found, however, that she wasn't through with the conversation.

"Did… did my father ever speak of her to you? My mother?" She tried to make the question sound casual, yet she could hear the faint note of hunger in it.

The viscount looked up, surprised. "No." The word was gentle. "Did he never speak of her to you?"

Susannah paused. And then she gave her head a coquettish toss, as if nothing had ever mattered to her less. "Apparently my father never spoke to anyone of anything, Lord Grantham."

The viscount didn't smile. "And no one else spoke of your mother to you, either?" Still gentle.

The lightness proved difficult to sustain. "No." Odd how the admission shamed her.

Pride kept her gaze even with his.

He watched her a moment longer, his expression difficult to read. Then he inhaled deeply, exhaled, and ducked his chin briefly into his chest in thought. And raised his head again, eyes glinting.

"I thought we'd address the White Oak next, Miss Makepeace, since you ignored it a few days ago favor of sketching
another
magnificent specimen."

Susannah gave a start, and blushed, and wanted to shake him, and all of this was somehow easier than the gentleness and the honesty. She felt her equilibrium restored, somehow. Oddly, Susannah suspected this was why he'd said it.

"May I see your work?" he asked, laughing silently at her flustered face. Mutely, she handed the sketchbook to him.

He studied her sketch of the voles. And for a time, a long time, it seemed, his face revealed nothing at all, which in itself seemed revealing. And then steadily, slowly, she watched his expression go sterner. A wall going up, over-compensating for some softer feeling.

At last, as welcome and startling as sun breaking through clouds: awe struggled through.

"How do you do it?" he demanded brusquely. It sounded like an accusation.

"'It'?" She repeated, afraid she sounded stupid. Still, she didn't know he meant.

"Capture them so… precisely the way they are. Their… voleness." He rapped the drawing with the back of his hand and looked intently into her eyes. As though much hinged on her answer to this question.

"I…" she hesitated. "I've never really thought about it," she admitted almost shyly, hating to disappoint him, because he clearly considered this significant. "It's as though…"

He waited. So she thought about it. She didn't know quite
how
she did it—captured voleness, that is. But she did know she'd always turned to her sketchbook in order to escape from or capture something, whether it was a thought or an impulse she needed to stifle, or something she needed to understand, or… Perhaps it was because—

Oh, but this was going to sound foolish.

"It's as though I can stop being
me
for just a moment, and I feel what it feels like… to be a vole. Or a rose. Or—"

She was going to say, "or you."

She wouldn't presume to know what it felt like to be him. But she thought of him on the pier, gloriously nude, stretching his arms toward the sky… and it had been as though his own pleasure in the moment had become her own pleasure. As if every bit of his pleasure, his abandon, his beauty, had infused her drawing.

"No," he said suddenly. Softly but firmly. As though he'd just had a revelation of his own.

"No?" She was crushed. And here she'd really given it some thought.

"No, I don't think you ever stop being
you
when you draw, Miss Makepeace… not even for a moment. I suspect you are entirely yourself when you draw." One of his fair brows went up along with the corners of his mouth, daring her to challenge his conclusion.

And his eyes still held hers relentlessly. His fair lashes darkened to gold at the tips, she could see now, and a trio of lines rayed from the corner of each of his eyes; they deepened when he smiled. There was a tiny divot, a scar, near the corner of his mouth; fair whiskers sparked in the hollows of his high-planed cheeks. The terrain of his face seemed utterly suited to the man, with its unforgiving angles and unexpected softness combined. She had an impulse to trace a finger over the slopes and comers of it, the way one would follow a map to see where it lead.

"Oh," she said faintly, at last. Imagine, she, who could always effortlessly talk of small things, could only say "Oh."

She suspected no talk was small for this man.

But the questions and challenges he'd hailed upon her like a shower of bright, sharp jewels since they'd met had ceased long enough to allow her an insight of her own: he hailed those questions and challenges so she would
not
be able to see into him. So that she would forever be dodging, rather than looking.

Oh, but that's a mistake
, Viscount Grantham, she thought It only made her desperate to know what he was so determined to hide… or protect.

Her eyes lowered then to his softly smiling mouth, drawn to it as though his secrets could be found there, or perhaps because it was the most forgiving aspect of his face; certainly at the moment it was easier to bear than his searching eyes. And there her gaze lingered… a little longer perhaps, than it should have. Because she was a woman, after all. And it was a splendid mouth.

She watched the smile fade from it.

Cautiously, she returned her eyes to his. What she saw there landed as cleanly as a lightning strike at the base of her spine.

The blue had darkened nearly to black. There was a thrilling tension in his face; his eyes skimmed her mouth, hovered… considering. A delicious, breath-stealing heat unfurled through her limbs.

And then his face changed abruptly: hard, slit-eyed and predatory, he sprang to his feet with such shocking speed that she stumbled backward.

He'd sensed it like a shift in the wind; even after years away from this land, anything that didn't belong rippled his awareness. And so when instincts had tugged his eyes away from Susannah Makepeace's… promising… mouth…

He'd seen on the outskirts of the wood… a man.

Who'd run when Kit sprang to his feet. Disappearing from view with remarkable speed.

Frustration bit into him now like a tether. He supposed he could give chase, for he could run like a bloody deer, and he knew this terrain better than anyone; he'd have the advantage over the intruder.

But he suddenly felt distinctly uneasy about leaving Susannah alone.

Kit lowered his pistol; he'd retrieved it from his boot without thinking, a reflex. He swiftly scanned the perimeter of his property, the place where the man had been standing. He saw nothing else untoward. Trees, grasses, flowers, squirrels. No men.

Poachers weren't entirely out of the question, but everyone in the region by now would know the lord was back in his manor, and he sincerely doubted even a desperate poacher would risk a daylight foray—though a stupid one might. He hadn't seen the long dark shadow of a musket in the man's hand, but he'd investigate the area later, look for footprints in the earth, for traps, any clues to the man.

For if someone had wandered innocently on to his land… they wouldn't have run.

He thought of John Carr; dismissed that possibility. And then he wondered whether his father was actually having him watched. Now,
that
seemed possible.

Bloody hell
. And there he was, naturally, gazing into the eyes of a female.

He turned to find Susannah still on the ground, leaning back on her hands. Frowning a little. Not as rattled as she might be, given the fact that that he'd just leaped up and drawn a pistol.

"I didn't know naturalists took pistols out with them. Did you intend to challenge the voles, then?"

He couldn't have said it more dryly himself, and for a moment, he wasn't sure what to say, which was a rare enough occurrence. Point to Miss Makepeace.

"It's not a dueling pistol," he said, before realized too late how absurd a defense this was.

"Ah."

"I thought I saw a poacher," he clarified coolly.

"I've never known anyone to bide a pistol in his boot. While he was out drawing voles."

"Haven't you?" he said absently. And then, remembering his manners, he extended his hand to help her to her feet She accepted it with alacrity. She'd removed her gloves to sketch, and what a soft little paw she had; he was tempted to linger over it for a moment, as he would any small pleasure, and allow his imagination to complete for him how soft the rest of her would be. In fact, a moment ago… a mad, mad moment ago…

Well, it was probably a very good thing he'd seen the man when he'd had.

Irritated with himself, his father, Miss Makepeace and the world, Kit released her hand abruptly. She wasn't a siren. He wasn't a boy. He was just a bored, restless spy.

"No," she replied firmly. "I haven't."

One didn't really expect such a display of spine from a young woman in blush-colored muslin. He wondered if she understood just how narrowly she'd escaped being kissed.

"And how would you know what a naturalist would choose to take out with him, Miss Makepeace? Odd, but I don't recall seeing any voles in your sketchbook before today. Naked viscounts, however, I
do
recall."

His words painted her face red as surely as if he'd dipped her in the color, and effectively silenced her, which had been his intent. He wanted to be able to look at her for a moment with a spy's eyes, and not a man's eyes.

For not only did she not in the least resemble James Makepeace—but the mother whom she presumably
did
resemble was entirely a mystery to her, if she was to be believed.

And he did believe her. It ached in her, he'd heard it in her voice: this void where her parents should have been. The twinge of guilt he felt about interrogating her was nicely fought back by his desire to get at the truth. It was all too odd, the deaths, the watching man, the mystery of James Makepeace's life.

"Perhaps," he suggested casually, "you should ask your aunt whether she thinks you inherited your talent for drawing from your father or your mother."

He probably couldn't overtly interview Frances Perriman about James Makepeace, however desperately he wanted to do it. But he could subtly urge her niece to do it for him.

Susannah still looked becomingly flustered; she fumbled her sketchbook closed. "It would be interesting to know." Polite and cool.

He preferred her sarcastic, or blushing, or proud, he decided. Anything other than polite. "Do you ride, Miss Makepeace?" he found himself asking suddenly.

"Yes, quite well." Then, as an afterthought: "Thank you." Chin angled high, like a flag carried into battle.

Ah, that was better. "Please meet me at my stables tomorrow morning. We shall ride out in search of ferns."

She did brighten a little at that. And oddly, though it was a small thing, it pleased him to please her.