Bronwyn Scott (5 page)

Chapter 10

“You’ve been whipped.” The words hung between them. Lucia meant them as a challenge. Ronan felt the closeness he’d fought so hard to establish with her start to slip. He’d not wanted her to find out like this, not when she would see it as proof he’d denied her the truth.

Lucia rose from the bed and came to him. She reached for his shirt. He let her pull it from his body, let her trace the thin white lines with her finger. These scars would never entirely disappear. He would bear them forever.

“Tell me what happened that night, after I fled.” Her eyes mirrored the self-recrimination he heard in her voice. He heard her thoughts as surely as if she’d spoken them out loud. Had she caused this? If she hadn’t run? If she’d been the one to go to Jonathon, could she have prevented this? They were not so different than the thoughts that plagued him about Jonathon. He knew what it was like to bear that particular cross. He would give her absolution if he could.

Ronan caught her hand, pressing it against his cheek. “You did your job that night and I did mine. You have nothing to regret.”

She swallowed, her throat working. “Yesterday you said you slipped out through the garden. What happened then? Who did this to you and why?”

His answer was succinct. There was no sense in keeping the truth from her now that she’d seen. “I went to kill Marcus Troy, only he got to me first. If Troy was dead, the game would end. I couldn’t save the others, but I could ensure Marcus Troy never betrayed another Englishman again.”

“Or Englishwoman.” Lucia pulled away and sat down hard on the bed. She was all seriousness now as her mind began to put the pieces together. How many times had he seen her look that way as he laid out a new mission for their team? He took the chair at their long-forgotten table, not far from where she sat on the bed’s edge. His hands dangled loosely between his legs, his head bent as he began the tale, picking his words carefully, still hoping to protect her while giving her enough knowledge, enough truth. Ignorance wasn’t always the key to safety.

“And?” Lucia prompted, her voice quiet, her hands still.

“I was taken to a castle outside Vienna and kept there for a month.” He would spare her the details.

“What did they want from you?” Lucia pressed, her voice quiet but firm.

Ronan raised his head briefly. “What do you think they wanted? They wanted names, your name. They knew they’d killed the rest but one had gotten away. Jonathon had told Marcus there were six of us.” If Jonathon hadn’t, he might have made them believe everyone had been accounted for.

“Worse, Marcus Troy knew there was a woman and he knew she was the one he still needed to find.” Ronan stood up and began to pace. “But he didn’t know who and he didn’t know where to start looking. You’d escaped him completely. You’d simply vanished, and I was his only link to you with the others gone.”

“And so they whipped you.” Lucia choked back a cry, coming to him once more, her hands at his shoulders, her lips pressed to his abused back. Then she stood in front of him, taking both his hands in hers. “Look at me, I want to see your face when I ask you.”

“What, Lucia?”

“Was it for me? Did they whip you for me?” she insisted, her green eyes flashing with anger.

* * *

His answer needed no words. His face gave him away entirely. He’d borne this for her. She pulled him to her and wrapped him in her arms. “Oh, Ronan.” She murmured into his hair, tears starting to slip from her eyes as the magnitude of his sacrifice swept her. She had not guessed. Her mind had been too wrapped up in nuance and strategy to see the truth. He had loved her in silence, in the privacy of his thoughts, all these years. Loved her yet.

Ronan’s arms were tight about her, their power giving her strength in this awful, wonderful moment of terrible discovery, the moment where she lost the fight to doubt and won the battle to love. Her heart was flooded with emotion. He’d endured such incredible hardship for her sake and she’d returned that devotion with rank skepticism.

Lucia slid her hand up his bare chest, coming to rest on the scar beneath his left breast. “And this? Was this because of me too?” She hoped not. She was already overwhelmed by the enormity of his sacrifice. She did not want to imagine he’d suffered more.

Ronan closed his eyes, his big hand closing over hers where it caressed him. “No. That was for Jonathon. Marcus couldn’t stand that Jonathon had preferred me to him.”

He’d not spoken of this part of the story to another. It was too confusing, too humiliating. He’d loved Jonathon, not as Jonathon had loved him, but as a brother, and he’d failed Jonathon. He’d known Jonathon’s tastes, but he’d not guessed he’d caught Jonathon’s attention until the night Jonathon had come to him. “It’s my fault Jonathon went to Marcus at all.”

Chapter 11

“Tell me,” Lucia whispered. They were exactly the right words. Not
of course it isn’t
or any of those trite phrases of absolution people gave when they didn’t really know the whole. The story poured out of him now, freed by Lucia’s words.

He told her how Jonathon had come to him one evening, an act odd in itself. The six of them were seldom together, to reduce speculation about their true purpose in Vienna, except when circumstances demanded two of them be at the same venue. Vienna saw them only as attachés to the English diplomatic corps. So it had been passing odd that Jonathon had come by for a drink. They’d drunk and talked.

When it had been time to go, he’d embraced Jonathon, as was their custom. But Jonathon had not released him. Jonathon had held him tight and kissed him on the mouth, hard and desperate. “
You don’t know how long I’ve waited to do that.
” Jonathon’s blue eyes had held his, willing him to accept the overture.

He’d seen the want in Jonathon’s eyes and he’d known it had taken no small amount of courage for Jonathon to declare himself. But he’d not been sympathetic. His rejection had been blunt. “
No.
Never.
” Jonathon had taken the refusal with his usual persistence, a trait Ronan usually admired in him. They were still standing close and Jonathon had placed a hand on his chest, his touch searing through the cloth of coat and shirt. “Please, Ronan. I can make it good for you, good for us. We would be magnificent together.”

Worry had come to him for the first time that reckless Jonathon didn’t limit his careless pleasures to the field and hedge. A spy absolutely could not be reckless in bed. Sex was the most dangerous weapon, blurring the line between games and true intimacy, trapping those who couldn’t tell the difference. Admittedly, he’d transmuted his concern poorly.

He’d slapped away Jonathon’s hand and his anger had poured out. There’d been extraordinarily hot words and Jonathon had not let them pass without response before stalking out into the night. He did not hear from Jonathon for a week afterward, and then it was to learn through his quiet networks that Jonathon had been seen in the company of Marcus Troy on several occasions.

“I should have intervened then.” Ronan blew out a breath. “But I told myself it was nothing, that I was reading far too much into it. Marcus Troy was part of our plan. He wasn’t the enemy. If I confronted Marcus, Jonathon might see it as jealousy on my part, a personal overture instead of business. In my pride, I let my judgment become clouded.”

Lucia stroked his cheek, cradling his jaw in the palm of her hand. “In all likelihood, Troy had decided to sell that information from the beginning, before Jonathon turned to him.”

The thought had occurred to Ronan too. It still didn’t erase his tactical error. Marcus could have done as much on his own, but Jonathon had made it easier.

“You take too much on yourself,” Lucia said softly. She led him back to the bed. His body stirred with curiosity, although his mind counseled caution. He had to tell her the rest. He had to get outside, not only to run the errand of retrieving his things and his horse, but to make sure danger had not followed him. It would be a miracle if it hadn’t. He fully expected it had.

Lucia smiled, unaware of the danger that approached. She pushed him down, sliding his trousers past his hips, making it clear whatever she intended would be quick. His body said he had time to accommodate that. Still naked beneath her robe, Lucia straddled him, rising up over him so that his tip just brushed at her entrance in exquisite frustration. It began to weep at its denial to paradise, a dewy bead forming at its head. If she would just lower herself a fraction...he could almost feel the smooth glide of her as she came down over him.

Ronan swallowed, desire riding him hard. To have her so close was perfect torture. “Lucia, if you would just...please.”

“I will
just please
. You lie back and think of England,” she whispered and lowered herself onto him, taking the whole of him in one fluid, delicious slide. Ronan closed his eyes, savoring. This might be the last time. The hourglass in his mind was nearly empty. If he was successful in wresting the envelope from her, he’d be gone by nightfall, leading danger away from Lucia forever.

But it would be worth it to know he’d lain in the arms of the woman who loved him, who had understood completely at last his sacrifice for her and who, in her own way, loved him in return. Lucia was not a woman who would ever
say
“I love you.” But he was not oblivious to all the ways she’d declared as much to him through other venues. She loved with her body, with her actions, and she loved deeply. When he’d taken her last night, it had been no ordinary physical coupling for either of them. She would fight for him. Which begged the question yet again—why not take her with him?

Why not have it all? Take the envelope and Lucia and disappear into the world? Why did this have to end with separation? Together they could outrun the danger. Together, with Lucia forever, anything was possible, although his brain was in no condition to refine that thought at the moment. Thinking of England was proving to be entirely too much, let alone planning for a future while Lucia was riding him astride.

* * *

Lucia moved on him, feeling the slick length of him deep inside her, the subtle movement of his hips beneath her. Ronan St. Simon was a magnificent lover. Even when she was the one giving the pleasure, he found ways to participate. But this was about more than the finding of physical release. This was about absolution and forgiveness. The pain on his face, the regret that had tensed his body when he’d told her about Jonathon had ripped at her heart, a heart that had already been torn apart by his story of torture. He’d felt Jonathon’s betrayal keenly and seen his own failure in it. She would relieve him of such guilt if she could.

Ronan arched up to her, bringing their hips flush, a secret desperation in his thrust she’d been surprised to find. He gripped her hips, signaling he wanted to roll her over, and she let him. It had not been her plan to let him up, but something else was at work here. He needed her beneath him in some elemental, indefinable way. Completion was not far off for either of them. When he took his final thrust, his tiger eyes locked with hers and the answer to the desperation asserted itself. Ronan was leaving her.

Like hell he was. He was not leaving her now, not after she
knew
, not after she’d given him so much of herself. How would she survive losing him a second time? Lucia wrapped her legs about him as if she could keep him inside her forever. It had been easier to move on with her life when she’d believed him dead with the others. How would she manage to do it again knowing he was alive, out there in the world somewhere?

Lucia reached up and threaded her hands through his hair. “Don’t go. There is no reason.”

“I have to.” But he made no move to take his body from hers. She let his strength surround her, reassure her.

Lucia stretched, sliding her hands over her head and beneath the pillow. Her hands met the metal of a blade and closed over a hilt, her body stilling at the contact, the aura of good feelings diminished by her rediscovery. Out of sight, out of mind. In the wake of the story of his torture and Jonathon’s fall, she’d nearly forgotten about the knife.

She dislodged Ronan and retrieved the knife. “What else have you neglected to tell me?” There was little rancor in her tone, only fear that she wouldn’t like the answer. He’d protected her all these years and he was protecting her still.

Chapter 12

“The worst truth of all. Marcus Troy is alive and he is coming for the last envelope.” Ronan rolled to his side and propped himself up.

Lucia paled, setting the knife down. “Why does he care? He’s already won. The Russians got their secret clause in the Unkiar Skelessi treaty. We were unable to warn our negotiators in time. It hardly matters.” Yet some sixth sense had always warned her that it did. Why else had she kept the envelope five years after any obvious need for it?

“Because he believes he was named as a person of dubious loyalties in the true dispatch, the one meant to reach the negotiator,” Ronan supplied. “He told me as much one night toward the end.”

She didn’t want to think what he meant by
the end
. The end of Ronan’s strength? The end of his life? The point at which Troy felt Ronan was sure to die from the atrocities inflicted on him, atrocities Troy had apparently administered and oversaw himself? If she ever laid eyes on Troy again, she’d kill the bastard. It might have been better to think of those things, though, it might have kept her from other thoughts, most obviously: Ronan had known all this before he’d set foot in her parlor.

Anger took her almost instantly, her brain dissecting anew everything that had transpired in the last day. Lucia leaped out of bed. “Marcus Troy is coming? You
knew
and you’ve spent eighteen hours playing love games?”

Ronan rolled off the bed and opposed her across its rumpled width, naked and furious. “
I
was not the one who pulled out the Zubrovka and the ropes, if you recall.”

Well, he had her there. Lucia belted her robe and fumbled for a response. “
You
pulled a knife out of your sleeve.
You
asked for the one thing I wasn’t supposed to give you.
You
broke the rules!” Her voice trembled against her efforts to the contrary. “You were supposed to be dead!” A sob welled up in her throat. She covered her mouth with her hand in a poor attempt to suppress it. It escaped anyway, a miserable mewl of a sound. Her legs shook. She was going to collapse.

Ronan was there, catching her, taking her to the floor and wrapping her in his arms. She didn’t want him touching her, not now when she was so weak, she who was always so strong with men, so sure of herself when it came to the opposite sex. Lucia flailed at him with her fists.

“How dare you walk into my parlor dressed in London’s best fashions as if you haven’t a care in the world, as if you didn’t know you were supposed to be dead, as if you hadn’t been tortured to protect
me
and turn my world upside down simply by being here,” she railed, tears streaming down her face, “all for the sake of the stupid game!”

He did grab her wrists then, stopping her fists. “The game isn’t stupid, Lucia.” His voice was harsh. “The security of the empire rests on that game. When we failed to deliver that information to the team in Istanbul, we cost the empire primary rights to the Dardanelle Straits for eight years in case of a conflict. You know what that means if there’s war in the Mediterranean: our soldiers, our navy, possibly trapped or delayed to reach others in need. It means hundreds, maybe thousands of lives lost. It makes six lives pale in comparison.”

She stilled at that. She knew how important the game was to Ronan, how much he believed in the worthiness of his cause, that he could make the world a better place with his efforts, his sacrifices, that one good man could make a difference. She had not meant to mock his work, work he’d nearly died for on more than one occasion, work that had claimed the whole of his adult life to this point.

She’d played for different reasons: for the excitement, because it had started innocently enough on her father the count’s behalf, but it had become addicting. Then she’d met Ronan and her mother’s English connections had been important, and it had all started again. But here in Bath,
she
was done with the game. True, she was bored. That didn’t mean she wanted back in. Nor did it mean she wanted to be used by Ronan. What had all this bed sport meant? Had it all been manipulation? Had some of it been genuine?

“Tell me this, Ronan. Did you come here for the envelope or did you come here for me?” Control was coming back to her, the one tool she could always rely on. She needed her wits. A reckoning hovered on the imminent horizon.

“For you.” Ronan did not hesitate with his answer. “I meant to lead Marcus Troy away from you, making it very clear to him that the envelope was now in my possession.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re worth saving, Lucia. You always have been. It’s always been you.”

That decided it. The answer was neatly given. He’d wrapped her fate up with the envelope, made them inseparable and by doing so he was protecting her and the game. But who protected Ronan? She was not fool enough to miss the fact that he meant to sacrifice himself for her again, this time perhaps in the most final of ways. Alone, he could not hope to elude Troy forever. As long as Troy felt there was a reason to hunt him, Ronan would not be free.

There would be no more sacrifices on her behalf. Her mind was made up. Lucia shook her head, caressing his cheek. “I can’t let you do it, Ronan.” She climbed to her feet, hiding a secret smile as she gathered her clothes and turned her back. Here at the end, the decision had been remarkably easy. There was really only one choice: to be with Ronan or not.

“Please, Lucia.” There was a harsh, desperate urgency to his voice. “Give me the envelope and kiss me goodbye. You can trust me. You will finally be free. It’s the only way.”

Lucia turned to him. “I will give you the envelope, but I’m coming with it. You are not facing Marcus Troy alone, not anymore.”

She saw him try to protest.

“No, Ronan. There will be no argument on this. You have tied my fate to that envelope. It goes with you,
I
go with you. Someone’s got to protect you while you’re busy protecting the empire.”

She saw the fight he waged with himself. Grim determination warred with desire, settling at last into acceptances.

“If you’re sure it’s what you want?” Ronan began to dress.

“It’s what I want.
You
are what I want.” Lucia dressed quickly, gathering items of use and value into a valise. “How much time do you think we have?”

“An hour or two.” Ronan shoved on his boots and slid his knife up the sleeve of a shirt she’d managed to find. Adrenaline coursed through her at the sight of him arming himself. It was like old times.

“You’re cutting it a bit close.” Lucia tossed him a smile and closed the valise. She held her free hand out to him. “Come down to the garden with me.”

“Do you have everything?” Ronan asked.

“Yes,” Lucia said with quiet assurance. They would not return to the room. They would go to the garden and they would leave. They’d simply walk out, never to return. Of course she’d write to her solicitor from their first stop and have him accept the offer for the property, but she’d wrap up her loose ends from afar.

In the garden she dug under a rose bush and retrieved a wooden box holding the envelope. She handed it to Ronan. “You’re the spymaster, you open it.” In truth, she was a bit nervous about the envelope’s contents. Had she been the one to carry the information all these years?

Ronan tore open the seal and pulled out a single sheet of paper, his quick eyes scanning the contents. He caught her gaze and nodded. “You can read it.”

She took the paper in a trembling hand. It was all there. The letter outlined the Russian plan to negotiate a secret clause with the Ottoman Empire that would free the Ottomans from supplying troops to aid a threatened Russia. Instead of troops, the Turks would close the vital Dardanelle Straits to any ship not flying Russian colors, a move that would be more effective in handicapping an invading force than supplying soldiers.

If the English had known in time, it would have changed the outcome of the treaty. The postscript at the bottom was damning:
Don’t trust the Englishman Marcus Troy.
He may be involved in upsetting the deal.

Seeing the words in ink brought the danger Marcus Troy posed home to her. She met Ronan’s gaze. The game wasn’t over. She’d never really been out of it. “No one knows of his duplicity,” she breathed. “He could still be caught. If he is—”

Ronan finished her thought. “He could be tried and hanged as a traitor to the crown.”

“His life is at stake, then. That is the prize he plays for now.”

“Yes. I think you’ve summed it up magnificently.” Ronan smiled grimly. “Shall we?”

Lucia put her hand through the crook of his arm and without looking back, walked out of the garden with Ronan St. Simon, spymaster extraordinaire, the man who loved her, and into a new Chapter of her life.