Lord of Fire (37 page)

She just looked at him, then rethreaded the needle for the next stitch.

“I was not cheating on you.”

“Yes, I rather guessed that when she did this to you,”
Alice bit back, matching his sarcastic tone. “Will you please be quiet and let me work? I am already upset enough.”

“I would never cheat on you. I was searching her for weapons.”

“Like you searched me last week?” She slanted him a dubious look and yanked the thread a bit too quickly through his flesh.

“Ow! You did that on purpose,” he muttered with a wince.

At last, she checked each neat stitch and found the whole row of twenty little knots satisfactory and secure.

“I have to bandage you now—”

“Enough, woman!” He brushed her off with all the moody impatience of a cat. Shirtless, he slid off the dresser and stalked past her, the firelight flickering over his bare chest and sculpted arms.

“Lucien.” She sighed. “Now it needs to be bandaged.”

He rested his hands on his lean waist and turned to her. “Henceforth, when I give you an order, I expect you to obey it. Understood?”

“No.” Throwing down the towel after washing her hands, she picked up his bottle of brandy and downed a swallow straight from the bottle to bolster her frayed nerves, then set it down squarely on the dresser.

“Pardon?” His stare darkened in warning.

“I am not your puppet, Lucien.” She folded her arms over her chest. “Who was she?”

“Forget you ever saw her.” He walked over to the medicine box and began bandaging his side without her help.

“Forget? Lucien, that woman is dead, and it’s my fault. We have to go to the authorities.”

He sent an ominous look of warning over his shoulder. “We are not going to the authorities,” he said slowly.

Her face drained of color as she stared at him. “I heard what you said to your men. ‘Get rid of the body.’ Lucien, you can’t simply cover this up. We need to send for the sheriff. Whoever she is, that woman deserves a proper burial on consecrated ground, not an unmarked grave in your woods! Her family should be notified—”

“Stay out of it,
Alice.”

“I will not.”

“Haven’t you caused enough trouble already?”

With a fleeting look of pain, she took a step toward him. “And aren’t you already carrying enough secrets? How far will you go to hide your activities in the Grotto? A woman just died at your party, Lucien! If you don’t send for the sheriff right away and explain what happened, eventually the truth will out. It is inescapable. Then one day, when they find out how you covered up her death, it will look so suspicious that you may be held accountable for murder. Is that what you want?”

“Nobody is going to hold me accountable for murder,” he said in a low warning tone, turning his back to her.

“Why wouldn’t they? Because you’re one of the mighty Knight brothers? You’re not above the law! What’s right is right.”

He didn’t answer. He was standing very still, staring into the fire.

Seeing that she was making no impact on his stony will, she tried another approach. “Lucien, we are leaving tomorrow morning for
Scotland to be married. I don’t want this death hanging over our heads as we start our lives together. . . .” She waited for him to say something, but when he remained silent, her eyes filled with tears. She clenched her hands at her sides and marched toward the door on legs that shook beneath her.

He pivoted, watching her pass with a searing stare. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“If you won’t do the right thing, I will,” she forced out past the lump in her throat. “That woman’s death was my fault—”

Lucien appeared in front of her, leaning his back against the door, blocking her exit. He stared at her with a feral glint in the depths of his wolf-gray eyes. “Stop blaming yourself right now,” he ordered in a low, harsh tone. “I am responsible. Not you.”

Fresh tears brimmed in her eyes as she stared up at him. “What manner of man are you, to want to pretend this never happened? Get out of my way. I am going to the authorities—”

“I am the authorities, Alice,”
he whispered emphatically, his eyes shimmering with white-hot intensity.

She searched his face without comprehension.

“Listen to me very closely,” he said as softly as the wind. “That woman was a Russian spy. She committed murder under my roof. She killed an American agent in the Grotto. That’s why I was questioning her.”

“What?”

“I am not a diplomat, Alice. I am a secret agent for the Crown. A spy. And the Grotto is nothing but a front for what we in the Foreign Office call a listening post.”

She stared at him shock.

“You wanted the truth. There it is.” His silvery eyes were as unreadable as mirrors. “I have now put my life in your hands. If you tell anyone about me, you will jeopardize my safety.”

“A spy,” she echoed. “You’re a spy.”

He nodded.

She sank down onto the chair beside the door, staring blankly at the floor as everything came clear to her. “A spy?” She looked at him again, flabbergasted, then studied him as though she were seeing him for the first time.

He crouched down slowly beside her chair. She saw fear darting through the depths of his eyes as he searched her face. “The Russian woman was aiding a dangerous French agent who is even now in
London, working against our country. You see? I am not an unfeeling man; it’s just that Sophia was aiding the enemy. That’s why we are not concerned about her death. When an agent dies on enemy ground, nobody cares. If I had died in
France, they would have buried me in an unmarked grave, as well. That’s just how it is,” he whispered, caressing her thigh as he tried to soothe her shock. “You mustn’t blame yourself or worry about what will happen. All that matters is that you are safe.”

She gazed at him for a moment, then suddenly pulled him into her arms and held him, closing her eyes tightly. “Oh, my darling.” She kissed his cheek. “Thank you for finally telling me,” she whispered.

“You aren’t angry?”

“No.”

“You’re not . . . revolted?” he asked.

“Good heavens, why should I be? You are even more extraordinary than I realized.” She kissed his hair and felt him shudder in her arms.

He kissed her neck, his shaky exhalation tickling her ear. “I didn’t know how you would react. Damien still hasn’t forgiven me for my choice of professions,” he said bitterly. He looked up at her with his soul in his eyes. “I was afraid that I would lose you, too.”

She cupped his jaw and leaned forward, kissing his brow. “My darling, foolish love,” she whispered. “You must never fear to tell me the truth.” She hugged him again, careful of his wound. “Oh, I can’t believe that vicious woman nearly took you away from me. I never saw anything so awful. Thank God you weren’t hurt worse.”

“I’m all right.” He pulled back and stared wonderingly into her eyes. “There isn’t much time. Tomorrow morning, I must send you north to Hawkscliffe Hall, my family’s ancestral castle in the
Lake District, until I’ve dealt with the situation in
London. With a few of my men to guard you, you will be quite safe there.”

“What about
Gretna Green?”

“We’re going to have to postpone it. I’m sorry, love. The situation is critical, and it is my job to catch this man.”

“Let me go with you to
London, then—”

“Absolutely not. This man is a very disagreeable fellow. That woman was his lover. He will want to avenge her when he realizes she’s dead. If he were to find out about us, he might try to harm you or to use you somehow to get to me.”

She stared at him in growing dread. “Is he so very ruthless?”

Lucien nodded grimly. “Worse.”

“Well, then . . . maybe you shouldn’t be the one going after him. You’re already hurt. If his mistress did that to you—” She nodded at his wound. “—what will the man himself do? Why don’t you send a messenger to the Foreign Office and ask whomever it is that gives you your orders—”

“Lord Castlereagh.”

“Ask Lord Castlereagh to assign someone else to the task, because you’ve already been injured and you’re supposed to be getting married? I’m sure there must be other capable agents who can see to this man. That way we can go straight on to
Gretna.”

“
Alice.” He smiled wryly at her. “For one thing, Castlereagh is in
Vienna; for another, these are my orders. And thirdly—” His expression darkened. “—this is between me and Claude Bardou.”

She did not like the cruelty that hardened his face when he mentioned that name. She studied him warily, shaking her head. “I have a bad feeling about this. Look at your side. Look at what almost happened to you tonight. Lucien, as your future wife, I don’t think I want you to do this.”

“I have to,” he said coolly, murder in his eyes. “I
want
to.”

“You want to?”

“Yes,” he murmured. “I want this man dead.”

“Oh? And what if he kills you, instead? What am I to do then?”

He stared at her for a long moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Perhaps she had expected him to put her mind at ease, assure her there was no chance that he would be killed in the line of duty. He offered no such comforting lie.

She got up abruptly from her chair and walked past him across the room, her mind reeling, a cold knot of dread in the pit of her stomach. She rubbed her forehead, trying to absorb it.

“
Alice? Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not.” She turned around. She fought a sense of rising hysteria. “Lucien, you know what I’ve been through. I lost my mother, my father, my brother—and now you’re telling me there’s a good chance that I could lose you, as well? I don’t think I can bear it.”

He rose warily to his feet and turned, his stare clamped on her.

Tears filled her eyes. “Don’t you love me?”

“You know I do. More than anything.”

“Then how can you do this to me?”

“
Alice, I have a duty. I love my country and I love you.”

“But you hate him more.”

He looked at her uneasily.

She swallowed hard. “Love or hate, Lucien? You can’t have both. Choose.”

“
Alice, don’t be bullheaded—”

“Choose!” she cried, her whole body trembling. “A week ago, you made
me
choose whether Caro or I should go home to Harry. Now it’s your turn. Him or me?”

“No more ultimatums,
Alice. We made love. You could already be carrying my child—”

“I am like clockwork, Lucien. I have already begun to bleed. Now, choose!”

“Don’t do this to me,” he whispered.

“I am not going back into mourning again. I’m not dying all my clothes black again, and I am not going to watch another young man’s coffin go into the ground. I can’t do it, Lucien!”