I Spy a Duke (2 page)

Remembering the stream of Nicodème’s blood down his blade gave him no comfort. “The bastard won’t hurt anyone ever again.”
 

Louisa stirred. Slowly, her eyes opened and her gaze traveled from side to side.

“I can’t hold on,” she whispered, her raspy voice a far cry from the confidence with which she’d always spoken. “Jim?”

He took her other hand. “I’m right here.”

“Protect them.”
 

He squeezed her hand. With that one last request, life shuddered out of Louisa. A silent, sad end to the indomitable girl who had blazed through life louder than cannon fire.

He remained by her side. Her body went cold. He held her hand until the servants came to clear out the room, and still he did not let go. Not until Arden tugged him away, forcing him to down a shot of brandy so he could speak again.

Protect them.

Louisa’s last words would become his personal crusade. From this day forward, he vowed he’d protect his agents with his very life. No one else would die because of his mistakes.

It was the only way he knew how to go on.

CHAPTER ONE

Maidstone, Kent, March 1799

On this of all days, James Spencer, code-named Falcon, had even less patience for social niceties than the small amount he usually possessed. Today, he’d give the great majority of his vast family fortune to be on a boat in the Atlantic Ocean, or perhaps in a little villa in the south of Switzerland. Bloody hell, at this point, he'd even accept the stifling heat of India, if it meant he was far away from the confines of Abermont House and everything familiar.
 

Yet he could go to the ends of the Earth and the memories of Louisa would not stop. Still, a year after her death, the recollections drowned him. Louisa, as she'd been as a child of four, her grubby hands digging through the dirt. A dozen governesses throughout the years could not curb her enthusiasm for nature. Louisa, a debutante during her first Season, wearing a pastel purple gown as she danced at her coming out ball. And lastly, Louisa's beaten and unconscious body, thrown over his shoulder as they escaped from the Talon's lair.

He curled his fist, desperate rage boiling within him as he pictured her mutilated body in the crude sickroom. Heard the pierce of her cries in his ears, then the shallow intake as she inhaled her last breath. He was useless to stop her death. Powerless. Still the fury seethed within him, a crazed, rancorous animal he could not cage.
 

Three hundred sixty five days had passed, and he remembered every damn detail as though it were yesterday.

In the hall outside his study, the clock chimed nine. Three more hours until this godforsaken day was over. Each minute dragged on interminably, compounded by the weight of his guilt. His blasted responsibility as head of the Clocktower. His failure.

He closed his eyes and breathed in. His office should have smelled like brandy, old papers, and soap from a fresh cleaning by the maids. Instead, his nose pulled in the pungent sweetness of dried blood, combined with the rancor of bile. His stomach lurched, brought on by the haunting smell insinuating itself on his mind once more. He was in Nicodème's dungeon again, as he was every night, but this time he did not need sleep to usher in the horror. This day had been a living nightmare all by itself, an onslaught of memories he could not fight off.

Opening his eyes, he let out a shoulder-shaking sigh. So much for the attempt at meditation. That had been a suggestion of his eldest sister, Elinor, and a part of him delighted in proving her wrong, even if it was on something as inconsequential as deep breaths not helping to relieve his stress.

As an alternative, he borrowed a tip from his second oldest sister, Korianna, and downed a third of a snifter in one gulp. The burn lit up his throat, a welcome diversion. He drank another third, and then the last. He'd conveniently placed the decanter on the edge of his desk in case of emergencies such as this one. A man had to have priorities, after all, and he now counted brandy very high on that list.

But even brandy was a temporary release. The miracles of spirits could not bring his sister back—no matter how many times he tried. They could not erase the fact that he'd allowed her to go on a suicide mission. His hand clenched around the empty snifter, wondering if the victory of shattering it in his palms would improve his mood.
 

Protect them.

Louisa's scratchy, pain-drenched voice resonated in his ears. The Clocktower had achieved a seventy-five percent mission success rate in the last year, and there had been no fatalities. He’d protected his fellow agents—but not his family, who should have meant more to him than anyone else.

Under James's leadership, a new era of prosperity appeared to be dawning for their organization. They'd managed to turn a key member of Fouché’s secret police to their advantage, and plant the seeds of rebellion against the First Consul. William Wickham, Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, had personally commended James for his service. The Clocktower was considered a secret sect of Wickham’s Alien Office.
 

But none of that meant anything when he'd failed Louisa. When the sound of her staggered, desperate cries filled his ears at every interval.
 

His hand tightened around the snifter. Squeezed the glass for all its worth. Suddenly, a crack resonated through the quiet office.
 

The crystal fractured.
 

He was left holding the sharpest piece, slit through his palm. For a second, he simply stared at the new wound, watching the blood drip down onto his desk, too numb to register it.

Pain pierced through him, drawing out a loud groan. With his good hand, he tugged the shard of glass from his palm, his breath hissing out as the fragment clinked onto the top of the desk. So much for being a hardened spy, used to bullet holes and stab wounds. His pain tolerance had gone to the devil with him not being in the field these past four years.

Blood splashed his desk, flowing freely from the open laceration. First things first, then. Pressure on the wound. He fished in his pocket, drawing out his handkerchief. He pressed the handkerchief to the cut, attempting to staunch the flow of blood.

 
Footsteps sounded down the hall, coming toward him. Blast it all. Most likely, it would be one of his sisters. He’d have to face their nagging questions, adding insult to injury. He steeled himself for the oncoming assault.

 
Yet the petite, blonde woman in the brown dress who rushed into his study was most certainly
not
one of his sisters. He didn’t know if he should consider himself lucky that his brother’s governess had found him, instead. After all, he barely knew her, outside of a few conversations they’d had since her hire six months prior.

Miss Vivian Loren’s large blue eyes rounded as she caught sight of his hand wrapped in the blood-soaked cloth and the shattered crystal. “Your Grace, I heard you cry out and came running. You’re hurt.”

He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

She arched her brows at him, unconvinced.
 

“You may go, Miss Loren.” He adopted his most autocratic tone, the one usually reserved for when he wanted to remind members of the
ton
that he was a duke, and their opinion mattered little.

She stood her ground, her eyebrows still arched, and her nose crinkled. Her nose intrigued him—thin and narrow. Crooked, except somehow that made her more alluring. As if she could be as flawed as he was.
 

He decided he liked that she didn’t leave. It had been a damnably long time since anyone had stood up to him. He did not count his sisters—they’d argue with the king himself, if given the chance.

“Enough of that,” she ordered in a no-nonsense tone. “Your wound needs attention. I am quite used to blood. If you’re concerned about my fragile female mind, you needn’t be. I shall not faint.”

“That’s the furthest thing from my thoughts.” Growing up as he had with a fierce mother and even fiercer sisters, the “fragile female mind” myth had long ago been proved false.

“Good,” she said. “Then you needn’t be so strong around me. Let’s look at your wound.”

God, how he wished that was true, on today of all days. But it was his job to be strong. To hide his pain beneath a veneer of proficiency. “Really, this is not the first time I’ve been cut.”
 

She ignored him, coming to his side of the desk. Pushing up her sleeves, she leaned down to inspect his hand. He expected her to wince at the sight of so much blood—but again she surprised him. She pursed her lips, reaching for the edge of the handkerchief. No fainting, no histrionics, just pure efficiency.

“There might be a spot of bleeding again without the pressure, but I need to see how deep the cut is,” she explained to him in that same factual tone, as though he were a child like his brother.
 

He ought to bristle at this. He was a grown man fully capable of taking care of his own wounds—he’d done so many times before. Yet there was something comforting about her competence.
 

She tilted her head to the side, bringing the scent of roses from her soap to his nose. He clung to that smell, allowed it to fill every crevice of his lungs, for it blocked out the cloying tang of blood and memory.
 

“The cut is not too deep,” she determined with a swift nod. “It should heal nicely, provided we clean it now.”

Her azure gaze dashed around the office, evaluating every object. She settled on the brandy decanter, uncorking it without asking for permission. She balanced it in one hand, her other hand sliding underneath his palm, raising him up off the soiled handkerchief.

“This might sting a bit,” she cautioned.

The brush of her hand against his warmed him in ways he neither anticipated nor understood. His hand
tingled
. What in the devil? He never reacted this way when a woman touched him. He forgot the pain, focusing in on the comfortable heat of her flesh against his. This soft, supple woman was at best two heads shorter than he was, yet she seemed unconquerable in her self-possession and surety.

Belatedly, he realized she was waiting for a response—he could not leave her forever supporting his hand, the bottle of brandy poised and ready. “I’m no stranger to pain.”

That made her brow quirk once more. He didn’t know why that pleased him.

She slanted the decanter, splashing brandy on his cut. The air rushed out of his lungs, as the sting of the alcohol cut through his fog.
 

Bloody, bloody hell.
No matter how many times he was injured, he’d never become at ease with this part of healing. The quick stab of pain was worse than a dull, constant ache.

“My apologies, Your Grace,” she murmured. “If it helps with the pain, the sting means it’s working.”
 

She set the decanter back down on the desk, but she did not release his hand. His bloody, oozing hand, which if he was any sort of gentleman he’d pull from her immediately, whether or not he derived some inexplicable relief from her touch.
 

His eyes fell to her face. He saw fortitude in the lock of her jaw, concern in the wrinkle of her forehead. But there was no sign that their proximity affected her in any other way.

He should not have been disappointed by that.

Eying his wound, she reached for her own wipe, but then decided better of it. “Might you have another handkerchief?”

He nodded. “In the top left drawer.” All the files pertaining to the Clocktower were kept in a secret room located behind the main library. There was nothing in his desk that she couldn’t see.
 

She opened the drawer, drawing out two handkerchiefs. The first she used to clean his hand with gentle strokes, until the red disappeared and there was only tanned flesh with a cut across the middle of his palm. Pushing the stained handkerchief off to the side, she spread out the second clean linen and then rested his hand on top of it.

“I’ll bandage you up now,” she said.
 

He was quite able to handle his own wound, but curiosity took hold of him. He wanted to see if she’d complete this task as proficiently as she had the rest.
 

As she began to wrap his hand, he reviewed what he knew about her. All servants employed by Abermont House were subject to a thorough investigation, given the nature of their business. Elinor had interviewed her after the last governess left to tend to her ill mother, but James had verified the dossier and made the final judgment.