Shana Galen - [A Lord & Lady Spy Novella] (2 page)

She’d shot him.

She’d really shot him, and bloody hell but it hurt. Blue had always thought Helena would be the death of him, but he thought she would hit him over the head with a wine bottle or stab him in the back. This—
this
—felt like a betrayal.

Without his permission or consent, his legs gave way and his body sank to the ground. The snow cushioned his fall, though he was so numb he doubted he’d have felt the impact regardless. He did feel the cold. It seeped into his bones, chilling him, cooling the white-hot pain. Or perhaps it was not the cold of the snow he felt, but the icy fingers of death. He’d seen men badly wounded. He knew how cold one’s body became before death set in.

Blue stared at the starless sky above him and thought,
Wolf
and
Saint
better
catch
the
bastard
. Then he closed his eyes.

“Oh, no.” A woman’s voice interrupted his peaceful death. “Do not close your eyes. You’re not going to die on me.”

He hated to disappoint her—although it sounded like Helena, and he was not quite so loathe to disappoint
her
—but he was well on his way to the grave.

“Ernest! Do
not
die on me.”

“Bloody hell!” he growled. He opened one eye and did his best to glare at her. It
was
Helena. She was the only one who used his god-awful given name. “My name is Blue. Or, if you must, Bloomington.”

“Oh, thank God.” She smiled at him, and he remembered why he’d fallen in love with her. She had the most beautiful smile—well, that wasn’t the main reason he’d fallen in love with her. She had unerring fashion sense. She was quite simply the best-dressed woman he’d ever seen. But back to the smile—it lit up her entire face until she all but glowed. How could she glow in the dark, cold night? With that smile, she could do anything.

“Go away, and let me die in peace,” he grumbled. For some reason, that made her smile widen, and she leaned down and kissed his lips. Now he knew he must be dying. Helena would never kiss him. But if he was dying, this was not a bad way to go. Her lips were soft and supple, her breath smelled like mint, and the heat from her mouth warmed him throughout. He wanted to clamp his hand on the back of her neck and slant his mouth over hers, deepening the kiss, tasting her, satiating himself with her. But, to his annoyance, she broke the light contact much too soon.

“I’m not leaving you out here.” She was forcing him to sit now. Hell and damnation, but moving hurt. Why could she not keep kissing him? “You are
not
dying out here.”

He groaned as a slash of pain knifed through him. “Do you plan to drag me inside and murder me again? Leave me.”

“Idiota. Cretino,” she said under her breath.

“I speak Italian,” he reminded her.

“And yet you
are
an idiot.”

“Must you insult me as I die?”

“Just cease speaking before I decide to leave you out here. I called you an idiot because if you were not an idiot, you would realize I was not trying to kill you. I shot you by accident. I am trying to get you inside to see how badly you are injured.”

Now that he was no longer lying in the cold snow, he could feel the warm, wet blood running over his side and seeping into his breeches. The silk would be ruined. But he did not think the wound was as bad as he’d first feared. Perhaps he might live.

And that thought brought with it the realization that Helena’s warm, round body was pressed against him. She was trying to get under him to support his uninjured side. “So you do not want me dead?”

She glanced at him, and he knew she could tell exactly what he was thinking. “Oh, I want you dead, but I am quite certain you’ll accomplish that feat all on your own.” She prodded him to walk, and he attempted to move his legs. They felt as though they’d been frozen to the ground. He actually considered peering down to ascertain whether or not ice had encased them. But she pushed and dragged, and slowly his body began to respond. He lurched across the icy ground toward her building.

And as she dragged him, all that warm, soft flesh pressed enticingly against him. With all the lush softness tempting him, he remembered why he’d fallen in love with her. She was petite, but her body managed to be rounded and impossibly erotic. Her clothing, her smile, her body… her perfidy.

He remembered why he’d fallen
out
of love with her.

“If you do not want me dead…” He gasped in a breath as sweat poured down his face from the exertion of walking the few feet to the door of her building. Helena was stronger than he’d thought. They’d almost reached the door. “Why did… you shoot… me?” He sounded pathetic. He would almost have rather died on the snow than face this ignobility.

They stumbled into the building, and Blue was thankful for the warmth. He was thankful he could feel the warmth. Oh but his enemies, Helena included, were going to be sorely disappointed. It looked as though he might yet live another day.

Helena leaned against the banister to catch her breath. Blue was pleased he was not the only one huffing. “I was not trying to shoot you,” she said, inhaling quickly and exhaling slowly. “I was trying to shoot that man in the alley.” She gestured to the stairwell. “Come, before we disturb all of my neighbors.”

Blue looked up the steep stairs and felt his head spin. The stairs seemed to whirl around before his eyes.

“Blue?” Helena said.

He smiled. She’d finally got it right.

“Are you alright?”

“Perfectly fine.” Except for the spinning stairs. She grasped him under the arm again and began to drag him. He stumbled, righted himself, and climbed.
I
was
trying
to
shoot
that
man
in
the
alley.
“Helena, you mentioned a man in an alley.”

With a grunt, she heaved him up another step. “Yes.”

“Do you always shoot men in alleys?”

“No.”

Another step. Black dots blurred his vision.

“Only those wearing carnival masks and pointing pistols in my husband’s direction.”

“How… romantic.” And it was, except he had a vague memory of that man in the mask. It had been a Venetian larva mask, starkly white when surrounded by a black cloak pulled about the wearer’s head. He’d seen him in the alley, from the corner of his eye, and earlier in the day as well. Usually such a “coincidence” would have alerted him to danger, but he’d been distracted by his lovely wife. And that was exactly why operatives should avoid personal relationships.

Someone was trying to kill him. Someone other than Helena.

That was his last thought before he heard the rushing in his ears and everything went black.

***

He opened his eyes and stared at the rainbow of light on the ceiling. He could remember his fascination with rainbows when he’d been a child. He’d thought they were magic and had made the mistake of stating this to his dour tutor, who had wasted no time showing him that rainbows were not magic at all, but merely the result of light being refracted through a prism.

No one in his family had believed in magic. No one in his family had believed in encouraging fanciful children. He was the tenth child of eleven surviving born to the Duke and Duchess of Ely, and he’d barely known his parents. They’d been shadowy, frowning figures who appeared in the nursery once every three months, nodding at the children and patting their heads. Lying in his bed at night, listening to his brothers squabble, Blue had concocted stories about his parents’ busy lives. They were always splendidly dressed, so perhaps they were actors on a stage. They seemed to come and go mysteriously, so perhaps they were pirates or spies.

As he grew older, the roles in which he imagined his parents became the roles and adventures he wished he could experience. At twenty, he’d joined the army and fought against Napoleon in the Peninsular War. He’d been captured three times and escaped all three, freeing his comrades in arms along with him. He had a knack for extricating himself from difficult situations and sneaking behind enemy lines, and once he’d even convinced a small group of French cavalrymen that he was their emperor.

When he’d returned to England, the Foreign Office wanted him. Blue enjoyed the work, but he wanted to be part of Melbourne’s elite—the Barbican group. He’d joined a theater company in order to better hone his skills and learn the art of disguise, and that’s where he’d met the lovely, irresistible Helena.

Now, he blinked at the rainbows on the ceiling and searched for the prisms creating them. The small chandelier crystals came into focus at the same time as he registered the warmth of the body beside him. He turned his head and stared down into Helena’s riot of russet curls. She was curled up beside him, asleep, her head on his bare chest. She was still fully dressed. She hadn’t even removed her cloak, but she’d taken the time to remove his boots and his coat and shirt. He craned his neck to study his side. The wound stung, but there was no telltale flash of heat to indicate infection. Of course, it was early yet. There was also no blood on the makeshift bandages—strips of linen he assumed came from one of her undergarments. Perhaps the pistol ball had merely grazed him.

He was lucky that way. His injuries were always minor. His aim always true. His instincts always accurate.

Except for her.

He looked down at Helena again. He’d been wrong about her. He should never have married her, never allowed himself to fall in love with her. For a man who never took a misstep, she was a glaring jump off the wrong cliff.

He had the urge to slip her cloak off her shoulders. Once he’d loved those pale, rounded shoulders. They’d been velvet-soft on his lips. She’d liked to tempt him by wearing gowns that accentuated her shoulders. He wondered if he’d be able to see her shoulders if he took the cloak off. If he’d be able to access her slim neck, her sloped collarbone, her firm breasts…

She stirred, and with the self-discipline he was known for, he eased her off his chest until her head rested on the pillow. Slowly, he lifted her hand and placed it on her abdomen.

One look at her, and Blue really did not think he could be faulted for his weakness in marrying her. And it was a weakness, for he was still fighting to resist turning toward her, taking her in his arms and kissing her, touching her, burying himself in her. He was a strong man, not in the least ruled by his baser instincts. But Helena was beautiful, so beautiful—and that was before one heard her sing. When she sang, she was absolutely ravishing. She had the clearest, sweetest soprano he had ever heard. The voice of an angel, bestowed undeservedly, for she was no angel.

One wouldn’t know it to look at her with all that long, long brown-red hair, that pale, perfect skin—not a freckle, not a blemish—and those red, red lips. Once he’d believed she used rouge to redden them so unnaturally, but he’d been wrong. Her nose was small and straight, not pert—no,
pert
would have been too childish for such an exquisite beauty. Her ears were small and shaped like shells. Her eyebrows were thin and arched over large, dark brown eyes. He’d fallen in love with her because of those eyes. They were hypnotizing without detracting, like his own. When she looked at a man with those eyes, he had the sense she really saw him.

The problem, Blue decided, rising, was that she saw far too many men. Her eyes, and her body with them, tended to wander. He was no saint. He had not cared that she was not a virgin when they married, but he sure as hell cared who she shared her bed with after they were wed.

He winced at the pain in his side and hobbled stiffly to a mirror in the corner of the room. He peeled the bindings off and studied the wound. A mere scrape. A bit deeper than he would have liked, but he would survive. If he could avoid fever.

Farrar, the Barbican’s surgeon, always poured gin on every wound he tended. Blue didn’t see the harm in doing so now. Helena certainly had gin somewhere about. He lifted pillows and opened drawers, peering here and there, and finding no spirits of any sort. He’d even moved the cat, which hissed and swiped at him, off its perch on the back of the chair. With a frown, Blue walked back to the bed.

She was still sleeping. He’d been nearly soundless in his search, but he attributed her heavy sleep more to exhaustion from performing the night before than to his own caution. She was used to sleeping the days away, while he had no set schedule to speak of.

Beside the bed he found his shirt and coat and frowned at their lamentable state. He could not go out dressed in these bloodstained items. And yet he had not seen any male attire—other than boyish costumes that were tailored to her smaller frame—mixed among her things in the wardrobe. Had she no lover?

“Helena.”

She threw her arm over her eyes and turned away from him.

“Helena.” He reached down to shake her awake and found the sharp point of a knife pressed to his throat.

***

The brows above the startling blue eyes—eyes that could only belong to one man—rose appreciatively when she pulled the knife. She lowered it just as quickly and put her hand to her racing heart. “You frightened me.”

“So I see. Do you always sleep with a dagger?”

He had a perpetually droll tone in his voice, the upper class accent making him sound both amused and patronizing at the same time.

“Actually, yes. Does that surprise you?” She pushed her hair over her shoulder.

“No.”

Now that her eyes had adjusted to the light in the room, she saw he was standing in a shaft of sunlight wearing only his boots and breeches. She recalled removing his coat and shirt the night before, after begging for help in carrying him to her room from one of the young men leaving the prostitute’s room on the floor below.

Last night, when she’d undressed him, she’d been concerned about his injury, staunching the flow of blood and cleaning the wound. But now he was standing before her, bare-chested, and he did not look particularly injured to her. In fact, he was the very picture of health. She’d seen men half-dressed before. She saw them every day. But very few looked like this without their clothes on. All of those muscles… when had he acquired those?