To Wed a Scandalous Spy (3 page)

"We two are it tonight, I fear," said the Falcon. "After contacting the Fox and the Cobra, I informed them that the Liars found documents in the safe of a certain Lord Maywell. These, when decoded, led us to believe that Sir Foster was returning from his self-imposed exile—"

The Lion grunted. "That's one way of putting it. I prefer 'hiding out under his rock like the cowardly traitorous slug he is.' "

The Falcon looked sourly at him. "May I continue?"

The Lion waved a hand magnanimously and the Falcon resumed. "I informed them that Foster is expected to arrive in London shortly with something—we have no concrete information on what it is yet—that Maywell felt would be very damaging to the Crown."

The Falcon tapped the document he'd laid on the table. "I have here the missive from the Fox in response, brought by fast courier."

The Lion reached into his coat. "And I have the same from the Cobra."

The Falcon nodded, then glanced down at his own document. "The Fox relates that he is still of the opinion that our first priority ought to be the trailing of the traitor. The Liar's Club should continue their investigation into the identity of the Voice of Society and how it seems to know a bit too much about their covert activities. We have higher concerns."

"It's just as well. I don't think the Cobra will ever entirely trust the Liars." The Lion unfolded his document. "The Cobra has already begun tracing Foster's path from the town where he landed, but he also reminds us that we are still investigating the possibility that there is someone pulling the strings of the French espionage in England, someone that might very well be an influential member of Society."

"Is the Prime Minister still hoping to dig that name out of Louis Wadsworth?"

The Lion nodded. "Liverpool is letting Wadsworth stew in the Tower at the moment."

The Falcon did not quite smile. "Ruing his greedy ways, I hope. Imagine selling faulty arms to the British government on behalf of the French!"

The Lion scowled. "He got paid twice, the bastard."

"Considering his present position, I'd say he's still collecting on that ill-considered plan," the Falcon said.

The Falcon and the Lion put their cohorts' messages down at their respective places at the table, in effect making it look as if the two had just stepped out of the meeting for a moment.

The Falcon leaned back in his chair. "I concur with the Cobra's plan. First Sir Foster, then the Voice. I believe that the traitor will lead us to this puppet master."

The Lion nodded. "I concur as well. The Cobra has insisted on personally taking the Foster mission, since he has previous acquaintance with the traitor."

"Meaning his ill-fated entry into the Knights of Fleur, I assume. It was a good idea to crack them by joining."

The Lion nodded. "It is to the Cobra's credit that he insisted on taking the fire for the royal arse when things went to hell."

The Falcon shook his head ruefully. "Can you imagine being painted with that brush for the rest of your life?"

The Lion let out a gust. "Sometimes I have nightmares that it is I."

The moment of sympathy stretched on. Then the two men visibly shook off the pall.

"Well, I suppose that brings us to our close." The Falcon stood and gave his waistcoat a single precise tug. The Lion, who tended to be perpetually rumpled, didn't bother.

"I hear you're going to be married," the Falcon said as they moved toward the door. "May I offer my congratulations?"

"Thank you. She's a lovely girl, well brought up and demure. She'll make a fine Lady Greenleigh someday."

The Falcon slid his companion a look. "Is it a love match, then?"

The Lion wasn't fooled by the casual tone. "Have no fear. I won't fall in love and reveal all our secrets on the pillows. She's merely an attractive girl who will breed me an heir." He dug for another cheroot in his coat pocket. "You should consider marrying. It could only improve your cover, you know. You're beginning to be far too intriguing a mystery to the eligible ladies in town."

The Falcon sent him a long-suffering look. "I'd rather not, thank you. The Falcon's responsibilities do not make for a good husband. Why would I want to do that to an innocent woman?"

The Lion looked thoughtful. "Why indeed?"

"Do you suppose the Cobra will ever marry?" The Lion shook his head. "I'd say 'tis doubtful. After all, what self-respecting woman would tie herself to a publicly branded traitor?" He reached for the latch of the ancient oak door. "Poor bastard."

Someone was stomping on Nathaniel's head. They'd been stomping for hours, apparently, since every thud of Nathaniel's brain had the bruised feeling of long acquaintance.

He tried to roll his head away from the pain, only to be transfixed by a spike of pure agony through his skull. His eyes shot open in response, then slammed shut against the bright dawn.

Dawn?

Nathaniel tried to raise both hands to his aching head, but only one hand would obey him. The other was cold and numb and pinned by an immovable weight.

Exquisitely alert now, he remained still as he assessed the possibilities. He was lying on his back, pinned by one arm, with a splitting head, outdoors in the morning dew.

None of this was good.

It was no longer today. It was now tomorrow. Frustration roiled through Nathaniel when he realized that Foster was lost to him. The man was traveling hard. He would be far ahead by now.

At the moment, however, there was no sound near him but the chirping of birds, the chuckling of a beck of some kind, and soft, kittenish snoring. Opening one eye, out of both slyness and anticipated pain, Nathaniel was able to see that he lay in the shelter of a hedge, on a bank of grass, by a road.

There was no sign of immediate danger. The trickling water was somewhere off to his left. The snoring was coming from the vicinity of his chest.

By stretching his neck and angling his head, Nathaniel could see a mop of untidy brown hair and one delicate hand that lay on his waistcoat, half slipped inside. Well, he'd woken to worse
things in his life.

He cleared his throat. "I beg your pardon," he said softly, "but we seem to be sleeping together."

The person lying upon him gave a drowsy snort and snuggled deeper into his armpit.

" 'Tis very flattering, to be sure, and you snore quite prettily, but would you mind very much giving back my arm?"

Still no response. Carefully laying his head back on the ground, for he wouldn't want it to break, Nathaniel forced his deadened muscles to move and rocked the sleeper farther onto his chest. Pulling his arm free from beneath the weight, he hissed as feeling began to flood back into his flesh.

Then he gently rolled his companion to the ground on her—yes, most definitely her—back. She was very pliant and went without protest. He went up on one elbow and leaned over her.

"Miss?" Gingerly, Nathaniel brushed his knuckles across her cheek. Her skin was warm and very soft.

She stirred and stretched away from him in a sensual arch, her sleeves sliding up white arms to show dimpled elbows. Lips working sleepily, she sighed, then slowly opened wide blue eyes the distinctive deep color of twilight and blinked at her surroundings.

She smiled at him. "Hello."

Her voice was husky with sleep. Very pleasant, actually, but Nathaniel was in no mood to be pleased.

"Who are you?" he asked with a frown.

She yawned delicately behind her hand. "I am Willa Trent And you are?" She gazed up at him from her position on the ground with her sable hair spreading across the grass, and suddenly Nathaniel was reminded of waking up with a woman after a rousing night of…

"I am Nathaniel Stonewell." Cautiously he left off his title. "Do you know why we are lying here?"

She nodded and smiled proudly. "I saved your life last night."

Last night? Nathaniel lay back on the ground beside the girl. His skull was pounding and his body ached from head to toe. Hissing in pain, he held his brain together with both hands. After the whirling slowed and the throbbing eased, he found he could speak again.

"What happened?" It couldn't have been Foster. Except that, of course, no security was unbreakable. Foster might very well have known someone was after him. He could have doubled back—

She made a slight humming sound beneath her breath. "Well… there was a rock."

Nathaniel blinked. "A rock."

"Yes." She hesitated. "In the lane."

"A rock in the lane." The girl was perhaps not very bright.

"Yes. And you fell on it."

Nathaniel took a long breath. "From my horse?"

She looked away. "One would assume."

Nathaniel's mind felt fuddled. Probing his skull, he found a likely knot over his left ear. Having fallen by the roadside with a sore head and no horse in sight, he would normally assume he'd been thrown from the saddle. Unlikely but not entirely impossible.

That still didn't explain the girl.

"All right, girl. Explain."

"I did. You fell from your horse onto the rock."

But her eyes slid away from his and Nathaniel began to suspect there was more to it than that

"Well, we must get you to the village." Picking herself up from the grass, the girl began industriously brushing at herself.

Despite his headache and his mounting suspicions, Nathaniel watched with some interest as her actions created fascinating vibrations throughout her generous anatomy. Then she began brushing at him with proprietary bustle. Nathaniel took to his feet to avoid her ministrations, which jostled his broken head, only to find her brushing at his backside.

"You are terribly dusty," she said. 'It simply won't do."

Nathaniel caught at her hands and clasped them tightly between his. "I would prefer that you not."

Her hands felt like captive birds in his grasp, but the rest of her went very still. Slowly, her candid blue gaze rose from their entwined hands to meet his eyes. Then she nervously licked her full lips with a tiny flick of her tongue.

A minor portion of Nathaniel's mind noticed the damp shine of those lips and responded accordingly. The rest of his thoughts were centered on how exactly he had come to be horseless on this dusty country lane.

The girl seemed harmless, but this would not be the first time he had seen an innocent used by traitors. Nor would it be the first time he'd seen treason housed in a harmless form.

"Miss Willie!"

Nathaniel started at the deep voice that boomed down the lane. Whirling so quickly that his head throbbed anew, Nathaniel automatically dropped into a defensive crouch.

Not that it would do any good. He'd be hard put to defeat the oncoming bloke on a good day, much less when he could scarcely focus his eyes. The man was enormous, as broad as two oxen. Or maybe Nathaniel was simply seeing double. The man was also roughly dressed, and by the way he addressed the girl, Nathaniel thought he might be a servant or perhaps merely a respectful member of her community.

So she was local. A simple, country woman helping a felled stranger by the roadside.

A respectable woman? She was well-spoken and obviously educated. Her blue gaze was innocent and guileless. She was unmistakably of the gentry.

Distant alarms began to go off in Nathaniel's thudding brain.

The man lumbered closer. "Miss Willie! We ain't been half-worried about you. When you didn't come home, we thought you'd been stolen from us."

The giant swept past Nathaniel, and the wind of his passing was nearly enough to send Nathaniel to his knees.

"That's all right. I'll trounce you in a moment," muttered Nathaniel, shaking his head to clear it. Staggering slightly, he turned to see the man swallow one of "Miss Willie's" hands in his massive paw.

"You mustn't worry us like that, miss. You know I'm a nervous sort, I am."

The man blinked sad eyes at the girl, who patted his cheek consolingly.

"I'm quite well, as you can see, John. There is no call to fret. I am safe and sound. I spent the night with Mr. Stonewell."

Nathaniel choked. "Well, now, ah… that is to say—"

The giant turned to blink his beagle eyes at Nathaniel. "Spent the night?"

Oh, damn
. "Well, perhaps…"

"And you, sir, be you well?"

What
? Nathaniel nodded cautiously. "Well enough."

For an instant the big man looked as though he would cry. Then his face twisted in a grimace that didn't bode well for Nathaniel.

When the man began to swing at him, Nathaniel prepared himself for pain, but all the blow cost him was his balance as the giant clapped him on the back. As Nathaniel staggered, the man turned around to bellow down the lane at the sturdy woman hurrying toward them.

"Did you hear that, Mrs. Smith? The whole blessed night. And hardly a scratch on him!"

The full import of Nathaniel's situation came over him for the first time since he had awoken with the strange woman in his arms—a woman he'd spent the entire night with, an innocent, apparently decent young woman of the sort that was worried about when she went missing.

An ordinary man might look for a way out, a knothole through which to escape. An ordinary man might simply mount his horse and ride away from such a vast misunderstanding, leaving the woman behind to survive the scandal as best she could.

Nathaniel was not an ordinary man.

Drawing a deep breath that only made the pounding in his head worse, Nathaniel turned to Miss Willa Trent and bowed deeply. "Miss Trent, would you do me the supreme honor of giving me your hand in marriage?"

Willa blinked at the man for a long moment. Mr. Nathaniel Stonewell remained in the bow, his hand calmly held out to her, while John, her guardian, waited with his face nearly purple from lack of breath and Moira, John's wife, hurried up with tears of joy already starting up in her eyes.

Only last evening Willa had told herself to be resigned to spinsterhood. Now a fine, handsome gentleman stood before her, begging for her hand.

He'd been kind when he woke her. And patient when he questioned her, even when she was trying very hard not to answer. Oh, he was so handsome, with the morning sun glinting in his mussed fair hair…