Jenna Petersen - [Lady Spies] (14 page)

“G-Good afternoon,” she finally stammered, hot color flooding her cheeks and putting him to mind of the way she looked as she reached the heights of pleasure. He bit back a groan.

“Hello, Emily,” he said softly.

She shook her head as if she were pushing off the effect he had on her and motioned to the chair he had occupied before her entrance. He stifled a smile at the way she smoothed her skirt, took her seat, and tried to pretend some modicum of control, tried to pretend like that searing kiss hadn’t just stunned them both. If he wasn’t so utterly aware of the hitch of her breath, he might have believed it.

But every spy had a weakness and the faint flush of her throat gave away her high emotions, even if her calm stare and even voice did not.

“I’m glad you could come,” she said, her voice shaking. “I have been anxious to speak with you ever since I received your message this morning.”

She stopped talking as a maid entered with tea. The girl set the service onto a low table between them and curtseyed out at Emily’s soft wave. As the door closed again, she went about the business of pouring their tea.

Grant watched her, fascinated at the gentle curve of her neck as she tilted her head and poured the amber liquid into his cup. There was something so ladylike, so quiet in the way she did the duty. Something so normal. Anyone who came into the room at present would think she was nothing more than a society widow performing mundane tasks.

Only Grant knew the truth. That below that cool, calm exterior lurked a woman capable of putting him on his back with a few moves. A woman of passion and pleasure and searing heat.

A swell of unexpected pride filled him at the thought. She trusted him with her secrets. He would wager his best stallion she did not do that lightly.

“Grant?” Emily pursed her lips. “Did you hear me?”

He shook his head as he set the teacup she had prepared for him down. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. “No.”

At his admission, irritation flashed in her eyes and her lips thinned. “I asked what you uncovered about Cullen Leary’s movements. Your message this morning indicated that you had news.”

Grant pushed to his feet and walked across the room to stare outside. Watching her did nothing but try his self-control. At least when he stared at the swirling snow in her garden, he could focus.

“Yes, I accessed all the records I could regarding Leary’s movements since the last case I worked on.”

He heard her rise behind him, the soft rustle of her skirts echoing in his ears. He could picture the swish of her hips as she moved toward him and tensed.

“What kind of case was it?” she asked.

His tension increased, but it was no longer pleasant. Her question, spoken so quietly, so benignly, cut through him like she’d sunk a blade into his chest. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe, could hardly see the snowy images outside. He felt himself being carried away, to the past, to that night…

“No,” he muttered, dragging himself back.

“No?” she repeated and she was right at his elbow, staring up at him with confusion and concern. “Grant, you’re pale. What is it?”

“Nothing.”

He edged past her and paced across the room, willing his heartbeat to return to normal speed. Willing her not to see the truth in his eyes. He wouldn’t look at her until he was sure she wouldn’t.

“It was a routine investigation,” he choked out, measuring his tone. “Arms trading to enemy forces. Leary was a go-between, a muscle man. We couldn’t tie him strongly enough to the men we ultimately arrested, so we had to leave him go.”

Emily pursed her lips and nodded solemnly. “Hmmm, I know how frustrating that can be. Perhaps in this case, you can get your revenge on the man. If we prove he is involved in some wrongdoing.”

“Revenge,” Grant repeated.

The word sounded hollow and empty. Vengeance was something he did seek, but he doubted it would make him whole or happy again. It would not retrieve the life that had been lost that dark and dangerous night a year before. It would not change everything that had happened.

She continued to press, completely oblivious to the way she was twisting a knife in his heart. “So what has he been doing since? Could this plot against the Prince be related to your case a year ago?”

He shook off the darkness that always accompanied his thoughts of that night and forced himself to concentrate. Breathe.

“It is highly doubtful. Most of the main culprits in that case were caught or killed at that time. And you know Leary, he can be bought by the highest bidder. He has no loyalty, he goes where the money is best. He likely doesn’t even remember the men he served a year ago.”

The thought of that made the bitter tang in his mouth even more acrid.

“Perhaps that’s true. But your men in the War Department kept an eye on him regardless,” she said.

He sucked in a deep breath, assured that he could finally look at her without revealing too much of his emotions. Turning to her, he forced a smile.

“Yes. And they report he’s been spending a great deal of time at The Blue Pony. Did you know the owner of the establishment also has a rooming house down the street? The Blue Pony may be the most convenient place to meet if any one of those men is staying there.”

Emily nodded as she made her way back to the chairs they had begun in. She looked up at him, her stare bright with speculation and intelligence. “An interesting theory. Does Leary have a room there?”

“He has been seen going in and out of the place with some regularity.” Grant shrugged. “He may have an arrangement.”

“Or a doxy,” Emily finished.

Grant arched an eyebrow. Leave it to Emily to say what he had been avoiding due to leftover gentlemanly concerns. He couldn’t help but smile at her candor, the pain in his chest finally melting away.

“He may indeed. I have a trusted resource looking into the matter. We should have an answer by tomorrow.” He moved toward her, drawn to her heat like a man left out in the cold for far too long. “And what about you, Emily? You did your own research today. What did you uncover?”

She watched his approach and a barely perceptible shiver worked through her. His body clenched with powerful need at her reaction. It gave him enormous pride to know he moved her as surely as she stirred him. That she tracked his every motion, waiting for his touch.

Passing her chair, he came around behind it, staring at the bare skin below her hairline and above the lacy neck of her pretty gown.

She sucked in a breath. “Ana is looking into the Prince’s whereabouts and plans,” she said, her voice shaking.

He reached out, sliding his fingers over that inch of exposed flesh, and Emily’s spine stiffened. “Does Ana know anything else?”

She hesitated, leaning back against his questing hand before she answered, “N-No. I managed to convince her to look into the matter without revealing any other details of our new case.”

Grant stared at the image of his dark hand sweeping back and forth over her pale skin. “Will she go to your superiors?”

A little groan escaped Emily’s lips before she choked out, “No, I don’t believe so. She wants me to trust her again, and she realizes I won’t do that if she betrays me to Charlie. She’ll investigate for a while, at least, while she tries to determine what you and I are up to.”

“Good.”

Grant leaned down and pressed his lips against the back of her neck. Emily shivered. Her fingers wrapped around behind his head, slipping into his hair, holding his mouth against her skin. Grant gently sucked her neck, tasting her as he allowed himself to be lost in desire.

“P-Perhaps I should try disguising myself again,” she murmured as she tugged his mouth even closer. “Become another lightskirt in the club. If I could get closer to Leary, there is even a chance he would talk to me, boast about his deeds.”

Grant stiffened, his head coming up and away from her skin. For a moment, his vision blurred and all he could think about was Cullen Leary chasing after Emily, his eyes filled with malice and violent intent. All he could think about were the consequences if he could not protect her.

“No,” he spat out, pushing away and backing up a few steps. “Absolutely not!”

E
mily twisted in her chair to face Grant at his sudden, unexpected response to her suggestion. What she saw on his face had her stumbling to her feet.

There was raw pain there. A vulnerability, even a panic she had never seen from him before, never expected. But she understood it. Those emotions mirrored her own.

It was a powerful glimpse of why the War Department was treading so carefully around him.

But she had seen Grant attack Cullen Leary with no hesitation before. So the anxiety that darkened his stare had nothing to do with being a coward. He was horrified for other reasons. Something deeper. Darker.

She feared exploring that raw emotion. It was too personal, and could draw her too close to the deeper involvement she feared. Still, she couldn’t just leave him like this. She had to help him.

“Grant—” she began, stepping toward him.

“No!” His dark chocolate eyes grew almost black. “I forbid it, Emily.”

Her empathy was pushed to the background, replaced by a pounding anger that stopped her approach in its tracks.

“Forbid
it,” she repeated, her tone deceptively quiet when she considered her roiling emotions. “I beg your pardon but I thought we were partners, Grant, not ward and guardian. You have no right to
forbid
me to do anything.”

He moved forward, hands clenched at his sides, and desperation etched in deep lines across his face. “You are determined to get yourself shot again, then? To die this time? Perhaps your friends are correct. Perhaps you are no longer worthy of the field.”

Emily recoiled, staggering as his words hit her with the force of a slap. Her throat constricted painfully and tears stung behind her eyes, but she blinked them away. She wouldn’t let him see how much that charge hurt her. Especially coming from him.

“I would say, Lord Westfield,” she said softly, resting her fingers on the back of the chair she had vacated and digging her nails into the brocade fabric, “that you are just as unworthy of the field if you refuse to take some level of risk in order to investigate a case.”

Grant’s face darkened with her words, but she felt no triumph in hurting him the way she had been hurt. There was no pleasure or sense of vindication. Only a hollow emptiness that seemed magnified as she looked into his eyes.

“I won’t do this,” he muttered, breaking the boiling gaze between them. “I cannot do this again.”

He paced past her and Emily jolted as she realized he was moving for the door. Panic clawed at her as she staggered toward him. “What are you doing, Grant? Where are you going?”

He froze, hand suspended above the door handle, his back to her. His head dipped down and his shoulders grew taught with tension.

“Perhaps you are correct, Emily. Perhaps I’m no good for the field anymore. Perhaps everyone is right.” He looked at her over his shoulder and her heart broke at the defeat in his stare. “But I cannot watch you put yourself in danger. I just can’t.”

“Grant—” she began, but he walked out. Out of the parlor. Down the hallway. Past Benson and his gaping mouth. Out the front door. He ignored her calls. Ignored her.

As the door closed behind him, Emily stumbled back into the parlor. Only when she collapsed into the closest chair did she realize she was shaking. Not trembling, fully shaking.

What the hell was she going to do now? She needed Grant.

Her heart throbbed at that thought. They had worked together all of a day and already she needed him? She had worked dozens of cases on her own in the past. Ones that were just as dangerous, just as important. She’d never needed anyone. But she needed Grant. How could that be?

She didn’t know. But those were the facts. She had to find a way to coax him back to her side. And to do that, she’d have to uncover just what had happened to him a year before. She’d have to deduce the source of the darkness in his eyes, move deeper into the recesses of his soul.

She would have to become acquainted with more than his body. More than his talent. She would have to know
him,
even though it was a perilous prospect to dig deeper into his soul. Knowing him better meant opening herself up to pain, to heartache. To something deeper than mere desire.

Rising to unsteady feet, she made her way into hallway.

“My lady?” Benson stepped toward her, his eyes filled with concern for her, an emotion he normally masked behind disapproval. “What can I do?”

She smiled for his benefit, though it was a weak one and did nothing to lessen his concern. “Fetch Henderson, please. I must go to Anastasia’s home.”

Grant clutched the tumbler in his hand. By God, he wished he was rip-roaring drunk. He had indulged last night after he left Emily’s, and woke with a splitting head, but he was ready to drown his pain yet again.

Ben was the only thing stopping him. His blasted brother was sitting in a chair across from him, staring at him with a rare look of seriousness in his brown eyes.

“You have danced around the subject long enough, Grant. What is wrong?” his brother asked.

Grant swirled the liquid in the tumbler with a humorless laugh. “I never dance so early in the day.”

Ben’s lips thinned at his sarcasm. “You don’t generally drink so early in the day either. Look at yourself. You haven’t shaved. Judging from the state of your clothing, you slept in what you’re wearing. And I’d wager this is not your first drink in the last twenty-four hours. So what is it? You haven’t been like this in a long time.”

Resisting a sudden urge to throw the tumbler against the wall above the fireplace, Grant set the glass down on the table beside him and rubbed a hand over his eyes. How exactly did one tell one’s brother, one’s best friend, that one was an utter coward?

His stomach rolled at the thought.

“Grant!” His brother’s voice was sharp enough to pierce through the painful fog. “Talk to me.”

“Perhaps the officials at the War Department are correct,” he answered, staring up at the ceiling high above. “Perhaps it’s best if I don’t work in the field any longer. A desk job is better for men like me. Men who don’t have a stomach for danger anymore.”

His brother’s snort of derision brought Grant’s attention back to him. “You are driven to danger. I don’t believe for a moment that you’ve lost the stomach for the thrill of a chase or the excitement of being shot at.”

“Then why did I walk away from Emily yesterday?” he asked, arching a brow. “Why did I tell her I wouldn’t participate in a scheme she suggested—one that would likely work—simply because it would involve danger?”

Ben leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his pointed stare made Grant shift uncomfortably. There were very few people who knew him so well. Ben could see into his soul if he chose to do so. And that wasn’t always a pleasant thing.

“Danger to you or danger to her?” his brother asked, low and even.

Grant ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. He understood exactly what Ben was alluding to. That night. Davina. The nightmare that had begun and never seemed to end.

“To her,” he admitted. “I think about Emily walking into danger and I…I freeze. I can hardly think. I can’t move. What if that happened in the field? What if she needed me?”

Ben pushed to his feet. “You would come. What happened that night a year ago was not your fault. You must give yourself permission to let it go. Let Davina go.”

“She’s dead,” Grant ground out. “It was my fault, my
life
that caused it. How can I ‘let it go’ as if the woman was nothing more than a dog?”

“There is more to this than Davina,” Ben said after a long moment of hesitation. He tilted his head, examining his brother more closely. “Is it because Lady Allington has turned out to be a spy? Because she was shot? It reminds you of that night?”

Grant flinched. He’d confided in Ben about Emily’s new role in his life: partner. But he hadn’t admitted they were lovers, as well. That fact still felt too private to share, even with his brother.

“After Davina’s death, I swore I would never allow my duty to endanger another woman. But Emily endangers herself on a regular basis. You should see the way her eyes light up when she discusses her work.”

Ben shook his head. “But you’ve worked with other spies before. Any problems you had with those partnerships had nothing to do with worry about their well-being. Is Emily less qualified?”

Grant shook his head. “No. She’s very talented and highly intelligent.”

“Then why take so much responsibility for her?” Benjamin hesitated. “Unless there is something deeper between you than a mere case.”

Grant turned away, pacing the length of the room. Emily did mean more to him than a case. She was his lover and the desire he felt for her was so shockingly powerful. He’d never experienced anything like the need he felt to touch her. Be near her.

“Do you have feelings for her?” his brother asked, surprise in his tone.

Grant spun to stare at him. “No! Of course not. A future with Emily would be impossible.”

“Why?”

He pondered that. There were so many reasons to keep her at arm’s length. Emily didn’t want a future. She had been the one who said they had to leave emotion out of their affair. And even if she hadn’t made that rule, a relationship between them would never work.

“Some spies do their job and will happily retire some day. Others are driven. Hungry for the work. Emily is a spy at heart,” he explained, almost more to himself than Ben. “She would never give that life up. Even if I did feel more for her than friendship, which I don’t, I could never live like that. If I knew she was at risk every day…I would go mad. I went through that already with Davina.”

Ben wrinkled his brow. “But Emily is nothing like her.”

Grant opened his mouth to reply when the door behind them creaked open and his butler appeared.

“I beg your pardon, my lord, but you have a visitor.”

Grant wasn’t sure whether to be relieved at the interruption or frustrated. Did he want his brother’s council in this delicate matter or not?

Finally he looked over his brother’s shoulder to the servant. “Who is it, Pettigrew?”

“Lady Allington, my lord.”

Grant took an involuntary step forward. After his departure the day before, he hadn’t expected her to seek him out.

“Show her in,” he said, his voice hardly carrying despite the utterly silent room. “I want to see her.”

Emily came to a halt as she entered Grant’s front parlor. It wasn’t just the surprise at seeing Grant’s brother with him that made her stop. Benjamin Ashbury gave her a cool appraising stare as he nodded a welcome.

It was Grant that brought her up short. She hadn’t seen him like this before. Despite his size, he was always pulled together. Sleek. Every hair in place, not a wrinkle in his clothing.

Today he was not. He wore no jacket or cravat and his white linen shirt was crumpled and gaped at the throat to reveal a tanned expanse of chest.

He hadn’t shaved either. Dark stubble slashed across his jawline and when combined with the tangled locks of hair that fell across his forehead, he looked every bit as dangerous as Cullen Leary.

And yet she didn’t fear what she saw. She feared the cause of the changes in him, but not him. Even now, with so much to say, she ached to touch him. To kiss him until he forgot the pain that haunted him.

In some ways, his brother’s presence was a godsend because she couldn’t indulge in those desires. She shouldn’t until she’d spoken with Grant about what she now knew about his past.

Just the thought gave her a shiver.

“Emily,” Grant finally choked out. He smoothed his big hands over his hopelessly wrinkled shirt and motioned to a chair awkwardly. “Will you join us in a drink?”

She tilted her head at his attempt to feign normalcy when it was so very clear that nothing between them was normal.

“No. Grant, I would like to talk to you.” She glanced at Benjamin Ashbury apologetically. “Alone.”

Ben nodded. “I should be going anyway.”

He moved to his brother and clapped a hand on Grant’s forearm. Grant looked at him and a world of communication moved between the siblings.

“Don’t do anything you’ll regret,” Ben said softly.

Grant shrugged rather than answered and his gaze flitted away from his brother’s. Ben turned to her and a ghost of his usually jovial smile softened his expression.

“Lady Allington.” He took her hand and dropped a very brief kiss against it. “It is always a pleasure to see you.” He moved to pass her and whispered, “Perhaps you are what he needs, not I.”

Emily didn’t have time to respond or even register her shock at his comment before he was gone.

“Does he know?” she whispered, clenching suddenly sweaty palms behind her back.

Grant looked at her and gave one nod. “He’s been aware of my profession for some years now. He knew I was assigned to follow you. And while he isn’t privy to all the details, he knows you and I are now working side by side on something. You don’t have to worry about my brother.”

Emily pondered that for a moment and then nodded. She wouldn’t trust her own family to return a book to the library in her stead, but Grant’s family was very different from her own. She hadn’t come here to argue over that issue. Something far more pressing weighed on her mind.

“I apologize for leaving so suddenly yesterday,” Grant said, shifting as if he were uncomfortable. She wondered how often he forced himself to say he was sorry. Somehow she doubted it happened regularly.

She stepped toward him, drawn to him though she knew how very dangerous that was. Taking him to her bed was one thing, merging her emotions with his was another. A mistake she was precariously close to committing now that she understood more about the man he was.

“You…” She hesitated. “I’ll admit your adamant denial of my suggestion, your anger when I refused to accept your decision, and then when you left without even a glance in my direction…those things frightened me.”

He lifted his gaze and she saw his surprise at her choice of words. “You, afraid?”

She shut her eyes. If she expected him to open up to her, she couldn’t refuse the same. She had to give him a little…just a little.