In this mood, focused and intent on gaining victory, he could be quite devastating; the scent of leashed aggression—leashed at his whim—was strong. Feeling very like his prey, she blinked at him. “I haven’t had time to think—”
“You don’t need to think, just answer.” He stepped toward her.
“No!” She held up a hand, pressed her palm to his chest. “Wait, just wait!” He stopped; she caught a quick breath and stepped back—put enough distance between them so her wits could function—and shifted her gaze from his face. “I have to think.”
His response to that, muttered beneath his breath, wasn’t complimentary. She ignored it, but had to fight to ignore him, to dim the effect of him at close quarters in his present mood. Her senses flickered, acutely alert; she was supremely conscious of the steely purpose in him, and that it was directed, fully, at her.
He was much more forceful, more potent, than he’d been years ago, battle-hardened, but also battle-scarred; to her, the latter only made him more interesting, more compelling, not less. Their attraction now operated on multiple levels, direct and indirect, physical and emotional; refusing to meet his eyes, she drew in a deeper breath and tried to reach past it.
His need of her was real; she didn’t question that. For it, he’d been willing to play the supplicant to seduce and persuade her; he’d asked rather than demanded or, worse, commanded—which, she knew, he could have done. But he’d wanted her to give herself, and been willing to give himself to gain that…was his need for her a symptom of love?
She glanced at him, but could see nothing beyond hard-edged impatience in his face, and an intensity of emotion in his dark eyes that took her breath away…she hurriedly unfocused. Even so, she could feel that emotion focused on her; whatever drove him, whatever compelled him with respect to her, was strong and immensely powerful.
Was it love? If he loved her…did he know? Even if he did, and she asked, would he acknowledge it?
All she had were unanswerable questions, but she needed an answer, now. What was it to be? No?
The instant the word formed in her mind, her inner self rose up and dug in its heels. After all these years, to have all she’d ever desired, the future she’d always wanted and still so desperately yearned for, dangling before her…how could she refuse without knowing if the prospect was real? She wasn’t such a coward; no wasn’t an option, not yet.
Regardless, she wasn’t about to settle for anything less than love; on that, her conviction had never wavered. So she couldn’t say yes either, not unless she was sure…
Drawing in a tight breath, she refocused on his eyes, felt his instant attention, the honing of his senses. “If you give me what I want, then yes, I’ll marry you.” She held his gaze steadily, lifted her chin. “As soon as you like.”
Something leapt in his eyes at her “yes,” but he quickly concealed it, screened it. He didn’t immediately respond, but searched her eyes, then flatly asked, “What you want. Am I to take it that’s the same thing your other suitors didn’t know to give you?”
“Didn’t know, didn’t know how to give, or couldn’t or wouldn’t give.” She nodded. “Precisely.”
Exasperation flared in his eyes as he considered her; she could see him assessing his options. Then he nodded—once, determinedly—and caught her hand. “Agreed.”
She blinked.
Charles raised her hand to his lips, kissed, and searched her eyes again; she hadn’t yet seen the truth, hadn’t yet identified his motive. “Until I discover what this thing you want is, and give it to you, we continue as we are—as lovers.”
His tone made it clear there was no question, not one he would countenance; after a moment, she nodded. “I never was one to slice off my nose to spite my face.”
His lips twitched; he hurriedly straightened them, but the fraught tension that had enveloped them nevertheless eased.
She studied him, puzzled, suspicion dawning in her silver-gray eyes.
“Come.” He closed his hand about hers, whistled for the dogs. “We can leave the dogs in the stables. We’d better head back.”
Frowning, she let him turn her; hand in hand, at his direction, they walked briskly back along the ramparts—too briskly to talk.
He’d got what he wanted; his impulse was to crow and dance, but he reined in all expressions of triumph—time enough for that when this was all over and the murderer caught.
She’d been right about that; it would have been wiser to wait and ask her then, but as usual between her and him, wisdom hadn’t featured—it had flown the instant she’d told him she’d indulged in erotic fantasies about them all those years ago. Even now, with victory assured, although he accepted the impulse, and on one level—a purely male, highly possessive level—understood it, he wasn’t thrilled that it had been strong enough to compel him to seize the moment and ask her to marry him, outright, without any preparation.
He was also not thrilled over the way she’d replied—yes would have been much neater—but at least she hadn’t said “No.” “No” hadn’t been an option; he was mildly relieved not to have been forced to point that out.
But he’d achieved what his conqueror’s soul, that part of him she’d so efficiently stirred to action, had demanded—her agreement to marry him. To be his countess, to be always by his side, his anchor in this world, the mother of his children; his list of the facets of her role was extensive. He’d already decided he’d give whatever it took to make her his—she already had his soul, even if she didn’t know it—and he had a very good notion of what the “thing” she wanted was.
If he’d wished, he could have given her the words there and then, and convinced her of their truth, but they did still have a murderer to catch, and until they did, he’d keep the news of his surrender secret.
Too much knowledge could be a bad thing. He didn’t know how the game would play out, what the next days would bring, but if she knew he loved her with all his heart and would give her anything, he could foresee scenarios where doing what he knew to be right and necessary to protect her would only be more difficult. Even more nightmarish were those imagined scenarios where the murderer realized just how much she meant to him and thought to use her as a hostage.
A mental shudder racked him. For one instant, the vulnerability of loving her shone bright as crystal and pierced him to the heart. Yet he couldn’t stop; all he could do was grit his teeth and bear the consequences.
He’d involuntarily tightened his grip; he felt her hand, delicate bones, feminine warmth and softness, enclosed in his, let his senses reach farther and registered her supple, svelte form beside him, her long legs keeping pace, and felt the momentary apprehension fade.
He smiled, nearly laughed, then remembered and abruptly sobered. He glanced at her, and caught her now openly suspicious scowl. He met it with blank innocence and looked ahead.
They reached the stable. Their horses were waiting; he lifted her up and held her stirrup, then crossed to where Domino stood and threw himself into the saddle. The triumph buoying him was almost too great to hide. Across the stable yard, he met her eyes, and waved to the entrance. “Let’s ride.”
Side by side, they thundered up to the escarpment. Then they flew.
Nicholas, exceedingly pale, wan yet transparently determined, joined them in the dining room for dinner. By unspoken accord no mention was made during the meal of the revelations he’d promised to make, but when they were finished, they all rose and repaired to the library.
Penny led the way to the armchairs grouped before the fireplace. She sank into one; Nicholas went to the other. Charles picked up a straight-backed chair, set it beside her armchair, and subsided in his usual graceful sprawl.
He looked at Nicholas, and raised one black brow. “So—where do you propose to start?”
Nicholas met his gaze, hesitated, then said, “At the beginning. But before I say anything, you need to know that no real secrets were ever sold, traded or in any other way given to the Fr
ench, at least not by any Selbornes.”
Charles studied him for an instant, then quietly said, “You aren’t going to tell me that this whole business—my involvement, my ex-commander’s, even the murderer’s—is, for want of a better phrase, wide of the mark?”
“Oh, no.” Nicholas’s lips twisted. “The murderer certainly knows the right score. Even you and your ex-commander—everything you’ve been investigating is perfectly real, not any conjuror’s trick. But you and he have throughout been ignorant of one vital element.”
Charles grunted. “That much I’d guessed.”
Nicholas nodded. “So…” He leaned back in the chair, rested his head against the padded back and fixed his gaze on them both. “It started in the 1770s. My father was a junior aide at our embassy in Paris. Paris in those days was the city of civilization; everyone who was anyone lived there much of the time. Howard, your father”—he looked at Penny—“like mine, was as yet unmarried. He came to visit my father and stayed for some years. During that time, my father was approached, oh, at a very friendly level, to, I believe they termed it advise the French on a minor matter of English-French diplomacy.
“At first our fathers were shocked, but that was soon overtaken by excitement.” Nicholas looked at Charles, wearily said, “To understand what happened next, you have to understand the Selborne wild streak.”
Charles raised his brows, fought not to glance at Penny. “Wild streak?”
Nicholas nodded. “I don’t have it, thank God. My father does. You haven’t met him, but he’s…I think the most apt adjective is ‘incorrigible.’ You knew Granville—suffice to say he and my father were kindred spirits. If anything, my sire was—still is—the more outrageous. Howard, Penny’s father, had the streak, too, but a milder version. He wasn’t so likely to instigate outrageous schemes, but he responded to the lure nonetheless.”
Nicholas sighed. “So there my father was, a young, titled, wealthy nobleman with connections to everyone, in Paris, then the shining capital of the world, with his closest friend and stalwart supporter by his side—with an opportunity to play a grand game with the French being laid before him.”
“A game?” Charles said.
“That’s how they saw it, the three of them—my father, Howard, then Granville. It was always a game, a great, glorious, outrageous game, with them always the victors.”
Charles exchanged a quick glance with Penny, then asked, “What were the elements of this game?”
“My father more or less drew up the rules. He agreed to advise the French, but because of his position within the embassy, they needed an intermediary they could trust, namely Howard and later Granville. Payment was to be a pillbox for Howard for successfully passing on the advice, and a snuffbox for my father for the advice itself. They’d both been toying with starting collections; this seemed to them god-sent. At that time in France, all things aristocratic were already being devalued, so those dealing with our benighted parents were ready enough to promise them items of a certain value, drawn from various private, often royal, estates, in exchange for said advice.
“That was the basis of the agreement. What the French didn’t know was that my father was truly brilliant—still is—at anything to do with Eurpoean diplomacy and foreign affairs. He sees into things, picks up nuances”—Nicholas shook his head—“I still go in awe of him, as does everyone in his section at the F.O.”
After a moment, Nicholas met Charles’s gaze. “The critical thing the French didn’t know was that my father fashioned his ‘advice’ from whole cloth.”
Charles blinked. “He made it up?”
Nicholas smiled wryly. “Therein lay the challenge of the game.”
Charles stared at him, then slumped back in the chair and looked at the ceiling. A full minute passed, then he looked at Nicholas. “I’ve seen the pillbox collection. We’re talking of one or two pieces of concocted advice passed every year for fortysomething years.”
Nicholas nodded.
“And the French never found out?”
“Not until after Waterloo. I told you my father’s brilliant, but not about military affairs. Initially, he avoided anything military in his ‘advice.’ The French didn’t care—back in the seventies they were more interested in politics, treaties, and bureaucratic secrets. They were so impressed by my father’s ‘advice,’ which always seemed so accurate, over the years they came to regard him as an unimpeachable source.”
“How,” Penny asked, “could his advice have appeared accurate if it was made up?”
“The French were asking about real situations—there was always a framework of real events.” Nicholas shifted, easing his bandaged shoulders. “In politics and diplomacy, when you’re studying events in another country, what you see is essentially puppets on a stage. You see what’s played out on the stage—but you can’t see what’s going on behind the curtain, what’s being done, what strings pulled and by whom, to cause the actions on the stage. With his insight, my father created alternate behind-the-curtain scenarios to the real ones, scenarios that nevertheless accounted for the actions the French could see.”
Charles nodded. “I’ve come across that sort of thing—misinformation of the highest caliber, almost certain to be believed.”
“Exactly.”
Charles shook his head, not in disbelief but in amazement. “I still can’t believe he managed it for so long.”
“Part of that was due to his success within the F.O. The higher he went, the more he knew, the more he understood, the more his ‘advice’ fitted the observed outcomes—and the more the French believed him.”
“What brought the game undone?”
“In a way, it was Napoleon. When the Peninsula Wars started, the French unsurprisingly wanted information on military matters. Initially, that wasn’t hard to refuse on the grounds it wasn’t something my father would be privy to, but then came Corunna, and the early losses, and, of course, Selbornes have always been patriotic to our toes.
“M’father knew whatever he told the French stood a good chance of being believed. He considered telling the appropriate authorities of his ‘game,’ but decided they would probably not approve, and quite possibly not understand. So, essentially on his own, he decided to embark on military misinformation by including in his otherwise diplomatic advice snippets about military affairs. To do so, he cultivated a friend in the War Office. Given his high status, that was easy enough. He didn’t need to know much, just enough to, with a minor comment, steer the French in the wrong direction, or misadvise them of the timing of events—that sort of thing. Nothing the French actually wanted to know about, just low-level events, very hard to check, very much open to change at the last minute.”
“And they continued to be taken in?”
“Yes. At that time, he’d been their ‘advisor’ for decades and had, as far as they knew, never let them down. He’d also encouraged them to think he was addicted to his collecting.” Nicholas shrugged. “I’m not sure that he’s attached to the snuffboxes themselves so much as that they represent each ‘triumph’ he’s had in misleading the French.”
“I take it,” Charles said, jumping ahead, “that the murderer has been sent here to, in effect, render punishment?”
Nicholas’s expression turned grim. “That seems to be the case.”
“You said they found out after Waterloo.” Penny’s head was reeling. “How? What happened?”
“Remember what it was like then,” Nicholas said, “just a year ago? The near frenzy, tales of the ‘Corsican Monster,’ and so on. My father was tired of it—he wanted an end. Especially when Granville insisted on enlisting.”
Penny straightened in her chair. “Your father came here, just before Granville left. He tried to talk Granville out of going—I heard him.”
Nicholas nodded. “He didn’t want Granville to go. He tried to convince him by sending a last message to the French, tried to get Granville to believe that that was enough for him to do. Granville ran the
message, of course, but he wasn’t about to stop there. He still rode off the next day.”
“What was that last message?” Charles asked.
Nicholas met Charles’s eyes. He was patently exhausted, but gamely went on, “My father knew very little of Wellington’s plans. No one did. But through the years of the Peninsula campaigns, my father had, through misdirecting the French, learned a great deal of Wellington’s strategies. When it comes to predicting how people will react when faced with given situations, my sire possesses an innate flair. So he tried to predict Wellington.
“He had access to excellent maps. He studied the terrain, and accurately picked the battlefield. He wanted a snippet, something to divert French attention, just a tiny push in the wrong direction. And this time he didn’t care if they found him out, because he knew this time the dice were being rolled for the last time.”