Nicholas heard it; he paled, but otherwise didn’t react. He continued to stare at the canopy. But he was listening.
“Now, however,” Charles continued, reining in his feelings, “for some reason we have a French agent sent to recover some or all of the exchanged pillboxes, and”-watching Nicholas’s face he guessed-“to punish the Selbornes, indeed, to kill any of those involved, or even their relatives.”
Nicholas didn’t react. Charles’s blood ran cold as Nicholas’s lack of shock or surprise confirmed he’d guessed right. He glanced at Penny; the stunned look on her face as she stared at Nicholas showed she’d followed the exchange and read it as he had.
Drawing a deep breath, he looked again at Nicholas. “Nicholas, you have to tell me what you know. This man is a killer-he’ll continue until he succeeds in what he’s been sent here to do, or he’s stopped. He can be stopped.”
He paused, then added, “Regardless of the past, the current situation is that you have a French agent about who wants to kill you. That puts you and me on the same side.”
Nicholas’s lips curved fractionally. “An enemy of my enemy must be my friend?”
“War makes strange bedfellows all the time.” Charles waited, then quietly said, “You have to tell me. If you don’t, and he kills again, that death will be on your head.”
His final card, but he suspected, from all he’d seen of Nicholas, perhaps a telling one. He certainly hoped so.
“Nicholas.” Penny leaned forward and laid her hand on Nicholas’s. “Please, tell us what’s going on. I know the family’s reputation weighs with you.” Nicholas lifted his head enough to meet her eyes; she grimaced. “No matter how bad the past has been, the family might not have a future at all if you don’t speak now. You must see that.”
Nicholas held Penny’s gaze.
Charles held his breath.
A long moment passed, then Nicholas sighed and let his head fall back. He stared at the canopy unseeing. “I have to think.”
Charles fought to keep impatience from his voice. “This killer’s on the doorstep. We don’t have much time.”
Nicholas lifted his head and met his gaze squarely. “It’s not my story. I can’t just”-he gestured-“make you free of it. I have to think what I can reveal, should reveal, and what isn’t mine to tell at all.”
“You just have to tell me enough.”
Nicholas searched his eyes. “Twenty-four hours. You can give me until after dinner tomorrow”-he glanced at the clock-“no, that’s now today.” He drew in a shaky breath, and met Charles’s eyes. “Give me until then, and I promise I’ll tell you all I can.”
CHAPTER
CHARLES HAD TO BE CONTENT WITH THAT. ASIDE FROM ANYthing else, Nicholas was exhausted and needed to rest.
Returning with Penny to her room, he checked that no villain was lurking, then locked her in and went to check on his patrols. All was quiet, yet the silence was rife with anxiety. After chatting to the four men presently on watch, he slipped back into Penny’s room, stripped, and slid under the covers.
She turned to him and tugged him close. He went, found her lips with his, kissed. Grumbled, “What is the matter with your family? It’s never
Penny looked into his dark eyes, softly smiled. “It’s not us-it’s
He humphed, and kissed her again.
She let him, met him, then encouraged him. Not just invited but dared him to take her, to give himself, let her give back to him and so reassure them both. To touch again and share the comfort they now found in each other, through the physical to reach further once again, onto that other plane.
Responding, accepting, he rose over her, pressed her thighs wide, sank between, and with one powerful stroke sheathed himself in her softness, joined them, and set them careening on their now familiar wild ride. She gasped, clung, and rode with him, absorbed, drawn wholly into the moment, yet dimly aware of the contradiction between his nature and his behavior with her.
He never pushed, cajoled, pressured; he never had. In this arena, he’d always been the supplicant, and she his…not mistress, but perhaps empress, dispensing her favors as she chose. As she decided and deemed him worthy.
And he’d never once argued with that. Never once sought to change their status quo, to demand or simply seize control and take.
A wall of flames rose before them, a surging, greedy conflagration; they plunged into it, rode through it, fell into it. Wrapped in each other’s arms, they let the fire have them, consume them, weld them, leaving them at the last clinging to the edge of the world. Gasping, shuddering, gazes meeting, locking, holding…
Then that too-brief instant of absolute communion faded; lids falling, all tension released, they tumbled headlong into the void.
They settled to sleep, him sprawled beside her, one arm slung possessively over her waist. Her thoughts circled, spiraling down, yet despite her languid state, they didn’t stop.
His breathing deepened and slid into the cadence of sleep.
Her mind continued to drift.
His willingness to cede the reins to her, to allow her to dictate their play, continued to nag, to register as, if not suspicious, then certainly significant, but in what way she couldn’t tell. She’d already asked him why. He’d replied with words she’d interpreted as a challenge:
She mentally paused, through half-closed eyes stared unseeing into the darkness as she replayed those words in her mind. What if they hadn’t been a challenge, but instead an honest reply?
Her instinctive reaction was to scoff, but she could hear his voice in her head; he hadn’t spoken lightly. What
The possibility shook her, tightened her nerves, sharpened her wits. Her mind whirled and drew another puzzle piece into her mental picture.
The link that had opened between them, that emotional communion that had somehow become an integral part of their joining, was still there, consistently there, and very real. She’d been stunned initially, shocked that he of all men would reveal so much of himself in such a way. That first moment, so intense, had taken her aback, left her momentarily uncertain. Now, however…she needed and wanted to learn more, to explore that connection and see where it led, learn what it meant.
He wanted her, not just physically but on some deeper, more emotion-laden level. That was what that connection, by its very existence, conveyed; she’d seen the yearning, the longing, woven through it.
She accepted he couldn’t pretend to such emotions; she couldn’t recall that he ever had, not with her. But he could conceal; he was a past master at hiding what he felt, one of his most spyworthy talents. While she could sense and be sure of his wanting her, of the sincerity of his belief that he needed her, she couldn’t see what was driving it, what lay behind it. What, indeed, had given rise to it.
One thing she knew beyond question. At twenty, he’d neither wanted nor needed her, not as he did now. She’d been right in defining how the years had changed him-at twenty, the superficial, the obvious, had been all there was; now he was a complex, complicated man, one with hidden depths, still ruled by intense and powerful emotions, but those emotions were now harnessed, controlled, often screened.
The man behind the superficial mask had grown in many ways, had developed depths he hadn’t previously possessed. What drove him to want her was new, one of those facets the years had wrought in him. But what was it?
