The Edge of Desire

Justin looked down on his sire’s white head, then his lips curved in a slow smile.

Surveying the nearby shelves, he crossed to one, pulled out a book, glanced inside it.

Then returning to the armchair opposite his father’s, he sat, opened the book on his knee, and started to read.

Back in the ballroom, Letitia swept up to Christian’s side where he stood with his fellow Bastion Club members. They were toasting the last man to fall into wedlock-Christian; she linked her arm with his, smiled graciously, and allowed them to toast her as well.

Christian looked down at her. “One point you can clarify-Dalziel, Royce Whoever-he-is, isn’t married, is he?”

She looked at him, then at them all, eagerly waiting on her answer; she clearly debated whether that information could be shared, then said, “No. He’s not.”

“But,” Charles put in, “he’s the sort of gentleman who has to marry, isn’t he? If he’s a marquess, then that follows as night follows day.”

“So,” Tony suggested, “there’s really one more wedding to come.” He caught Letitia’s eye. “Isn’t there?”

She returned Tony’s gaze; anticipation bloomed, then grew until it gleamed in her eyes. “Yes, indeed.” She smiled ecstatically. “He’ll have to marry. And quite soon-at least if he wants any peace.”

“Once he ends his commission…?” Jack Warnefleet prompted.

She nodded. “Once he goes back to being who he really is, there won’t be a matchmaking mama in London, or indeed the country, who won’t have him squarely in her sights.”

The members of the Bastion Club exchanged a communal glance.

“Now that,” Tristan said, “is a toast we can make with alacrity.”

“Indeed.” Charles, their unofficial toastmaster, raised his glass high. “To the end of Dalziel’s commission. It can’t come too soon.”

With a cheer, they all raised their glasses high and drank.

“And to Dalziel’s bride,” Christian added. “Whoever and wherever she might be.”

Epilogue

Two days later

London

Standing in the center of the study in his elegant town house, Royce dropped the last of the files he’d cleared from his desk into a storage trunk. Chances were he’d never look at them again, but they were, in effect, all that remained as proof of his existence over the past sixteen years.

He stood looking down at the trunk. Felt the full weight of all he’d done, all he’d ordered to be done, over those sixteen years. Knew the price-exacted on so many different levels-he’d paid that it all should be so.

Faced with the same choice, he would pay that price again, regardless.

He’d been barely twenty-two when he’d been approached and asked-all but begged-to take on a very particular commission with His Majesty’s Secret Service. Despite his lack of years, there were few others with connections in Europe the equal of his, still fewer with his talents, with his inherent ability to command, along with the zeal to inspire others with similar background and skills, to willingly go into extreme danger, trusting in him to be their anchor, their only contact, their sole lifeline to safety.

Few who could have, as he had done, readily recruited the best, brightest, and most able of a generation of Guards.

Especially when they hadn’t, quite, known who he was.

Memories threatened to claim him; abruptly shaking free, he stalked back to his desk. Rounding it, he dropped into the leather-covered chair behind it. Once again his thoughts circled; he would have preferred not to indulge them, yet the hour was, it seemed, one for taking stock.

He’d never lost an agent, not one solely under his command. That, he felt, was his greatest triumph.

His greatest failure was equally easy to define; he’d never succeeded in identifying his “last traitor,” a fiend he and his ex-colleagues now knew to be flesh and blood, a man they’d come within a whisker of catching a month ago, but, as always, he’d slipped through their-his-fingers.

Although it went very much against his grain, he’d accepted that he would have to let that failure lie; he’d run out of time.

But as for all the rest-all the years of keeping strictly to himself, a social pariah of his own making, while ruthlessly and relentlessly managing the reins of the agents he’d deployed far and wide across the Continent-he was more than satisfied with what he’d achieved, the contribution he and those men had made to England’s safety over the last fraught decade.

They’d been good men all; some-the seven members of the Bastion Club-he would now consider friends. They’d consistently included him in the adventures that had befallen each of them in returning to civilian life.

Now he faced the same prospect, although he seriously doubted there would be any interesting adventure attached.

Fate, in his experience, was rarely that kind.

His resignation from his commission was effective from that day. He’d spent the last weeks tidying up, writing and delivering the inevitable reports to various ministers and government functionaries.

Many had requested a briefing, seeking to remind him that they existed, to establish a connection with his alter ego-his real self. He’d viewed such requests with due cynicism, but in the main hadn’t denied them, knowing he’d have to make the transition to his other self sooner rather than later.

That as of today, the individual known as Dalziel had ceased to exist.

He snorted softly. Steepling his fingers, he set them before his face. Relaxed in the chair, he stared across the room. And consciously tried to bring his other self to mind. To life.

But sixteen years was a long time.

And a name changed nothing of what a man truly was.

Distantly, beyond the solid walls, he heard a horse clatter up and come to a stamping halt in the street outside; although his mind recognized and identified the sound, sunk in a survey of the past he didn’t register its import.

The front door knocker was another matter; plied with considerable force, it jerked him from recollections-some painful-of his distant past.

Hauled from his reverie, he focused on the door. Ears straining, he heard his butler, Hamilton, cross the front hall. An instant later, muffled by doors and walls, came the sound of men’s voices-Hamilton’s and one other’s. Presumably the rider’s.

The cadence of the unknown rider’s accent unexpectedly kicked premonition to life.

Had his heart pumping just a tad faster, had him steeling himself against what was coming.

His mind raced, imagining what the message might be, what latest hurdle was to be erected in his path.

What else his father might think to throw at him.

He was waiting, tense inside but outwardly at ease, his hands, long fingers relaxed, draped over the end of each chair arm, when Hamilton approached the study door, knocked briefly, and entered.

Royce’s gaze went to his butler’s hands, expecting to see his silver salver with a missive lying upon it.

But Hamilton’s hands were empty.

Raising his gaze to Hamilton’s face, Royce read his expression with the barest glance.

Felt like he’d been kicked in the chest.

His features grave, Hamilton bowed-lower than usual. “Your grace. A rider has arrived from Wolverstone.”

No further explanation was necessary; the title said it all.

It could only be his if…

Somehow he gathered enough wit to speak. “Thank you, Hamilton. Please see to the comfort of whoever it is. I’ll speak with him shortly.”

Once he’d absorbed the latest blow.