Pierce had no fondness for horses. They bit, and they’d bitten him enough times that he must look like a ripe apple to them. Wattles had shown him an empty loose box and given him a cot on which to place the blanket for which Pierce had paid. One blanket. And a cot. He’d requested a brazier, but the innkeeper had muttered something about hay and fire and that had been that.
He set his valise on the cot and then seated himself there, testing it. It sank in the middle, almost swallowing him. He flailed about until he was sucked in, arms and legs sticking out as his backside all but touched the ground.
“Mr. Moneypence!” a female voice called. He struggled to extricate himself, but the cot refused to release its prey. “Mr. Moneypence?”
Perhaps if he didn’t answer, she would go away. Forever. But he knew she wouldn’t. She would find him in this undignified state, and he’d be mortified for the rest of his life.
“Oh, Mr. Moneypence!” She’d found him, of course.
“I do not require assistance,” he said, but his words were incoherent due to the fact that his face was buried in his knees. She tugged at his wrists, and he waved about to dislodge her grip. He moved this way and that in a gross parody of what he imagined resembled the mating dance of an ugly fish and finally managed to fall out of the cot and onto his knees on the hard stable floor.
He looked up at her, all fresh and pretty and unscathed by man-eating cots. “What do you want?” he asked, rising without grace and brushing his trousers off. They were covered with straw. For the next fortnight, he’d probably be finding straw in parts of him he didn’t want to think about even after his work here was done.
“I had hoped we might discuss this...situation.”
She sounded as though she were laughing. She’d clapped a hand over her mouth. To conceal a smile? He would throttle her. She lowered her hand and straightened. “You must leave immediately.”
Pierce brushed at the straw tickling his nose. “I was here first.”
She clasped her hands behind her back, either because she thought it would intimidate him or distract him with the way the material pulled taut over her breasts. He raised his gaze to her eyes.
“I was asked by Baron to come here. Considering he is the head of the”—she lowered her voice—“Barbican, you should be the one to leave.”
He had assumed she had come of her own accord. He’d assumed she had heard rumor of the mission and decided to investigate on her own. With the holidays nigh, agents were scarce at the moment.
He’d also hoped she had come to see him, to make amends. He was an idiot, as usual.
He surrendered to the straw itching his nose and bent to reassemble the cot. “I am also here on official business,” he said, not naming the Barbican. Really, did the woman have no sense? Even a whisper might be overheard. “Bonde ordered me to come.”
She huffed out a breath and lifted his blanket from the dusty floor. “That explains everything then.” She turned as though to leave.
“What does that mean?” he asked, blocking her retreat from the box. “Bonde has more authority than Baron.”
“So says you.” She gave the wreck of the cot a meaningful glance. “Baron is the head of the...of our organization. Not Bonde. He issues the orders.”
“Bonde is the best agent we have and the natural successor to M.” She was Lord Melbourne’s niece, after all. “Baron is in charge only temporarily.”
“Aha!” She snapped his blanket, releasing more dust into the air and making his eyes water. “You admit he is in charge. That means my mission is valid, and you should take your leave.”
“I’m not leaving,” he said. “Even if I have to sleep in the stable, I’m not leaving.”
“Well, you’re not sleeping with me!”
“Perish the thought!” He hadn’t perished the thought. He entertained the thought all too often, and now that she was in his presence, he was having difficulty forming any other thought. “If you are intent upon staying, perhaps we might work together.”
“Absolutely not,” she said, brandishing the blanket. He snatched it from her before she set another dust storm in motion. “I would rather stick my hand in acid than work with you.”
He gaped at her, glad he had resisted the urge to straighten her bonnet. It sat crookedly on the dark curls coming loose from her knot. The angle made her look like a ship listing to port. “What did I ever do to you to deserve that response?”
She jabbed a finger painfully into his chest. “You asked me to marry you!”
He wanted to grasp the hand poking into him, perhaps break the finger or perhaps kiss it. Instead, he tried to ignore the heat flowing into him from it. “You say that as though a proposal of marriage is a bad thing.”
“It is, and you know why.”
He did not begin to comprehend her objections, but he was not foolish enough to admit as much. “I merely thought it would be a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“An arrangement. Yes, that is what I want. An arrangement.”
“I could call it something else—”
“But it wouldn’t be any different! You want a wife to further your career. You want some sort of political hostess who looks pretty and says the right things and spends her days making certain your needs are seen to.”
“I never said that.”
“So you aren’t applying for a position in the Swiss offices?”
“I am, but—”
“And you didn’t assume I would give up everything here—my work, my family, my life—to follow you?”
“Not everything.”
She pinned him with large brown eyes. “Then they need a weaponry designer in Switzerland?”
He realized he was
