One Night With a Spy (8 page)

It was all Mr. Blythe-Goodman's fault. He made a woman think of hard hands and urgent heat. And those eyes, darkening like night in the forest when he looked at her… perilous night in a dangerous forest.

Aldus had touched her as if she were about to break from his handling. How could she have told him that she wanted more, that she longed to
feel
a man's hands on her?

She was not like the fragile ivory carvings from China that Aldus had compared her to. Pain was simply something she'd lived with all her life, from hard work if nothing else.

This world, the luxurious realm of Lady Barrowby, was only part of the mask she'd donned upon her marriage.

She'd spent her childhood in the rough-and-tumble world of the traveling fair folk. They were a loud, boisterous lot, prone to fits of arrogance and temper and just as prone to acts of astounding generosity and good humor.

Her life had been colorful and mostly unkempt, except for when her more subdued mother had managed to pin her down long enough for a bath and combing.

Now she was a lady, just as her mother had dreamed for her. Those dusty wild days were nothing but fading memory. Only Julia's resilient nature remained the same.

So there was nothing Aldus could have done to cause her more than the most momentary discomfort, yet he had insisted on treating her as if his intrusion were more than mortal woman should be forced to bear.

The gentlemen who called on her now were much the same, treating her as if she might blow away if they spoke too forcefully, as if she might collapse beneath the pressure of their slightest touch.

Gentlemen were bloomin' annoying that way.

Of course, Elliot might be open to a bit of rousing bed play. Unfortunately, Julia wasn't so sure any longer that she would enjoy being with Elliot. His reaction when she'd outlined her proposal had been rather lukewarm. He'd begun to seem a bit… depleted, somehow. As if he were half a man—

As if he were half the man that Marcus Blythe-Goodman is.

She slapped away that annoying thought the way she would a gnat. Marcus was a boor and a lout and a great deal too distracting—

Marcus, eh?

Damn, she was doing it again.

And who said the man was even pursuing her? He had called on her, just like all the others, yet he'd scarcely spoken until she had addressed him first, never joined in with the social chatter, done nothing but watch her with those eyes…

She shivered. Sometimes she had felt as though he hated her, then she would catch a glimpse of heat shimmering like the green light in a jungle—

Ridiculous. The man was simply not to be borne. She had much more important things to think about.

Before Aldus's death, she had been running her own investigation into the man the Liar's Club called the Chimera. The Liars were very good, but she had sources in a world that they could not touch.

No one could penetrate the tight, nomadic society of the fair folk unless one was one of them.

There was no way to infiltrate, investigate, or otherwise gain access to the traveling fair folk. Not the finest of the Liars could pass in that world… but she could.

From the center of her web at Barrowby, the strands of her intelligence-gathering spread out over England and all of Europe—for what did festival players care for wars and borders? Her information came fast and fresh, spread like lightning through the ranks of the showmen, the accuracy preserved in the long-standing oral tradition of the "Say."

As there was nothing to do now but wait for the final decision of the Three, she might as well take up the threads of her latest investigation once again.

The Chimera had last been seen on Cheltenham lands in Durham County and she knew the Liars and the Three considered the man to have drowned beneath the wheel of a crumbling mill.

Julia was not so sure.

The Chimera had slipped through their defenses again and again. He'd assumed the guise of a young bag man of the streets and insinuated himself into the household of the previous spymaster, Sir Simon Raines. He'd then been passed from household to household among the more highborn Liars as a valet until Rose Tremayne, the first lady Liar—and Julia had been very interested in the career of the young housemaid Rose Lacey from the beginning—had become suspicious of him.

Trust a woman to see through the man's disguise.

In addition, it had been the Falcon's operative, his cousin Lady Jane Pennington, who had been the one to realize that the uneducated young valet, Denny, was in fact the French spymaster, the Chimera. The fellow was a brilliant master of disguise and seemed to have an eerie ability to sense and recruit England's dissatisfied and aimless for Napoleon's cause.

Yet such a man had died beneath a mill wheel? Julia didn't think so.

The body had never floated to the surface—something the Lion had explained away by the fact that the bottom was riddled with years of accumulated grasping sunken branches.

The Liars were making inquiries, she knew, but the fact remained that the Liars were still undermanned from the Chimera's attacks and only the first class of new trainees had graduated from the Liar's Academy. With man—and woman!—power so short, Julia somehow doubted that the Liars were expending their energies searching for a dead man.

Enter the traveling players.

In every corner of England and Europe, a "Say" was being spread about an evil man who could change his face and manner at will, a man of small stature, who might even now be ill from a near-drowning. The showmen loved such a tale and even the tiniest child would soon be on the lookout for such a man as they played the last of the harvest fairs of the year.

There was nothing to do now but wait to hear from them as well as from the Royal Three.

She slipped from her bed and pulled her wrapper about her. Pickles was used to her doing for herself in the mornings and doubtless assumed that Julia would be having a bit of a lie-in now that there was no need to rise early.

The heavy draperies still covered the window, keeping out the light and the chill. Julia tugged one aside to peek out at the day.

It was gray and misty outside, which was no surprise. The hills were nearly revealed now that the trees stood naked in their carpet of fallen leaves. There was little doubt the winter would be—

Something moved between the stables and the house. Not a deer, not a servant about his business. The motion had been furtive and quick. Someone did not want to be seen.

Julia blew out an irritated breath. Her suitors were truly pressing her patience! She tugged the belt of her wrapper loose and moved quickly to her wardrobe. Someone evidently hadn't taken Elliot's claims seriously!

It was a good thing that Sebastian was safely in bed.

Marcus made his way back down the wall of the house without incident, until he was only ten feet from the ground.

Then a great bestial roar shattered the dawn's stillness.

Marcus would never admit it later, not even to himself, but he flinched. Very well, it was more than a flinch. He went rigid with shock, lost his grip altogether, scrabbled uselessly at the wall for a split second, and then fell to the ground like a rock.

Thud.

He landed flat on his back, no wind left in his lungs. His teeth snapped hard on his tongue and his brain rattled in his skull.

First thought—
Ow
.

Second thought—
What in the hell was that
?

The Beast of Barrowby? Surely not. Yet, whatever it was, it was undoubtedly large and predatory and Marcus had no intention of being prey. He dragged air back into his lungs and scrambled to his feet with his back pressed to the wall of the house.

How could anyone have slept through that horrible noise? Unless they were used to it—or, more likely, knew the source and discounted it? Which meant that everyone in this house knew something he didn't.

Marcus just hated that.

The roar did not repeat. He almost wished it would. Fleeing—er, making a strategic retreat—from a beast would be easier if one knew where said beast was located.

Searching through the shadowy grounds of a strange estate for some mighty beast—as rabidly as his curiosity twitched within him—proved too stupid a concept for even his rash nature.

No, better to leave while he still had the chance. He carefully, silently left the way he'd come, a mere shadow among shadows. The secret of the beast could wait. A stick cracked behind him.

Julia was still fuming over the invasion of her valued privacy. It seemed some of her erstwhile suitors would take more convincing than others.

Now fully dressed, she pulled one slipper over her stocking foot and reached for the other. If it was that overeager bore Eames, she was going to stuff his pompous—

Suddenly a great roar shattered the morning quiet—a roar that most definitely wasn't coming from the specially heated stable addition she'd had built as far from the horses as possible.

Nor was that the "I'm bored and need entertainment" roar, or the "someone forgot to feed me" roar.

That was the hunting roar.

She jumped to her feet and ran from her bedchamber, hopping on one foot to pull on her other slipper as she went. She was joined in the hallway by Beppo and Pickles, moving at a run. There was no need to exchange words—the entire staff knew what to do.

Sebastian was loose—and there was a stranger on the grounds.

The beast stood on Marcus's chest, its great weight pressing the life from his lungs, its hot, stinking breath bringing up primordial instincts of fear, its mighty jaws opening wide to—

There wasn't a single bloody tooth in its mouth. Not even one lone, ivory survivor.

Oh, this was just perfect. "Bloody hell," Marcus wheezed. "You're someone's blasted pet, aren't you?"

The Lion leaned down and snuffled his face, drooling enthusiastically on his cheek. Marcus gasped for air as the great weight shifted to press more heavily on his chest.

"Ge-orff!" He shoved at the broad muzzle with both hands. Stars were beginning to spin before his vision but he noticed the lion's miffed expression as its friendly overtures were refused. Maybe if he kept offending it, it would go away.

"You're molting"—gasp—"and you drool"—gasp— "and you really ought to chew mint leaves for that breath—"

The sound of lightly running steps came closer. "Oh!" A feminine noise of disapproval followed. "Shame on you, Mr. Blythe-Goodman! What a terrible thing to say to a poor, defenseless animal!"

Marcus rolled his eyes upward to see an upside-down Lady Barrowby glaring at him with her fists on her hips.

"It isn't"—gasp—"listening anyway. Get the bloody thing"—gasp—"
off
!"

Her expression told him quite plainly that she considered him to be the greatest pansy ever to walk the earth, but she knelt to the grass and held out her arms.

"Sebastian," she cooed to the colossal, malodorous creature. "Come to Mummy, my darling!"

The beast finally climbed off Marcus. Unfortunately, it traveled in the direction of its mistress, which meant that the enormous hind feet also left permanent impressions on Marcus's rib cage and he saw more of the undercarriage of the great cat than he truly cared to. It was enough to make a man bloody insecure.

"Unhh." He rolled to one side and spared a moment to drag sweet, lovely, untainted-by-beast-breath air into his tortured lungs. At least now he knew the secret of the Beast of Barrowby. Alas, the answer only raised more questions.

His breathing returned to normal and his rib cage apparently still operational, Marcus looked up at the Beauty of Barrowby where she sat with her Beast. His mouth went dry, for she wore a morning gown of some filmy pale blue fabric that draped closely to her curves as she lounged half over the golden beast to scratch the thing on its opposite ear. Her bodice barely won the day against the bounty of her creamy bosom and her golden hair hung loose on her shoulders. Marcus's wayward mind flashed on some of the more erotic passages he'd read in her diary, pelting him with thoughts of bare, wet breasts and round, eager thighs that wrapped hungrily about his waist—

Yet imagination could not compare with the real woman before him. She was a bountiful pagan goddess of fire and ice—one that made a man consider abandoning his religion to worship at her feet.

That or ravaging her unto mutual madness, preferably on a lion-skin rug.

Both were dangerous thoughts for a man on a mission.

She took her attention off soothing the hurt feelings of the lion long enough to shoot him an assessing glance. "What brings you to Barrowby so
early
today, Mr. Blythe-Goodman?" She laid her head on the beast's broad skull and gazed at Marcus coolly.

"My deepest apologies, my lady." Marcus made to stand, but one look at the great cat's eerie, alert, golden gaze cautioned him to stay where he was.

He arranged himself on the ground with somewhat more dignity, leaning on one hand with his other elbow supported by a raised knee. A casual, picnicking sort of pose, not at all as if he feared another round with the Breath of Death. "I was taking my morning constitutional and I fear I strayed too close to Barrowby in my enjoyment of the day."

The excuse was weak as hell, a fact that could not have escaped her, considering that Barrowby extended for miles in every direction, but she only nodded slowly. "It is lovely in the morning, isn't it?" She smiled down at the lion in her embrace. "Sebastian couldn't bear to stay in his stable on such a warm day."

"It was a most memorable walk." He gave her his best careless grin. It wasn't as good as Elliot's but it had worked more than once.

To his surprise, she looked away, small spots of color rising in each cheek. It was the sort of response one might expect from a schoolgirl, not a wicked widow. It caused an answering, protective response in himself.
Defend the maiden
. He examined that response with detachment, decided it was only to be expected from a gentleman of his caliber, and dismissed it.

Nonetheless, he went on his guard. The chivalrous man within didn't seem to have many defenses against her gamesmanship. That man saw a sweet, untarnished beauty who needed protection and devotion.