The Secrets of a Scoundrel (3 page)

“I’ve already told you. My name is Virginia Stokes, Baroness Burke. Gin to my friends.”

“Baron Burke . . . your husband,” he murmured, searching his memory. “I’ve heard the name, but I don’t believe I ever met the man.”

She pursed her lips, as though holding back a comment.

Judging by her expression, it was something along the lines of,
You weren’t missing much.

Seeing that he had read that assessment on her face, the mysterious Lady Burke looked away.

“Wasn’t he a nabob?” Nick knew that the Order had a few men based in India. “Was he an agent? One of ours?”

“God, no.”

“Are you?” he persisted in a whisper, leaning his forehead against the bars.

There was an edge to her smile as she glanced wryly at him. “You know the Order does not allow women to serve in that capacity, my lord.”

“Then who the hell
are
you?” he exclaimed, pulling away and banging the bars in frustration. “Answer me! I can see there’s plenty you’re not telling me—”

“You will be given information as it’s needed, Lord Forrester.”

He glared at her, seething as he strove to figure her out. For all he knew, this could be another trap.

He had many enemies out there to this day. Or the Order could be testing his loyalty. He might be an idiot if he took the bait. “I’m sorry. I just don’t understand what’s going on.”

“No, I don’t imagine that you do. You’re just going to have to trust me, I suppose.”

“And why would you trust me?” he countered. “You see where I am. I don’t deny that I belong here for everything I’ve done.”

“What you’ve done?” she echoed in surprise, her blue eyes flashing with a sudden angry gleam. “You’ve served this organization and the Crown since you were younger than John Carr. And this is the thanks they give you? A bloody cage?”

Nick was taken aback to realize for the first time that she was not angry at him, but
for
him.

He wasn’t quite sure what to say. “I deserve it.”

“For wanting to quit? For getting tired of it all?” she countered passionately, to his surprise. “For having your heart broken too many times, facing down an evil that other people don’t even know exists? Oh, Nick.” Gazing at him, she shook her head almost tenderly, and he went half-mad with the need to figure out where he knew her from.

Then she gave it away softly. “Nick, Nick, Nicholas.”

The phrase jerked his head up and put all his defenses instantly on high alert.

Only one person used to say that to him, in tones of fatherly affection . . .

The only father figure he had ever known. The first and possibly the last person who had ever believed in him.

His handler.

Oh, how he’d let the old man down.

He gripped the bars intensely, staring at her. “Who are you?” he demanded in a savage whisper. “Either tell me now, or take yourself out of here. Quit playing games.”

She was unmoved. “Do you want to know why I’m giving you this chance? Yes, I do need the game piece. But the reason I’m willing to trust you is because my father did. Explicitly.”

“Your father?” He swallowed hard, his brain unwilling to accept this revelation.

She finally relented, lowering her mask of cool control just a bit. “My mother’s the Countess of Ashton, and though I am acknowledged as the offspring of her husband, the Earl, the truth is, thirty years ago, Mama took a braw Scotsman for a lover—an Order agent, who sired me. My natural father was your handler, Nick. Virgil Banks.”

His jaw dropped.

Virgil’s daughter?
So that’s how she knew so much . . .

“Now, for the last time, will you work with me or not?” she demanded in a hard tone—that suddenly made perfect sense.

Good God!
Speechless, Nick could only stare. Before his untimely death, Virgil Banks had been a legend of the Order. The taciturn Scot been like a father to all “his boys,” the highborn lads he had handpicked to be trained and turned into agents. The canny spymaster had taught them everything they knew. But . . .

Virgil had a daughter?

“He never told us!” he blurted out. “We were like sons to him. I mean, I thought he kept the secrets to the mission side of things. But—he never said a word!”

Her lips twisted ruefully. “Would you? Think about it. If you had a daughter, would you introduce her to someone like you?”

“Hell, no,” he said without a second’s hesitation.

“Well?” She chuckled.

He let out a short laugh, as well, just barely managing to shake off his astonishment. “Well, I’d do anything for the old man.”
Including keeping his daughter from getting herself killed.
“Of course you’ve got my help.”

Clever as she was, he doubted the lady investigator had any real idea of the sort of people she was dealing with. Only the worst of the worst attended the Bacchus Bazaar.

But if he had this one chance left to do something good, maybe even save his soul, he’d keep her safe. Keep her out of her own investigation as much as possible . . .

Meanwhile, she held his gaze with a sweet, girlish blush filling her cheeks, relief easing into her blue eyes. “Oh, thank you! I was so hoping you’d say that. It’s a lot to take on by oneself.”

“I know,” he answered softly.

“I’ll go get the guard,” she said. “Let’s get you of there, shall we?”

He nodded. When she turned away, Nick stared after her, still entirely astonished.

Well, so much for bedding her, he thought wryly after a moment. He had enough problems without also being haunted from beyond the grave by her father’s angry ghost.

What a shame.

Chapter 2

S
he returned with Ross, who gave Nick a warning glower and told him to pack his things: He’d be leaving.

Nick complied uneasily, still filled with a sense of unreality. Part of him feared this was all a cruel hoax soon to be reversed, but he took out the single box he had arrived with and placed in it the few belongings he’d been allowed to keep, along with the various small comforts sent to him by his friends. He took the map of America down off the wall, folded it somberly, and put it in the box in which all of his possessions now fit.

Then Ross unlocked his cell, not to grant him his usual one hour a week outside but to remand him into the custody of the lovely Lady Burke.

With his wrists and his ankles shackled, Nick was first escorted upstairs for a final meeting with the graybeards. There was paperwork to fill out, a short but intense interrogation, dire warnings issued.

This, he was advised, was his one chance to prove to them he could still be trusted. One chance to clear the slate.
Good God,
he thought while their lecture droned on,
what did this woman want from him, really?

It had to be a lot worse than anyone was admitting for them to let him go. Ah, well. If it was for Virgil, he was in.

In any case, the last thing the graybeards did before he left was to return his signet ring to him. Feeling rather dazed, he stared at it for a second as if he had never seen his family’s coat of arms before: a black wolf on a scarlet ground.

Despite the awkwardness of the shackles on this wrists, he managed to slip it onto his pinky finger, and thus became the baron again.

Heir to an ancient, but quite bankrupt family.

Not exactly cursed bloodlines, but damned unlucky—and plagued by a self-destructive streak.

Lady Burke looked at him. “Is there anything else you need before we go?”

Nick shook his head, mute and overwhelmed. The only thing he wanted was to be gone from here.

Before the bastards changed their minds.

“This way, then. Come with me.” Concern flickered in her eyes at his lost expression; she gestured toward a waiting coach-and-four in the square.

He stepped outside, blinking in the light.

He was not so far gone not to feel the searing sting to his pride when he had to cross to her carriage in front of all the young students, with his chains clanking like a cautionary tale.
Now then, pupils, pay attention
.
Here’s an example of what not to do in life. Always follow orders, do not think for yourself, or you might end up like him.

He kept his head high and stepped up into his new owner’s coach, then sat down with his shoulders squared and a stoic stare fixed straight ahead at nothing.

Lady Burke said her good-byes to the graybeards with a murmur that she would be in touch. Nick saw Ross (how he’d miss him—!) give her the key to his manacles, but when she joined him in the carriage, she did not release him from them. Not that he could blame her.

He wouldn’t have trusted him, either. Even now, low, dishonorable thoughts of escaping at the first opportunity were going through his mind. Of course, he ignored them. This was Virgil’s daughter. He could no more betray or abandon her than he could give in to the pull of lust that he felt already heating the space between them.

Any other woman in the world, he’d have been happy to cheapen with his long-pent-up needs, but this was Virgil’s little girl. No, he stoutly informed his starved libido. He would treat her as chastely as if she were a nun. At least, he’d do his damnedest to try.

After all, if he made a move on her, and she didn’t like it, she could send him back to prison. For the first time possibly in his life, Nick resolved to be an angel.

The mysterious baroness rapped on the coach, commanding her driver to make haste; in the next moment, the carriage rolled into motion.

They were off.

Good riddance,
Nick thought.

W
atching him intently, Gin wondered how he was doing. Expert assassin or not, on a very human level, the man beside her seemed overwhelmed to taste freedom once again—such as it was, considering he was still in chains.

The stench of the prison still clung to him. He needed washing, fresh clothes, a few weeks’ worth of good meals, and Heaven only knew what else.

Considering all he had been through, she realized that, realistically, he might need a day or two before he was ready to start their mission.

Well, she wasn’t made of stone. She was a mother, after all, with a certain nurturing instinct. Besides, she needed him strong for the challenges ahead.

Physically, he was obviously more than fit, but mentally, emotionally, it was hard to say.

Yes, she could spare a day or two to let him recover and get his bearings, Gin mused as she discreetly watched him gazing out the carriage window.

He was absorbed in staring at the bleak November countryside, and though Gin could only see his face in profile, his expression looked stricken, his dark eyes wide, his sculpted lips parted slightly.

She bent her head a little, masking the fact that she was studying him with increasing concern. Perhaps she should simply leave him alone, but how could she ignore his pain? The man seemed quietly distraught.

“Are you . . . all right?” she inquired with cautious tact.

He kept staring out the window. “Everything’s more beautiful than I remembered,” he answered in a slightly strangled voice.

“Ah.” Gin was embarrassed for having intruded on his anguish. She looked away, reminding herself that this was the first time in months that the man had been set free from the confines of the prison.

When he sat there a moment longer, still brooding, she attempted to lighten the mood. “You have interesting taste if you find this day is beautiful. Wait till the sun comes out at least. Today is all gloom! The fields are so brown, the sky is gray—”

“The sky. Exactly,” he echoed. Then he glanced over at her with a rueful half smile that nearly stole her breath.

Gin gazed at him with a pang of understanding but was reluctant to admit even to herself how his words, indeed, his vulnerability in this moment thawed some of the frost she was so careful to keep around her heart.

A protective layer of indifference.

“Well,” she managed at last in a wry tone, “they do say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

He smiled at her, then gazed out the window again, his starved stare greedily consuming all there was to see.

The carriage rolled on.

A
fter a time, her prisoner must have looked his fill for the time being.

He stretched out his long legs as best he could in the cramped carriage; with his manacled hands resting on his lap, he put his head back and finally closed his eyes.

Till now, he had been acutely vigilant, but the rhythmic rocking of the carriage must have finally lulled him into a state of relaxation. Or perhaps he was just saving his strength to give her a fight later.

She knew better than to trust him, of course. But on the other hand, she couldn’t stop staring at him with an odd and gratifying sense of ownership, possession . . .

You’re all mine, for now,
she thought in amusement.

She couldn’t help but furtively study him, this novelty. Her father’s problem agent. The unpredictable one.

He wore no cravat, of course, and she soon became fascinated by the elegant line of his neck and his Adam’s apple. Her gaze roamed casually over the sleek waves of his dirty black hair, in need of washing.

The inky fringe of his lashes.

His sculpted lips.

The scar not quite hidden by the dark stubble on his jaw. Why, he even looked like a proper cutthroat, and so he was, she thought, but she could not deny that he was a beautiful man.

Older, wiser, no doubt scarred by the world, but just as appealing now as he had been the first time she had seen him, only in a different way. She had been seventeen . . .

As she watched him doze, her thoughts drifted back to the day many years ago when she had tailed her father to a fencing studio in London to get her first look at “Virgil’s boys.”

After hearing her father, her dearest friend and confidante, heap praises on the new crop of agents he was training (though he would never say it to them); hearing the warmth and pride in his voice when he spoke of them; the respect he had for each of these brave young warriors who became like sons to him while she was merely a daughter, she had grown jealous, resentful.

Who were these strangers who took so much of her father’s time away from her? She even feared that he might love them more than he loved her, his illegitimate daughter.

Virgil had obviously not known how much she had needed his attention at that point in her life. Hoping that at least she might be included in that aspect of her father’s secretive existence, she had asked to be introduced to these supposed flowers of chivalry.

He had forbidden it. He wanted her nowhere around them, for a long list of reasons. Well, as disappointed as she had been, a spymaster was not the sort of father that even so rebellious a daughter as she disobeyed lightly.

Nevertheless, she had inherited from him a certain talent at sneaking; in her jealousy, she had decided to go and see “Virgil’s boys” for herself. Spy on the spies, as it were, just once—so she could see them and prove to herself that they weren’t so great as all that.

That she, too, could’ve become just as skilled as they if only her father would give her a chance.

But Virgil refused that, too, beyond some basic training in self-defense and reading people.

Females were not allowed to join the Order. She had hoped to be the first, but he would not hear of that, either.

At last, after furtively tailing her father to a London fencing studio where the lads were having a casual training session one afternoon, she had finally glimpsed the group of them, all in their early twenties, one more beautiful than the next.

Fighting like demons against each other in practice, then laughing and roughhousing good-naturedly like brothers between rounds.

Though their vibrant male beauty had left her breathless, their close-knit warmth had struck her like a stab in her girlish heart.

For this, she had realized, was her father’s real family, and she was just as woefully excluded from it as she was from the family she lived with.

The Earl of Ashton’s palatial home had been a very chilly place for the redhead who wasn’t quite His Lordship’s daughter.

Gin lowered her head, tamping down the pain from the memory of that lesson; it still smarted. In any case, her most vivid memory of that day had been of Nick, the young Lord Forrester, leaning by himself against a column, sharpening his blade.

She had picked him out when one of the others had called his name. He had looked over, and her stare had homed in on him: she knew that name.

Now she could put a face to the one who drove her father to distraction. “Nefarious Nick,” as his brother warriors called him, was her father’s greatest headache.

To be sure, the young, intriguing, black-haired knight was deadly. But Order teams were trained to work as a seamless unit, and Nick had always been a bit of a lone wolf.

Apparently, the Order’s prison was where his stubborn, independent streak had got him.

How she could relate to that.

For, indeed, her own stubborn, independent streak had landed
her
in a prison of sorts herself for a number of years: marriage.

But she wouldn’t be making that mistake ever again.

Putting the past out of her mind, she closed her eyes and leaned back beside him as the carriage rumbled on.

A
fter three hours of travel, it was necessary to stop and change horses. They pulled into the cobbled yard of a busy, galleried coaching inn called The Owl.

It had a pub on the ground floor, guest chambers above, and a livery stable in the back.

Nick lifted his head from the squabs, eagerly watching out the window at the hustle and bustle of ordinary life going on. Travelers spilled out of newly arriving stagecoaches; others filed into departing coaches while the tin horns blew.

Gin glanced at her prisoner when they both caught the scent of food coming from the pub. She heard his stomach grumble loudly in response and gave a sympathetic wince.

She wished it was possible to release him so he might come in with them—it would probably do him good—but she did not dare. Not here, in a busy transportation hub.

If he took it into his mind to escape, there were too many opportunities for him to grab a horse and go. She would never see him again. And then there would be hell to pay from the graybeards.

“Would you like to get out and stretch?” she offered.

He shook his head. Cynicism flickered in his dark eyes when he realized she had no intention of taking the shackles off him. But his pride outweighed practicality.

“No, thanks. I’ll wait,” he said, stone-faced.

“Suit yourself.” She gave her two grooms strict orders to guard him. With a nod, one brought his hand to his pistol, then they both went to stand on either side of the carriage doors.

Gin strode into The Owl to make the arrangements for the horses and order food.

Inside, she stayed near the window to make sure her valuable prisoner did not try to overcome his pair of guards and get away. Meanwhile, the coachman unhitched the horses from the last stage and traded them for fresh ones.

Before long, the food was ready. She carried it outside, distributing the small hampers of provisions to her men before climbing back into the carriage.

“Beef stew or chicken pie?” she asked her prisoner when she returned to her seat.

He looked startled by the question and blurted out, “I have a choice?”

Gin paused, feeling another unexpected pang of compassion. “Actually, why don’t you take them both,” she mumbled. “I don’t have much of an appetite today.”

As the coach rolled into motion once more, Nick asked to start with the beef stew. She reached into the hamper the innkeeper had prepared and carefully gave him the bowl of stew and a spoon. His chains clanked as he took the precious substance in his hands.