Page 43 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

She took an uncertain step toward him, away from the door, and he nodded encouragingly. “I know you won’t like to hear this, but sometimes waiting is part of the mission too.”

She sighed. “How long?”

“In an hour, say, I’ll go back to Royal Crescent to check on things. I’ll leave word for Her Grace that the sight of the duke in distress overwhelmed your delicate sensibilities, and you came back here to recover. I promise you, nothing bad will happen in an hour. Our would-be assassin, if he even exists, will need time to puzzle over his failures and plot his next attack. And in the meantime, perhaps the duke and duchess will have a chance to…work out some of their differences.” Mischief twinkled in his eyes.

“Oh, yes,” she said, fighting to keep her own eyes from rolling. “Right. I nearly forgot. Though personally I should’ve thought all the coughing up seawater and shouting might interfere with the kissing.”

“Doubt me if you will.” He grinned. “But Hartwell’s just fought for his life and won. His heart is racing, and in spite of that dip in the channel, his blood is hot. And after a good fight, well…” He lifted his hands as if to indicate that the conclusion must be obvious. “A man likes to f—”

Though he broke off before finishing the forbidden word, she knew full well what he had been about to say. One did not spend months in the company of soldiers, men hardened by war, without occasionally hearing things that would’ve burned most ladies’ ears.

Heat bloomed in her chest, rushing up into her head.

And downward too. Below her belly. Between her thighs.

“I’m sorry, Fanny,” he said, letting the wooden chair rattle back into its place as he stepped toward her. “I forgot who I was talking to, I guess. I shouldn’t have—”

She held up a hand to stay him—his progress across the room, his apology. Her head spun. It took every bit of her remaining wherewithal to make her way across the room to the velvet chaise and sink down onto its foot.

“Is that true?”

Fitz took a cautious step toward her, and when she didn’t object, came closer still. “It’s just talk,” he said, reaching out for her hands again. She surrendered them to him; her fingers were still cold. “Men talk a great deal too much.”

“Yes.” He was being kind, trying to comfort her, imagining she’d been bothered by a naughty word. “At least, I hope that’s it. Because otherwise, you see, I might be forced to conclude that I simply never in my life inspired that kind of passion. I can recall any number of arguments with my husband, and not one of them ever led to kissing,” she confessed, hating the shakiness in her voice. “To say nothing of f—”

In one swift, smooth motion, he pulled her onto her feet and into his arms, covering her mouth with his. She hadn’t an opportunity to raise her defenses, to stiffen her spine or pucker her lips. Just a gasp of surprise at the softness of his kiss, the hardness of his body, the strength of his arms wrapped around her.

“Hot,” he murmured against her mouth. “Sweet.”

“Peppermint drops,” she tried to explain between kisses.

His chuckle vibrated through her. “No. Just you.”

The temptation to go on kissing him was strong enough that she made herself pull away. Reluctantly, he let her step out of the circle of his embrace. “You…ah…” She turned toward the window. No view of the water here, just the houses across the way, filtered through a sheer silk drapery with a shabby hem. “You needn’t put on a show of affection to humor me.”

“A show?” In two steps, he was behind her, not touching her, yet she’d never been so aware of another’s presence. “Hasn’t this footman charade pretty well established that I’m no actor? I thought for sure you must have known for weeks how much I wanted to kiss you.”

Fanny thought back to the night before last, how he’d made a joke and walked away from her. “Y-you have?” she asked doubtfully. “But why?”

A soft laugh ghosted over her scalp. “Because I’m a contrary fellow, Fan. In the Underground, you always looked so cool and aloof. Never a hair out of place.” His fingertip skated along the nape of her neck, where a few stubborn curls had sprung free during the windy walk without a bonnet. “I found myself imagining how you’d look with your hair tumbling down and a flush on your cheeks.” Lower and lower his finger slipped, tracing the gathered edge of her simple sprigged muslin. “Without those dull, high-necked gowns.”

But her widow’s weeds had been safe, familiar. She’d grown comfortable in the role of icy matron. As prim, proper Mrs. Drummond, she’d persuaded Colonel Millrose to teach her about bookkeeping and business matters and to let her run the tobacco shop that disguised the real operations of the Underground. And that role, in turn, must have persuaded General Scott she was ready for more responsibility yet.

She, who had once been valued solely for her beauty, who had been told time and again not to bother her pretty head about politics or the war, was in Brighton on a mission at the behest of the foremost intelligence officer in the British Army.

“What makes you so certain that dour, black-gowned woman isn’t the real me?”

“This.”

A tremor of desire traveled up her spine when he dropped his lips to that delicate crescent of skin at the top of her back. She had no hope of containing it, disguising it. She wasn’t passionless, after all.

But in giving in to passion, what might she be forced to give up?

“We shouldn’t…” She sighed as his arm came around her waist, drawing their bodies together. “I shouldn’t…” She sagged against him. Fitz’s touch called her back to a time before her marriage, when there had been soft, pretty things. And amusements. And flirtations.

“Why?”

She was running out of excuses. “How old are you, Lieutenant Hopkins?”