Page 101 of Love and the Shameless Lady

Chapter 16

Doing his best to be stoic, Julian waited for the axe to fall. He couldn’t have confessed to anything much more lowly.

She gave an appalled gasp and let go of his arm. “A spy?” she whispered, her eyes wide and astonished.

“Unfortunately, yes. It’s an ungentlemanly profession, I know.”

She clutched his arm. Not a reason for optimism, he told himself. She is probably about to faint from shock and distress.

“A spy,” she breathed.

“Yes. I quite understand if that means you cannot marry me.”

She let go again and burst into laughter. “For heaven’s sake, Julian, I’m a fallen woman who sings obscene songs in a tavern. How could I possibly object to a spy?” She paused, as if a thought struck her. “As long as you’re spying for England.”

“Of course,” he said, relief washing over him. “Oh, Daisy, I love you. Are you sure you can stomach marrying me, knowing what I am?”

She rolled her eyes. “Tell me all about it. I would ask if it’s exciting, but I can tell that you don’t like it much.”

“No, but I need the income.” He clasped his hands behind his back and walked beside her along the verge of the lake. A pair of swans floated lazily past. “I attend a great many meetings of radical thinkers, playing the role of a scholar whose area of interest is the secessio plebis—that is, the uprisings of the common people of Rome against their rulers. My mission is to sniff out those who pose a genuine threat, the sort who foment discord and rouse the common people to action. I sympathize with them. I don’t think they should suffer imprisonment or death for their views, and yet we cannot afford dissension and unrest during wartime.”

“Conscience versus duty,” she said. “Now I see. Your conscience sides with them, but your duty requires you to inform on them.”

He nodded. A duck quacked in the reeds. “I try to advise them to wait for a better moment to propose their reforms. I warn them that sooner or later the government will learn who they are and take severe measures against them. They rarely believe me.”

“And if they don’t see sense, you report them to your employers.”

“Yes.” A squabble of crows rose from a coppice across the lake.

“And you greatly dislike doing that.”

“I loathe it!” At last he turned to her. She was so very lovely, and she understood. “What if I judge wrongly? What if I send someone to prison or to his death, who wouldn’t have caused any real harm?”

“I have a solution for this problem,” she said.

“You do?”

“When we marry, you will have the income from my dowry. You will be able to quit being a spy!”

It should have been a relief. He should have welcomed her solution. And yet . . . “No,” he said. “I can’t do that.”

Daisy took his arm again, and they strolled slowly around the lake. “It seemed like such a good idea. Your conscience won’t allow you to marry for money?”

“There’s nothing dishonorable about marrying for money,” he said, “or for using the income from your dowry, but the fact remains that duty calls. I’m good at what I do. As far as I know, no one but Philippe has guessed what I am, although I admit that I’m a little unnerved by his perceptiveness. Fortunately, he is only a thief, not a French spy.”

She stared. “Do you mean . . . you thought he might be a spy?”

“I was sent to your smuggling village to find out more about two suspicious Frenchmen who stayed there from time to time. Picture my dismay when I realized one of them was my close friend.”

“How horrid.”

“And then someone tried to kill you, but I couldn’t see any connection between you and French spies. It made no sense, and although I could, with difficulty, imagine Philippe being a spy, I simply couldn’t believe he would murder an innocent woman in cold blood.”

She halted, hands on hips. “You suspected him all along? And you didn’t tell me?”

“I couldn’t accuse my friend without proof—just as you couldn’t betray your cousin’s confidence.”

“My life was at stake! That’s nothing like me not telling you about Gloriana’s charade!”