Page 66 of The Boxing Baroness

Fury boiled inside him at her confused look. What an actress she was!

“Me? How would I know anything about this?”

“You were Strickland’s lover—I’m sorry, that’s right: you claimed to be his wife”—he scoffed—“only weeks before he arranged his death and disappeared. Surely you must have noticed something untoward.”

Her jaws clenched and her nostrils flared at his crude taunting. “Actually, his wife was with him only a few days before he supposedly died. Why don’t you ask her if she knew what he was up to?”

He held her glare, looking for guilt, fear, or shame—any sign that she knew what her ex-lover had been up to during those final weeks. But all he saw was anger, confusion, and hurt.

If what he’d learned last night at the Three-Legged Dog was true, then she was a remarkable performer.

“My brother and the other two men were captured because of information the French received from one of their own agents—a man who’d been held on one of the prisoner hulks anchored at Chatham.”

Naked fear flickered across her face at the word Chatham, but was quickly suppressed. “What are you trying to say, Your Grace?”

“I’m not trying to say anything. I’m telling you how the information passed from Whitehall to a prisoner on a hulk in Chatham to somebody in France. And led to the death of two men and the possible imprisonment of the third.”

Her gaze flickered away, and then back. “Dominic’s family seat is outside Chatham.”

“Yes.”

“I was there—in May of last year.”

“Were you?” he asked with mock surprise.

“You know I was—don’t you? That’s what all this is about. You think Dominic had something to do with all this.” She gave a huff of disbelieving laughter. “You think I had something to do with this. You’re saying Dominic smuggled the man out—a spy with secrets that led to the murder of British soldiers.”

“Did you?”

She stopped her horse in the middle of the road, snow swirling around her. “How dare you accuse me of such a thing!”

“I’m not accusing—just asking.”

“It doesn’t sound like a question,” she snapped, bright spots of color on her pale cheeks, white flakes of snow caught in her eyelashes. “That’s what all this is about—isn’t it? You’re using me to get to Dominic because you think I helped him spy. Maybe I’m still helping him?”

He merely stared at her. “Are you?”

“Why bother asking when you won’t believe my answer?”

“Make me believe you, Marianne.”

“Why should I? Just what is going to happen when we meet Dominic, Your Grace? If you think I had something to do with treason, you’re not just going to bring me to him to have tea and crumpets, are you?” Her mouth tightened and she swallowed audibly. “If you think I was involved, you probably think my uncle was involved, as well.”

Telling her the truth will hardly help your cause.

He knew that. But he couldn’t bear to look at her after what he’d learned last night.

He was not trained as a spy—somebody who could prevaricate convincingly when it came to treason and traitors, a friend’s death and his brother’s capture.

“I do,” he said.

“Then what are you going to do with us?”

“I’m going to find out the truth.”

“What if I told you that I know nothing about any of that?”

When he didn’t answer, she snorted. “Never mind, I can see your answer on your face. What’s to stop me from turning around right now and going back to London?”