Page 77 of A Rogue at Stonecliffe

“Well...yes.” She studied the table for a moment. “But I think perhaps I was cruel, rejecting the deed you did for me. I don’t want to belittle the sacrifice you made for me. I think your intentions were good. I don’t believe you meant to hurt me so much.”

“I didn’t,” Sloane agreed earnestly. Perhaps it was not all lost between them. “I would never try to hurt you.”

“I know.” Annabeth nodded and raised her head to look at him. There was a sadness in her eyes that pierced him. “It seems you and I keep hurting each other even though we never mean to. I think that too much has passed between us. That our happiness is inevitably followed by sorrow.”

“Ah. I see.” Then it was lost after all.

“You have told me that there is no future for us,” she went on. “Our past is entangled with pain. I was foolhardy to push you into an affair.”

“You didn’t need to push.” He smiled faintly.

“Maybe not. But I did. I don’t regret it. The past few days have been wonderful. But I see now that if we continue, I will only get deeper and deeper, and when this is over and we go back to our normal lives, it will be the same as it was before. I don’t want to live through that again. I’m not sure I can.”

Sloane wanted to argue. He wanted to tell her that it would not be the same, that they would not part and go back to their old lives. That they would marry and live happily ever after. But of course he could not. He had made the life he had, and he could not plunge Annabeth into that. So he said only, “Very well.”

THERE WAS SILENCE in the curricle on their way back. Sloane had nothing to say, and apparently neither did Annabeth. Stiff and awkward at first, the atmosphere gradually softened under the boredom of the ride and the need to be on the alert for their enemy. By the time they reached the inn that night, they were back to normal—or what had passed for normal before he had made the mistake of making love to her.

They could not reach London that night, but Sloane passed through the town where they had stayed before; there was no way he was going to spend the night in the same place they had stayed on the way to the valet’s house. The last thing he wanted to think of was the joy of that night. He pulled up at another inn later, and there he got a chamber for each of them. It amazed him how heavy his heart was at the process.

As they waited for their food, Annabeth said, “Tell me exactly what happened with my father.”

“Annabeth, why bring this up again?”

“Because I want to know. I don’t want to be operating in the dark any longer. If you haven’t noticed, I have a large stake in this whole thing, and I want to solve it as soon as we can so I can go back to my life.” Her voice wobbled a bit on the last few words, but she kept her chin up and her eyes on him.

“Yes, of course. You’re right. What do you want to know?”

“Everything you know about the matter. Start at the beginning.”

“As I told you, I knew nothing about the accident in his letter. Nor did Asquith. We were aware there was something that the French had used on your father to get him to take and hand over a document with information they wanted. After that, they used the document he had stolen for them to keep him in line. Asquith approached me and said that I could counteract what Mr. Winfield did if I turned spy for our side. He gave me a ship for smuggling.”

“Obviously he was not above blackmail either.”

“No. I think England is the only thing he cares about. He views everything through that lens. Information is what he deals in. He gathers it and stores it in case he needs it for the future. He knew how I felt about you—though I guess that was not much of a secret anyway.”

“It sounds to me as though his own power matters to him as well.”

“You’re no doubt right about that. It matters to him that he is important to the government, that those in power regard him as indispensable. I think he enjoys being the head of the spy network as well—moving the pieces around, solving the problems. That’s one reason why finding this confession was critical to him. It galled him that he didn’t know what secret the French had had over your father to begin with, the one they used to get the incriminating document your father stole. He wants to ferret out the villain he was unable to find all these years, the enemy who damaged Asquith’s own network. He wants to be the final victor over that man.”

“I don’t understand. Why were there two different things the French used to threaten Papa? Why didn’t they just use the incident with Papa’s curricle?”

Sloane shrugged. “It does seem a bit excessive, doesn’t it? But I think it must have been this—the curricle incident, if revealed, would have been a scandal and the first information Hunter gave them was fairly minor. At the time he might have thought it was a fair trade-off. With the more important information though, he might have balked. What he had done in that curricle race would have been a blot on the family name, but it was an accident that had happened long ago, and he was a gentleman, related to an earl and a friend to many in the nobility. The likelihood that any charges would be brought against him was very slight.”

“Yes.” Annabeth sighed. “It’s reprehensible, but I’m sure you’re right.”

“But by giving the French that first information, he had made himself a traitor, and treason is a great deal worse than scandal. It wouldn’t matter who his family and friends were, and he could hardly claim it had been an accident. He would have been tried.”

Annabeth paled. “And the punishment for that is hanging.”

Sloane nodded and looked away. Facing death had been easier than facing that look on her face.

After a moment, she said, “Why did they not use it?”

“The threat is what gets the mark to do something. Actually doing what they threatened makes it certain that he will not do it. To that extent, the threat of exposure is useless. In any case, I was able to retrieve the incriminating document, and your father left his employment, rendering him of no use to the French.”

“That is what Simpson heard you arguing with Papa about, isn’t it?”

“Mmm. I was, perhaps, overly dramatic. But I was not a happy man at that time. We burned the document in his fireplace, and he left the Home Office.”