AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Don’t put me out to pasture just yet.” Henry narrowed his eyes. “I still have a few uses.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest—”
Henry waved a hand. “I know. I’ll be careful. Besides, it would be good for me to get out of this blasted house. Agatha hovers over me like a nursemaid. I can’t take much more of it.”
“I’m grateful for any assistance.”
Now seemed like a prime opportunity to ask how Henry was feeling, but before Rafe could get the words out, the door swung open. It was the maid with the tea tray. He hid his disappointment behind a genial smile. Mary cast him a not-so-subtle glance as she set down the tray. “Would ye like me to pour, sir?” she asked Henry, her voice practically quaking in the face of his forbidding glare.
Henry shook his head. “No. We’re fine. Thank you, Mary.”
The girl gave Rafe another parting glance before she fled the room.
As Henry moved to fill Rafe’s teacup, one corner of his mouth curved up. “Still catching the eye of every woman with a pulse, I see.”
Rafe chuckled, recalling his first encounter with Sylvia when she had seemed incredibly perturbed to have even noticed him and worked hard to pretend otherwise.
That was the moment.
People always talked about the moment they “knew.” When they met eyes across a crowded ballroom or bent to pick up a dropped handkerchief. How the smallest gesture had changed the entire course of their lives. Even his father had claimed such a moment in the way Rafe’s mother, born in one of the poorest sections of London, had held out her hand to him when they first met, as proud and regal as a queen.
I knew right then that no one else would do ever again.
The words shivered up his spine with new understanding.
“Actually,” he began, surprised to find his throat tightening with emotion. “I’ve met someone.”
Henry had moved to pass Rafe his cup and now froze, his face gone blank. “Pardon,” he said after a moment. “Did I hear that right?”
“Yes,” he said, taking his cup. “You don’t need to look quite so shocked.”
“No, sorry.” Henry gave himself a shake. “I’m just…surprised. You always said you couldn’t be bothered. The work came first.”
“I know,” Rafe cut in, recalling his youthful arrogance. “I was an idiot.”
“Well, who is she?”
He suddenly regretted having said anything. This was still so new, so vulnerable. Like a butterfly unfurling its wings for the first time, wet and trembling with fresh life. When the slightest wrong movement could kill. He poured too much cream into his tea and stirred the beige liquid. “I met her at the castle. She’s a lady’s companion to one of the guests.”
“Really? How very interesting.”
Rafe wanted to wipe that smug smile right off Henry’s face. “Yes. Her name is Sylvia.”
“Lovely. And does she know how you feel?”
“More or less.”
Henry snorted. “You know, I assumed when you were finally felled by Cupid’s arrow, you would be positively rapturous.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Rafe bristled. “I’m not some damned poet.”
“Absolutely not, but you’ve always carried an air of the romantic about you.”
Rafe stared at him a moment. “Did Mary slip something into your cup?”
Henry let out a hearty laugh. Rafe would have been happier about it if he wasn’t the cause. “Not at all. It was just an observation I’ve made over the years.”
That explanation was not comforting in the least. Henry had been recruited for intelligence work in part because of his extraordinary memory. He could easily recall entire conversations from years past or describe rooms he had walked through down to the last insignificant detail. The man was a living, breathing memory vault. Which made him an incredibly valuable asset. Henry might be done with Crown service, but that didn’t mean the Crown was done with him.
