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That’s what makes a perfect killer. But he didn’t say it.
Tossing the grass away, Morgan faced him, her eyes honey gold in the westering light. “What are you trying to tell me?” Her voice and her expression had lost their edge. She cocked her head as if trying to understand.
“I…” Just talking about it made him go cold. Made his gut churn. “I’m trying to tell you it’s all right to be shaky in the knees and want to cast up your accounts. It’s all right if you’re not the dirtiest, meanest son of a bitch out there.” He dropped his gaze to the ground. To a crush of pebbles. A broken stalk of grass. Anywhere so he didn’t have to meet Morgan’s eyes. That keen gaze of hers would pick out every crime he’d ever committed in the name of duty. See every man who hadn’t been as quick or as cunning or as good as he was. And unfortunately for their sakes, he’d been damn good once.
“Cam?” Her hand on his arm snapped his head up. Her hair fell forward, a loose strand caught in her lips.
That simple gesture was all it took. He leaned toward her. Caught her face in his hands. And before she could resist, claimed her mouth in a hungry, desperate kiss. Her lips moving over his overpowered the raging flashbacks. There was no room for thought. Only sensation. The faint whiskey taste of her lips, the exquisite softness of her skin, the deep, spreading burn of his body as seconds passed and she didn’t pull away. Could it be this easy?
She started in his arms. Shoved him away. “No.”
Out of reach, she scrambled to her feet, dragging her sleeve across her mouth. Erasing all trace of him. Her expression was enough to tell him how badly he’d cocked things up.
Her voice trembled. “Thank you for your concern, but I don’t need your advice. I can see where it’s led you.”
Cam plowed a frustrated hand through his hair. “Aye, stuck with the most stubborn, pigheaded pain in the…neck.” He stood, faking a calm that took all his energy. Afraid of what he’d just done. The emotions he’d unleashed with one thoughtless kiss. But she’d felt perfect in his arms. Just as he remembered.
He wondered if she remembered too.
Cam sat—drink in hand, though he’d yet to take a sip. He’d ordered it more for reassurance. To have if he needed it. And the way this investigation was shaping up, he’d need it soon.
The message had been waiting for him at the inn when they’d returned.
Come to The Forlorn Hope at seven.
Take a table by the stairs.
Fingering his glass, he worked on blending in. Disappearing. Difficult because of the placement of his table, but not impossible. He’d not abandoned his battle skills when he’d stepped off the boat in Portsmouth. Just drowned them.
While he waited, he kept an eye on those coming and going. Counted the men heading upstairs. Made mental note of all exits.
A loud party of militia officers held court by the hearth. Near the back, a group of infantry sat, their attention all for their ongoing card game. Lucy and her kind served drinks as they sought customers for the tavern’s upstairs rooms.
Cam couldn’t help but compare their rice-powdered breasts and pasted smiles to Morgan’s prowling grace, the huntress light in her golden stare. Even now, with all her efforts bent on proving herself one of the boys, she was the most feminine female he’d ever known.
Sex with a sword.
There was a dangerous thought. He glanced at his watch. It was long past seven. He’d give it another ten minutes.
The stairs behind him creaked as another satisfied john returned to the taproom from the brothel above. But halfway down, the footsteps slowed. A hoarse, gravelly voice sounded low in Cam’s ear. “Remember me, Sin?”
He stiffened. Few people knew him by that name. And with good reason. It was a name he hated. A name that symbolized a time in his life he thought ended last year with a dagger thrust through his upper back. Another tearing into his thigh.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Cam answered without turning around, his fingers tightening on his glass.
A soldier in the scarlet jacket and gosling green facings of the Fifth Foot dropped into a seat across from him, though it could just as easily have been the scarlet and white of the Third Dragoon Guards. Or even a French grenadier’s bearskin cap and epaulettes. Cam had seen him in all of them.
Uniforms meant little to Rastus. A scrounger extraordinaire, he used what came to hand or what was most expedient under the circumstances. It’s how he survived when others smarter, faster, or stronger didn’t. “Welcome home, Colonel. Been a while.”
“Not long enough, Corporal. I heard they shot you for a deserter.”
Weedy and pouch-faced with a terminal shake in his hands, Rastus lit a cheroot. Closed his eyes as he inhaled. Blew the smoke out through his nose with a yellow smile. “Nah, just a mite of confusion. I decided to head back to Spain with my woman. You remember Dolores? There was a bit of trouble, but it come right in the end.”
“Did you finally make an honest woman of her?”
“Ha,” Rastus snorted. “Marriage? I ain’t one for shackling myself. Dolores found herself a butcher in San Millan. Fought as a guerilla in the war. Lots of practice cutting meat, eh?” Rastus cracked his knuckles. Snapped his neck.
Cam cringed, remembering where he’d been and what he’d been preparing to do the last time he’d heard that incessant, aggravating one-by-one crunch of bone. He picked up his glass, knowing it wouldn’t take much to push those thoughts away.
