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Philipa returned with a couple of young woman bearing a trifle and some coffee. Ben accepted both.
“Do you hunt, Ben?”
Lady Philipa was pouring as she asked, and Ben gave her a surprised, furtive eye flick. He glanced very swiftly to Aleksey then back down to his plate.
Aleksey clarified, “Animals, Benjamin. My wife means foxes. Pheasants. Tigers. That sort of thing.”
“Oh, then no. Sorry. I like animals.”
Aleksey snorted but reckoned he covered this well by coughing slightly as he took some coffee.
“Pity. I’m off this afternoon to a neighbour’s shoot. Then I thought, seeing as it’s your first night, Ben, we’d just have a kitchen supper. But tomorrow we have a few friends for dinner at eight. I do hope your business will be over by then and you can both join us?”
Ben glanced once more at him. He held Ben’s gaze as he replied slowly, “Of course. But Benjamin and I have work to do until then. He is going to outline his suitability for me.”
As Philipa was rising, Ben glanced behind Aleksey to the windows. “Perhaps we could do that walking around the grounds this afternoon, sir. They look pretty big.”
“Everything is big at Barton Combe, Benjamin. And I’ve been told some of it is very attractive. That is an excellent idea. You could work off all that food, perhaps.”
Ben glanced down at his now empty plates and bowls then back up. “I got up a couple of hours early today and did a twenty-mile run before I rode down. My best time ever actually. But if you could manage a slow stroll that would be good.”
Five minutes later, Aleksey was waiting for Ben, toeing the gravel outside the house, pondering his next move. When he’d got in this kind of mood with Nikolas, he used to trick him to the beach and bury him up to his neck in the sand.
Ben appeared and they set off.
“Do you enjoy the army, Benjamin?”
“Yeah. I do. A lot.”
“You would miss it if you left then?”
Ben pulled something off a shrub and began demolishing it. “I suppose that kinda depends on what I’d leave it for.”
Aleksey liked this answer, but before he could capitalise on it, Ben added, “Racing motorcycles would be my dream job.”
Aleksey shuddered. “I am afraid the role I am offering is not quite as glamorous as that. But it would have its moments, I suppose.”
Ben chuckled softly. “Well, I now know one thing about it—has its moments. Progress of sorts.”
“How do you think the United Kingdom defends its sovereign integrity?”
Ben’s pathetic attempts to answer this superbly boring question gave Aleksey some peace while he thought up a way to explore exactly what Ben would give the army up for. When he’d let the other man stumble through an answer he appeared to have learnt on some banal military course, he interrupted with, “And what if all of that legitimate force—your land, sea and air power—is useless because the enemy you are facing does not work in the conventional sphere of operations?”
Quick as a flash, Ben responded, “Black ops? That’s what this job is? Under-the-radar military actions?”
“Yes. The Department. Does that make leaving the army more attractive to you, Benjamin?”
Ben stopped and appeared to find something fascinating in the woodchip-lined path they were walking on. Suddenly, he looked up straight into Aleksey’s eyes, and Aleksey sensed that this was a challenge and did not flinch. As he had suspected at Sennybridge, they were exactly the same height. It was the first time he had gazed directly into another man’s eyes for many years, but those eyes had been amber. Exactly the same shade as his, he recalled.
“You run thisDepartmentpersonally?”
“Yes.”
“You’re ex-military too. What Regiment? Would you come on operations with me?”
Aleksey swallowed deeply, counted his metaphorical numbers, and replied self-deprecatingly, “Alas, I am merely a civil servant and was only a minor diplomat before I came to the United Kingdom. I employ men like you to do the real work.”
Benjamin Rider lowered his gaze, but it wasn’t retreat, not at all. He raked his steady green appraisal slowly and extremely sceptically over Aleksey’s body, right down to his shoes and back up again to his hair. He then turned to continue walking, and Aleksey, naked, eviscerated, was forced to follow.
