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“Any one of us could find ourselves in a similar situation in the future. I’d like to think there’d be someone to help me should the needarise.”
A situation of his own making. The villainous traitor. “He’s working with St.George.”
Unmoved by that pronouncement, Laura started toward him. “Take off your trousers and lay on yourstomach.”
“Is this how you talk to those benefactors ofyours?”
She narrowed her pretty grey eyes on him and said, “Most of them don’t come to me with dog bites.” Then she brushed past him into the corridor as Sebastian hobbled into herparlor.
Bloody awful beagle. Sebastian thought he might have preferred being shot, not that he’d been given achoice.
He placed his pistol on a nearby table, shrugged out of his jacket and started on the fastenings of his trousers. “You don’t owe him anything,” he called toward the emptycorridor.
But she didn’t reply, and he didn’t expect her to. There was no need. She was still in love with Haversham, Sebastian would bet his future dukedom on it, though she’d never admit as much aloud, not to him, probably not even to herself. Agents of the Home Office, after all, should be detached at all times, and they should certainly never fall in love with theirmarks.
Sebastian sat gingerly on the edge her settee and tugged off both of his Hessians, wincing the entire time as even the tiniest of movements seemed to send pain shootingthroughhim.
Finally, painfully, he managed to slide his trousers off, and then he laid face down on her settee, burying his face in apillow.
Laura returned a moment later, and knelt on the floor beside him. Her soft fingers traced the outer rim of his injury and she sucked in a breath. “He certainly did a number on you,didn’the?”
“Damn dog,” Sebastian muttered into the pillow as she started to clean his wound with water and some cloth. “First the bloody cat gets my face andnowthis.”
“I think you should never have pets,” Laura said, dabbing at the bite on the back of his thigh. “I don’t think animals careforyou.”
But Sebastian didn’t want to think about cats or dogs. He was on a mission and this little setback didn’t change things. “Where do you think he’sheaded?”
“Anywhere in the world but Grasse,” she replied quietly. “I think you’re going to need stitches,Sebastian.”
He lifted his head off the pillow to glance at her over his shoulder. “That bad,isit?”
“I’ve seen worse,” she said. “But it’s far from pretty.” Then Laura pushed back to her feet. “I’ll be back in aminute.”
Not Grasse, clearly. But where else would the man go? Laura knew Haversham astronomically better than Sebastian did. But the marquess was a very good friend of Thurlstone’s, he knew that. Haversham could hop a ship and go anywhere in the world if he called in the rightfavor.
Laura returned with a sewing kit and bottle of whisky that she placed on the floor, before kneeling beside him again. “This is going to sting a little,” she said as she retrieved the whisky bottle fromtherug.
And then… “Mother of God!” Sebastian bellowed into the pillow to muffle his scream. Damn it all, that stung more than a little, but the exposed flesh of his wound did seem to numbabit.
“Andthatis why men don’t bear children,” Laura muttered toherself.
Bloody hell that hurt. After a moment, Sebastian lifted his head off the pillow and glanced back at the beautiful agent. “It’s a very good thing you went into acting instead of nursing. You know that,don’tyou?”
She shook her head in response and her long blonde locks brushed against the outline of her breasts in the process, and Sebastian wished he was in a condition to appreciate that better. But as it was, he felt like thedickens.
“Would you like a sip of whisky for courage,Sebastian?”
And dull his senses? He couldn’t afford that luxury. “Just get onwithit.”
Laura retrieved a needle and thread from her sewing kit and her soft hands found the back of his thigh again. Damn it all, he needed to distracthimself.
“If he could go anywhere in the world, where do you thinkhe’dhead?”
“I don’t think he’ll leave England,” she said as her needle piercedhisskin.
Sebastian bit back a curse, though his fingers did squeeze the edge of her settee probably more than she would haveliked.
“Or Wales, rather,” she added, puncturing his skinoncemore.
