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“I’m finished.”
“Give me those—” Without thinking, he turned and promptly lost the power of speech. She looked like a Titian painting, all dewy, creamy skin and long, sinuous limbs. Thick, loosened brown hair tumbled over her shoulders in a riot of waves and curls nearly to her waist. Her bare knees were curled to her chest, arms wrapped around them. A sheer shift hid all of the delicate, feminine parts from his view, but the hollows and lines of her body left him breathless. He cleared his throat and finished what he’d been about to say. “Clothes, please.”
With a blush on her cheeks, she pointed to the bundle beside her. Silently, he took the discarded apparel, including his coat, and hung them over the wall next to his. The faint scent of cinnamon and baked apples wafted from the clothes, and he fought the instant urge to lift them to his nose and breathe them in. That would not do.
He scowled. “Why do your things smell like a harvest festival?”
“I visited an apothecary once that made perfumes and soaps. I chose a scent I liked and a special soap was prepared for me. It’s a bit too sweet, I think, and everyone seems to think I’m hiding a Marlborough pie in the pockets of my skirts.”
With a huff, Valentine didn’t answer. It wasn’t too sweet at all, and he didn’t want to dwell on the slew of lascivious images that rushed into his brain at the thought of what truly lay beneath those skirts and had nothing to do with apple and custard whatsoever.
“This is not so bad, is it?” he said, settling himself a good distance away from any tantalizing scents on the other side of the fire.
She chuckled, that rich real sound that he preferred over the false one she put on for her admirers. “Better than being dead, I suppose. How’s your wound?”
Valentine reached up to the dried line of blood and winced. It wasn’t deep, but it stung. He didn’t want to touch it, but it probably needed a good cleaning, just in case, once they got back to civilization. He’d seen sepsis set in from an insect bite that had gotten infected. “It’s fine for now.”
“You were lucky it wasn’t worse,” she said.
“Thanks to your shout of warning.”
Valentine blew out a breath, all of his questions rising to the surface again. They had skirted long enough around the issue of how they were in this predicament in the first place, and now it was time for some answers. It was clear that she knew what he was, even though he had avoided admitting anything with his usual, automatic deflection. Technically,hewasn’t a spy any longer. It was Lisbeth’s mission, though that was splitting hairs at best.
“Exactly what kind of trouble are you into?” he asked bluntly.
She exhaled. “I’m not in trouble. Well, not technically.”
Valentine fought the bubble of frustration at her stubbornness. He couldn’t help her if he didn’t know the scope of the mess she’d found herself in. He’d long revised his earlier speculation that she was meeting a lover, unless it was a tryst gone wrong. A disagreement on terms or jealousy or some such. He had seen it a thousand times in the rookeries. But this wasn’t that. Back at the tavern, there’d been no desire on her face at all.
“Bronwyn, you nearly got killed by a group of hoodlums. You’re dressed in clothes that no lady of your station should be caught wearing, and you’re sneaking off to meet with strangers in seedy taverns three thousand miles away from where you should be.”
“Snug in my bed like a good little girl?”
Hell if her words didn’t make his traitorous blood simmer. She was a paradox, this woman. Sweet, and cloyingly innocent one moment and then a saucy hellion with a sword for a tongue the next. Who was Lady Bronwyn Chase? Had he been wrong about her all along? Lisbeth had sensed there was more to her, but he’d been so blinded by antipathy that he’d missed all the signs. Blinded by obvious misdirection. Devil take it, the little minx had pulled one over onhim.
“Was it an act?” he asked with a narrowed glare.
She eyed him back, her shadowed blue gaze glimmering with yellow and red tones from the flames. “What?”
“The flirtations. The intrigues. The love letter.”
Valentine didn’t miss the way her eyes widened and flicked toward where her trousers were drying over the wall. Was the letter in there now? He shook his head. Whether it was or not was her business. For all he knew, that had also been part of the performance and nothing but a blank sheet of paper she had planted to support the illusion.
“Why were you at McGillin’s?”
Her face tightened, though she gave nothing away. “Same reason as you. For the pie.”
Valentine admired her pluck, but he’d worn down men more hard-bitten than her. He could wait her out or catch her in a trap of her own making. She would tell him, if he had to pry it out of her truth by truth, and he wasn’t above intimidation to get his way. “Does Ashvale know of your secret obsession for pie or assignations in seedy taverns?”
Her nostrils flared, the threat obvious. “No, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“You have to give me something more here, Bronwyn.”
She glowered at him, head cocking slightly, and he could see the wheels turning in her head. How had he ever thought of her as vapid or unintelligent? She was as sharp as a tack and as inflexible as one, too. Normally, he was an excellent judge of character, a skill honed over countless years in service and surveillance, but she had fooled him so completely that his own dependable instincts had faltered. Dark lashes hooded over her eyes, hiding them from view.
“A trade then,” she said eventually. “A secret for a secret.”
He frowned. “You seem to forget that I’m holding all the cards.”
