Page 34 of His Wife, the Spy
“You send meto Cardiff and getmarriedwhile I’m gone?” Kit pushed himself from the mantel and came back to the desk. “To the woman you caught poking around your bedroom.”
“Don’t loom over me.” Jasper dropped his pen into the ink pot. “It wasn’t my intention.”
“The timing or the wedding?”
“Both.” Jasper blotted the letter to Claudette before folding it with as crisp a crease as possible given the ten-pound notes contained within. “Though I would have waited if I’d known it would put your nose out of joint.”
Kit moved the seal out of reach. “Jasper. Your new wife wants to see you hang.”
“Name a wife in London who doesn’t want to see their husband swing.”
His best friend stood speechless, his face deepening to purple with alarming speed. Jasper finally took pity on him.
“I wouldn’t have married Annabel if I thought she was a danger to my life span or my freedom.” He dropped bits of blue sealing wax into the crucible he’d used since his father’s death. “Or to the queen.”
“So whydidyou marry her?”
Jasper had been asking himself the same question since he’d left Annabel in her father’s library after their odd betrothal negotiations. He’d gone there intending to apologize and offer to help find her a place somewhere the gossip wouldn’t reach.Then he’d seen Spencer’s carriage near the house and decided, instead, to give her a piece of his mind.
But she’d been in tears, which reminded him of Fiona and the muddle she was still trying to climb free of. The difference was that Fiona’s scandal was based on fact, and her family had money thetoncouldn’t ignore. Annabel didn’t. “Fiona tore a strip off me for being a careless, heartless lout.”
“Fiona.” Kit rolled his eyes. “Her redemption is becoming a pain in the arse.”
The phrase took Jasper back to the library, where he’d sworn without thinking and Annabel hadn’t reprimanded him for his manners. Surprisingly, it seemed to put her at ease. There had been something about her honesty and wry humor that had done the same for him, despite her association with Spencer.
“Annabel is the best path toward learning Spencer’s game.”
“You could have simply asked her,” Kit said.
“She wouldn’t have told me.” Jasper didn’t believe she knew. Spencer had proven to be wily prey because he kept his own counsel.
“Everyone has a price, Jasper.”
Annabel’s had been the chance for her sisters to find suitable husbands and an allowance for her mother. He put the wax over the candle. “Her loyalty is not for sale.”
“Goddammit, Jasper.” Kit pushed himself from the chair and ambled to the liquor cabinet. After filling a glass, he stood at the window. The afternoon light spilled over his shoulders and onto his back. “You’ve yoked yourself to someone who depends on your enemy for safety.”
Jasper was wagering that Annabel didn’t depend on Spencer for anything. She was smarter than that. He was hoping vows in a church and keeping his word would buy him the time to win her to his side.
Or his ego was getting the better of him. “Perhaps.”
“You say that the way you did at Eton when you were convinced of your answer, even if it didn’t match the lecture.”
The indigo wax pooled in the crucible. “What did you find in Cardiff?”
“The miners are all whispering about a new company, fronted by Abel Collins.”
“What do we know about him?”
“Da’s known him for years. He’s strong as an ox and as determined as a man has to be to go down a shaft every day and come out black inside and out. And the word is that you’d rather have him on your side in a fight. But Da has never trusted him.Hedefinitely has a price.”
“Do you know what he’s doing?”
“Not yet,” Kit said. “Everyone whispers, but there’s nothing solid. What I do know is that he’s got a pub he favors and a table in the corner that’s always full of foremen and shift leaders. He always picks up the tab.”
“Not his money?”
Kit shook his head. “No way in hell. He’s always paid his own way, butjusthis own way. Someone is bankrolling him for something.”
