Page 11 of A Bride By Morning
Wentworth, who had finally recalled the snifter of whiskey sitting on his desk, choked on the beverage. “A woman?” He set his glass down with a sharp rap. “Don’t tell me you brought a woman into Coningsby’s study with you. If you say those words to me, I will put my hands around your fucking throat and squeeze the life out of you.”
Gabriel leaned back in his chair, irritated now. Ruining Wentworth’s usually stoic demeanor had a certain appeal, and Gabriel would be the first to admit that he indulged in far too many vices—gambling, drink, fucking—to spark some life inside his dead heart. But that never came at the expense of his work.
“In all the years you’ve known me,” he said in annoyance, “have I ever once compromised even the most trivial reconnaissance mission?”
Wentworth gave him a long, thoughtful look. Gabriel might have squirmed in apprehension were he not accustomed to such intent scrutiny. Wentworth, after all, was such an accomplished spymaster that his position in the Home Office didn’t formally exist. Rather, his post at the Metropolitan Police was a cover for more covert government work.
“No,” he finally said. “But even the lowest file clerk at the offices has heard tales of your carousing.”
Something sharp and glacial sank into Gabriel’s blood as he gave Wentworth a stern look. He was well aware that drink and women had occupied numerous evenings since his return from Moscow three years prior. “What I do at night is my business,” he said coldly. “She was in Coningsby’s study before I got there.”
Wentworth straightened, irritation flickering across his features. “And you didn’t notice a whole damn woman in the room with you? Their ballgowns aren’t exactly inconspicuous, Monty. Christ fuck, that’s the error of a rank amateur.” Then, before Gabriel could tell him to go fuck himself, Wentworth circled his desk and plucked his pen from the holder to jot a note. “What’s her name?”
“Miss Lydia Cecil,” Gabriel said reluctantly.
Wentworth’s head jerked up. “Isn’t that the woman who used to send letters to the Home Office? Hundreds, if I recall.” His eyes narrowed. “What have you been telling her?”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened. “Nothing. If she knew I was in Moscow, she wouldn’t have needed your offices to forward me her messages, would she?”
The spymaster still seemed wary, but returned his attention to the note on his desk. “I’ll instruct my agents to look into this Miss Cecil. Even spinsters have secrets. We’ll hold the information against her if she gets any foolish notions about spreading gossip.”
“No.” A brume of red settled across Gabriel’s vision. Images of violence congealed in his mind at the thought of the fuckwits at the Home Office gathering intel against Lydia for blackmail.
Wentworth didn’t look up. “Don’t provoke me further, Monty. I haven’t gone over there and punched you in the face because you’re no longer officially in the government’s employ. But now I’m cleaning up two of your messes. Leaving Boris Medvedev alive was careless, and now I have the Russian leader of the Syndicate on my shores. If this woman fucks it up—”
Gabriel rose to his feet, the very foundations of him hardening to shards of ice. “I said Miss Cecil won’t be a problem. I write my notes in code.”
Wentworth paused in exasperation. “And all this woman has to do is mention that she saw you rifling through Coningsby’s personal papers. If Medvedev catches word of it and investigates you, he might notice that you bear an uncanny resemblance to the Alexei Borislov Zhelyabov who infiltrated the Syndicate and failed to assassinate him. And that’sifhe doesn’t know about you already. I think the fucking knife you stuck in his face might have given him an incentive to look into you.”
Hearing the alias Gabriel had used during his operation in Moscow did little to improve his temper. The Syndicate, after all, was responsible for the man he became. In Kabul, Medvedev’s agents murdered his superior, and Gabriel took on the unpleasant profession of spy and assassin. A killer instructed by his country to give a name to every bullet and every blade.
He stopped writing to Lydia after that. He’d thought long and hard about the man he’d become and thought:She’s not for you. She’ll never be for you.
You will break this girl.
“Let me deal with Miss Cecil,” Gabriel said.
Wentworth’s pen paused over the note. “Don’t make me clean up her corpse, Monty.”
The very idea of hurting Lydia sent a stab of wrath through Gabriel. He marveled at it. That anger was so different from the coldness that had occupied his heart for years. Only for her. Somehow, seeing Lydia in that study invigorated him. She had pushed past the desiccated husk in his chest he’d called a heart, a thing that had not pumped blood in some time. That she’d left him so discomfited was only natural; his body, after all, had long since grown used to the ice beneath his skin. The thing he’d thought so permanent held weaknesses, after all. She’d left him unbalanced.
“I said I’d deal with her,” he said sharply. “I didn’t say I’d kill her. We were friends in childhood.”
Surprise flared in Wentworth’s features. “You had friends?”
Gabriel gave him a stern look. “I understand that you know me as something of a bastard, but I wasn’t always like this. She and I grew up together in Surrey. Why do you think she sent all those fucking letters to your offices?”And if I weren’t an idiot, I would have married her that day ten years ago.
But now . . . he was not built for marriage. He had hardened himself a long time ago; the exterior was a facade. Inside, he was a beast—an animal.
A wolf.
Wentworth sighed and set down his pen. “Fine,” he said. “I believe I heard her aunt planned to attend Lady Brome’s annual ball in two days. Dance with Miss Cecil, purport to be her friend again if you must. Whatever you need to do to persuade her that what she saw in Coningsby’s study was nothing out of the ordinary.”
Gabriel’s gaze sharpened. “That’s the night Coningsby wrote in his diary.”
The other man gave Gabriel an impatient look. “Indeed. You clean one mess, and my men and I will visit the Docklands and take care of the other. Don’t fuck this up, Monty.”
Gabriel watched Lydia from across the ballroom.
