Page 71 of A Lady's Handbook of Espionage
As soon as she was out of sight, Isabel slipped inside and went down the corridor, past oils of stern-faced ancestors and tables worth more than most London homes. A footman’s voice echoed from somewhere nearby. She froze, counting heartbeats until the sound faded.
Three doors down on the left – that would be Harrington’s room, if Ripon’s casual mention of the east wing was accurate. She pressed her ear to the wood. No movement inside.
One hairpin. Five seconds. Child’s play.
The lock yielded with a muted click, and Isabel eased the door shut behind her. She began to search, carefully replacing everything exactly as she found it. Most of the papers scattered across the desk were indecipherable to her – complex chemical formulae and dense scientific jargon that might as well have been written in a foreign language.
But then, near the bottom of a stack of correspondence, a familiar name caught her eye.
Ramsgate.
She was so engrossed in her discovery that she almost missed the telltale creak of a floorboard outside. Almost.
Isabel’s head snapped up. Silently cursing, she folded the letter and tucked it into her bodice. There was no time to return it without risking detection.
The door handle turned. Isabel’s mind raced; she could try to claim she’d gotten lost looking for the powder room. Or she could go for a more direct approach – incapacitate whoever was about to walk through that door and escape.
But before she could decide on a course of action, a familiar voice spoke from the doorway.
“Somehow,” Callahan drawled, “I had a feeling I’d find you here. For someone who considers herself synonymous with subtlety, you rather tipped your hand today.”
20
Callahan shut the door behind him and leaned against it, studying his fake wife through narrowed eyes.
Isabel’s gaze darted to the window as if calculating her odds of escaping his wrath via a swan dive into the shrubbery.
“Don’t even think about it,” he warned. “I’d haul you back before you made it halfway down the lattice.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.”
“Of course not. You were only admiring the fucking vista, weren’t you? Enjoying the view of the gardens and whatnot.”
He shoved off the door and walked towards her. Isabel held her ground, but tension thrummed through her, the slightest hitch in her breathing as he invaded her space.
She deserved to squirm.
“Tell me,” he continued, “did my instructions not to do anything on your own simply fall out of your pretty head? Or are you congenitally incapable of following orders?”
“I just—”
“Just couldn’t resist a locked door, is that it? Just had to go poking around in some posh git’s unattended correspondence like an addled magpie?”
She snorted. “I was taking a turn about the house and happened to find myself outside Harrington’s rooms. Nothing untoward about that, is there?”
Such a liar. Such an absolute bloody menace. Isabel Dumont was many things, but innocent had never been one of them.
Callahan caught her chin between his fingers. “Let me make this simple for you. Sass me all you want. Swindle your way through life. Hell, stab me again if it makes you feel better about how badly you want me to throw you down and fuck you raw. But you donot. Get. To lie. To me. Are we quite understood?”
“I thought lies were part of our arrangement,Mr Ashford,” she said, not backing down an inch.
“Is that the only currency you think we trade in,Mrs Ashford?”
A savage craving rose in him, the kind of need that revealed the animal in his skin that wanted to bite her until she submitted. Until she confessed what they both knew.
“This is a fake marriage, remember?”
“You want to know what I think?” he asked. “I think you’ve spent so long lying that the truth feels foreign.”
