Page 78 of A Lady's Handbook of Espionage
“I was carrying Favreau’s child. He would have done anything to keep me with him, and a pregnancy was a vulnerability. Ababywas a vulnerability. That’s why I was desperate to escape in Hong Kong. I couldn’t let him find out or risk starting to show.”
He reached for her, stroking her hair. No demand in his touch, just . . . comfort. Soothing her.
“What happened after that?”
“There are ways for women to get rid of a pregnancy, and I couldn’t keep it. I didn’t want to. But I need you to know why I couldn’t let you close back then. Why I had to burn every bridge and disappear the way I did. I would rather you be angry with me than see you dead.”
Callahan dragged her closer and held on tight. She turned her face into his shoulder, her eyes wet.
“The things we do to survive mark us,” he murmured into her hair. “But we endure in the only ways we can. We adapt and overcome because the alternative is to let the world grind us to dust. I forgave you for Hong Kong a long time ago.”
She leaned in, pressing her lips to his in a gentle kiss. A tentative exploration of new territory. It was achingly gentle, this careful mapping of scars. A hushed dialogue of breath and touch and understanding.
When they parted, Isabel rested her forehead against Callahan’s. “Thank you.”
“Always.”
22
Callahan stood at the edges of the crowd, nursing a glass of champagne.
Isabel was speaking with Harrington. She’d woken up that morning more determined to finish this mission than ever. Maybe because of everything she told him last night about her and Favreau.
Pregnant. She’d been pregnant in Hong Kong.
He’d held her when she finally settled in to sleep, considering this piece of information that reframed her actions. She’d been terrified in that gaming hell; he’d recognised that much. But now he felt foolish for not understanding that she had what amounted to a ticking clock in her mind.
Stop talking like you know me, she’d said then.
And he thought he had. Because he’d followed her aliases and heists, but he didn’t truly understand the woman herself or what she went back to after every time they met.
It made him want to put a fist through a wall.
He downed his champagne, focusing on the other guests. To his left, a cluster of men were engaged in animated discussions about the latest advancements in steam engine technology.
“I tell you, gentlemen, the future lies in compressed air!” declared an older gent. “Mark my words, in a decade, we’ll have engines running on nothing but the air we breathe!”
His companion scoffed. “Nonsense, Higgins. It’s all about hydraulics, my good man. Water power is the way forward. Why, I’ve been working on a design that could revolutionise—”
Callahan’s focus drifted to another group nearby. This one seemed to be embroiled in a heated debate about the merits of various preservation techniques for biological specimens.
“Formaldehyde is all well and good for soft tissues,” a woman with an impressive plume of feathers in her hat was saying, “but for delicate structures like insect wings, nothing beats an ethanol solution.”
A dour-faced man with a monocle nodded. “Quite right, quite right. Though I’ve had some success with glycerine for plants. Keeps the colours remarkably vivid, you know.”
Christ, was there no end to the prattle?
“You look like you’re moments from tossing someone out the window.”
He turned to watch Isabel approach. She was resplendent in a gown of deep emerald silk that made her eyes shine like cut gems. Everything in him softened. What he wouldn’t give to have her alone right now.
“Trouble,” he murmured. “I see you’ve decided to save me from the tedium at last.”
Her lips twitched. “Poor Callahan. Subjected to the horrors of intellectually stimulating discourse. However will you survive the trauma?”
Callahan opened his mouth to assure her that his continued well-being amid the symposium from hell was very much in question, when some sod took that opportunity to interrupt.
“I say, old chap, you wouldn’t happen to know the proposed ideal ratio of a copper-zinc alloy for the plating process, would you? I have it on good authority that 1.1 recurring is the golden mean, but can’t for the life of me recall whether that refers to tensile strength or conductivity.”
