Page 5 of The Spy Who Loved Her
Naturally she wouldn’t have done. She didn’t even know him. For years he had existed at the very periphery of her life. She might, in some small manner of speaking, be distantly aware of him as a facet of Diana’s life, since they were such dear friends.
But they had never met. Had never been formally introduced. He’d contrived to keep it that way.
“I’d say I was surprised to ‘ave seen you there,” Chris said. “But I weren’t.”
“Wasn’t.” Rafe chucked his discarded cravat across the room with perhaps a little more force than was truly necessary as he sank into his own chair at his desk. “Wasn’tsurprised.”
“I weren’t.” Bending one lanky arm, Chris settled his chin in his palm. “Ye go to her, too, then, on the day,” he said. “Same as me. And she don’t even know you.”
“Doesn’t.” Rafe scowled, knowing well enough that Chris was needling him deliberately with his speech. The coarse accent might have been the one of his youth, but he could just as easily shift his speech toward the refined if he so chose. Generally he seemed to prefer some godawful amalgamation of the two, peppering his speech with dropped aitches and half-enunciated words. “Why are you here? Just to warn me away from Emma?” That had never been necessary. He’d stayed clear of her of his own volition for more years than he cared to admit.
“Just the opposite, in fact.”
Something about the clearly-enunciated syllables gave Rafe pause,as if Chris had deigned to correct his speech to make a particular point. His fingers hovered just above a half-finished missive that he’d abandoned earlier in the day when he’d left to take breakfast with Marcus. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we’ve got a problem. Two problems, in fact. And I’m making them your responsibility.” Chris shifted in his seat, his jaw tensing. “Ambrose left a journal.”
“Impossible,” Rafe said. “I damn well searched—”
“Not fucking well enough, it seems.” Those glacial eyes damned him with accusation. “Em found it. Seems she’s finally decided to let go of the bastard. She hasn’t read it, but just the fact that it exists…”
“Hell.” Rafe rubbed at his chest, at the strange ache that had settled there. Worry, he thought, the likes of which he’d not experienced in some time. Nearly ten years now, he expected. “Has she mentioned it to anyone but you?”
Chris shrugged. “Impossible to say, and I couldn’t ask her besides.”
True. What reason would he give for such curiosity? But if anyone else were to learn of its existence—
Emma could be in danger. And she wouldn’t even know it. “We’ll have to retrieve it somehow.” Already he dreaded the prospect. It had been ten years since last he’d taken up that unsavory task. The very night she’d been informed of her husband’s death. Still he could remember her wail of grief, so piercing, so heartrending that it had slid over into his dreams for years. And he’d been a floor above her, rooting around within her husband’s study at the time.
“Which brings me to the second problem,” Chris said. “Em asked me to find her aparamour. I figured you’d do well enough.”
“What.” It ought to have been question, except it wasn’t. It was a flat, incredulous statement.
“Call it killing two birds with one stone,” Chris said, with a forced attempt at joviality.
“I will not.”
“Would you rather I send her someone else? Send her some pox-ridden gent who won’t have a care with her feelings, just so she can have a man betwixt her thighs again?” Chris canted his head speculatively. “Or haveyougot the pox, then?”
“Of course I haven’t got the bloodypox.” It was a searing hiss. Of rage. Of inconvenient longing.
“Leastwise, I know you’ll have a care with her,” Chris said.
“Are you mad? You don’t offer your sister to your damned friends.”
“Half-sister,” Chris corrected blithely. “And why not, then? I’ve done it before.”
That had been a different thing entirely, and he hadn’t offered so much as Ambrose had asked Chris’ permission to offerforher. They had all been friends once, the three of them—Rafe, Chris, and Ambrose. Before they had known that there had been a reason not to be.
“You always wanted her,” Chris said. “Even before Ambrose got her. I knew it then. Only—”
Only Ambrose had had so much more to offer her. He hadn’t been titled, but he’d come from a wealthy merchant family. And Rafe had had little else to his name but his role as the spare to a marquessate that no one expected him to inherit.
Ambrose had been the better match. Objectively. Or so they had thought. Until Ambrose had nearly dragged her down into ruin with him.
“I should have let you have her,” Chris said, a telling rasp in his voice. “Even then.”
But she hadn’t been Chris’ to give. Emma had chosenAmbrose—because Ambrose had been the one to offer for her. Ambrose who had called upon her, courted her, married her. Ambrose who had betrayed her. Ambrose who had betrayed all of them.
