Page 62 of The Spy Who Loved Her
She had been content in her ignorance, until she had known better. And then she had been discontent in her knowledge,becauseshe had known better. But she could not judge the lie while resenting the truth. Her wounded pride had been born of a life lived in a world of stark contrasts, of black and white and nothing else in between. But that world had been only another lie, one which she had swallowed down herself.Thiswas the truth; the world painted in countless shades of grey.
A decade of lies woven round her—to preserve her reputation, her security. An illicit liaison undertaken—to spare her the lingering effects of Ambrose’s duplicity. A life taken—her husband’s life taken—to save another. She had wrestled with that for some days now. Struggled with the knowledge that she would have made the same choice; the very choice she had so easily condemned Rafe for making. She had waded through a current of guilt, of shame, only at the thought of it. How much deeper had Rafe’s guilt run, for wielding the pistol?
It was so easy to judge those actions when removed from their context. From her place of monumental privilege, in a world of convenience and safety that had been secured for her by those willing to live within the darkness of the world, she had never before had to acknowledge it. For better or worse, this world was hers now, too.
Now she had to find her footing within it.
∞∞∞
Emma flexed her aching fingers in a vain effort to alleviate the cramps that had afflicted them. She had been working for hours, since just after breakfast with the children, and still without a hint of success to show for her efforts. Scraps of discarded paper littered the desk before her, and her inkwell had nearly run dry; a consequence of scratching out line after dreadful line of absolute nonsense.
She had hoped to find some meaning in the numbers that had beenetched in the margins of the pages, but thus far it had eluded her. Rafe had provided a full accounting of them, neatly compiled in an ordered list, but there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to them. And there were simply too many books, too many pages to account for. She was only one woman—how was she meant to conquer such a task?
Emma rested her elbows upon her desk, settled her face in the cup of her hands, and sighed. It was not enough to have been a fool for the duration of her marriage; Ambrose had made a fool of her even from the grave. He taunted her even now with the chaos into which he had cast her.
A scratch at the door pulled her from the dark cloud of her thoughts, and she scrambled to gather up the assortment of papers and the journal, stuffing the jumbled mass of it all into the drawer of the desk. “Enter,” she called.
Neil stepped through the door. “My lady, you have a caller,” he said. “Sir—”
A chortle interrupted him. “Now, now, my boy, I can announce myself.”
Emma stiffened at the jovial tone, one she had not heard in quite a long time. On spindly legs she rose from her chair, her heart leaping into her throat. “Sir Roger,” she said as the man walked through the door, and could have cursed herself for the odd, fractured little catch in her voice.
“It has been an age, my dear,” Sir Roger said, the apples of his cheeks rounding above the neatly-trimmed grey of his beard, and though his voice was gentle and pleasant, she could only hear treachery within it. The sibilant hiss of the snake she knew him to be.
How was she meant to conceal her anger from this man who searched her face with sharp, cunning eyes? God help her, she was not a proficient enough liar to manage a situation such as this. What would Rafe do? What would Kit do?
Chess, Kit had said. Like playing a game against a master. If she could not quite mask her anger, perhaps she could twist it to her advantage. “It has indeed,” she said, and turned her face away from him, in what any reasonable person would interpret as a cut. “Do forgive me, Sir Roger. I have long been under the impression that your friendship—such as it was—expired with my late husband. I cannot imagine what has brought you to my door after so many years.”
“Ten years, isn’t it? I thought to offer comfort to an old friend’s widow during what certainly must be a difficult time. Especially,” he added, “given that gossip suggests she has recently had a falling out of some sort with herclosest friend.”
Emma felt her breath back up into her lungs. He couldn’t know the why of it, she assured herself. He couldn’t. Diana did not even know, really. Not the whole, dreadful truth of it.
But hesuspected. Whatever his sources had been, whatever they had told him, it had been enough to send him here. To her. And she was not nearly so accomplished a liar as she needed to be to quell whichever suspicions he had acquired.
“Curiously, that same friend has had a falling out with her brother as well,” Sir Roger remarked idly. “I have it on good authority that he was turned away at her door on two successive Saturdays. One does wonder what precipitated it.”
One could wonder all one wished. She would say nothing.
Sir Roger’s eyes strayed to her desk, to the scant evidence she had left behind, and there was something terrible and speculative about his gaze. “I have also heard just recently,” he said, his voice inflected with curiosity, “that you have discovered a journal that Ambrose left behind.”
Emma swallowed hard, struggling to maintain her composure. “He left all things behind. But I do wonder where you heard that,” she said.
“Oh, just gossip. You know how it is.” He produced a sigh that had all the right hints of melancholia and yet still fell flat in her ears. “I do miss him,” he said. “Do tell me—did he write of me? It would be a balm to my soul to know that I occupied some small place in his thoughts.”
A searching question, deliberately light. Emma lifted her chin. “Not to my recollection, Sir Roger.”
“Pity,” Sir Roger said, though the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile too sharp to be genuine. “Still, I would dearly love to see for myself. What is the harm in sharing just a bit with an old friend who loved him as well?”
She knew she was being lead into a trap but she couldn’t see it closing around her, couldn’t determine where to place her feet to avoid it. She had never been much of a chess player. “Sir Roger, you are asking me to share my late husband’s privatethoughts. It’s quite a sensitive subject, and not one I care to discuss any further at the moment. Perhaps in the future, when—when it is not quite so painful.”
“Oh, come,” Sir Roger chuckled. “If ten years has not blunted the pain, then surely nothing will.” His voice pitched to a wheedling tone. “One brief passage is all I ask.”
“I won’t.” The refusal tripped out of her mouth on instinct alone, and she knew even as the words left her tongue that they had been a mistake.
For but a fraction of a moment, Sir Roger’s mouth tightened into a sneer. “Well, now,” he said, on a feigned laugh of surprise. “I suppose that puts me in my place, then. I do apologize if I have offered offense. Perhaps in the future you’ll be more of a mind to share those treasured memories. If you can.”
If you can. Emma suppressed a violent shiver at the strange inflection of suggestion that lingered within the words. Her nerves sizzled with the sensation of that trap springing closed around her.
