Page 14 of The Spy Who Loved Her
He’d been a soldier on the peninsula, for just a few months—and it was there that Sir Roger had found him, and had recruited him for the Home Office instead. He’d been an agent of the Crown ever since. “Have you never tired of it all?” he asked. “I confess, I am eager to be done with it.”
“Never,” Sir Roger chortled. “Keeps my mind sharp, you know.” He notched his king back into place and sat back with a sigh. “I do wish I could keep you a little longer,” he said.
Rafe felt his jaw tense as he bit back an annoyed rejoinder. If he had had his way, he would’ve left service years ago. But he hadn’t. Sir Roger had made certain of it. He might owe Sir Roger his gratitude for the loyalty he had given to Emma in the wake of Ambrose’s death and the lengths to which he had gone to help them extricate her from the situation in which Ambrose had left her, but it had not come without a cost. For that reason alone, he felt just a little less guilty for keeping a secret of such magnitudefrom him.
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“You will be attending our ball, will you not?”
Emma paused, teacup halfway to her lips, as she belatedly realized that the inquiry had been directed to her. Three pairs of eyes had settled upon her, awaiting a response.
“Oh,” she said to Lydia. “Oh, yes. Of course.” Had she failed to respond to the invitation? The ball wasn’t for another three weeks at least, but she had never been so careless as to let an invitation go unanswered.
“My goodness, Emma,” Phoebe chided gently. “You’ve been woolgathering for the last half hour at least.”
Had she? She’d been certain she’d made all the right noises, had nodded along when it had been required of her. She’d gone through two cups of tea and perhaps three or four sugar biscuits. There was a ritual, a rhythm, to their weekly teas, and Emma had long since learned it by heart. So it had been a simple thing to slip off into her own mind, and to let Lydia, Phoebe, and Diana carry the conversation for her in the meantime.
“I do beg your pardon,” she said. “I suppose I simply have a great deal on my mind.”
“Of course,” Diana said, her face lined in sympathy. “And who could blame you. Ten years, now, is it not?”
What? Oh—since she’d been widowed, Diana meant to imply. The taste of shame settled upon her tongue, and she took a sip of tea, which failed to exorcise it. Of course, a good and decent widow would have reason to be distracted at this time of year, so close to the anniversary of her husband’s death.
But she wasn’t a good and decent widow. She hadn’t been thinking of Ambrose at all. She had been thinking of the lingering soreness between her thighs, of the enduring pinkness that the rasp of Rafe’s stubble had left upon her breasts, her throat.
Of course I am going to catch you.
“Yes,” she said, hoping she had not gone as scarlet as she felt certain she must have done. “Ten years.”
Diana rubbed one hand over her midsection; an absent motion she had recently acquired, no doubt due to the babe she carried. “Have you never given any thought to—”
“No. Never.” She didn’t blame Diana for her curiosity. Emma had been widowed even before she and Diana had become friends, and Diana had never known Ambrose. They had bonded at theTonevents they had attended, both of them left largely to their own devices, albeit for different reasons. ButEmma was five years Diana’s senior, married and widowed before Diana had even had her come-out in society.
“But you were widowed so young,” Lydia said. “It’s such a shame.”
No; the shame was in having wasted three years of her life loving a man ever so much more than he had ever cared for her. Having wasted another decade in mourning, burying herself in her own grief when she might havelivedinstead. “I promise you, I am quite content as I am.” A lie, but only a very small one.
“Frankly, I’m envious,” Phoebe said. “I do wish I could simply decide to have done with the marriage mart. But Mama is convinced that the upcoming Season will be my moment of triumph.” A long, low sigh followed, accompanied by the wry twist of her mouth as she selected another biscuit. “Dotell me you’ve left off as many bachelors as possible from your guest list,” she implored of Lydia. “I’m not certain I could put it past Mama not to offer me up to anyone available.”
“Well,” Lydia said, her voice taking on a note of sympathy. “There’s bound to be a few, to be sure. We could hardly snub those who are in town presently. But already we’ve received so many acceptances, I imagine it will be quite a crush. Probably you’ll have no trouble avoiding them.”
“Oh,” Diana said, “That reminds me—will Rafe be in attendance?”
Emma choked upon a sip of tea, suddenly awash with panic.
“I don’t believe so,” Lydia said, oblivious to Emma’s sudden disquiet. “At least, he hasn’t replied. But then, that’s not so very unusual. I’ve not known him to attend such things when it is possible to avoid them.”
Diana made a tiny sound of aggravation. “Blast. I swear, my brother—”
Of course. Emma fairly wilted with relief, the rest of the conversation turning to noise as her pounding pulse began at last to quiet. Of course—Diana’s brother. The middle one, whom Emma had never had occasion to meet.
Rafe. It wasn’t so very uncommon a name. Perhaps it wasn’t evenhisname, but only a moniker he’d adopted so that she would have something by which to address him.
The conversation moved on, and Emma found herself feeling faintly guilty. They had shared secrets between them, the four of them, for years now. A sisterhood that Emma had long cherished. She had been a trusted confidant when Diana had made the decision—however ruinous it might have turned out for her, had anyone else learned of it—to track down her missing fiancé. She had been among the first to knowwhen Lydia had become pregnant with her son. She had been among the few to hold Phoebe’s own secret—that she was doing her level best to avoid marriage, however much her mama might try to wrangle her into it.
But her own secret she kept. What would they say of her, if they learned that she had taken a lover? That she had taken a stranger to her bed, and had found herself discontented with a single night of passion? That she had, in fact, sent a message round to Kit almost immediately to ask the man to return?
Probablywell done, if she had to guess.
