Page 79 of A Deal With a Notorious Devil
With an agitated little flutter of her hands, she stalked across the room toward him and flounced down upon the couch. Her fingers found the tight muscles of his knee even as her browspulled together in consternation. “Kit, is there something going on which I ought to be aware of?” she asked. “You’ve been locked away in your study a great deal just lately. And—and out of the house.”
“Nothing with which you need concern yourself.” He knew she had worried each time he’d left. But there was still a villain on the loose, and he knew she wouldn’t feel safe until he’d been gotten rid of. To that effect, he’d called in a great number of the favors he’d acquired over his career. Wherever Russell was hiding, he’d not been rooted out yet—but Chris had had decades to develop connections in both low places and high.
Before his arrest and the wreck of his knee, he’d been one hell of a spy. Subterfuge and deception came easily to him. His spying days were long behind him, but the patterns of them, the habits of them—they were not.
“I want to know,” she said softly, tucking her head against his shoulder. “I know you’ve been keeping secrets. Please, Kit.”
Ah, hell. “I’m laying out a trap,” he said, and wound his arm about her shoulders, threading his fingers through her hair. “Brooks has been working with me to write up a good number of papers offering a substantial reward for information on Russell’s whereabouts, spreading the word in every low place he’s likely to frequent—or to know someone who does. Probably it won’t yield anything substantial, but it will put him on the defensive.”
“You’ll send him to ground,” Phoebe said, her voice inflected with worry. “He’ll become more difficult to find.”
Yes—until he wasn’t. “I’ll forcehim to ground,” Chris said. “That’s the point of the trap. To make him suspicious of friend and foe alike, knowing he might be informed upon at any moment. To make him desperate enough to act whenIwish him to do so. Until now, he’s had the advantage of me.” It could not be allowed to continue indefinitely. “Sooner or later, he’ll be forced to make a move—but I can give him an opportunity tooconvenient to resist. I’ve let it be known I’m selling my office in Cheapside,” he said.
“You are? Why?”
Chris gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It was convenient,” he said, “when I was living above it. Less so now that I must take a carriage to reach it. I suppose I held onto it out of habit more than anything else. Besides, my current place of residence is hardly a secret and I don’t need a carriage to reach my study. Easier by far to conduct business here as necessary.” He laid his hand over her own. “It would be foolish,” he said, “for Russell to invade the house. There’s too many servants about. But the office—it’s on a busy street, and there’s a good deal of noise. An altercation is not likely to be heard, much less heeded.”
“But you’ll have reinforcements,” she said. “Won’t you?”
“I’m afraid not. A proficient criminal can spot them a mile off. Were I to have people waiting in the wings, he’d know he was being set up.” It was a near certainty that they were being watched, though he’d not been foolish enough to divulge that unpleasant fact to Phoebe. Even the hint of a trap could send Russell to ground again, and perhaps Chris would be dodging bullets the rest of his life—however long that happened to be. Probably not very. It hadn’t bothered him much before, the fact that his life could abruptly be cut short. He’d lived with that danger for too many years to lend his own mortality more than the occasional passing thought, and he’d come right up to the very precipice of it more than once.
But he’d never truly had anything much to live for, either. He’d never been vulnerable; not in any meaningful way. And now…now there was Phoebe. Who couldn’t feel safe in her own home whilst Russell yet breathed. She was a distraction—a vulnerability—he could not afford.
He’d tossed the dice with his own life more than was prudent, but he would never gamble with hers. For her safety,and for his own peace of mind, he would have to take this risk alone.
He squeezed her fingers in his. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The advantage will be mine. Even with a bad knee, I’m a force to be reckoned with.”
∞∞∞
“Tomorrow,” Kit said into the darkness as he settled back into bed beside Phoebe and folded her into the circle of his arms, “I’m taking you to stay with your parents for a time.”
It took a moment for Phoebe’s mind, still pleasantly foggy from a delightful bout of lovemaking, to catch up with her ears. “What?” She wrenched herself away from him, and a rush of air slid between them, cooling the mist of sweat from her skin. “No!”
“Ouch, woman,” Kit grumbled as her elbow knocked a bit too close to his fresh wound in her efforts to pry herself free of his arms. “It’s only for a little while. A week, perhaps. Just until I’ve taken care of this—”
“No!” she said again, wedging a pillow between them and scraping the tangled covers to her bare breasts, though he could hardly see them in the darkness. “You can’t send me away.”
“Don’t be dramatic. I’m not sending you away. I’m sending you to your parents, just over the wall. Your parents’ house is the safest place for you at the moment. Smaller than ours, more secure, and staffed with servants who have been with your family for years, decades—incorruptible.”
“I won’t go.” Phoebe slid her legs over the side of the bed, found her footing upon the floor, and vaulted out of bed entirely. Kit had tossed her nightgown somewhere distant, but herdressing gown had been left draped over the bottom corner of the bed, and she jammed her arms through the bunched sleeves. “You can’t make me go!”
By the faint huff that floated through the darkness to her ears, she sensed that he disagreed—though he wisely kept the fact that as her husband, he had the legal right to send her anywhere he pleased buttoned firmly behind his lips.
“Phoebe,” he said, though there was a notable coloring of exasperation heavy laden within his voice. “Come back to bed.”
Had she thought shelovedhim? More fool, her. She found the nightstand—with her toes, to her chagrin—and swept her palm across it to find the candle she’d recently snuffed out, then turned to carry it toward the dying embers of the fire in the hearth.
A longsuffering sigh drifted from Kit’s lungs as the wick caught fire, shedding dim light in a corona around her. “I need just a bit of time free of any distractions,” he said, with a helpless shrug.
“Distractions!” The word stabbed a barb of hurt through her heart. Had she not been so very close to the hearth, she might have stumbled back a step. “I’m adistraction?”
He threw up his hands. “Of course you’re a damned distraction!” With a furious exhale, he shoved at the covers tangled about his legs and crawled off the bed himself. “I told you once,” he said as he hobbled toward her, hindered by the lack of his cane, which he had left leaning against the foot of the bed, “that no one would be fool enough to target you. I was wrong about that. Probably I’m not wrong this time, but I won’t take chances with your life.”
“I can defend myself,” she snapped irritably, skittering away as he approached. “I stabbed you, didn’t I?”
“By accident,” he said, a scowl tugging at his lips as he reached out to grab her wrist, only to be neatly evaded in thenext moment. “Could you do it on purpose?” he asked, his voice rife with mockery. “Could you look a man in the eyes and stab him intentionally? Could you willingly take a life, even to save your own?”
“I—I—” She didn’t know. She’d never been in such a position before. Was it possible to speculate upon such a thing before it had happened?
