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He almost smiled at her haughty tones.
‘I can see this may be as arduous as it was back on the Heath. I apologise if I am being difficult,’ he said with mild amusement.
To his surprise, instead of raising her hackles further, she appeared to relax.
‘Surely, my lord, you can appreciate this is a rather...uncomfortable situation for us? Perhaps if you told us what you want, we could all proceed more quickly?’
Very good, he approved silently. Perfection, down to the faintly coaxing smile that tilted up one corner of a rather pleasing mouth. Not a bad little actress at all.
‘Very well. My offer is simple.’ He continued, ‘I am part of a government agency and we need a woman in the ranks. I think, given your skills, you might be suitable.’
‘What precisely would I be required to do?’
‘You would take part in certain official operations aimed at protecting crown and country. We will obviously train you and develop the necessary skills, but most importantly, you would be expected to follow whatever directives your superiors give you. If you accept, I will provide more details. Until then I am afraid you will have to take my offer at least partly unseen, as I am accepting you rather on the same terms. Which reminds me, I would like to know your names. Your real names.’
He saw the hesitation in her eyes.
‘My word on it that I have no intention of handing you over to the authorities.’
He met her probing gaze evenly, watching as doubt changed to resolution in the peculiar green-blue depths. But as she still hesitated, the giant leaned forward and spoke for the first time since they had entered.
‘My name is George Durney, my lord, and this is Miss Sarah Serena Trevor, but we have only ever called her Miss Sari.’
Michael smiled at the annoyed look the young woman shot her companion. Obviously she would go by nothing as commonplace as merely Sarah and Serena was as inappropriate a name as he could imagine for such a mercurial creature.
‘What if I agree, but you then decide I’m not suitable for this...agency?’ she asked abruptly.
‘If we decide at any time during your initial training period that you are not suitable, we will give you three months’ salary and part ways.’
‘And the pay?’
‘As I mentioned before, twenty pounds a month to start, including whatever costs you incur as part of the job. You should find accommodation close to the Institute...’
He paused, wondering if they might be lovers. He didn’t know why that possibility had not occurred to him before. The man was older, but probably no more than forty. It was possible.
‘Is it just the two of you?’ he asked brusquely.
‘Also my wife, sir, and miss’s younger brother, but he’s away at school,’ George stated.
Michael ignored his faint relief at the giant’s response. He noted the woman’s change in expression, her shoulders pulling downwards, as if the weight of responsibility was physical. Her lips parted slightly, but she said nothing and he noticed for the first time the soft fullness of her lower lip. He shifted slightly in his seat, annoyed by the sudden tension in his body. He was assessing her as agent material, not as a potential mistress.
‘Very well, the pay should be enough for all of you. If...’ he deferred to her with a faintly sardonic bow ‘...you decide to accept our offer.’
* * *
Sari forced herself to straighten in her chair, inspecting the man facing her. In the dark, with her nerves singing with fear and pain, he had appeared to be a giant and a devil. His size was still formidable, but in daylight his threat was more refined.
Firstly, he was too handsome...no, perhaps handsome was not the right word. In the dark the shadows had painted his face in harsh angular lines. The full light of morning streaming through the windows only softened those lines a small degree. His eyes were deep-set and glinted with a strange grey she found hard to identify. His mouth was tightly held, the tension apparent in the grooves that bracketed it. He had a perfectly sculpted nose and cheekbones, the only features that she could actively label handsome. The rest of him was far too forbidding, too challenging.
His black hair was cut short and simply, unlike the artfully curled fashions that were now common, and his clothes were equally subdued and tasteful. There was no ostentation about him or about the room in which they were seated. It was blatantly his space. The walls were lined with books, but there was none of the haphazard air that had characterised her father’s studies. Apparently he controlled his environment with as much rigidity as he held himself. A sudden twinge of pain throbbed in her arm. Seeing him in the light of day made her all the more aware that he could have killed her that night.
‘Had I not been a woman, would you have taken that second shot?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Yes,’ he replied, his mocking air disappearing instantly, his eyes unequivocally telling her the same. Their colour was not as dark as she had thought. A rim of slate grey held in a paler ice. The combination was disconcerting, almost feral.
Sari shifted back slightly in her chair, removing herself from the intensity of his gaze. She rather thought it was not the smartest thing to do, putting her fate in his hands. He would use her thoroughly for his own purposes with little thought to the consequences. He was a man with an agenda and she was merely a small means to his ends.
Still, what option did she have?
‘Very well.’
He lifted one eyebrow at her laconic response. Then he half-smiled and pulled a sheet of paper from his desk.
‘Good. I will give you an address. Arrive on Monday morning and ask for a Mr Anderson. He is responsible for the new recruits. Meanwhile, here is a draft on my bank for twenty pounds.’
It was Sari’s turn to raise an eyebrow—she was surprised he trusted them not to simply disappear with his money. Then she saw the faintly disdainful look in his eyes, as if he knew precisely what she was thinking. Her sense of helplessness and fear shifted into a surge of anger at this cold, unyielding man who dangled salvation with little concern whether she took it or took herself to perdition.
A perverse, rebellious demon took hold of her and she stood up and strode briskly to the desk. Even as she saw his disdain turn to wariness, she extended her hand, the abruptness of her gesture making a mockery of its polite antecedents.
‘A pleasure doing business with you, my lord,’ she said.
Michael stood up, unhurriedly, inch by towering inch, making her hand look very small indeed. Just as she thought she would have to withdraw it, he reached out and grasped it in his. A rush of heat rose up her arm and she was peculiarly aware of the texture of the large hand that held hers; it was firm and warm and calloused and it seemed to engulf more than her hand. She was swamped by the same mixture of fear and anticipation that had rushed through her on the Heath. She tried pulling away, but he did not immediately let go. Finally, he released her hand slowly, and she felt each finger as it grazed her palm.
Despite the fact that she stood closer to him now than she had ever been, his voice sounded distant.
‘As you said: a pleasure.’
Sari breathed in deeply, picked up the address and draft and strode out without another word, followed by George.
* * *
Michael remained standing after the door closed behind them. He flexed his right hand. That had been a mistake. He had merely been responding to her aggravating bravado, but the moment he had grasped her hand every nerve-end had gone on alert. He had felt for a moment just as he had before a battle, every sense and instinct ready, focused on danger and survival. It was a ridiculous response to a mere handclasp.
He had a premonition that perhaps this was not his best idea. She was too independent for their purposes. They needed someone who could follow orders. Then he remembered her stone-cold focus as she had aimed the pistol at his head, even as blood dripped down her arm. He had to face the fact that she was as good as they were going to find. The fact that she brought out the worst in him and that she clearly disliked him was beside the point. After all it was Anderson who was primarily responsible for new recruits, not he. Hopefully, by the time she went through her training she would have learned some discipline. He turned back to his correspondence. He would keep an eye on this experiment. Just enough to make sure she didn’t turn the whole Institute on its head.
Chapter Four (#ulink_908ddab0-99e4-56ec-b91f-1944d389034c)
That evening he found Anderson at Brooks’s Gentlemen’s Club, lounging behind a newspaper in his favourite chair in a quiet corner by the tall windows overlooking St James’s Street.
‘My highway robber paid me a visit today, Sinjun,’ Michael said casually as he sat down next to him.
‘You sent her away, of course,’ Anderson said hopefully, folding his newspaper.
‘Not at all. We are to expect a visit this Monday morning. Unless she absconds with my twenty pounds.’
‘Michael, you cannot be serious. What on earth are we going to do with her? I thought we agreed it wasn’t suitable.’
‘We agreed to no such thing. I merely said that with any luck she would not show up. It seems your luck is out. Don’t be so negative, Sinjun. She might prove useful.’
Anderson leaned his forearms on his knees morosely, and Michael tried not to smile. Unlike Michael, Anderson had no sisters and he had always been diffident around women. Though he had frequently professed to being in love with some pretty girl or other in his youth, he conducted his liaisons the same way most men dealt with the nursery—he enjoyed himself once he was there, but usually found an excuse to postpone his next visit.
‘Then you take responsibility for her,’ Anderson said finally. ‘You always seem to know what to do with women...and stop grinning, that’s not what I meant. I mean they’re always comfortable around you and you just don’t seem to care.’
Michael’s grin widened.
‘But I care a great deal, Sinjun. That’s why they are comfortable with me. And I don’t know why you say you don’t know what to do with them. I seem to remember you falling in and out of love with some fair maiden or another every term whilst we were up at Oxford.’
It was Anderson’s turn to grin.
‘Everyone was falling in love then. Except you—I remember how offended I was when you told me to stop making a fool of myself and just go and get the job done.’
Michael laughed.
‘Well, it was damn exhausting, listening to you go on about Jane, or Sophia, or Anthea or whomever. I was trying to study and you’d be reading your maudlin poetry out loud. You were lucky you were too timid to ask any of them to marry you, otherwise you’d probably have at least ten children by now.’
‘Anthea! I’d forgotten her. Lucky is right. She’d have made my life a living hell. But I still want to get married. Do you really not want to?’
‘Thankfully, I don’t need to, now that Chris has two healthy sons. He’s much better suited to managing Crayle Hall anyway. He lives and breathes estate management. If the estate and title weren’t entailed I’d hand them over without a qualm, except that he’s too proper to consider such a flouting of convention.’
‘For heaven’s sake, one doesn’t marry just to produce an heir. I mean, there’s love, and companionship...and I don’t mean the kind of companionship provided by someone from the muslin company,’ he added with asperity.
Michael smiled affectionately at his friend.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about when you talk about love. And frankly neither do you. I would wager you can’t even remember the names of all the women you’ve been in love with. It’s just a fancy name for unrequited lust.’ The smile faded. ‘And when it’s something more than that it’s usually destructive. My father was in love with my mother and look where that got them. All I can remember was his jealousy and her misery. You saw what it was like when they came to the Hall. Sometimes I think you had the best of it with your parents being away in India for all those years. You only had to see them once a year.’
‘If that. I much preferred spending the school holidays with you lot, though I do admit your parents did put a damper on our fun when they would come down from London. I never understood why your father always was so jealous. She was far too sweet and timid to ever stray.’
‘They were both fools,’ Michael said dismissively. ‘Thankfully they rarely stayed for long.’
Anderson laughed suddenly. ‘I just remembered how he used to line you and Chris up the first day they arrived and quiz you about your achievements at school like a drill sergeant. No wonder you always excelled. I was always terrified he would put me in the line, too.’
‘If we’d had any courage we would have told him to go to hell,’ Michael said with a self-deprecating smile.
‘Well, you did eventually, I suppose. Enlisting in the army amounted to the same thing. It definitely wasn’t what he planned for you. But that’s not the point. Not every marriage is like your parents’. And even if you don’t believe in love, then what about children? Isn’t that a good enough reason to marry?’
Michael could indulge him no longer.
‘It was bad enough being responsible for Letty and Christopher and Allie or for my men during battle, but at least they are their own masters in principle. I’ve done my share of being responsible for other people and a damn poor job of it too often. I have Lizzie and my father and more of my men than I care to count on my conscience and I don’t need any more opportunities to let people down, especially not those who are wholly dependent on me for their survival and wellbeing.’
Anderson gaped at him.
‘Good God, Michael, your father had a heart attack and overturned his curricle with Lizzie in it. If anything, it’s his fault that your sister broke her back in the accident. You weren’t even there!’
‘I might as well have been. He was so furious when I told him I was joining the army that if he could have disowned me he would have. He made it clear that if I left I wasn’t to come back. Don’t tell me the fact that he had a heart attack the next day was unrelated.’
‘It’s still not your fault. And as far as I can remember he’d already had one heart attack years earlier and the one that killed him in the end happened much later when you were already in Spain. Were you responsible for those two as well?’
Michael shrugged. Even with Anderson he had no intention of touching this particular wound. He had already said too much.
‘We are straying from the point, which is that there is no reason why you can’t deal with Miss Trevor. In fact, she might be just what you need.’
‘You make her sound like a medication, or a trip to Bath to take the waters.’ Anderson grimaced.
Michael laughed. ‘I hope it’s not as bad as that.’
‘Fine. At least tell me what she is like. Big and vulgar?’ Anderson asked despondently.
‘Not at all. I would wager she is a gentleman’s daughter, though I haven’t the faintest idea how she ended up on the wrong side of the Heath. I will leave the family history exploration to you. I have a feeling she will answer your questions more readily than mine since she and I did not exactly hit it off. As for size, she is a small thing, a couple inches shorter than Allie, I would say.’
He sipped his whisky, watching with amusement as a faint bloom of colour spread across Anderson’s cheeks at the mention of Alicia. He wished his friend had more stomach when it came to women so he could follow through on his obvious attraction. No wonder he was horrified at the prospect of being saddled with Miss Trevor. Michael wondered how he could make her sound more acceptable, then decided it was best for Anderson to be forewarned.
‘She is quite pretty which could be useful. Very direct—in fact, painfully direct. A bit of a shrew, I think, but clever and quick to grasp what is good for her. From her behaviour on the Heath she appears to have an inordinate amount of loyalty for her silent giant friend. I have no idea how they ended up working together in such dubious circumstances. Another piece of the puzzle for you to uncover...’
Anderson sighed. ‘I hate puzzles.’
Chapter Five (#ulink_3dc57d43-b09f-5cf4-bbbf-b9434ad0b74f)
Sari stared at the neo-classical grey building with its simple entrance. There was no distinguishing plaque. Just a number—eleven—by the wooden door. She glanced up at George who stood beside her, hands on hips.
‘I’ll go in with you, Miss Sari.’
She patted his arm. ‘No, George. If this is the place, I’m going in alone. I won’t have you be late for work. It’s a long way back to Islington.’
George frowned down at her, wavering.
‘It’s all right, really it is,’ she said with much more confidence than she felt. ‘You can wait here and see me safely inside, but it is about time I stood on my own two feet.’
Without waiting for his response, she crossed the narrow empty street and pulled at the bell pull by the door. The door opened so promptly Sari took a step back in dismay.
A very tall, elderly man inspected her, not unkindly.
‘Ma’am?’
‘I...I was told to come... My name is Sari Trevor and...’
‘Ah, of course, Miss Trevor. Do come in.’ He stood back, indicating a long corridor. Sari glanced over her shoulder, sending George a quick smile before stepping inside with an assurance she was far from feeling.
‘My name is Penrose, ma’am. If there is anything you need, you have only to ask.’
‘I...thank you, Mr Penrose.’ Sari smiled nervously at this rather sweeping statement.
‘Here is Mr Anderson’s office.’ He knocked on the door and opened it. ‘Mr Anderson? It is Miss Trevor. And Lord Crayle asked to be informed if she arrived. I will go and fetch him.’
Even in the midst of her confusion, Sari noticed he said ‘if’ rather than ‘when’. Clearly the earl had not completely trusted her not to just disappear with his money. She took a deep breath and tried to focus on the man who had stood up from his desk. She had expected someone like the earl, but he was almost his antithesis. He was good-looking, but in a pleasant, unthreatening way, with kind blue eyes and very light brown hair. He did not look at all like a government agent.
‘Thank you for coming, Miss Trevor. Please sit down. Did you have any trouble finding us?’
‘I... No, we found it quite readily.’
