Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

“Bear the discomfort.”

Supportez l’inconfort. C’est votre sacrifice à la Révolution. She remembered cold days, hungry nights. Hours in the bare training field, hurting with a dozen kinds of pain, body and mind. The Tuteurs said, “Bear the discomfort. It’s your sacrifice to the Revolution.”

In those days, Devoir had been a rock of strength for all of them, endlessly strong, endlessly patient. She missed him. This stranger was no substitute.

Paxton—most definitely he was Paxton, not Devoir—wrapped himself the whole length of her body, reading the tension of her muscle, ready to predict any attack before she made the first twitch. He was nicely graded force, intelligently applied. One must applaud.

But any man on earth can be persuaded. A judicious mixture of lies and truth could work wonders. “You’re expecting great revelations. I’d rather you didn’t.”

He made a disbelieving exhalation between his teeth. That eloquent, familiar noise. That was Devoir’s comment on so many of life’s small happenings.

His grip loosened slightly. There was room to breathe.

She said, “I will spill out everything I know in your lap in the hope you will lose interest in me. Shall I tell you the man you seek favors a British gun? A Mortimer, I think. He sounds like an Englishman and dresses like one, but he’s probably French. Police Secrète would be my guess. He knows too much about the Coach House for him to be anything else. He calls himself Smith.”

“That’s not his name.”

“My well-trained intellect had already come to that conclusion. Do you know your coat is wet?”

“A little damp.”

“You’re soaked. And now I am soaked. We’ll both catch pneumonia.” She shifted in the close confinement of his coat wrapped around her, aware of the edge of a lapel, the round buttons on his waistcoat, the smooth cloth of his trousers. His chest barely shifted with his breath. Otherwise, he was motionless as a wall. She was the one restless against him.

She wasn’t wearing enough clothes to protect her from too much knowledge of his body. She felt everything through the linen of her shift. Her breasts, sensitive with the cold, shocked when she rubbed against his coat. Old friendship, old memories rose up. She knew him too well. Every touch against him was just on the edge of being familiar and feeling safe.

There’s too much silence. I have to say something. But she was awash in sensation. It was a hot river flowing under her skin.

I don’t want this. But part of her did.

Pax’s hands closed convulsively. Not by his will. Not by his intent. He couldn’t help it.

Vérité explored the confines of the hold he had on her, being irritated, talkative, and close to naked. Where she wasn’t soft skin, she was the slide of the thin cloth that barely wrapped her up. Her breasts grazed his chest, swift and startling. Her belly slipped across his. She was everything womanly—strength, softness, mystery. Since she was Vérité, she added a good dollop of deadly to the mixture.

He had a cockstand the size of a pine tree.

You don’t think of her that way, a voice inside him said.

But he did.

She’s not twelve anymore.

He wanted her in the most straightforward, simple, earthy way. Maybe it had started when they stood facing each other in the church. Maybe before that, when he watched her cross Braddy Square in a long, lithe sweep of brown cloak. Maybe when she became exquisitely lethal and attacked him.

Her hair brushed his face, tightly curled, glossy, feather soft, smelling of wood smoke and snuff. It grabbed him and pulled him into memory, into the years of the Coach House. In the stark dormitory under the rafters, two dozen starved, savage, brilliant children slept on mats on the floor, huddled together in the cold dark, sharing blankets. Vérité used to fit herself beside him, snuggled up to keep warm, her hair tickling his nose.

The way it was doing right now. If he chose, he could lower his head to that bedlam of curls and breathe her in. He could sort through the waves and semicircles with his lips. He could drop his hold on her arms and put his hands to her breasts and run his thumbs across her nipples, back and forth, learning them by touch, feeling a miraculous response in them.

He’d painted women clothed, naked, and at every stage in between. This was different. Vérité was more than an image made with pigments and brush. More than blended color and the fall of light. She was touch and smell and taste, breath, life, pulsing blood.

He’d seen the dark fuzz between her legs through the linen of her shift. The image filled his mind. He imagined stroking that soft kitten. Touching Vérité, pleasing her, enticing her. Persuading her down into the straw.

The unbearable sensuality of the image climbed out of his groin and plucked at every nerve in his body. His body tightened like iron bands.

That wasn’t for him. Not with Vérité. Not with anyone.

She gave an impatient, determined shove at his chest. “I can’t talk like this. You’re just bullying me. I’m not trying to run.” Her voice came up, muffled, from the region of his cravat. His coat was pushed aside where she twisted against him. Any minute now, she was going to brush up against his cock.

Then she did exactly that. She gave one startled jerk and went absolutely still. He felt her vibrate with her heartbeat.

She whispered, “Let me go. I said I’d tell you what you want to know.”

If he didn’t let go of her now, he might not be able to.

He opened his hands and stepped away and away, keeping an eye on her, till he felt the storeroom door at his back. He reached behind him to open it and let more light in.

She didn’t try to hide herself. She kept her arms at her sides, her fists clenched. Her skin was pale as milk in this weak light, a sketch in pastel, laid down in thin shades of color. She looked scared and sneaky and determined. A warrior maiden, utterly indomitable in a shift that didn’t cover half of her.

She was beautiful. Add that to the list of complications.

She was also cold. He’d dragged her out of her warm nest and left her shivering in the damp air.

He gathered up her cloak from the floor and tossed it to her across the space between them.

“Thank you.” Gravely, she organized it in her hands, turned it right side out. “There are some complications it is better to ignore.”

That was Vérité, being direct.

“I intend to,” he said.

“Then we both shall. Why are we still alone? I keep expecting your friends to arrive in a great thumping vehemence. I don’t hear them.”

“They’re waiting outside.”

“So you came to take me alone. That was either a mistake or very subtle. I don’t think you make many mistakes.” She circled the cloak around her and was enveloped in darkness. Only her face showed and her feet, white and vulnerable against the wood floor. “This is better. Ask your questions.”

She didn’t look at where his cock was hidden under his coat, being obstreperous.

It wasn’t that easy for him to ignore what his body demanded and demanded.

He thought, You can’t have her. But the corridors of his mind were crowded with old choices, clamoring to be reconsidered. The rules for every other woman on earth didn’t apply to Vérité.

I want her. That was the path to madness and beauty. I could convince her. She knows what I am and I could still convince her.

He knew he wasn’t thinking clearly.

Deliberately, he ran his hand into his sleeve and found the old burn scar on his forearm. The skin was thin there. The surface of the scar felt nothing. Beneath that, there was no protection against pain. It lurked there, waiting for the slightest touch.

He dug his nails in deep, found pain, and held on to it till he was in a place clean of thought and feeling. Till the universe narrowed to a single cold, spiked, dark point.

When he stopped and pain receded he felt empty. It hadn’t helped at all. Vérité was still beautiful and he still wanted her.

He said, “Tell me what you know about Smith.”

Her eyes, wide and dark, didn’t waver. “Almost nothing. There. That was simple.”

“Tell me this nothing.”

“What do you need to know? I can tell you that he tells lies the way other men breathe.” Her fingers made a knobbly half-moon at the front of her cloak, keeping it closed around her. “I don’t think I got ten words of truth out of his mouth the whole time I was chatting with him.”

Vérité had seen to the root of the Merchant. He was a man constructed of lies. “What else?”

“He wears London tailoring, expensive tailoring. His gloves are French. I didn’t notice that when I was talking to him, but I see them now, in my mind. London boots. London hat. Good, solid quality. Almost new. You could hunt down his bootmaker and his tailor if you have the time to fritter away. It won’t lead anywhere.”

“Probably not.” The Merchant liked good clothing. One of his vanities.

“I will point out what you have already figured out. He set only one man to follow me through London, so he doesn’t travel with multitudes.”

The Merchant was a weaver of grand schemes, but schemes he could accomplish with a few like-minded fanatics. He’d have a small band with him, loyal to the death.

She was stalling for time, and he didn’t have a lot of it. Doyle would get impatient after a while. He said, “Tell me more.”