Page 40 of How the Earl Entices

“I was the one who found that letter,” he continued quietly. “By utter accident. The seal was broken after Wentworth posted it and before it could leave the embassy, so the clerk who caught it brought it to me.” He reached up to draw an idle fingertip along the window’s edge. “The clerk thought it was an accounting matter, and part of my duties was to serve as the embassy’s quartermaster, responsible for all accounts in and out. But something about that letter struck me as odd. Why should a buyer of expensive fabric care about the names of factory workers? So I took it to Sir Henry Jacobs, my mentor and the man who’d helped me gain my post.” His hand dropped away. “At the time, I had no idea what I’d found. But Henry knew. He confronted the ambassador, who killed him for it. I found his body draped over his desk in a pool of blood, his throat slit from ear to ear.”

When he looked back at her, she gasped at the grief that darkened his face.

“I promised his widow that I would catch the men responsible, and I won’t stop until I’ve found them. Wentworth is only the start of the work I have to do.” So much determination rang in his voice that it dripped with resolve. “Now you know what I’ve done to be accused of treason and murder, why I was out on the Channel during that storm, why I forced myself into your cottage…why I’m innocent.”

But she wasn’t at all certain of that. “It only proves that you stole those documents. For all I know that letter and hotel register have nothing to do with your story, that you were the one who forged the ambassador’s name on the embassy log to place blame on him, while you planned to give that list of names to the French yourself.”

His eyes narrowed on her for a beat, studying her closely. Then he shrugged a shoulder, a forced gesture of nonchalance that contrasted sharply with how his jaw tightened beneath his week’s growth of beard. “Then turn me in. Call out to the driver and make him stop, reveal who I am, and claim your reward.”

“You know I can’t,” she shot back, keeping her voice low even as her frustration rose.

He shook his head, dismissing that. “You don’t trust me because I’m not the only one keeping secrets.”

“Because I am keeping my son safe!” she ground out, her alarm and unease almost too much to bear. Revealing Ross’s identity would rain all kinds of unwanted attention down upon her.

“The woman who captures England’s greatest enemy since Napoleon would surely be awarded her son’s inheritance.” His midnight blue eyes gleamed like the devil’s own as he tossed out that temptation. Fitting. Since he was offering up her dearest wish in exchange for her soul. “But the ambassador also goes free to sell more secrets, to reveal more of our agents to the enemy. Can you live with their deaths?”

She fisted her hands in her lap. The impossible choice he was presenting to her was far more complicated than it seemed on the surface. This wasn’t about choosing between revealing his identity or not. It was about deciding to trust him. The blasted devil knew it, too.

“Better make up your mind soon. We’re almost to the inn. If you wait until then to send up the alarm, you’ll have your reward ripped away from you by every driver and hostler in the yard.” He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped together between them. His eyes were piercing. “What’s it going to be, Grace? Does it all end here, or do you trust me enough to help me the rest of the way to London?”

Damn you. Her eyes burned, blurring with hot tears. After ten years, to come so close to giving her son the life he deserved, the one he was meant to have— All her hopes for Ethan’s future were slipping through her fingers as easily as the miles beneath the coach’s wheels.Damn you to hell.

Not answering, she slumped back in the corner of the seat and turned her head to stare out the window. But she saw nothing, her tear-filled vision blurring until the landscape became nothing more than a mass of dark reds and golden yellows of a smeared sunset, edged by the oncoming darkness of night.

Over the final mile of the stage, her fear gave way to frustration, which turned into silent fury that she should discover now the odds that they were up against. He’d warned her before they left Sea Haven that he might not be able to help her, but she’d gambled on him anyway. What other choice did she have? But now, unless she continued to help him, they would never reach London, and whatever small chance she had at successfully pleading her case would crumble to dust. So she sat there, doing nothing to signal to the driver to stop.

The coach slowed before passing through a narrow archway into the inn yard. She’d opened the door and had her feet on the ground before it came to a complete stop, to stay as far away from him as possible.

But his hand closed around her elbow from behind, halting her.

“You said you needed me,” he murmured, his mouth lowering to her ear to keep from being overhead by the hostlers around them. “Now I need you, Grace. I can’t do this without you.”

Her chest tightened, and not because she needed him in kind, to help her with Ethan’s inheritance, but because it had been a very long time since she’d been needed by a man.

That it was him, of all men, made her heart bleed.

“All right,” she whispered grudgingly, blinking the stinging anger from her eyes.

“Thank you for trusting me.” He affectionately squeezed her arm.

“I’m not keeping silent because I trust you,” she flung back just as quietly. “I did it because keeping you from being arrested is in my own best interests.”

Wordlessly, he lifted her hand and placed a kiss to her fingers. His eyes gleamed at that wholly blatant lie.

She snatched her hand away and grabbed up her bag that a hostler had unloaded from the rear luggage rack and dropped to the ground, then stomped away toward the inn door. Not caring if he followed her or not.

A flash of red—

She halted. Half a dozen soldiers gathered on the far side of the inn yard, their red uniforms torn and dirty, all of them travel weary. But it was the soldiers’ arms and legs that caught her attention. Because they were missing.

She stared, gripped immobile by the harrowing scene. None were whole men anymore. Two had wooden spindles fashioned where their legs should have been. Three others were missing hands, and one had lost an entire arm. Another was missing half of his face, with no chin or jaw beneath the wide bandage tied around his head. They were waiting for transportation to take them onward, finally going home to families and loved ones.

“Now you know why I risked my own life to save the lives of every agent on that list,” Ross said quietly over her shoulder, following her stunned gaze to the soldiers. “How do I tell men like these that I couldn’t find it within me to sacrifice my life to save others who are fighting for England, when they’ve given so much?”

Harsh remorse assaulted her. When his hand closed around her elbow again, she grudgingly let it stay.

“We’re both exhausted. Let’s take a room and settle in for the night.” He placed her hand on his arm and led her toward the inn. “We can argue more about my treason over breakfast.”