Page 2 of A Spy’s Guide to Seduction

“Do you think so? You don’t really want to continue at home, do you? You want an establishment of your own.”

“Of course I do. But it won’t be my establishment, will it? It will belong to some man, and it will be my job to run it for him.”

Rosalind shook her head. “I don’t think marriage...should be seen in exactly that light.”

Emily stared at the rather magnificent painting of a chestnut stallion over the marble hearth. “You know, Roz, I should marry the first imbecile I meet, however brainless or idle he is.”

“Darling, I don’t think you should do anything so desperate.”

The door to the sitting room opened, and a young man of fair, ruddy good looks, entered and stopped with a furrowed brow when he spotted Emily. “Hello, Em,” he said. “I thought...” He looked around the room as if it were a puzzle to be solved.

“Phil, dear?” Rosalind gave him one of her dreamy smiles.

He crossed the room and gave his wife a quick kiss on the cheek. “Roz,” he said, “I’m looking for Lynley. I thought Gittings said he showed him up to you, but now I find Em instead.”

“Oh dear,” said Roz. “I forgot all about Lynley.”

“Where is he then?” Phil asked.

“Right here, old man.” A deep voice came from the shadows, and a tall, dark-haired giant with a lean face, elegantly dressed limbs, and an indolent manner, unfolded himself from behind the camelback sofa. He fixed his gaze on Emily.

“You should have made yourself known, sir.” Emily waited for her hair to catch on fire from the heat of the blush in her cheeks.

The giant moved her way with easy grace. “I think you’ve proposed to me,” he said. “And I accept.”

Emily had been trained all her life not to stare, but nothing could stop her from gaping up into the handsome, amused face staring down at her.

“Shall I put the announcement in the papers?” The giant took her hand in his large warm one, gave it a quick kiss, and turned to her brother-in-law. “At your service, Phil.”

With a bow and a look of supreme satisfaction, he took his leave.

* * * *

Outside the townhouse on George Street, the two men headed south. It was a breezy, end-of-March day that required a man to fix his hat squarely on his head and lean into the wind. They had passed the blustery expanse of Grosvenor Square before Philip Villiers, Lord Woodford, spoke.

“Lynley, you’re not serious about marrying my sister-in-law?”

“What makes you think I’m not serious?” Emily Radstock’s overheard outburst was just the stroke of inspiration Lynley needed. Now that he’d been recruited for the spy club, he had been looking for a way to return to society without actually being available to any of the likely candidates for his hand.

“She’s...on the shelf...been there for years. You have no pressing reason to marry. Have you?”

“Other than the usual reasons you mean—get an heir, have a ready source of carnal embrace, avoid burning in fiery damnation for all eternity?”

Phil halted abruptly at the corner of David and Grosvenor Streets, his face contracted in puzzlement. The chill wind eddied around them. “No, I was thinking of being in love, of finding another person necessary to your happiness.”

“Is that what you did, Phil?” Lynley doubted there was such a thing as one person being necessary to another person’s happiness. Happiness itself was perhaps overrated. Besides, what he needed, what he’d discussed only the previous evening with his new employer, Goldsworthy, the spymaster, was a strategy that enabled him to pass among London’s fashionable elite, looking for whoever was stealing documents from the Foreign Office and selling them to the Russians.

Phil decided to start walking again. “Couldn’t do without Roz.”

“And at the time you didn’t consider Emily, your sister-in-law? She must have been available.” And she was beautiful. Lynley had been gut-punched by her beauty when he’d stood up from behind that flowered monstrosity of a couch. She had nothing of her sister’s demure serenity. Her hazel eyes flashed under slashing dark brows, and it had required all his considerable practice in self-containment not to stare at that lush, generous mouth.

Phil shuddered. “Never. She’s well-looking, I’m sure, but there’s something...”

“Bold, energetic, outspoken about her? Something of a termagant?”

“Yes,” said Phil, plainly relieved of the obligation to be tactful about a difficult relation. “She writes letters to the Times,” he confided.

“Not demure and domestic?”