Page 27 of A Lady’s Handbook of Espionage

Isabel stood in front of the mirror. The gown the Home Office had procured was blue silk with delicate Chantilly lace with a neckline that offered a tantalising glimpse of décolletage.

The sort of ensemble that would have men eating out of her palm.

“I don’t suppose,” she murmured to the maid fussing with the fall of her skirts, “you have any creative ideas for concealing a small arsenal beneath all this? A pistol or two? Perhaps a nice stiletto?”

The girl looked up with wide, startled eyes. “I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

“Nothing, darling. Just idle musings of a deranged mind. I’m sure I’ll muddle through.”

She dismissed the girl and turned back to her reflection, allowing herself one last assessing glance.

Every part the lethal ornament, ma petite. What fine jewellery you make.

Isabel banished Favreau’s memory with a violent shake of her head. Then she drew a deep breath, held it until her lungs burned, and strode into the private sitting room.

Callahan was already waiting, his broad shoulders cutting a fine figure in stark black and white. He glanced up at the soft susurrus of Isabel’s skirts.

And went still.

He stared. Drinking her in with a heat that sent sparks skittering across her skin.

“Well?” Her voice emerged huskier than she’d intended. “Will I pass muster? Or shall I go change into sackcloth?”

“You look,” he rasped, “like the most dangerous thing in the room. Like a fever dream.”

Isabel swallowed hard. “Yours or mine?”

“Everyone’s. You’ll be the scandal of the symposium. There won’t be a man there who won’t imagine peeling you out of that dress and seeing if you taste as good as you look.”

“Is that what you imagine? How I might taste?”

“You know it is.”

How strange, the way the world could tilt on its axis with a few innocuous words.

“Careful, Agent. A woman could get ideas, hearing you say such things.” She dragged her stare down. “You clean up well.”

“High praise, coming from you.”

“Remember,” she said, reaching out to straighten his cravat.

“You have to play the idiot to perfection while I inhabit the role of a rich socialite. Our aim is to have these illustrious men of science regard you as a malleable fool in desperate need of education, all while fawning over your gracious and obscenely wealthy spouse.”

Callahan arched a brow. “This is hardly my first foray into subterfuge.”

“Yes, but it’s your first performance with me,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

He turned at the last moment, his lips brushing hers. “I’m sure I can keep up.”

*

The symposium’s opening ball was full by the time they walked into the ballroom.

The air was thick with expensive perfume, cigars, and fresh flowers. Scientists were gathered in small groups, while rich businessmen and lords mingled among them.

“See anything worth nicking?” Callahan murmured in Isabel’s ear.

She slid him a scathing look. “This gown is far too tight for petty theft.”

“Apologies. I forgot that the notorious Spectre has standards. Shall I ask what priceless trinkets Lord Ripon keeps in the family vault? Only the best for my fake wife.”

“I’ve turned over a new leaf, haven’t I?”

“Truly a loss for criminal society.”

Isabel hid a smirk behind her champagne flute. “Shall we mingle?”

They exchanged pleasantries with the other guests. Isabel watched Callahan slip into his vapid persona; Jamie Ashford was a man whose gravest concerns in life seemed to be the precision of his cravat’s folds.

“Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t we?” she asked.

He flashed a smile. “I’m the very model of noble comportment.”

“Indeed,” she muttered, silently vowing to flay Wentworth alive for assigning them these particular identities. She was going to stab someone by the night’s end, that was certain.

“There’s our man.” Callahan inclined his head towards a group. “Ramsgate’s the one with grey hair and spectacles. Appears to be expounding on . . . gallstones, perhaps? Hard to tell.”

Isabel picked out their target easily enough. “Then let’s go introduce ourselves.”

Tightening her grip on Callahan’s arm, she tugged him through the crowd.

“. . . a truly fascinating case. You see, the circumstances of the gallbladder’s rupture—”

“I beg your pardon,” Callahan interrupted. “Did I hear mention of internal organs? How captivating!”

Ramsgate’s mouth hung slack, his diatribe curtailed. The other men blinked as though startled out of a daze.

“I—well, yes.” The older man peered at Callahan like some curious new species of beetle. “Though I’m not certain—”

“Oh, you must forgive my husband.” Isabel bestowed a winning smile on the befuddled assembly. “Jamie does have such a morbid fascination with the gorier realities of science. Why, just the other evening, he bored me absolutely to tears with the riveting particulars of a ruptured spleen.”

Callahan released a booming laugh. “Guilty as charged, my sweet! Though, in my defence, the details of that grisly business did make for a cracking good tale. Get it?” He thumped the nearest man on the shoulder, heedless of his wince. “A cracking good tale? On account of the ribs giving way?”

If a feather had dropped at that moment, the sound would have been deafening. The sycophants flanking Ramsgate were doubtless unused to being interrupted by a foppish dandy who wouldn’t know an atom from an abacus.

Isabel had to give her partner credit – the man did a fine job of playing the idiot savant.

She widened her smile and interfered before Callahan’s performance got out of hand. “You must forgive James his little jokes. An acquired taste, I’m afraid.”

“Indeed,” Ramsgate managed. “Well, I’m not certain—”

“Oh, how unspeakably rude of me.” Isabel offered a gloved hand. “We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Lydia Ashford, and this is my darling husband, James. We’re here from New York.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he reached out to clasp her fingers in a limp, perfunctory grip. “Edmund Ramsgate. A pleasure, Mrs Ashford. And you as well, Mr Ashford.”

“I couldn’t help but overhear you mention your work.” Isabel leaned in, conspiratorial. “My husband and I are always looking for worthy scientific endeavours to support. Financially, of course. It’s a particular passion of mine.”

A calculated gleam entered Ramsgate’s eyes as they swept over the small fortune glittering at her ears and throat. The reaction was subtle, barely there, but Isabel knew that look.

It was almost disappointing how predictable men were beneath their veneer of civility. As transparent as the beggars in the East End.

“Well,” Ramsgate demurred, “I wouldn’t want to speak out of turn. You have an interest in biochemistry, do you?”

He cut a dubious glance at Callahan, who was staring at the milling throng with the perplexed air of a man who’d stumbled into the wrong study by mistake and couldn’t quite determine how to extricate himself.

“I’m sure I can keep up,” Isabel assured him, batting her lashes. “And Jamie does so adore hearing me ramble on about my little enthusiasms. Don’t you, love?”

“Hm? Oh, rather!” Callahan snapped to attention. “Absorbing stuff. Miasmas and whatnot.”

Ramsgate looked mildly appalled, but pushed on, nonetheless. And so began a solid quarter-hour of increasingly esoteric jargon. Callahan had long since progressed from diplomatic boredom to the stare of a man girding his soul for war.

“. . . of course, the real challenge is stabilising the compound,” Ramsgate was saying. “Ensuring a reliable delivery mechanism . . .”

The prospect of listening to Ramsgate drone on in perpetuity stretched before Isabel like a slow death.

“. . . environmental factors can wreak such havoc on more delicate solutions, but I’ve had some promising results with a tincture derived from the common foxglove—”

Deliverance came from an unexpected quarter when Ramsgate paused to draw breath, and Callahan seized the opening like a drowning man.

“Is it just me,” he asked, fanning himself, “or is it deuced warm in here? I’m feeling a touch peaked.”

Isabel made a concerned sound. “You do look flushed, darling. Perhaps a turn on the balcony is in order? A spot of air might set you to rights.”

“Capital idea, light of my life.” Callahan sketched a bow. “If you’ll excuse us, gentlemen? I fear I’m on the verge of a swoon.”

As they approached the French doors to the gardens, Isabel heard Ramsgate mutter, “Bit of a milksop, that one.”

Callahan shut the doors and leaned against them in exhaustion. “Bloody hell. I think that man actually sucked the soul out of my body. Through my ears.”

Isabel rubbed at her temples. “I can’t decide if I’m more astonished by his lung capacity or his ability to talk so much while saying nothing.”

“He employed some form of circular breathing, I’d wager. Like those chaps who play wind instruments.” He shuddered. “I’m not sure how much more of this I can take without running mad. Quicker just to nick his papers.”

“They’re coded, remember? And we can’t arouse suspicion. That means not stealing his scientific effects.”

He sighed. “Right.”

Isabel’s lips twitched. “Poor fake husband.”

She found herself all too aware of Callahan’s proximity. The solid warmth of him at her side, the faint scent of his soap and tobacco.

“Mm.” Callahan tapped his fingers against the wall. “Then I’ll keep playing the idiot and hoping he yields something. You keep dangling money in front of his face.”

Isabel nodded. Her mind raced ahead, sketching and discarding possibilities, each more unpleasant than the last.

Callahan’s hand covered hers. She looked up to find him watching her, something unreadable in his expression.

“You’re leagues away,” he said softly. “What are you concocting in that devious mind of yours?”

“Just plotting.”

“Should I be bracing for explosions? Stabbings? Defenestrations? Threats?”

God, he knew her too well.

“Hush.” She turned her hand, twining their fingers together. “I promised Wentworth I’d be on my best behaviour. All worthwhile sacrifices in service to the Crown, remember? That’s why I’m trussed up in this dress.”

“Naturally.” His voice dropped, gone soft. “Though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t itching to strip you out of it, jewels and all.”

The space between them seemed to shrink. Isabel couldn’t breathe right. Couldn’t think straight. There was only the moonlight catching in his dark hair, the hard line of his jaw, the way his eyelashes cast shadows on his cheeks.

Her body burned for him.

“You’re a distraction, Agent Callahan.” She adjusted her gloves. “We’ll try Ramsgate again tomorrow. If nothing else, I could always seduce it out of him. Men tend to talk when I take my clothes off.”

His eyes narrowed. “No.”

“You don’t think I can do it?”

“That’s not it.” His jaw clenched. “You’re not his to touch.”

She raised an eyebrow, heart hammering against her ribs. “Whose am I, then?”

“Mine.” As if he’d been waiting to say it. The simplest truth in the world. “For the next three days, at least, Mrs Ashford.”

Isabel often thought she never wanted to hear the word mine from a man. Favreau had said it enough. Had marked her up like property.

But when Ronan said it, a shiver of want went through her. Because to be his wasn’t to be owned, it was to be cherished.

My body is yours , he’d whispered last night in the dark, when they’d both been naked and honest. She’d almost confessed then that her body had been his for years. That it would always be his, long after this mission ended. That she’d never stopped wanting him, even when she tried.

“And after the three days, Mr Ashford?” Her voice was a little breathless.

“Don’t change the subject.” His fingers caught her chin. “Trouble, I’m serious. No seducing. Nothing on your own. No stealing.”

“No seducing,” she promised. “No stealing.”

“ Nothing on your own ,” he pointedly finished.

She grinned. God, she loved when he got like this – all protective and commanding.

“Promise.”