Page 30 of A Lady’s Handbook of Espionage

Isabel slipped from the sheets and dressed, careful not to disturb Callahan.

The door hinges creaked as she eased into the corridor. She’d never been still for long. With Favreau, there had always been another job. Before that, in childhood, her hours had been circumscribed by lessons and the distant, unyielding figure of her father.

Even in Boston, she had a routine. Breakfast, briefings with Vale, afternoon tea, dinner, a walk. At night, she always watched the stars and listened to the distant noise of the city.

She learned that staying still was when the thoughts crept in. And with the thoughts came memories. She had darker ones than most, a lifetime of cruelties and hunger and grasping hands. The blades that cut her open.

Memories like hers thrived when the world went quiet.

Earlier, she’d used Ronan. When a nightmare threatened her peace, she’d pushed him onto his back and he’d sleepily watched her as she rode him. Two hours later, she woke him again, and he’d pleasured her with his tongue.

Waking him a third time was tantamount to weakness, and that wasn’t acceptable.

So she moved. Her wandering feet took her down the servants’ staircase. She’d long ago internalised the most forgettable routes in any house. The better to avoid detection.

Isabel cut through the kitchen, deserted at this late hour. She appropriated a jug of ale from a cupboard, then continued her restless patrol, skirting the perimeter of the room until she spied the door she was seeking: the one that led to the gardens.

The air was rich with the scent of rain-damp leaves as Isabel scaled the ivy lattice on the house’s rear facade. Three floors up, she swung over a stone balustrade and sat, setting the jug of ale between her thighs.

She allowed her eyes to drift closed. The gleam of Favreau’s smile rose from her memories, the whisper of his blade at her stomach, the caustic burn of his spend inside her.

You make a magnificent canvas, ma belle. Don’t you like the pain?

No.

Not that kind of pain.

Not with him.

Isabel forced air into her lungs. Let those memories stay locked in their iron boxes, chained and muzzled. For now, there was only the dome of stars above and the answering vault of the city, a thousand pinprick windows glowing gold.

The lattice creaked. A booted tread came from behind her, scarcely louder than a cat’s. Isabel stiffened, every sense surging to high alert.

She slid a palm over her knife. Her mind cycled rapidly through pressure points and soft targets – throat, liver, kidneys—

“Trouble. You’re slipping.”

Callahan. Of bloody course .

“Am I?” she asked dryly.

He sat beside her. Not for the first time, she was struck by his beauty. Dark hair mussed from sleep, feet bare in unlaced boots, his linen shirt gaping to reveal the strong column of his throat.

Yes, Ronan Callahan was devastating.

She took a swig from the jug before holding it out. Callahan accepted the offering, his knuckles brushing hers. The fleeting contact sent a shiver through her.

“For the most notorious thief on the Continent,” Callahan said, pausing to swallow a mouthful of ale, “your situational awareness leaves something to be desired. Letting yourself be snuck up on? It’s begging for a knife between the ribs.”

“The only one who swoops in to menace me at inopportune moments is you.”

He slanted her a look. “If I’d wanted to menace you, you’d have my blade at your throat. Instead, we’re having an almost civilised conversation.”

“Is that your way of saying you’ve no intention of finishing me off?”

“I’m becoming accustomed to you warming my bed. It’d be a shame to see such a pretty head parted from your shoulders.” He knocked his knee against hers. “Makes for a messy coverlet.”

“Such concern for your linens.” She clucked her tongue. “And here I thought you cared.”

“Oh, I care.” The sudden heat in his gaze sent a flutter low in her belly. “I care very much about keeping you in one piece so I can take you apart myself.”

She watched him take another long pull from the jug.

“So,” he said, setting the ale aside, “want to tell me why you’re restless tonight?”

“Maybe I just fancied a nightcap under the stars. I’m not angling to die of exposure, if that’s your concern.”

“Good. Death by freezing lacks a certain flair. An opium haze, a poisoned kiss . . . there’s an elegance there.”

“This from the gentleman with a human skull on his mantelpiece.”

“Everyone needs a hobby.”

Isabel felt her mouth curve despite herself.

They lapsed into a companionable quiet, passing the jug between them. The distant clatter of carriage wheels and the hollow clop of hooves against cobblestones drifted up from the streets below.

“I never watched the stars in Paris,” Isabel said quietly, apropos of nothing.

She kept her gaze fixed on the distant glimmer of the Thames.

“I was always busy. Always working or distracted. But in Boston . . . in Boston, I’d climb out onto the roof of Portia’s townhouse and just look. For hours, sometimes.”

She could feel the weight of his stare, heavy as a touch.

“It was like I could breathe again, out there above the city. Like I could finally think. I’d trace the constellations with the tip of my finger .

. .” She mimed the motion, her hand outstretched.

“And pretend I could touch them. That if I reached out far enough, I could scoop up a handful of stars and tuck them away inside my ribcage. A little piece of light, just for me.”

Callahan’s exhale was soft. “Did it help? Soothe you, I mean?”

“Sometimes. Mostly, it just made me realise how small I was. How inconsequential. When your choices are steal or starve, lie or die, you learn to live with so little. Existing in a cage becomes your entire world. When you know what it is to want – truly want, with an intensity that consumes you – it’s terrifying to imagine being satisfied. ”

His fingertips grazed her cheek. “Why are you really out here, sweetheart?”

“I met Favreau seven years ago today.”

Isabel’s gaze dropped to her hands. Those memories whispered from their little box at the back of her mind, all the things she buried deep that liked to sink their claws in during dreams.

“I was a virgin before that,” she said quietly. “Did you know? I mentioned in my briefings sent to Wentworth.”

A soft exhale left him. “No. I didn’t read them. They felt too . . .” He cleared his throat. “Personal.”

“Well, I described Louis Favreau to Vale physically, but didn’t mention that he’s quite beautiful.

Blond, tall, blue eyes. To a half-starved girl of sixteen, he looked like an angel.

That’s what I called him when he caught me attempting to pick his pocket.

Un ange . And for those first few weeks, he was.

He bought me food and clothes and looked at me like I was the only person in the world.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to be someone’s sole focus?

To be taken care of when you have nothing? ”

Callahan’s expression was gentle. Not pity, just understanding. He shook his head.

“When a man starts to hurt you,” she said quietly, “you do anything to get the good back. Even if he holds you down and you realise it’s not safe to say no.”

Callahan slid his fingers into hers, holding tightly. “It won’t be like this forever. The nightmares. The restlessness. I know it doesn’t seem that way now.”

“Do you whisper that to all the battered creatures who warm your bed? Am I just another bird with broken wings for you to soothe?”

She expected him to recoil. To take the excuse she offered to retreat into banter or brittle silence. But he remained still.

“You know you aren’t.”

But she was broken. She didn’t even think she deserved this man, let alone his kindness. Parts of her still wanted to push him away. Save him from cutting himself on her jagged edges. She was built to break men.

“What if I used you again?” she asked. “Wanted you to hold me down and fuck me until it hurt? Would you do it? Would it get you hard to hurt me?”

She watched his throat work as he swallowed. Imagined sinking her teeth there. To stake her claim in the same primal language he’d used to write his possession across her skin.

“I get hard from you.” Stark. Unvarnished. “From the way you look at me when I’m buried inside you like you can’t decide if you want to claw my heart out or swallow it whole. I’ll fuck you however you want me to, Isabel.”

She glanced down at their entwined hands, the way his fingers engulfed hers.

There was a terrible sort of symbolism in that – the notion that he could enfold all her broken pieces, swallow up the fractured sprawl of her until she disappeared entirely.

Until Isabel Dumont was nothing more than a memory, a whisper of smoke on the wind.

“I think Favreau broke something in me,” she confessed, the words tearing themselves free.

“Do you?” Callahan’s voice sharpened.

“I thought when I was free of him, I’d never want a man’s hands on me like that again. That I’d want . . . softness. Gentleness.”

“Isabel . . .”

“I like it when you bruise me and cuff me, and I surrender. What does that say about me? That I can only find pleasure in the echoes of my own violation? Ronan, I think he broke me —”

“No.” Callahan gripped her shoulders. “You’re not broken.

What that twisted fuck did to you wasn’t about desire.

It was about power. What we do together?

That’s about trust.” His palm cradled her jaw, breath ghosting across her parted lips.

“Little thief. Would you feel safe enough to say no with me?”

“Yes,” she breathed. Immediate. Unwavering.

“There’s the difference.” He stroked his thumb along her cheekbone, unbearably tender. “Safety. The certainty that I’ll never take more than you’re willing to give. The fact that you crave pain doesn’t make you broken. It’s all right to want it, sweetheart. It’s pain you choose.”

It was too much. The steady conviction in his gaze, the absolution of his touch.

“I’m so desperately sorry for Hong Kong,” she whispered, her eyes stinging. “I should have told you on the steamer when you asked—”

“Isabel, you don’t owe me any explanations. What’s done is—”

“I was pregnant.”

The confession dropped between them like a stone into a pond, the ripples of it radiating out.

Callahan’s breath left him in a sharp exhale. “What?”

Isabel curled in on herself, shoulders hunching. Her gaze skittered away to fix on some distant point over his shoulder, unable to look at him.

“I was carrying Favreau’s child. He would have done anything to keep me with him, and a pregnancy was a vulnerability. A baby was a vulnerability. That’s why I was desperate to escape in Hong Kong. I couldn’t let him find out or risk starting to show.”

He reached for her, stroking her hair. No demand in his touch, just . . . comfort. Soothing her.

“What happened after that?”

“There are ways for women to get rid of a pregnancy, and I couldn’t keep it. I didn’t want to. But I need you to know why I couldn’t let you close back then. Why I had to burn every bridge and disappear the way I did. I would rather you be angry with me than see you dead.”

Callahan dragged her closer and held on tight. She turned her face into his shoulder, her eyes wet.

“The things we do to survive mark us,” he murmured into her hair. “But we endure in the only ways we can. We adapt and overcome because the alternative is to let the world grind us to dust. I forgave you for Hong Kong a long time ago.”

She leaned in, pressing her lips to his in a gentle kiss. A tentative exploration of new territory. It was achingly gentle, this careful mapping of scars. A hushed dialogue of breath and touch and understanding.

When they parted, Isabel rested her forehead against Callahan’s. “Thank you.”

“Always.”