Page 19 of How to Seduce a Viscount (Wed Within a Year #3)

H e could have asked her anything but that.

Just moments into their fragile truce, she was going to break faith with him again.

And yet, to keep peace with Luce meant betraying the earl to whom she owed everything.

The earl had explicitly asked that she say nothing about the lead regarding Stepan until they were sure, fearing that false hope might lead to reckless action.

She was protecting Luce by not telling him, although she doubted he’d see it that way if he knew.

‘You know better than to ask that,’ she chided him with a smile meant to distract him as much as he was trying to distract her.

Good lord, but they were both shameful flirts, using each other’s tactics against each other.

The lingering glances, the little touches and the long kisses.

Seducing each other to protect their own secrets.

But maybe there was one secret she could share with him that might be offered in appeasement.

‘There is something. I’ve kept it to myself because it did not seem relevant to our situation.

This is to be my last mission for the earl before I retire.

’ She let out a shaky breath. It was the first time she’d said the words out loud.

It was a far different thing to speak them out loud than it was to think them.

That had been hard enough. Saying the words to another made them real.

‘Retire? At twenty-three?’ Luce didn’t quite believe her.

She gave a small nod. ‘Your grandfather wants it.’ She did not elaborate on the reasons why, which were both personal and professional.

His eyes lit with understanding. ‘But you don’t want it.’

‘It’s the only life I know. Why would I leave it?

’ Except to honor the last thing asked of her by the man who had raised her and educated her.

And perhaps to chase her impossible dream of a family of her own.

‘Your grandfather wants me safe before…’ She had to catch her breath.

This, too, was difficult to say out loud.

‘Before he can’t watch out for me any more.

’ Wren swallowed, watching Luce’s face. Would he hate her for it because his grandfather was giving to her the one thing he would not give to his grandson—freedom from the network?

Luce gave nothing away but stayed silent. His own gaze steady, matching hers, while the fire crackled gently and the mantel clock ticked.

‘I am to simply disappear. But after today, I wonder if that is possible or if it is even fair for me to inflict my presence on an unsuspecting quiet village knowing that someday my past might catch up with me. Maybe you’re right and it is not really possible to leave the game, even if one leaves their name behind. ’

If he was right, it meant her impossible dream remained out of reach.

‘Who will you be?’ Luce asked with a quiet matter-of-factness.

In their world, aliases and shifting identities were commonplace. But this would be the last time. If she were a cat, it would be her ninth life. There would be no further iterations of her.

She shook her head. ‘That’s just it. I don’t know.

I was no one before your grandfather found me.

I was just Wren. I had no history. I had nothing.

There is nothing for me to go back to, even if that were possible.

I am supposed to walk into the mist and re-make myself from whole cloth. I don’t have a title to help me do it.’

‘Even with a title it’s not that easy. While I do sometimes wish to lay down the mantle of a Horseman, and while I do want to live a life apart from that, I do not want to walk away from my family, or my brothers any more than you want to walk away from the network.

’ Luce gave her a half-smile. ‘So, I stay. Perhaps it’s for the best. Every time I think I can strike out for myself, something brings me back in. ’

‘Like a girl with a code stabbing men on your doorstep?’ She gave a soft laugh. ‘I fear I have disrupted your plans for a quiet winter.’

His gaze rested on hers, his own voice gentle. Somewhere in the discussion of her retirement, the anger had left their conversation. They were Luce and Wren once more. ‘Maybe that’s the universe’s way of telling me I should not leave.’

‘I wish the universe would tell me the same thing. I would like to stay, too, but your grandfather will not hear of it.’ She studied the fire, aware that she was holding back on this issue as well.

She’d only given him part of the truth behind the need for her to retire and only part of the reason those men were here looking for her.

What a fraud she was, withholding three truths from this man who’d saved her life, with whom she’d been infatuated with for years.

If this was how she treated the people she cared for, perhaps she didn’t deserve to have better?

Perhaps too many years as an agent had stripped her of the ability to truly love.

‘I think the scariest thing about retirement is who I will become. Who am I if I am not part of the Sandmore network? What is my value? My worth to anyone?’ She felt Luce’s eyes on her.

‘You define yourself too much by your extrinsic value. You are a very worthy person, Wren Audley, regardless of what name you take next.’ He wouldn’t believe that much longer, not when all the secrets came out.

At least she would be long gone by then.

She wouldn’t have to face him with the knowledge of what she’d withheld.

But heaven help her, here was a good man and she wanted him anyway.

‘As are you, Luce Parkhurst, Viscount Waring. Brother, son, grandson,’ she said softly, moving her gaze to his face, her breath catching at what she saw there: understanding, empathy, commiseration.

Visibility. He saw her . Again. It wasn’t a one-time occurrence.

For someone who was used to being invisible and playing parts, being seen was exciting, intoxicating and yet one more step into a vast unknown territory.

Perhaps he understood her so well because these were concerns for him too; the youngest of four brothers, looking for his place and having found it here at Tillingbourne after years of fighting to establish himself with his family, with his brothers and with his grandfather.

How like her luck to discover this man when nothing could come of it here at the end of this particular life, when she must disappear entirely from the world he inhabited.

Time would run out for them. Their time together was already running out thanks to the vicar’s inconvenient guests.

Last night, there’d been slow kisses and the promise of time aplenty to think it through, to take it slow.

But a fateful meeting on the street in the village today had changed that timetable, sped it up and moved everything forward so that now she was down to last things whether she liked it or not.

There would be the dinner. The snow would melt.

Then she’d have to follow the Stepan lead and vanish into the unknown where no one, not even Luce, could follow. Where she would be entirely alone.

Urgency sparked. Desperation sizzled. ‘I don’t want to go.’ The confession came out in a rush. Those were dangerous words. She was putting herself above the mission. The longer she stayed, the harder it was to keep her word to the earl.

‘Then stay. As long as you like. We can have all winter.’ Luce’s voice was a low, seductive whisper, his words imbued with temptation followed by simple logic. ‘We have nowhere to be.’

He believed that because she’d allowed him to believe it, because she’d lied to him and withheld from him. Her secrets were becoming a drumbeat in her head, one that was increasingly harder to quell.

‘You have to find a wife,’ she whispered the reminder. They both had somewhere to be. The only difference was that he’d been honest about it.

‘I’m not asking for for ever, Wren. I am just asking for now,’ he made the argument.

For a little while, the fantasy could be theirs. They could choose each other for a short time and the rest, secrets and all, be damned. For a little while, the fantasy would be safe enough.

‘Yes.’ She breathed the word, already out of her chair.

Already moving towards him, before the rest of the words left her mouth before logic could change her mind.

‘I’ll stay. For a little while.’ In his house, in his life and in his arms for as long as she could.

Before she had to leave. Before he learned the truth about her mission.

Before he realised she’d withheld information shortly after promising not to.

Before he despised her. Before that dismal ending, there would be a passionate memory to take into the unknown and to hold against the lonely nights to come.

His mouth was on hers, his kiss hard and hungry, sealing their choice, temporarily silencing the traitorous tattoo in her head.

She was not the only one spurred on by desperation and urgency.

He understood the rules, too. Understood that this spark between them was a rare, precious flame that could burn bright for only a short time like a comet making a once-in-a-lifetime-appearance.

Now that they’d decided on this path, there was no reason to defer pleasure and every reason to pursue it. Time was fleeting, passion ephemeral.

She tugged at his jacket, shoving it from his shoulders with deft hands that had suddenly become clumsy with haste.

A haste to feed the fire, to be consumed by the heat of its blaze, to give over to it and see where it led.

What was about to happen between them would be heady and explosive, powerful and profound in its promise to fulfil and to overwhelm.

She cursed as her fingers fumbled with his waistcoat buttons. ‘Men wear too many damn clothes.’