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Reserving any further judgment on Merchant, Sinclair moved to the next name on the list: Quentin Crawley.

Well, Quentin certainly traveled about enough to qualify.

But a smile tugged at Sinclair’s lips. He did not often trust merely his intuition, but he would be astonished if Crawley turned out to be the one he sought.

As Mrs. Varens had pointed out, Quentin very much enjoyed ‘playing spy,’ but to involve himself in any real danger, the precarious position of being a counteragent-Sinclair doubted that Crawley possessed the steady nerves such a deception would require.

On the other hand, Sinclair thought, his gaze resting on the last name, there was Isabelle Varens herself, cool, sophisticated, obviously intelligent.

Sinclair did not doubt that Isabelle had the courage to take such a risk.

One didn’t earn a sobriquet like Avenging Angel from one’s peers for being a timid soul.

And Isabelle traveled freely on both sides of the channel.

She had balked at the notion of working with Sinclair, declaring her intention of telling Merchant he must make other arrangements.

That, of course, Sinclair did not intend to let happen.

Isabelle could have been genuinely angry about the kiss, or she could have a more sinister motive.

It would not be easy for her to contact Napoleon with Sinclair tagging after her.

Thus far, of all the names on the list, she seemed most likely to be Bonaparte’s spy.

Sinclair dipped his quill pen into the ink-pot and underscored her name with a thick line, only to frown and follow it up with a question mark.

He kept remembering how soft and enticing she had felt in his arms, how warm and sweet her lips.

Yet he had had no business attempting to kiss her.

He felt almost grateful that she had slapped him, bringing him to his senses.

He knew some men might consider seduction a good method for gaining information, but Sinclair had his own code.

He did not bed women in order to learn their secrets and then betray them.

In truth, he had not been thinking of information at all when he had held Isabelle, only the flaring of his own desire.

That disturbed Sinclair more than anything else.

He was no saint by any means. He had a keen appreciation for beautiful women, but he had always known how to check his passions until the appropriate place and time.

What was it about Isabelle Varens that overrode his natural caution?

Beautiful, she certainly was, but he had known many beautiful women before.

Perhaps it was Isabelle’s more elusive qualities.

An aura of mystery seemed to cling to her, her fine sculpted features touched by a deep sadness even when she smiled.

When he had asked about her husband, he had seen the haunted expression in her eyes, as though some specter from her past had risen to torment her.

Sinclair rarely felt protective impulses toward women, but he had had an astonishing urge to cradle Isabelle Varens against him, lay all her ghosts to rest.

A loud clatter from the region of the fireplace disrupted his wandering thoughts. Startled, he glanced up, having all but forgotten his brother’s presence in the room. Charles, in the act of removing his boots, had accidently kicked up against the fire irons.

“Sorry,” Charles muttered. “Are you nearly finished, Sinclair?”

“Another minute or two,” Sinclair said with a grimace. Chuff never could sit still for more than five minutes at a time.

Sinclair set the list aside and dragged his attention back to Colonel Darlington’s letter.

“This will be your last contact with headquarters. All further information will be provided to you by our agent in Paris. From this time on, I advise no further communication with your family, especially your father.”

A wry chuckle escaped Sinclair.

Charles was warming his stockinged feet by the fire. But he paused to peer round the side of his chair at Sinclair. “I never knew old Darlington was given to cracking jests.”

“An unintentional one,” Sinclair said. “He tells me not to communicate with Father. Apparently he doesn’t heed the gossip in the officers’ mess or he would know that the general and I have not been communicating for years.”

Charles looked unhappy and cleared his throat. “You know, Sinclair, that if there was any message you wished to send him, I have a few days’ leave coming. I will be seeing Father ….” Charles’s words trailed off and he seemed to be holding his breath, awaiting Sinclair’s reply.

An unendearing image of General Daniel Carr rose to Sinclair’s mind—a ramrod-stiff bearing, steel-gray hair, and cold green eyes.

A handsome man despite his advancing years, Daniel Carr’s features were so rigid, he might well have been an effigy carved from stone.

Sometimes, when glancing into a mirror, Sinclair wondered if he would look like his father in thirty years’ time. The thought scared all hell out of him.

“You can give the general a message for me,” he said. “Tell him I’ve changed my name to Carrington, that he can stop worrying that I will drag the illustrious name of Carr into the gutters.”

Charles heaved a disappointed sigh. “I suppose I cannot blame you for your attitude. Father was completely unfair. He despises intelligence work, yet he never hesitates to use the information spies provide when drawing up battle plans.”

“Spying is a necessary evil,” Sinclair said, imitating his father’s gruff, stentorian tones.

“But dirty work, not fit for a gentleman. Let someone else’s son do it!

” Sinclair concluded his impersonation by banging his fist upon the desk.

Shrugging his shoulders, he forced a laugh.

He had given over trying to please his father a long time ago.

The old man had been outraged when he discovered Sinclair had traded his cavalry commission to become part of army intelligence.

General Carr had used his considerable influence to get the appointment canceled.

Sinclair had retaliated by resigning from the army altogether, thus becoming the first Carr male in five generations who would not go to his grave wearing regimentals.

He continued to work for the army as a civilian spy and had not spoken to or seen his father since. That had been over five years ago.

Sinclair blocked his father out of his thoughts except for the times such as this, when Charles made a feeble attempt to effect a reconciliation.

“The general is not such a bad old fellow,” Charles ventured. “He has always treated me quite decently.”

Sinclair rocked back in his chair, regarding his guileless younger brother with an amused smile.

“That is because you always do exactly what he wants, Chuff.”

Charles stiffened defensively. “But I like being in the cavalry.”

“I am glad that you do.” Sinclair spared his brother’s feelings, although sorely tempted to point out that Charles would have liked whatever the old man told him to like.

Sinclair was fond of his younger brother, but he knew that Charles was weak-willed, easily led just like Sinclair’s mother and two sisters.

“I will admit the general can be a proper martinet when crossed,” Charles continued. “But you’ve always defied him ever since I can remember. I often wondered how you dared.”

“My philosophy has been the same with Father as it is with the rest of the world. You can do what everyone else thinks you should and be miserable. Or you can please yourself and let them all curse you. Then someday when you’re an old man, at least you’re not likely to have regrets about the way you’ve lived your life. ”

Charles looked troubled. “And don’t you ever have any regrets, Sinclair?”

It was a strangely perceptive question to come from Chuff, almost too perceptive. Sinclair got abruptly to his feet, dismissing the question with a laugh.

“I’m not an old man yet, even though I know I must seem like a graybeard to you. Ask me your question again twenty years hence.”

He crossed the room, scooped up his brother’s boots, and thrust them at Charles. “Get these back on. I assume you came here by stage. I want to make sure you are on the next one going out before Darlington finds out about this outrageous stunt you and your friend Tobias have pulled.”

Reluctantly Charles took the boots and began to struggle into them. “Aye, I shouldn’t like to land Toby in the suds. He’s a good fellow.”

But obviously not possessed of the secretive nature required for intelligence work, Sinclair thought.

“I expect Darlington will ask Toby if there was any return message,” Charles said.

“Have Toby tell the colonel that when I have anything to report, I will send it through the usual channels.” Sinclair laid pointed emphasis on the last words. “He can also say that I have met the Varens woman.”

Something in Sinclair’s tone of voice must have alerted Charles, for he glanced up sharply, red-faced from his exertion in donning the boots.

“Oho! A woman is it? Up to mischief again, I daresay.”

“My dear Chuff.” Sinclair regarded his brother with wearied patience. “Where do you come by this notion that I carry every female that I meet off to my bed?”

“Because you do. At least, all the pretty ones.”

Sinclair grimaced. Charles would be astonished to learn that over half of the conquests attributed to Sinclair were the result of barracks-room gossip and Sinclair’s own boastful attitude as a youth.

Sinclair admitted to a certain amount of flirtation with the ladies, because he had discovered that flirting always kept affairs from drawing too near the heart.

Becoming too serious about any relationship was one more set of shackles Sinclair had managed to avoid.

Choosing not to reply to his brother’s comment, Sinclair fetched Charles’s still damp coat from the peg.

Charles stood up slowly. “This has turned out to be a rather short visit,” he said in forlorn accents.

“Bad timing, old fellow. In a few months, when this work is done, I’ll look you up and we’ll spend a night carousing and scouring the streets for wicked women.”

Sinclair’s words coaxed a faint smile from Charles, but as he helped Charles into his coat, the young man sighed. “I suppose you won’t be slipping to Norfolk to see Mother anytime soon, either.”

“Regrettably, no. You must give her and the girls my love.” The girls?

Sinclair rolled his eyes at his own choice of words.

His sisters were older than himself, spinsters both of them because none of their suitors had ever measured up to the general’s exacting standards.

Eleanor and Louise had been pretty enough in their youth, soft and blond like Sinclair’s mother, like Charles.

It was rather ironic, Sinclair thought, that it was himself, the wayward son, who was the only Carr to bear a strong physical resemblance to the general.

Even after Charles pulled his cloak around him, he attempted to linger. Sinclair took his brother by the arm and guided him inexorably toward the door.

“Mother will be terribly disappointed to hear you can’t come home for so long,” Charles said.

“Can’t be helped.” Sinclair felt ashamed of himself for sounding so cheerful.

Although he did occasionally slip home to see his mother when he knew the general would be gone, the visits were more penance than pleasure.

His mother invariably began crying over his disreputable life, then his sisters would join in.

Weeping females always made Sinclair uncomfortable.

They generally could never find their own handkerchiefs and ended by snuffling against the shoulder of one’s favorite frock coat.

As Sinclair maneuvered his brother to the door, for one moment he had the horrible fear that even Charles meant to burst into tears. But although Charles looked pale, he managed to smile as he held out his hand.

“I suppose this is good-bye then,” Charles said. “Dammit, Sinclair. I hate seeing you go off on these things. It would be far easier to watch you charge a row of blazing cannons than this affair where you won’t even know who your enemy is. I have a very bad feeling about this assignment of yours.”

Charles caught Sinclair’s fingers in a hard clasp.

The gesture triggered a memory in Sinclair, his father barking at Chuff not to be a puling babe, that Charles didn’t need a candle to find his way to the nursery.

The general’s orders bedamned—Sinclair had always let his brother clasp his hand, guiding Chuff up the dark stairs to his little bed.

Although much moved by Charles’s concern, Sinclair tried to shrug it off. “Are you turning fortuneteller, Chuff?”

“It is nothing to make jests about. I keep having these horrible visions of you lying somewhere dead with a knife stuck in your back.”

Sinclair had had the same premonition himself more than once—that he would end his life in just such a fashion, dying alone in some dismal set of lodgings like these. But he gave Charles’s hand a reassuring squeeze before pulling away.

“I will watch my back,” Sinclair promised. “And you take care of yourself, young scapegrace. After all, you’re the only one of my relatives I can tolerate for more than ten minutes at a time.”

He clapped Charles on the back, keeping their final farewell light. But as soon as he saw Charles out the door, the grin faded from Sinclair’s lips. He found himself doing something he had never done before.

Striding to the window, he brushed back the lace curtain and peered through the dirty panes.

He watched Charles trudge down the cobbled street until he lost sight of Chuff’s stocky form in the rumble of carriages and other pedestrians scurrying along the walkway.

It was almost as though he never expected to see Charles again.

Sinclair let the curtain fall, stepping back from the window. What was wrong with him? He was letting his brother’s dark fears color his own mood.

“What an old woman you’re getting to be, Carrington,” Sinclair muttered. But he was forced to admit that he too carried an inexplicable apprehension about this latest assignment. Yet he had taken far greater risks in his life. What made this time so different?

Maybe it was the woman, Sinclair thought, his mind once more envisioning Isabelle Varens’s gold hair and all too seductive curves.

A woman like that could be a man’s undoing.

Sinclair had seen it happen to others of his sex many times, but he had always guarded his own heart too well. Maybe he was long overdue for a fall.