Page 14 of What A Rogue Wants (Lords Of Deception #1)

“To me and to each other. Do you see the way the ‘y’ loops around to touch the ‘l’ then back to meet the end of the ‘y’? The word was engraved to form a perfect circle that symbolizes the unending trusts between me and my spies. Each ring has a different word engraved in it. Can’t have anyone linking the rings together.

Your father’s ring says trust. But the words are also looped to form a connection. ”

“Spies?” Grey clamped his mouth shut the second he realized it was hanging open.

“Of course. How do you think we stay so powerful? Kings must make luck, Grey, and always be six steps ahead of everyone else. My spies are my luck—each a step that keeps me on the throne. One of them has been killed. And now I need another.”

Astonishment was too weak a word for what Grey was feeling. “And you are asking me ?”

“Were your father and brother wrong about you? You seem surprised.”

By God he was surprised. His father must feel something akin to warmness for him to recommend him to the king.

Shame swept through him like a raging fever.

He clenched his teeth together on the need to confess the ass he had been for the last fifteen years.

A thirty-year-old self-indulgent bastard didn’t deserve to be a spy for the king.

But, by damned, he wanted this. He would become a spy.

Hell, he would devote his entire life to being a spy.

And then maybe he would earn his father’s love and respect.

He paused. It had been years since he’d admitted to himself he wanted those things.

The king smiled at him. “Your eyes give me your answer. Put on the ring and say the vow.”

He quickly did as he was told, and once the words of loyalty were spoken, and he was dismissed to spend this one day as he wished, he knew exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to find Madelaine and make a fresh start. Maybe they could take a stroll or a ride through the park.

He wanted to get to know her not as the man he had been, but as the man he wanted to be—no longer an unrepentant rake but a man of honor like his brother and father.

It took him a good hour to find Lady Madelaine, but it was worth the effort and the coin he had to part with to get her lady’s maid to reveal that Lady Madelaine had slipped out of the castle to collect some flowers as a surprise for the queen.

Grey snorted at the thought. There weren’t any flowers in bloom this time of year, and the maid had said Lady Madelaine was carrying something wrapped in a cape.

He suspected she’d slipped away to get in some target practice with her bow and arrow, and when he spotted her close to the woods and hidden by several tall trees from the view of anyone who chanced to look out the castle window his suspicion was confirmed.

He started to make his way toward her, but stopped as she drew up her bow and arrow and aimed at a distant tree she’d placed a circular target on.

He didn’t want to startle her or throw off her aim with his approach.

By the look of concentration on her face, and from what he’d already seen of her archery skill, she took her practice seriously.

He leaned against a tree to watch her. She pulled her bow taut, moved her face into and away from the wind, and shifted her stance.

Desire made him shift his own position. She fascinated him.

He’d never seen a look of such determination on a woman’s face unless she was determined to trap a man into marriage.

Lady Madelaine wanted marriage, an admission by her own lips.

He should be avoiding her at all cost yet he was here.

What would marriage to her be like? He’d never considered marring anyone.

A lady to tumble for pleasure and to annoy his father with scandal was the closest he’d ever linked himself with any woman.

He knelt down by the tree no longer wanting to approach her.

What better way to learn the real her than to watch her.

Her guard would be down. Every time she smiled, he smiled.

Her exclaims of frustration made him laugh.

But the way she threw her arms over her head in triumph when she made a good shot was the best part of watching her.

She was beautiful, and his lust was stirred. Yet something else was awakened.

He’d been stirred to lust many times in his life.

It was her uniqueness that he found compelling.

She cared for things women were not supposed to.

She loved these things so much she’d chanced sneaking away and incurring the queen’s ire or worse.

Lady Madelaine was going to have a deuced hard time with the marriage she was seeking if her future husband minded a wife who wasn’t the typical female most men seemed to want.

Most men, except him. He smiled and frowned in turn, but a stick breaking beside him interrupted his musings. He reached for his dagger and glanced up at the shadowy figure above him.

As he shielded his eyes from the sun’s glare, Gravenhurst dropped to his haunches. “Spying?” he said, looking between Madelaine and Grey.

“Something like that.” Grey shifted uncomfortably at being caught, Gravenhurst’s knowing smirk, and his friend’s choice of words. Gravenhurst had been the one person Grey had ever confided anything in, and it seemed strange not to be able to tell his friend about becoming a spy for the king.

“Are you working out a plan of attack?” Gravenhurst asked.

“Not exactly.” Grey watched Madelaine draw another arrow. He quickly told Gravenhurst of his encounter with Lady Madelaine and Thorton, and their enlightening conversation afterward.

Gravenhurst chuckled. “I’d say that’s the worst misjudging of a lady you’ve ever done.”

“I’ve never misjudged what a lady wants, until now.”

“And misjudging her makes you smile?”

Did it? Grey quickly wiped the smile from his face once he realized Gravenhurst was correct.

“Who do you think she’s imagining she’s shooting?” Gravenhurst sat on the ground and crossed his legs out in front of him.

Grey ran a hand over the stubble on his face. “Could be me or Thorton. It’s hard to say.”

“Take heart, Grey. Your character may be tarnished in her mind, but I doubt she thinks you a bloody bastard, which is undoubtedly how she thinks of Thorton.”

“You’re helpful as always,” Grey said, irritated his time alone to study her was being interrupted. “Why are you here anyway? Bored?”

“I came to find you.”

“And you have. Spit it out and be gone.”

“I’m under the king’s orders.” Gravenhurst swatted at a bee buzzing around his face.

The sun glinted off his ring. Grey frowned, followed the path of his friend’s hand and hissed low as he counted the six stones he’d never paid heed to before.

He stared at the man he’d considered like another brother for as long as he could remember.

He thought he knew Gravenhurst as well as he knew himself, but doubt now bombarded him. What did he really know of anyone?

What was certain and what was fabrication?

Gravenhurst’s parents had died when he was very young, and he’d been raised by an uncaring, distant relative who’d let Gravenhurst come and go as he pleased.

His friend had spent more time at Grey’s house than his own, and Grey had not even minded when Gravenhurst and Edward had become good friends as well.

Grey had been glad that Gravenhurst had someone else who cared about his welfare. These were facts.

Gravenhurst was gone a good many months out of the year.

Another fact. He claimed he loved to travel and he would rather do it when he was young, in good health, and unencumbered by a wife who wouldn’t be able to endure the adventures he went on.

This was likely fabrication. Gravenhurst had never once asked Grey to go on one of his trips with him, and now that Grey cast his mind back, he was certain his friend had been gone many of the same times Edward or Father were gone.

He swallowed a knot of astonishment. “You work for the king.”

Gravenhurst slapped Grey on the shoulder. “That I do, my friend. And not, mind you, as an equerry.”

“You bloody bastard. Why didn’t you tell me?” His words came out on an exhalation.

“I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t able to. Just as you will never be able to talk of what you do with anyone but the king or one of the other five spies who are part of our circle. I took a vow to keep the secret, just as you have. You cannot be angry with me for that.”

“I’m not angry, just shocked at the discovery. How long have you worked for the king?”

“Since I was twenty-one.”

Grey whistled. “Eleven years. They recruited you young.”

“Come on. We’ll talk as we walk.”

“Walk?”

Gravenhurst nodded toward Lady Madelaine. “Either we move or the lady catches us here.”

Grey scrambled to his feet and followed Gravenhurst back toward the castle. “There’s much to accomplish in the next couple of weeks,” Gravenhurst said. “The king wants me to prepare you to track down Sutton’s killer with me.”

“Sutton was a spy, and he was killed?”

“Yes. He was captured while on a mission in France with Stratmore several months ago. And our contact in France confirms Sutton was killed by De La Touche.”

“Stratmore is a spy? Lady Madelaine’s father?”

“Try to keep up, Grey.”

“I’m keeping up, damn it. That doesn’t mean I’m not surprised. Who is De La Touche?”

“Napoleon’s most favored spy. And his deadliest one. Mostly we spies have a code. We lie, we cheat, we steal, but normally we don’t kill, unless absolutely necessary.”

Grey nodded, but his mind reeled. Stratmore a spy.

Pearson a spy. And Grey’s father had killed men.

His brother? How little he really knew about his own family.

The shame of all the jealousy he had felt swept through him again.

He’d assumed so much about his father, and it was all wrong.

“I take it this man De La Touche does not abide by the spy code of conduct.”

“No. He doesn’t. In the last five years, he’s killed two of our spies. Sutton makes number three.”

Grey walked into the courtyard of the castle and stopped.

He glanced back and waited until Lady Madelaine came into view.

All this talk of killing made him want to ensure she got into the castle safely, though he knew she was safe here.

She trudged toward the castle, her sluggish steps making it obvious she didn’t want to return to her mundane duties as a lady-in-waiting.

A smile tugged at his lips. Poor dove. He understood her reluctance.

He watched her for a moment, before refocusing on Gravenhurst. “How can you be certain Sutton is dead?”

“Our contact has never been wrong. Besides that, he identified Sutton’s body and retrieved his ring, which you are now wearing.”

Revulsion swept through Grey. He had to force himself not to yank off the dead man’s ring. It was only a ring. It wasn’t as if he’d killed the man for it. But damnation, he was bothered knowing his chance to be a spy had come from a man’s death.

Gravenhurst clasped Grey’s shoulder. “Don’t dwell on it. I don’t dwell on the man I replaced. Sorry I had to lie. But I couldn’t very well tell you one of the king’s personal spies was killed and you had been tapped to replace the fallen man.”

“No, I don’t suppose you could. Why did my father recommend me now? After all these years? I had thought, when the king told me the news yesterday, that Father might have been waiting for me to mature, but if you were chosen so young, why me now?”

“You’ll have to ask your father to be certain.

I was a perfect candidate though. Orphaned young.

No living close relatives. No wish to ever marry or have children.

And you? I can only speculate, but I imagine your father wanted to keep at least one son out of harm’s way.

But bloody fool that you are, you thrust yourself into danger daily.

Might as well be doing it for a noble cause. ”

A sense of need swelled inside him. He would make his father proud. He’d not acknowledged the desire to want to in many years, but now he could. He was facing all sorts of buried demons today. “Why hasn’t anyone tracked De La Touche down before now?”

“We have, but he got away from us. Sutton was the lead for tracking him down, but now Sutton is gone.”

“Am I to be the one to hunt De La Touche?”

“No. You’re to help me. Once our contacts trace De La Touche’s new hiding place we’ll go together. You’ll be my backup.”

“Excellent. I’m ready.”

Gravenhurst chuckled. “You’re not even close to ready, my friend. But when I’m through with you, you will be.”