Page 27 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

Sunset was streaking the sky over the channel when he arrived, but all was dark by the time he opened the door to Fanny’s sitting room and slipped inside. She must already have retired, though the hour was not that late. He tried to tamp down the surge of disappointment that passed through him. He had no urgent news, after all.

And then a single word—“Well?”—came from the shadows.

He followed that sound to the corner of the room and then waited as she lit a candle. Its flame illuminated only a quarter of the small room, but it was more than enough light to reveal the worry in her face.

“I’ve just dropped off a whole crate of papers and ledgers and such at Royal Crescent,” he said, stepping closer. “A present from the duke’s solicitor. Mrs. Horn says the footman who was taken ill is much improved, just a bit of a headache now, and the duchess is resting peacefully.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” The flickering light might have disguised the skepticism in her expression, but he could hear it plainly in her voice. “His Grace tossed me out on my ear.” On her lips, the honorific became an insult. “Shortly after you left.”

“Mrs. Horn says he sat with her all day himself,” he tried to reassure her. “She seemed quite touched by his show of devotion.”

“Devotion?” Fanny scoffed, unfolding the leg that had been curled beneath her and standing. “A few hours hardly make up for years of neglect. For all we know, he poisoned her.”

“Do you really believe he’s capable of that?” Fitz asked, astonished.

“There’s very little I wouldn’t believe of one of Scott’s men.”

“Is that what you think of us—of me?”

For answer, she carried the candlestick to the nearby mantel and touched the candle’s flame to the wick of another. By that doubled light, he could make out the details of the small sitting room. The rose-patterned wallpaper. The aubergine velvet chaise longue on which she had been reclining. A small table beside it, and on its polished surface, a book lying open, facedown. A history of Brighton—he knew that much from having carried the thing home from the circulating library. He wondered whether she’d put it aside reluctantly, only as the light faded, or given up early on.

“My husband was devoted too. Devoted to his work. To keeping up appearances. To making sure I knew my place.” Her voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “Do you know why I’ve spent more than a year in the Underground?”

“Colonel Millrose told some of the men it was because you knew something you shouldn’t, that your Captain Drummond let slip…”

Even as he spoke the words, he recognized their hollow sound. Of course there must be married officers who shared more than was wise with their wives, in part because they couldn’t bring themselves to keep secrets from the women they loved.

Fitz had never met Drummond, but from what Fanny had just said, her husband hadn’t been the sort.

His gaze fell once more on the book, and he recalled what Fanny had told the Duchess of Hartwell outside the circulating library just the day before. How her husband had denied her even the simple pleasure of reading novels.

Confirming his sudden understanding of the situation, Fanny shook her head. “No. It wasn’t a slip. It was a trap. You see, on what turned out to be his final assignment, he was partnered with the Magpie,” she explained, using the code name given to Major Langley Stanhope for his ability to mimic voices. “Robert and I had half of a house in Marylebone. Magpie was always popping in and out with an update on the mission, but equally ready to talk with me about things my husband believed a woman incapable of understanding. Weighty matters. News of the day. Politics.

“Robert disapproved of our…friendship, I suppose you might have called it. It was certainly never anything more, despite what my husband imagined. But his jealousy got the better of him. One day, he—he told me something about their assignment. Something I had no business knowing. I think he assumed I would say Major Stanhope had already revealed as much, and his suspicions about us would be confirmed. Only Magpie would never have done something so foolish. So dangerous.” Her gaze was focused on the floor, but her thoughts were considerably further away. “Robert must have realized right away the mistake he’d made, though he tried to pass it off as nothing. And it might have been…until he died. Afterward, when Colonel Millrose questioned me, I proved Robert right,” she said, snapping her attention back to Fitz with a stilted, humorless smile. “I was too naïve to keep quiet. I made it clear I knew more than I ought. So, down into the Underground I went.”

“My God.” She had been married for years to a man who held her at arm’s length, who seemed to have imagined this curious and clever woman incapable of serious thought. And when he died, that man’s compatriots had—without irony—all but imprisoned her for knowing too much. “They only wanted to keep you safe,” Fitz murmured consolingly, stepping closer still, hands outstretched as if to grasp hers.

“Safe? Safe from what?” She rounded on him, and he dropped his arms to his sides. “The knowledge of what men are willing to do to acquire secrets? What they must sometimes endure to keep them?” Her pale eyes scoured his face, as if searching for the shadow of bruises there, the memory of what the French agents had done to him while he’d been their prisoner. He could not quite read her expression.

“Hartwell suspects,” he told her, hoping to convey the seriousness of their present situation. “Who we are. Why we’re here.”

“Let him suspect all he wants,” she retorted flatly. “I won’t stand by and see Caro—the duchess—sacrificed to this ridiculous game.”

The venom she laid on that word, game.… Was she trying to make him defensive? If he argued with her, it would only confirm in her mind that he was just like all the rest.

But she must have at least a hint of doubt, or else she would not require confirmation. Perhaps she had not quite made up her mind about him?

“Fanny,” he ventured. Her eyes flared, but she did not protest the familiarity. “I don’t intend to stand in your way. But I—I also care for you. A great deal. Enough to want to make sure you aren’t hurt.”

A flush of color brightened her cheeks, as if she were not quite indifferent to his concern. “I have to do this, Fitz. I have to prove that I’m more than a glorified housekeeper. More than an ornament.”

Her cool beauty had the effect of making her seem untouchable, something altogether too delicate for a man’s rough hands. But in this moment, beneath the warm glow of the candles, he saw only the beautiful fierceness of her determination, and he ached to reach out to her.

“Prove to whom?” he asked. “Not to me.”

“To myself.”

He could only nod his understanding, though he knew too well what she felt. Hadn’t he joined the army to prove himself a better man than the one with whom he shared his name? “Then you must go on being a friend to the duchess, no matter what the duke says or does. Together, we’ll figure out whose side Hartwell is on.”