Page 48 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

“I was sixteen years old when I met then Colonel Scott, and already an accomplished thief. One does what one must to survive,” he added with a slight shrug of something like embarrassment. “Scott put those skills to better uses, taught me new ones. For the first time in my life, the fact that I was half-French was a reason to be valued, not despised.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I ought to have done,” he readily admitted. “That wasn’t fair to you. But it has been the business of my life to collect information, not to share it about. Besides,”—a dry laugh gusted from him—“if you remember, when we met, the war was over.”

A spy. She was married to a spy. “That’s why you’ve traveled to so many places. Why you went to…to France. He sent you.”

His shoulders rose and fell on a surprisingly shaky breath. “I can’t lay the blame for that last trip at Scott’s feet—though the work I ultimately did for him had a hand in keeping me away, it’s true. I left four days after our wedding because I—” As if the next words were sharp in his throat, he swallowed twice before speaking them. “I found myself drawn to you, Caro, in a way I had not expected. Next thing I knew, I would be fancying that I needed you.” The humorless sound with which he punctuated that sentence made it clear how alarming he found such a prospect.

But it also hinted that he had not triumphed over his fancy as fully as he might have wished. “And when you came to me that morning,” he went on, “with that silly book in your hands, I was afraid…afraid you might try to persuade yourself you needed me too. I couldn’t let that happen. Not for your sake. Nor for mine.”

Of all the devastating discoveries of the day, this one might have been the worst: the realization that if Maxim’s soul hadn’t been so scarred by tragedy and torture, they might have built something from those moments, might have had a life together. Instead, all these years later, what did they have? An unexpected attraction, as he’d said, and very little else.

Could this moment be a chance to start again?

His forearm lay propped across his upraised knee, and she reached for his hand, turning it toward her until she could see the red abrasions scoring his palm. Then she laid her hand palm upward in his—her own, similar wound was considerably less stark now, pink and only a little tender. “I suppose after all this time you’ve realized you didn’t—don’t—really need me.”

His fingers curled gently around hers, encircling her hand entirely in his. “My God, Caro,” he whispered. “I’m here. What else must I say?”

She tugged against his grasp, not to free herself, but to encourage him to rise. Together, hand in hand, they walked on.

“Do you know why I came to Brighton?” she asked after a long silence. They were standing shoulder to shoulder now, looking outward. “Because the sea is powerful. And, to anyone with a lick of sense, more than a little terrifying. Like you.”

“You said you weren’t frightened of me.”

“I wasn’t. I’m not.” She looked down the cliff’s face and watched as the water tumbled the fine pebbles, sorting through them like a child, deciding which to toss away and which to keep. “But when you left…then I was frightened. Frightened and very, very angry. I was desperate to free myself from those feelings, to make it seem as if the distance between us was of my own choosing. So, I fled London and came here. I picked Royal Crescent because the houses overlook the water. I thought I could make myself stronger if I forced myself to face it—something I can’t control, something I don’t fully understand. Every day I walked along the water’s edge, careful never to let it touch me. And every day, I very deliberately turned my back on it. Over and over again. I waited for the day when I could at last look with disdain on the people drawn to the sea’s charms, all the while feeling nothing for it myself. Nothing at all.”

He nodded his understanding. “I told myself I should have hoped to find you indifferent when you saw me again.”

“But I wasn’t,” she confessed on a whisper. “I’m not.”

He led her to a narrow set of steps—mere notches in the cliff’s face, really—and down to the strand. Shrugging out of his duster, he made a place for her to sit. Then he tugged off his boots and his stockings. His calves, the only bit of him hidden from her view the day before, were muscular and sprinkled with dark hair.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, a question that became more urgent when he bent and began to unlace her ankle boots.

“You said you’d never set foot in the water in all the time you’ve been here. Shall we try putting a toe in? Together?”

Gripping her lightly by the hands, he led her out. With every step, she wanted to protest. The shingle was uncomfortable on the tender soles of her feet; the water, which rushed to surround her, was freezing. The first time it touched her, she squealed.

But he was the one who’d nearly drowned the day before, and he was already ankle deep. If the water frightened him, he had a very different way of dealing with his fear.

The water swirled and foamed over the tops of her feet, which quickly progressed from cold to numb. But she didn’t retreat. She took a step, and another, until her hems were wet. Now that she’d come this far, she would readily have ventured deeper than was wise. Just as she’d always feared.

She raised her eyes to his face, and something in her expression made him catch his breath.

“You should hate me.”

“I have hated you, sometimes,” she admitted. “Perhaps even often. But hatred is not the opposite of—”

“No.” The single word was firm, unwavering. She did not know whether it indicated agreement with what she had been about to say, or a refusal to hear the word spoken aloud.

Distracted, lost in one another’s gaze, they were both caught off guard by a larger wave that broke around them and soaked them to the knees. He laughed; she joined him, then quickly sobered.

“Does…does all of this”—the spying, yes, but most of all his battered, distrustful heart—“mean you’re bound to leave me again, someday?” she asked.

Urging her back toward dry land, he helped her to sit down before kneeling himself, dried and chafed her icy feet with the hems of his duster, and finally put her shoes on again. “I don’t know if there’s a way for me to make things right.” He did not lift his eyes to her. “But all that’s happened in the last few days has made me more determined than ever to free myself from my past. I’m bound to you, Caro, if you’ll have me.”

She stood unaided. “I still don’t know if I can trust you.”