Page 68 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

“That would be lovely, C-Caro,” Fanny managed to say around the lump that had formed in her throat. Of all the adventures and excitement she had imagined would surround her first mission, she had certainly never imagined finding a friend.

Or a lover. Fitz’s fingertips resting lightly against her waist were warm, even through the layers of her dress and pelisse. With a bow of his head to the duke and duchess, he directed Fanny out the door and down the stairs, pausing to speak with Geoffrey to relay the duke’s instructions before escorting her from the house. Whatever fragments of a servant’s demeanor he had managed to piece together, he had now shed entirely, as he walked beside her, with his hand beneath her elbow. Once it would have seemed to her a sign of possessiveness. Now she understood it could also be a gesture of support.

He would have pointed their steps toward German Place, but Fanny paused beside the iron paling that separated them from the strand and stood looking over the water. She couldn’t honestly say she would miss the seaside, but she was more than a little apprehensive about what awaited her in London, Caro’s offer notwithstanding. Would she be expected to return to the Underground and resume the dull, matronly part she’d been playing for the past year? Was another future even possible?

She glanced over her shoulder and found Fitz with his eyes closed and his face tipped toward the weak sunlight. He put her in mind of a lion, his posture of drowsy ease disguising something dangerous.

But that wasn’t really fair to him. The greatest danger lay within her, in her attraction to him. Because just as she’d told him, if she gave in to it, she feared she would find herself trapped for sure.

“Did you mean it?” she began abruptly. “Last night, when you hinted that you might propose to me?”

His eyes popped open, but he didn’t immediately look down at her. “Honestly? I’m not sure.”

Why did those words make her chest ache? She hadn’t wanted a proposal from him. And yet…

“I understand why you would be reluctant to rush into marriage again.” He wrapped one hand around a fence post. “And I—well, I didn’t exactly grow up with an excellent model for how to be a husband.” When his knuckles whitened, she reached out to lay her fingers over them. “Or a father.”

“I can’t have children.” She pushed the whispered words past her lips in a rush, not even sure why she needed him to know.

“Can’t?” he echoed, sounding dubious. “If you did not conceive during your marriage, the problem might just as easily have been Drummond’s.”

“Oh.” Heat rushed into her cheeks. “I…I hadn’t considered that.”

“Not that it matters, either way,” he insisted, at last turning his face to hers. “I like children well enough, but it can’t have escaped your notice that I haven’t a fancy title to pass along, like Hartwell. I only have a pretty little stone manor house that I inherited when my father died.” His gaze drifted past her. “I really ought to sell it. I don’t see myself settling down in the country.”

With her first finger, she began to connect the scattering of freckles on the back of his hand. “Never?”

He shrugged. “I like my work.”

“I like your work too,” she confessed after a moment. “That’s strange, isn’t it? For a woman?”

“Why?” He frowned. “Why shouldn’t you like a bit of excitement? Why shouldn’t you want to use your talents to help defeat the French? You’ve got the makings of a first-rate agent, Fanny. You can get people to open up to you, tell you their secrets. You’re quick thinking and tenacious. You’re brave.”

“Thank you. But I doubt General Scott or Colonel Millrose will see it that way.”

“You do them a disservice, Fan. Neither of them is what you might call conventional. If they were, what sort of intelligence operation would we have? If they were, you wouldn’t be here now.”

“These were extraordinary circumstances. That doesn’t mean they’ll be willing to send a woman—me—out into the field again.”

Fitz fell silent for a moment. The air around them was punctuated by birdsong, snippets of conversation from the people walking along the Marine Parade, the clop of horses’ hooves. Those sharper notes were rounded out by a deeper tone, the constant, low rumble of the water. “I predict they will see the value of having a lady spy,” he said at last. “But it’s true that I don’t think they will want you going about on assignment all on your own.”

“You mean, they would send an officer to accompany me?” She tried to tamp down the hope that rose into her chest. “Disguised as my manservant, or perhaps my cousin?” she asked, echoing General Scott’s suggestion.

“Maybe even your betrothed.” Fitz had said as much once before, and though he smiled as he spoke, there was something else hidden in his expression.

She slid her hand over his, up his arm to his shoulder, where she made a project of pretending to dust away some imaginary lint. “Would I get to choose my partner, do you suppose?”

At the word partner, he turned his whole body toward her, so that her palm came to rest against his chest, an increasingly familiar posture—caught between warning him away and drawing him close.

“I don’t know what to do, Fitz. I meant what I said last night—I can’t go back to who I was before. I want something else, something more out of life. But I also want you.” Heat prickled in her cheeks, but she made herself hold his gaze. “I want you to keep that promise you made the other day. A dozen more times, wasn’t it? And I want—I want you to teach me how to return the favor.”

She felt rather than heard the growl that rumbled through him. “God, Fanny. If we were back in German Place, I’d—”

“I know. That’s why I wanted to have this conversation here.” Though, given the molten steel of his eyes, she wasn’t sure even this place was quite public enough to keep him from kissing her senseless. “If General Scott finds out we’re lovers, you know what he’ll do.”

“I suspect he’d make another tally mark on his list of matches, don’t you? But maybe he won’t figure it out.”

She cocked a skeptical brow. “Be serious. And if anyone else finds out, there’ll be a scandal.”