Page 29 of Mistress of Sins

“I play a merchant so that I might travel freely.” He checked the pistols, but his mouth flattened. “Do not ask me more.”

He kept fending off every inquiry she made, as if she were some stranger to him. It was not to be borne.

“I consented to have you kill me if we are caught,” Jennet reminded him. “I woke you in the library. Before that, I gave myself to you in the hot house. I have trusted you, far beyond my better judgment, yet you persist in concealing yourself and your actions from me.” She folded her arms. “I am asking more, sir.”

He set aside the pistols and came to close the door to the bed chamber. “Keep your voice down.”

She hadn’t realized she was almost shouting at him. As he moved toward his ghastly collection of weapons Jennet took hold of his arm to stop him, and stood on her toes to put her mouth next to his ear.

“This is about you, Liam, not me. Since the day you left I have wondered what, exactly, made you do it,” she said in her lowest, sweetest voice. “If nothing more, I have earned the truth. Before either of us flee or die, you will tell me the reason why you left Renwick. Or I will put on your ugly rings and hit you until you do.”

Greystone drew back, walked to the other side of the dressing room, and then returned to her. The look on his face was one of exasperated resignation.

“I am not merely a spy.” He finally met her gaze, his own shuttered. “If you must know, then I will tell you. I serve the crown as an assassin. I am known as the Raven.”

Jennet had thought she could not ever feel as angry as she had after they had made love, and she had struck him in the face. Alas, she had been wrong. “You left me to do this. To become this…this…Raven. So you could go to France, and spy, and kill people.”

“My targets have been dangerous and vicious men who would do their worst to ensure Bonaparte’s victory,” he assured her. “Interrogators, torturers, and the very worst of brutes from the battlefield. I took no pleasure in it, but for every life I have taken, I have saved thousands.”

“That is not the material point here.” She took in a deep breath. “You chose to become an assassin instead of my husband. You did not marry me because of this. Have I got that right?”

Greystone nodded once.

Jennet could not hit him again. She could not scream. She had no poison. She might use one of his blades to stab him in his black heart, but that would leave her alone to face Pickering’s murderers. She glanced around her, seized the basin from the wash stand, and hurled its contents into his face. He stood there, soaked and dripping, streams of water pouring down his cheeks like tears. She saw some shining rivulets streak his chest, and realized the dousing had removed the silver from his hair.

“Do you feel better now?” he muttered.

“I am trapped in this house with a dead man and his killers. I am wearing the shirt of an assassin to whom I gave myself seven years after he fled on our wedding day. Which he did so he could kill the very worst of the French.” Oddly saying it aloud calmed her, and she traced the gleaming marks the dye had left on his skin. “Do you know, I have never felt better in my life.”

* * *

“Keep touching me,” Greystone warned, “and you may revise that opinion.”

If nothing else, Jennet had settled their accounts and satisfied her pride. Now it cost her nothing to slide her hands up the slick, muscular vault of his chest, and link her fingers behind his neck. The movement brought her body against his, and the warmth of him came through the borrowed shirt and spread over her breasts. She could feel his arms coming around her, the new tautness in his limbs, the swelling bulge of his shaft against her belly.

“I am willing to have my mind changed,” Jennet told him.

“There is no time for this,” he said against her hair as he clamped his hands around her waist, as if he meant to push her away. “I know you must despise me for the work I do.”

“You said yourself that we must wait until those men enter the library.” She pressed herself against him. “And I do not despise you. Before he died, my father did the same,” she said, startling him. “I cannot tell you how many men he killed while fighting for England, but I wager there were many. My mother told me that he was an expert marksman with any weapon, and he even taught her how to be a crack shot. Why did you keep all this from me?”

“I never wished you to know the truth.” He drew back, his eyes filled with torment. “I wanted you to see me as the man you loved.”

“Except for this hair dye, you do look remarkably similar to him.” She pressed her lips to his jaw. “Perhaps I should examine more of you to be sure.”

Greystone uttered a muffled groan. “Jenny, please.”

“Or I could simply kiss you breathless and then ravish you, as you did to me in the gardens and the hot house,” Jennet suggested, nudging him back to the bench by the wash stand. “Well, I could not carry you off–”

He covered her mouth with his, stroking her lips apart with his tongue to give her a deep, hungry kiss as she pushed him down to sit on the cushion. Straddling his lap felt as natural as reaching down to release his straining manhood from his trousers. His hands took hold of her waist again, lifting her as he guided his cock between her thighs. When she felt him nudge her quim, she sank down slowly, taking him inside her.

“Ah.” Tucking her knees on either side of his hips, and bracing herself with her hands on his shoulders, Jennet engulfed his thick girth. She glanced down as his hands unfastened the shirt and unlaced her soft stays until he freed her aching breasts. “You have no respect for my modesty, sir.”

“My cock is so deep inside you, Jenny, I can feel you melting around me like hot honey,” Greystone said softly as he put his hands on her mounds, and slowly rubbed them. “I believe I have obliterated your modesty.”

“Good.” She smiled at him. “It has been growing tiresome.”

His touch felt so wonderful she could hardly breathe, and then he brought his mouth to her, and began kissing and licking and sucking at her. Jennet lifted herself from him, and then came down, stroking him with her softness as he ravished her nipples. One of his long, lovely hands stroked down her spine, and then cupped and squeezed the curve of her bottom, making her gasp with excitement.