Page 42 of A Perilous Passion

“And I’m telling you, I’ll be careful. I didn’t meet a soul coming here.”

“Not the point!” he bit out.

“Why?” She threw out her hands in frustration. “Is there something more to your operation than just catching smugglers? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

He fixed her with a stare so grim she flinched away.

“On the contrary, Miss Allston,” he said stonily. “I rather think there’s something you’re not telling me.”

Chapter Eighteen

When Charlotte didn’t immediately respond, just stared at him with those great hazel eyes of hers, Rafe hoped desperately that Corporal Triggs had been wrong about her identity.

He wanted her to be innocent.

He needed her to be innocent.

“You’re supposed to be a spy,” she said loftily. “I thought you knew everything, my lord.”

Cheeky chit.

He should ask her about Essex. And demand she tell him who her father was. Not knowing was eating him up inside.

“I don’t believe you’ve been honest with me, Charlotte. How can I trust you when you don’t tell me everything I ought to know?”

She put her hands on her hips. Distracting him. Lord, what fine curves she had!

He shook the thought away and fixed his gaze back on her face.

Was it his imagination, or had she gone pale?

“I assumed,” she said, “since you’ve delved deep enough to discover my scandalous elopement, that you’d found out all you wanted to know about me. What else is there? What dastardly things can a nineteen-year-old woman have done in her brief lifetime to discomfit an earl?”

She had a point. All he had was the hearsay of a single man, eyewitness though he may be. Even if Triggs’s suspicion wasn’t a case of mistaken identity, it didn’t prove Charlotte had been involved in, or even knew about, her father’s illegal dealings. He needed positive proof before condemning her.

“Sit down,” he ordered. “I’ve some questions for you.”

Folding her dignity about her like a cloak, she sat opposite his desk. Feeling very much the inquisitor, he took his place behind it.

“What do you know of the smugglers hereabouts?”

She looked genuinely surprised. “Nothing, save that you want to round them up. And that they’ve been using a cave off the beach. Have you explored it more thoroughly yet?”

He raised a hand. “I’m asking the questions, remember?”

“Of course.” She looked so like a schoolgirl attending to her lessons, he almost smiled. How could anyone think she had a shameful past? She appeared innocence itself.

But looks could be deceiving.

“Nothing else?” he persisted. “No names, no suspicions?”

“No. You know I’d help you if I could.”

“Have you told anyone about my assignment?”

Again, that look of wide-eyed innocence. “Of course not! You were most emphatic we should stay silent.”

He pressed his fingers together and stared down at a scratch on his desk. This was probably the truth. If she’d been in league with the local free traders, a knife between the ribs would have sent him to an early grave by now.