Passion for the Game

“You should not care about Simon or Eddington. I should not care about Angelica. What we do when we are apart should be of no consequence to any business between us.”

His lips firmed. “I agree that is the way it should be. But that is not the way it is.”

“It was sex between you and me. If we indulge again, it would remain nothing more than sex.”

“Very good sex,” he corrected.

“Did you think so?” She studied what she could see of his features in the darkness.

He smiled and her breath caught. “I knew it before the fact.” His fingers drifted across her lips. “You need to heal so we can resume our bedsport. In the meantime, tel me. What did Welton want of you that forced you to go out in this condition, rather than recuperating as you should be?”

“Why did Sedgewick approach me as if he knew me and assume that you were my escort?”

They stared at each other in silence, neither will ing to make an admission. Final y, she sighed and snuggled tighter against him. How she missed the feel of a man in her bed, the comfort of a strong embrace and the warmth imparted by a handsome man’s desire. Somehow the things left unsaid brought her closer to Christopher. There was no denying that they were impossibly alike.

“My brother was an agent,” he said suddenly, his breath blowing warmly into the hair at her crown.

Staring out the window at the starry night, Maria blinked and held her breath, wondering why he would reveal such a thing to her.

“He learned information,” he continued, his voice devoid of emotion, “and shared it with me. You see, he needed funds quite desperately and I acquired them the only way I could.”

“Il egal y.” Suddenly, the occasional sightings of goodness she had witnessed in him became explainable. She, too, functioned outside of the law for the welfare of a sibling.

“Yes. When he learned of my activities, he was furious. It did not sit well with him that he benefited at the risk of my neck.”

“Of course not.”

“So he came to London to assist me, which spared me many times. I was always aware of traps before they were sprung.”

“Dastardly,” she whispered, her hand running down his side. “And quite bril iant.”

“We thought so. Until his actions were discovered.”

“Oh.”

“Our cooperation was then extorted using my brother’s safety as leverage. It was messy, and in the end, deadly. Nigel wanted to save me and he did, but it cost us his life.”

“I am sorry.” She pressed a kiss to his chest, her lips clinging to his skin. How well she knew what it was like to lose a sibling. At least she had a chance of recovering Amelia. Christopher’s brother was lost forever. “I trust you were close to one another?”

“I loved him.”

The simple statement rocked her to the core. The words detracted not at all from his seeming invincibility. They were imparted with such strength that the admission could never be construed as a vulnerability. “Is that your grievance against the agency?”

“In part. There is more.”

“You tel me this to gain my sympathy and my assistance?”

“Partly. And partly because if we cannot discuss the present, that leaves us with only our pasts.”

Maria closed her eyes, her equilibrium unbalanced by the laudanum and Christopher, whom she could not understand. “Why discuss anything? Why not leave it with sex and the bare minimum required to achieve your ends?”

She felt the impact of his head fall ing back into the pil ows. The action was rife with frustration.

“I find myself in bed with an invalid, a woman I cannot trust in any fashion. If I sit here in silence, I shal go mad attempting to reason out why I am here and not elsewhere. Since fucking is out of the question, another activity is required to distract me.”

“Is that all I need to do to extract information from you? Deny you my body? Then you will spout secrets to entertain yourself?”

He growled low, and she shivered. Not with fear, but with a tiny flare of desire. The man had no notion of what to do with her or with himself while he was around her. Since she knew exactly how he felt, she sympathized.

“I loved Dayton,” she offered, her tone so low it was scarcely more than a breath.

Christopher’s large frame stil ed beneath her.

“He was a good man, and I made every attempt to be good to him in return. I was so young and untried, and he was accomplished and worldly. He made it possible for me to survive. And I repaid him by costing him his life.” Although she tried to hide it, there was an aching note of loss in her words.

“Maria.” His hand slid into her hair and cupped the back of her head. He said no more than that, but he didn’t have to.

She’d shared very little, but Maria felt as if she had revealed her deepest self. It was not a feeling she welcomed. As if he knew her turmoil, Christopher adjusted her so that her face tilted up to his, enabling him to take her mouth.

It started with a soft swipe of his tongue along the curve of her lower lip. Then a press of his lips, so different from Simon’s—thinner, firmer, more demanding. His head tilted and he fit his mouth over hers, stealing her breath, making it his own. Even as she struggled with the change, she understood it. Physical interaction was something they both felt comfortable with.

She opened to him, their movements control ed and leisurely, every touch of their tongues thought out and considered. It was a calculated encounter, one planned and executed with a purpose. This was not foreplay or a prelude. It was the finale. No more emotion.

Then she ruined everything by reaching for his hand and lacing her fingers with his. Their grips tightened, and an edgy sound fil ed the shared space of their kiss. Whether it was his or hers, she could not tel . Unnerved by the sudden intimacy, she pulled away, turning to hide her face in the space between his shoulder and throat. He breathed harshly in the silence, his chest rising and fall ing rapidly against hers, which heaved similarly.

Eddington would come tomorrow with the offer to rid her of Welton and thereby give her Amelia. And all she had to promise was Christopher, served up on a silver salver.

She inhaled his scent, her breath stil shaky.

“Maria.”

Her name. Spoken hoarsely. He said no more than that, but again, he didn’t have to.

Amelia exited the small manse in her temporary home of Lincolnshire and sucked fresh air deep into her lungs. Every home they occupied was in some state of disrepair—this one seemed clogged with dust—and each was a distant holding of someone her father knew. How he managed to secure use of the properties was a mystery to her, but then everything about her life was an enigma. No one told her anything, aside from the insistence that her sister Maria was a degenerate.

Pausing on the side of the house, Amelia looked over at the stables, her gaze searching for the tal , lean form of Colin and the reassurance the sight of him would bring. The handsome groomsman was the nephew of her coachman, and he’d been with her since they were children. He was three years older, yet he seemed much older than that. They’d been friends once, playing together in the moments when he was free from work, running through the fields and pretending they were people who lived in far different circumstances.

That seemed so long ago. Colin had matured and grown away from her. His free time was now spent with women his age or older, or with the other servants. He avoided her now and was curt and il -tempered the rare times he was forced to speak with her. She was an annoying child of ten and six to a young man of nineteen. Despite this, she was quite besotted with him. Always had been. Prayed she would not always be. She had her pride, and being shunned by the object of her affection was so miserable she prayed for the day he affected her not at all.

Silently chastising herself for looking for him, Amelia turned away and found the unkempt pathway that she wandered along daily for exercise.

“You will grow out of it, too,” her last governess had said, when Amelia had cried over a particularly hurtful dismissal from Colin. She hoped that was true, that she would eventual y grow out of her childish infatuation.

Soon. Please, God, make it soon.

Swinging her bonnet in her hand, Amelia circumvented the estate, jumping over raised tree roots and piles of fall en leaves with nimble, boot-clad feet.

When she reached the wooden fence that separated her from freedom, Amelia paused and for the first time considered what it would be like to flee. She’d never entertained the thought before, but now her thinking was altered by Maria’s attempt to retrieve her. What was out there? What adventures waited beyond her minute existence that consisted of servants and a governess and a life on the road?

“Ah, the pretty lass strays.”

Startled by the coarse masculine voice behind her, Amelia spun too quickly and nearly fel over.

“Heavens,” she cried breathlessly, her hand placed over her racing heart. She recognized the freckled young man who stood a few feet away as one of her father’s new lackeys. The ones he had hired to replace those lost in the altercation with Maria. “You gave me a fright.”

“Sorry,” he offered, smiling apologetical y. Short and sinewy, the brown-haired boy was the youngest of the crew whose livelihood it was to keep her safe. Of course, she was beginning to suspect that they were supposed to keep her in, rather than keep others out.

She noted the long pole in his hand. “What are you doing?”

“Going fishing.” He gestured to the other side of the fence with a jerk of his chin. “There’s a stream over there.”

“Oh.” She didn’t mean to sound disappointed.

“Do you like fishing?” he asked, studying her curiously with pale blue eyes. Dressed in woolen breeches and coat, his overly long locks sticking out from beneath his cap, he didn’t look dressed for fishing, but what did she know?

“I’ve no idea,” she admitted. “I have never been fishing.”

He grinned, looking so boyish that she suspected he was the same age she was, maybe even younger. “Would you like to try it?” he offered. “I wouldn’t mind the company.”