“I saw that while other men were serving our country, I’d simply moved from party to party, club to club, pleasure to pleasure, from one useless pursuit to the next. Frankly I was disgusted with myself. I wanted to change. To do something important. Something good. Something I could be proud of.”
She nodded slowly. “I see. So…if we’d met eight years ago, I wouldn’t have liked you.”
“Most likely not. I don’t see how you could have when I didn’t like myself.”
“And now? Do you like yourself now?”
“At this particular moment-not really. I lied to you. But in general…yes. I’m proud of the work I’ve done. The people I’ve helped. The lives I’ve protected and saved. Unfortunately with that sort of work comes secrecy, and with secrecy come lies. For eight years I’ve lied to my friends and my family-none of them know what I’ve just told you.” He gave her hands a gentle squeeze. “I wouldn’t have lied to you, Genevieve, if it hadn’t been absolutely necessary.”
She nodded slowly, clearly digesting his words. “All this means you didn’t come to Little Longstone for a holiday while your employer was away on his wedding trip.”
“No, I didn’t.” He took a bracing breath and forced himself to say the words he knew would drain the caring from her eyes. “I came to Little Longstone to find you. To retrieve the letter Lord Ridgemoor sent you for safekeeping.”
All the color leaked from her face. He could almost hear the pieces clicking together in her mind. And then all the emotion faded from her eyes, until she stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. Even though he’d known it would happen, it still felt as if he’d been cut off at the knees. Without a word she slowly eased her hands from his. He wanted to snatch her hands back, to keep that connection, but he let her go. The loss made him feel as if his heart had been punctured.
“Tell me how you know about that,” she said, her voice not quite steady.
And so he told her. All of it. Of Waverly’s plot to kill Ridgemoor and frame Simon for the crime. Of Ridgemoor’s last words. Of Simon confiding in Waverly and being granted the time to clear his name. Of renting the cottage. Repeatedly searching her home. Of her almost catching him that first time. She listened to all of it in complete silence, her gaze never moving from his, only growing bleaker until, when he finished, she simply stared at him with eyes that resembled two flat stones.
A full minute of the loudest silence he’d ever heard swelled between them. He wanted so badly to touch her, but he knew, knew she’d pull away from him. And he also knew that would break whatever small piece of his heart still remained intact.
“Richard is dead,” she finally said in a voice as flat as her expression.
“Yes. I’m sorry. I know you cared for him.”
“You knew all along that I wasn’t a widow. That I’d been his mistress.”
“Yes.”
“You befriended me, flirted with me, spent time with me, seduced me-all to get the letter.”
“No-”
She held up her hand to halt his words. The emptiness in her eyes was gone, replaced with a combination of pain, anger and betrayal that twisted his heart. “Do not lie to me again, Simon.”
“I’m not lying. I admit that’s why I came here and why I initially sought you out. But once I met you…you weren’t what I expected. Genevieve, what we shared together, it’s all been real.”
Her eyes blazed at him and an incredulous sound escaped her. “Real? It’s been based on nothing but lies! If you wanted the damn letter so badly, why didn’t you simply ask me for it?”
He didn’t immediately answer, and he saw the realization dawn in her widening eyes. “Dear God, you didn’t ask me because you thought I might have been in some way connected to Richard’s death.”
“I couldn’t ignore the possibility.”
“So not only were you willing to seduce me for the letter, you did so believing I might have been either directly or indirectly responsible for my former lover’s murder.” The sound she made reverberated with disbelief. “These are actions you can be proud of?”
Without thinking, he reached for her hand. She jerked away as if he’d burned her, and his hand fell to his side. “I couldn’t tell you the truth at first. All I knew of you was contained in the last desperate words of a dying man, words you cannot deny were more incriminating than exonerating. All I can tell you is that every moment I spent in your company served to convince me of your innocence.”
“Yet still, you did not tell me the truth. Or ask me for the letter.”
“I’d planned to do so as soon as I returned to the cottage this morning.”
Another bitter sound. “Because you weren’t able to find it after spending the night searching my home. And pawing through my personal belongings. Again.”
He could think of ways to pretty up that bald statement, but what was the point? She was correct. “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “As for seducing you…I want you to know that my mission and the letter were the last things on my mind when we were together. And that I…care for you.”
The fire in her eyes extinguished like a snuffed-out candle. “‘Care for me,’” she repeated in an utterly bleak tone. “Yes. That is obvious.”
A sensation very close to panic gripped him. He had to make her understand. “Genevieve, I was trying to capture a murderer, a man, it turns out, who was a threat not only to me and you, but to England as well. I was going to tell you as soon as I could. I never meant to hurt you.”
But he had. Hurt oozed from her like blood from a wound. And even if she forgave him, he knew she’d never forget. Or look at him with that same care he’d seen when he first opened his eyes. He tried to remind himself that in a mere few hours, as soon as he could travel, he’d be on his way to London. He’d never see her again. But instead of that reminder making him feel better, it only served to make his heart feel as if it had been ripped in two.
Her only reply was to rise, moving as if her limbs weighed an enormous amount. Then she turned her back to him and slowly headed toward the stairs.
“Where are you going?”
She paused, then glanced at him over her shoulder. “I’m going to get you your letter. After all, it’s the reason you’re here.”
Simon watched her climb the stairs with labored steps. After she had disappeared from view, he struggled to his feet, resting his hand against the wall and closing his eyes to combat the waves of dizziness that hit him. When he opened his eyes he saw the folded piece of paper he’d offered to Waverly-the piece of paper that had saved him. Taking care not to keel over, he picked up the paper square and slipped it back into his pocket. By the time Genevieve rejoined him, he’d regained his equilibrium.
She stood in front of him, holding a gilt-edged frame. Her eyes remained expressionless, as if she’d pulled a curtain over her emotions. “Richard sent a note along with the box-a note I destroyed per his request-indicating he would come for it soon. Even though months had passed since we’d been together, the way he’d dismissed me still rankled, as did the fact that he took another mistress almost immediately, a very young, very beautiful woman. He didn’t even have the decency to tell me face-to-face that he wished to end our arrangement. Instead he merely sent me a note.”
Her lips pressed together briefly, then she continued, “I knew the box had to be of great importance and I was determined that he’d face me when he retrieved it. It took me hours to figure out the combination, but when I did, I discovered the letter inside. I suspected anywhere I tried to hide it would be discovered, just as I suspected Richard would try to retrieve the box and its contents without seeing me. I resolved to thwart him. Therefore, I hid the letter in plain sight by slipping it into an old picture frame and hanging it on my bedchamber wall, among all my other artwork and replicas of favorite poems.” She held out the frame. “Here you are.”