It would have made a difference, knowing that he was married. Sometimes being a spy meant seducing men one didn’t particularly like, or men who didn’t hold themselves to the same vows of constancy as their wives. Spend enough time with such men, and finding one you did fancy—who didn’t belong to another woman—was a rare find, and one to be taken advantage of.
She hadn’t known he was a damn Warden. Then again, neither had he.
He looked better. Fitter. Happier. His black hair was a little longer, the angles of his face a little less sharp. He had another man with him. This one wasn’t quite as tall as Fi . . . Lord Huntley, but he was more muscular. He was definitely English, with reddish hair and gray eyes.
And the way he stared down his nose at her. It was a strangely nice nose, for an Englishman. He had brackets etched on either side of his mouth that suggested he knew how to smile and did so often, though they might have just as easily been cracks from attempting to smile just once. He didn’t look like a man who laughed all that often—or ate, for that matter. He could stand to gain a few pounds.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
Broad shoulders straightened beneath an olive green coat, and a gingery brow rose mockingly. “Alastair Payne, Lord Wolfred.” Ah, the fine lines around his eyes and mouth weren’t made from humor, but from mockery. She wasn’t impressed, despite his pretty face. Christian names meant little in their line of work. “What do the Wardens call you?”
His expression didn’t change, though his eyes went as cold and flat as a rain-soaked street. “Wouldn’t be very deserving of such a surreptitious title if I told you, would I?”
No, of course not, but that didn’t change that she’d like to know who she was up against. “That’s hardly what you English call ‘sporting’ when you know who I am.”
To her surprise, the rugged man turned that stormy gaze of his to Huntley, who shot him the barest of glances. “The Company called her the Dove.”
Payne’s eyebrows pulled into a deep scowl. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, his gravelly voice a harsh rasp.
Claire might have smiled in pride if not for the hatred dripping from his words. Hard gray eyes locked with hers. For one disconcerting second they flashed like twin mirrors. “You’re lucky no one’s sneaked in here to kill you.”
She hadn’t thought of that. Her mind had been too clouded by the laudanum to think clearly. When word got out that she’d been captured, there were Wardens who would try to kill her. The Company would as well. They wouldn’t want to risk her spilling their secrets.
Hell’s bells.
Huntley cleared his throat. “I don’t know what you think I can do for you, Claire, but I’m not technically with the W.O.R. anymore.”
She looked into the eyes of the man who had saved her life on more than one occasion and saw that he was telling the truth. She nodded, resigned. She was on her own, then. “I want you to know that I had no idea what the Company did to you.” It was just another reason to hate the bastards. It was one thing to capture an enemy; it was another to meddle so deeply with his mind that he didn’t know who he was. They’d sent him home to kill his own wife as the ultimate revenge—not only against the wife, but against Huntley as well.
“I never thought you did,” he replied in that low, dark voice of his. He frowned as he sat down in the chair Dr. Stone had occupied earlier. “How did they even catch you?”
It was meant as a compliment, but it didn’t feel like one under the weight of Payne’s steely gaze. “I got myself shot and fell off a roof.” She managed a smile. “Rough night.”
“What can I do for you, pet?”
Claire’s heart warmed at the nickname. “You know me. I need you to vouch that the information I give the Wardens is true.”
“Why would we take anything you give us as fact?” Payne demanded. Color had risen to the jut of his cheekbones, and she noticed he had a smattering of freckles there.
Claire turned her focus back to Five. Damn it, Huntley. “Robert is dead.”
Sincere sympathy softened his austere features, eliciting a hot wash of tears behind her eyes. She blinked them back. She’d rather be shot in the face than cry in front of Payne.
“Claire, I’m so sorry.”
“Who’s Robert?”
Huntley glanced up at his scowling friend. “Her brother. He was a friend of mine.”
She expected Payne to twist the knife and rub a little salt in the raw meat of the wound. He did not. Instead, he inclined his head, the waves of his thick hair flashing copper under the lights. “My condolences.”
“I don’t need sympathy from you,” she snarled. It was rude of her, but anger was the only thing that could keep the tears at bay. “You would have killed him yourself had you been given the chance.”
His eyes brightened with emotion—a spark of lightning in the middle of a thunderstorm. “Yes, I very well might have, but if you’re as eager to hand over Company secrets as you seem to be, I wager it wasn’t the Wardens who ended him at all, was it?”
There was no cruelty in the words, just cold, hard assumption. Claire swallowed against the hatred clogging her throat. She didn’t know this man, but she’d love to rip that lovely face right off his damn English skull.
“No,” she replied from between clenched teeth, holding his gaze. “It wasn’t. My brother was killed because of the Company.” She turned to Huntley. She couldn’t give too much away. “He was betrayed by another agent and died in an explosion of that same agent’s design. There wasn’t even a body left for me to bury.”
“I’m sorry, Claire. Very much.”
He meant it, she knew. “They didnknewThey dit do a thing to avenge him. The agent responsible is still free.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know.” It was the first time, she realized, that she’d ever lied to him.
Huntley stared at her with those piercing eyes of his, weighing the truth of what she’d told him. “What can you offer the Wardens to justify leniency?”
That was simple. Her chin lifted. “I’ll tell you every Company secret I know—including how to find Stanton Howard and the man who tried to destroy your mind.”
“Surely you don’t mean to take that seasoned liar at her word?” Alastair shook his head. “Christ, Luke. I shouldn’t even have to ask.”
They were in the study at Luke’s house in Mayfair, not far from Alastair’s own. He paced because he was too agitated to stand still. Luke, however, seemed terribly calm as he poured a dram of whiskey for each of them.
“I’ve never known Claire to be a liar,” Luke replied, offering him a glass. Alastair took it and downed more than half its contents.
“That was when she thought you were on the same side.” Heat from the liquor blossomed in his chest. “For the love of God, she’s turned her back on her own agency.”
“Careful.” Luke gestured to his glass. Alastair glanced down. He was holding the crystal so tight, a fine crack ran down it. “I gave the W.O.R. everything I had on the Company as well.”
Alastair flexed his fingers, forcing the metal beneath his skin to ease its grip. “It’s hardly the same. You were a Warden for years. The Company abducted you, erased your memories and sent you back here to kill your own wife, all as a kind of vengeance against you, Arden and the W.O.R. Of course you turned over all you know about their operations.”
“The Company has allowed her brother’s death to go unpunished.”
“Maybe for good reason.” He downed the rest of his whiskey.
Luke’s face took on a dangerous tightness. “He was my friend.”
Alastair made a face. “And you were shagging her. Neither of those things says much for your clarity of judgment.”