Chapter Twenty
Jackson’s back met the mat with a bruising whack, the sound reverberating off the brick walls of the refurbished mill.
Roberts, not a hair out of place, crouched down and smiled. “Had enough, Your Grace?”
Hardly.
The taste of fear was still on his tongue. Anna’s words rang in his ears.
You’re a fraud.
Jackson dragged himself to his feet, his back stinging and his jaw aching from Roberts’s last punch. He raised his guard and yelled, “Again!”
Roberts sighed and raised his own fists. “No empathy for a poor earl’s son.”
Jackson sneered. “Your family’s wealth may not rival the royal coffers, but one would hardly call your prospects poor.”
“I was referring to my knuckles,” Roberts said, rubbing the raw skin. “If I’m expected to beat you into a more amiable position, I’m likely to bruise bone.”
Damn jester. “I didn’t ask you to spar.”
“No,” Roberts drew out the vowel to facetious effect. “You stormed in and threw a punch at the first fighter who met your eye.”
“Agent Harper was up for a round,” Jackson pointed out. “You have no right to interfere.”
Home Secretary Sidmouth had seen the old mill transformed into a sparse but well-maintained gym: boxing ring, sawdust-filled bags hung from the ceiling, and a rug-lined track around the building’s interior.
A frequent haunt for agents—retired and active—to keep in fighting shape .
. . or to keep the demons at bay. Few needed an invitation to slide between the ropes.
Roberts expertly ducked to avoid Jackson’s next attack. And again. The bugger had the gall to yawn.
“When you’re finished,” Roberts said, “I’ve a mind to pay another visit to our detained barkeep.”
Jackson kept his arms up. “Any word yet on the other players in the counterfeiter’s ring?”
Roberts shook his head. “Our newest inmate is particularly tight-lipped, I’m afraid.”
Jackson huffed. Roberts was a patient man. The harder the nut, the more delight the man would take in cracking the shell open with slow deliberateness.
“Why use a sharp knife when a dull spoon savors the experience?” A direct quote.
“Though it was clear upon first inquiry that we caught the majority of the inner ring,” Roberts said. “The supplier, the organizer, the front man, the enforcer: seems everyone but The Printer himself was in that back room.” His look was considering. “We did good, Jackson. We severed the body.”
But not the head.
Jackson didn’t need to be an authority on Greek mythology to know this monster would grow its limbs back.
“What of Hobbs? Did Sidmouth get anything more from him?” Jackson asked, throwing a straight punch that Roberts expertly knocked away with the back of his hand.
Roberts voiced what Jackson already suspected. “Why inform a pawn of the game when it is meant to be sacrificed?”
Frustration turned Jackson’s next punch wide.
Roberts lowered his guard in response, the action a declaration of war.
Jackson lunged, but Roberts danced away. Temper rising, Jackson half-turned as he threw his next swing. Not even a clip as he met empty air.
“Stop evading and fight,” he panted.
Roberts chuckled. “I take it married life isn’t the wedded bliss when all the lies are uncovered? That bricky duchess of yours still in a fit over your subterfuge?”
A fit would have been preferable. Anna hadn’t so much as spoken to him since they’d returned from the mission. She’d gone straight to her chambers and slammed the door, the echo of her anger reverberating through the whole house.
Not that he’d confide in Roberts, of all people.
Jackson gritted his teeth. “My marriage is fine.” It would be. As soon as he bloody well figured out how to make it right.
“‘Fine.’” Roberts gave a pitying shake of his head. “For lace and linen.”
Jackson scoffed. “What would you know of it?”
If he didn’t know Roberts was stone beneath the workman’s disguise, Jackson would have said the look that crossed the other man’s face was unsettled. A figment of imagination, no doubt, because Roberts smirked a second later.
“I know when it’s been a spell for a man. Makes him slow. Humorless.” A taunt. “Forgotten how to use the prick in your pants, Your Grace? Or is it that the lovely duchess needs a better snake to charm her into uncrossing her legs—”
Roberts’s nose made a satisfying crunch under Jackson’s fist.
Breathing hard, Jackson grabbed him by the lapels and hit him again. And once more . . . before Roberts struck him under the chin.
Jackson met the mat a second time, and his vision grayed at the edges. When his gaze had cleared, Roberts was standing over him—smug as a snail—and holding nothing back.
“You wish to make amends and bed your duchess. Congratulations. Now, stop throwing your face at my fists, save us all your whining, and tell the woman.”
Jackson sat up and wiped at his mouth, blood smearing across his hand from a busted lip. He desired Anna, true, but his wants were nothing so shallow. A body was nothing without the mind. “I’d hate to see you woo a lady. They rarely take to knife-throwing and snake charming.”
Roberts chuckled. “Not the ladies I know.” A pause. “The duchess is a broad-minded woman, dangerous with a lock-pick, and a half-decent agent. Hardly a wilting flower. Unlike some peers I know and pretend to respect.”
Lungs aching as he breathed, Jackson held his side, sure he’d bruised a few ribs on his way to the floor. “Are you saying I’m the wilted flora?”
Roberts extended his hand. “I’m not calling you a blooming rose.”
Jackson grunted and took the hand up. Sweat dripped down his back and his left leg twinged, given his full weight. The bandage around his leg must have come loose, the wound no doubt bleeding anew.
He needed a bath, one hot enough to burn his skin. He eyed the smaller man, nothing but a drop of blood on his upper lip. “You goaded me into attacking.” The bounder had let him get in a few licks.
Roberts shrugged, as if a broken nose were worth the momentary entertainment. “Takes the fight out of the cock without a good peck here and there.”
“You’re a damn monster.”
Roberts inclined his head. “One with a well-stroked snake.”
Jackson rolled his eyes, his desire for a bath doubling at the man’s vulgarity. Exhaustion clung to his shoulders and the edges of his mind. What could he lose by speaking plainly?
“You didn’t see her face.” He voiced his fear. “She may never forgive me.”
Roberts rolled his eyes. “You’ve become a sad excuse for an investigator if you can’t plainly see you aren’t the only one with secrets.”
Jackson turned sharply. “Anna doesn’t have secrets.”
“She snuck up on us that day in the library,” Roberts said, his expression saying more than the man.
Jackson remembered. “What’s your point?”
“I only know of two kinds of people who can take me by surprise. Assassins—”
Unlikely. If Anna had had the skills, she’d have disposed of him that night at the Lyon’s Den. Or last night in the pub’s back room.
“Or those who’ve learned to hide their presence,” Roberts finished.
Jackson frowned. “What’s the difference?”
“One is interested in a quick, clean slide of the knife . . . the other is anticipating the strike.”
Jackson froze, the implication too awful to say aloud. He did anyway through gritted teeth. “You think someone hurt my wife?”
Roberts’s nod was grim. “Would explain why the wildcat refuses to retract her claws.”
“I’ll kill them,” Jackson vowed through a haze of red. Why wouldn’t she tell me?
“Might want to tone down the aggression and up the charm, if you have any.”
Jackson frowned. “You’re suggesting I what? Tease her? Seduce her?” He’d tried that and failed miserably.
Roberts’s pitying look didn’t help Jackson’s mood.
“How about a dose of candor?” was his enigmatic reply.
Jackson scowled. “You know better than anyone how dangerous our secrets are. I can’t divulge national secrets to win over my wife. It’s bad enough she knows I work with the Home Office. Keeping my real involvement from her will be a mess.”
“Would the truth be so bad?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Roberts sighed. “Means I bruised my knuckles for nothing.” He turned and walked toward the exit, giving a wave over his shoulder with a last piece of advice. “Go home to your wife, Your Grace, and stop being a pig-headed meater.”
Jackson stood outside the duchess’s chambers, his palms sweaty as Anna must have mistaken his knock for that of her maid.
“Enter,” she called.
He paused with his hand on the door, going over every irritating piece of advice Roberts had given him.
Candor. Honesty.
This was bound to end in tears.
Hot and cold rushing over his skin, he opened the door and waited for Anna to look up from her chair by the fire before he blurted out, “I would like you to pet my snake.”
Because that didn’t make him sound like a rutting idiot.
A wrinkle formed between her brows. His idiocy had one benefit, at least; she hadn’t chucked a book at his head yet. “You’ve a pet snake?”
“No,” he said, heat creeping up his neck. “That is, I am interested in petting—er, having you—” He should have started with an apology, an explanation, then jumped into the deterioration of his pride. “I am requesting . . .” To murder Roberts for his shite advice.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you requesting, Duke?”
He took a breath. He knew how to charm a woman. Hadn’t he had her shivering against him in his chambers before? “I am interested in consummating our marriage.”
A beat of silence.
Her hand flew to her mouth, and a noise emerged, what Jackson thought might have been a sound of shocked embarrassment, only to realize a second later he was the one to earn the name.
His ears flamed. “I’m glad I bring you such amusement,” he grumbled.
She wiped at her eyes, the harpy tearing up at his humiliation. “After the lies, the deceit. You think you can stroll in here and seduce me? Truly, Duke.” Her gaze went hard. “You are hilarious.”
“No, what I am is an idiot.”
Her eyes widened. She leaned back in her chair and waved a hand. “Go on.”