Chapter Twenty #2
Jackson ran a hand through his hair. Where to begin? “I meant to apologize first.”
“Instead, you went straight to seduction?”
“And failed spectacularly,” he said.
Her lips quirked, but she gave him no quarter. “I thought you would be better at that part.”
“Which part?”
“Flirting. Seduction. The first few times you tried were much better.”
Before had been a game, a delay tactic; he hadn’t truly intended to take her to bed. Hadn’t known all the ways he could have idiotically approached her without knowing all she’d been through.
“Your face!” A giggle burst between her lips. “It is perfect.”
He huffed, seeing her flushed and smiling taking the edge off. “I’m not. Perfect or good at flirting.”
“Poor Duke.” She laughed again, still angry—obviously—but seeming more than willing to take it out through merciless teasing. She’d always been easy to anger and slow to forgive. “How on earth did you sow all those ducal wild oats with such tactless lines?”
He raised a brow. “I didn’t.”
She shook her head. “Don’t expect me to fall for such blatant falsehoods. There must have been women. Barmaids? Lonely widows? I’m sure the list of willing women when it comes to a duke’s advances are legion.”
Jackson stared at her. After the time—the years—they’d been together. Over a decade of him pining.
New heat poured through his veins, this time in anger. He took a breath. This wasn’t about exchanging old hurts or bearing the most pathetic scars of his past. He was here to make amends—real ones this time.
“Tell me . . .” Anna’s tone held no hope of amnesty. “Those connections you mentioned, the ones so convenient for the Home Office, do they also include getting close to your targets? No, I suppose that would be the wives of your targets. Quite the asset, I’m sure.”
One second. Two. And Jackson’s temper snapped.
“I am no good at seduction because there’s been no one I’ve ever wished to flirt with except—” You.
He gritted his teeth. “Do you think me so callous? So unloyal? I made a proposal of marriage to you.” She wanted the unvarnished truth?
So be it. “I didn’t propose out of any sense of rushed necessity or whim, much as I know you’d accuse me of such.
Your father’s death had been nothing but an excuse for me to finally express my truest feelings. ”
Shut up, fool! He was saying too much. But that look of knowing—of indictment—that had been in her eyes, as if he would so easily cast his affections aside, it wasn’t to be borne.
“I have only ever wanted one woman.” He wouldn’t look away, wouldn’t let her deny the truth in his eyes by breaking contact. “There has never been another. Not for me.”
Silence followed his speech. A damn declaration of love.
Any other woman would have swooned, gasped, raced from the room, overwhelmed by his outburst.
“How dare you?!” Anna charged forward, her eyes blazing.
She poked him in the chest. Hard. “You think you can spout such words of devotion and win this argument? Well, I won’t allow it.
You lied to me. Again and again.” Another poke.
Another shot fired. “How long have you been working with the Home Office? Since before that day in the grove?”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t have been involved in anything so risky without telling you.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me now? Before the carriage accident? Before we all were nearly shot?”
He hadn’t an excuse for that except, “We were forced to marry. You had no choice. I couldn’t bring myself to explain my situation and put you in more danger. At least if you were unaware, you would act normally. Not draw any suspicion.”
Her mouth twisted. “Yes, you decided that.” Her next blow was cruel. “Guess growing up with a father who controlled your every waking second must have rubbed off, eh, Duke? No need to tell your wife. She’s easier to control that way.”
Jackson’s back went rigid. “Back then, I was a marquess and miserable under my father’s thumb.”
“And now you are a duke and miserable under your father’s ghost. I do not see a reprieve in your circumstances, Your Grace, merely a weightier title.”
“A title we now share.”
“‘Share’!” Anna stepped forward, her jaw set, her eyes flashing. “You do not know the meaning of the word. I am a fixture, a divan, to be re-upholstered and stuffed at the whim of the discerning eyes of my betters.”
How could she think that? There wasn’t a woman alive more nobly minded, more willing to sacrifice everything for her family. “It’s never been the case, not for me.”
“I am not so sure. How could I know? You withhold your interests, your work, your very self from me.”
“I asked for your help with the pub,” Jackson said.
“You didn’t ask.” She sneered. There’d be no blunt-tipped swords in this fight. “I walked in on your conversation and forced you to accept my help since you were clearly over your head.” Her jaw tensed. “I trusted you. Again. And again you betray me.”
Before Jackson could defend himself, she went on. “You’re working with the Home Office, but there is more. I know there is.”
I’m a spy. The words were there, balancing on the tip of his tongue, but he tipped them back behind locked jaws because she was right. He did hold back. He had to.
Roberts’s advice aside, everything about the exchange in the pub had proven his life as an agent was too dangerous to share.
It would be less dangerous if you stopped withholding pertinent information.
Jackson wouldn’t tolerate the stray thought. Anna was intelligent, quick on her feet, calm in a crisis. She was also impulsive, quick to anger, and stubborn.
And it was his job to protect her.
“Why can you not trust me?” he demanded, his own self-anger turning his words harsh. “Even now, you can’t accept our history, our past. I would never do anything to hurt you. You know that. You know me. I wasn’t the only one in that grove six years ago. You turned me down, remember?”
“It has never been about my trust in you. It is how you’ve never once trusted me to fight, to win. I have no need for your protection, Jackson. I never did. But . . .”
“‘But’?” he pressed.
She said nothing, her expression closing.
“I’m not the only one holding back,” he accused, finally seeing what Roberts instinctually knew. “The truth is, you can’t tolerate needing anyone.”
How could he forget? She’d never needed him. It had always been the other way around.
Anna shook her head. “You are nothing but a stranger now.”
The words were daggers to the chest, glass in an open wound. Once, they had been closer than lovers. So deeply inside each other, Jackson couldn’t breathe outside of her presence.
The past six years had changed too many things. He had changed. Had to, because without her, the very light of his being had been snuffed out. An asset for a man who lived in the shadows with nothing to lose.
But now the light had returned, and he’d do everything in his power to keep her safe. Even if that meant keeping her at arm’s length.
But he wouldn’t lie. Not to her.
“For better or worse, I cannot tell you certain things.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Then we are at an impasse.”
“Yes.”
A colorful string of adjectives and nouns followed his response. None of them complimentary.
“I cannot deny the part of myself that wants to protect you any more than you can deny your need to rush headfirst into danger,” he said when she’d finished.
She stared him down. “That may have worked six years ago, but no longer. I am not some wide-eyed maiden, smitten and easily duped. There is protection and there are lies.”
She brushed past him and retrieved her boots next to the fire before sitting in the overstuffed armchair and lacing them up her calves.
Jackson watched her nimble fingers work, his insides twisting when she stood and walked to the bedroom door. “Where are you going?”
“To find my brother. While you’ve been keeping secrets and making promises you’ve no intention of keeping, William is still missing.”
“I didn’t break that promise,” he said, grateful to say that with all honesty. “Roberts has been on your brother’s case for weeks.”
“Then I guess it is to Roberts I must speak, not you.”
Even when they’d been children, Anna’s temper had been a long-burning fire. There’d be no reasoning with her until the flames banked.
“You cannot go out now.” It was well past dark. “And certainly not alone.”
The look she threw at him over her shoulder was icy. “I am not a simpering miss, nor some spoiled lady. The streets do not frighten me, Duke.”
Unease gnawed at his gut. She truly meant to search the city at night.
After they had been nearly riddled with holes just last night? He stepped forward, putting himself in her path. “You will not leave this house.”
Her chin raised. “You have no say in my activities.”
That spark in her eyes . . . She was a goddess when she stood toe to toe with him. “I am your husband.” No matter that she deserved more, better. Better than him.
“No, Duke,” she said, her voice quiet but no less powerful.
“A husband is a partner, a confidant. No idiotic society will tell me any different.” She took a step closer, raising herself further on her toes until she was in his space, taking up his whole view.
“And you are nothing but a jailor if you presume to lock me away.” She settled back on her heels, her expression steely.
“Good thing there isn’t a single lock in existence that can keep me contained for long. ”
She was magnificent. Even as his insides cramped at the idea of her at the mercy of the streets, his heart pounded with the desire to drag her into his arms, to show her all the ways that he did belong to her in every way that mattered.
He backed down, not because her safety was any less important or that he believed he couldn’t find a lock that could hold her, but because to forbid her from looking for her brother, to hold her back any longer, would be to break the promise he’d made.
The only thing she’d asked of him.
He took a single step to clear her path, to show her he would not stop her. Anna was capable of handling herself . . . in any other scenario. “The man who wishes me harm is still out there.”
“I’ll wear a disguise,” she said, the admission so easy, Jackson knew she’d done it before even last night. “And I’ll leave through the servants’ entrance.”
He nodded. As long as no one knew she was his duchess, she would be safe from the men hunting him.
“Should I expect your man to follow my every move?” she asked.
She’d noticed Roberts shadowing her the past few days. Of course she had.
No use lying. “If not my man, then one of his.”
Her mouth tugged downward at the corners, and Jackson had a feeling he’d disappointed her somehow.
“Good evening, Duke,” she said before quitting the room.