CHAPTER EIGHT THE SPY BEHIND THE SMILE #3
Then he had allowed her to negotiate rules requiring honesty.
He had touched her, kissed her and taken her to bed while withholding the truth that part of their relationship began as an intelligence assessment.
Eleanor waited until the pain became anger.
Anger was easier to carry. She retreated before Gabriel opened the door, crossed the public archive and left through the entrance without looking at the clerk.
Outside, the rain had stopped. London continued around her with remarkable indifference.
Carriages rolled through wet streets. A flower seller called to pedestrians near the corner, while two gentlemen argued about shipping taxes beneath the protection of a doorway.
Eleanor walked. She did not yet know where she intended to go.
Rothmere House would mean questions. The publishing office would be cold and perhaps empty.
Her father’s house contained another betrayal she was not ready to confront.
Gabriel’s town house stood six streets away.
She knew the address because intelligence required preparation.
The decision formed before pride could prevent it. Eleanor turned toward St. James’s.
* * *
Gabriel reached his house twenty minutes after she did. His butler met him in the entrance hall with an expression bordering upon alarm.
“Miss Finch is in the library, my lord.”
“How long?”
“Approximately twelve minutes.”
“Is she alone?”
“Yes.”
“Has she broken anything?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Gabriel handed over his coat.
“Then the situation remains recoverable.”
The butler’s silence suggested otherwise.
Gabriel entered the library. Eleanor stood beside the windows with her back toward him.
Her bonnet and gloves rested upon a table.
She still wore the blue wool dress from breakfast, though the hem had darkened from wet streets.
His gaze went immediately to her mouth. He remembered it swollen from his kisses, opening beneath him as pleasure stripped away her composure.
Eleanor turned. Nothing in her face belonged to the woman from last night.
That frightened him more than fury would have done.
“You heard the meeting,” he said.
“I heard enough.”
Gabriel closed the door. Not locked. Never locked.
“I intended to tell you.”
“When?”
“Today.”
“Before or after you obtained my father’s papers?”
The question cut cleanly.
“I need the original drafts to identify his alterations.”
“Then your timing was fortunate.”
“Eleanor.”
“No.”
She moved away from the window.
“You do not get to use my name as though intimacy makes evasion kinder.”
Gabriel absorbed the blow.
“You asked for honesty,” he said. “I will give it now.”
“After discovery.”
“Yes.”
The admission angered her further.
“Do you expect praise for refusing another lie?”
“No.”
“Then begin.”
Gabriel considered where truth started. Paris? Vienna? His mother? The first time Hargreaves recognised that a charming young earl could enter rooms barred to sober men? He began with the simplest fact.
“I have worked with Hargreaves since the war.”
“In what capacity?”
“Informally. I gather information from places official agents cannot enter without attracting notice.”
“Bedrooms?”
“Sometimes.”
“Card rooms?”
“Yes.”
“Private suppers?”
“Yes.”
“Women who believe you desire them?”
The question carried no raised voice. It hurt more because of that.
“Sometimes desire was genuine.”
“And the information?”
“Also genuine.”
Eleanor’s mouth tightened.
“How convenient.”
“I did not seduce women solely for access.”
“Only partially?”
Gabriel had no answer that would not sound worse. Her laugh held no amusement.
“Several affairs were investigations.”
“Yes.”
“Did the women know?”
“Not always.”
“Did they believe the intimacy private?”
“Yes.”
“Did you?”
He looked at her.
“Parts of it.”
“Which parts?”
“Their bodies were not information.”
“But their trust was.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened.
“You make it sound simpler than it was.”
“Charm is useful that way. Complication excuses what blunt language would condemn.”
“My work protected soldiers, diplomats and women trapped in houses with dangerous men.”
“And therefore no one harmed by the method matters?”
“I did not say that.”
“You imply it whenever you defend the result before acknowledging the cost.”
Gabriel moved toward the desk, needing something solid between them. Eleanor followed. He recognised the choice immediately. She would not permit furniture to become distance unless she chose it.
“You knew the Mercury Club might be involved before agreeing to help me,” she said.
“Yes.”
“How much did you know?”
“That Hargreaves had traced payments to a scholarly press and believed coded texts were moving through the club.”
“Did you know my father might be involved?”
“His publisher’s name had appeared.”
“And you said nothing.”
“We had no proof.”
“You demanded access to everything I knew while deciding which facts I was permitted to possess.”
“I was protecting the investigation.”
“You were controlling it.”
“I was trying to keep you alive.”
“Those statements are not mutually exclusive.”
Gabriel looked at her. She had learned too well from Julian and Beatrice’s history. Protection had become the word men used when authority felt more comfortable than trust.
“I never lied about the danger,” he said.
Eleanor’s eyes flashed.
“Omission is the method charming men use when they want honesty from women without offering it in return.”
The sentence struck precisely because he recognised himself within it.
He had asked Eleanor to name fear, discomfort and desire.
He had required her to tell him when she wanted him to stop, when she wanted more and whether she understood every risk.
He had taken her honesty and answered it with carefully selected truths.
“My work requires secrecy,” he said.
“Then you should not have taken me into your bed.”
The library became silent. Gabriel felt the truth of that in his body.
“I did not sleep with you to obtain information.”
“No?”
“No.”
“You questioned me about my father. You examined my reactions. You assessed whether I could be trusted.”
“At first.”
Her face changed. The qualification had escaped him.
“At first,” she repeated.
Gabriel closed his eyes briefly.
“When Julian asked me to assess your father’s influence, I observed how you spoke about him, whether you defended him without reason and whether you concealed relevant facts.”
“Did I pass?”
The cold wording recalled his cruelty that morning. He deserved it.
“This was never an examination.”
“You called last night one before breakfast.”
“To create distance.”
“Why?”
“Because waking beside you frightened me.”
Eleanor stared at him. The admission stripped the argument of momentum for one heartbeat. Then pain returned to her expression.
“You do not get to wound me pre-emptively because tenderness made you uncomfortable.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Gabriel stepped closer. Eleanor did not retreat, but her entire body tightened. He stopped.
“My work protects lives,” he said, hating how inadequate the words sounded.
“I have heard men describe troop movements while believing me drunk. I have taken letters from rooms where ministers planned to sell information. I have warned wives before violent husbands returned. I have identified men who purchased girls, officials who traded military secrets and aristocrats who used debt to control entire families.”
“I do not deny that the work matters.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
“I want you to admit that the work mattered more than my right to choose what I shared.”
Gabriel’s breath left him. Eleanor held his gaze.
“Did my feelings become acceptable collateral because your purpose was useful?”
He could not answer. Not honestly. The intelligence service had always accepted collateral.
Reputation, trust, intimacy and occasionally lives were placed against outcomes no one could measure cleanly.
Gabriel had told himself that consent in the bedroom remained separate from deception outside it.
With Eleanor, the boundaries had collapsed.
Her desire had been real. So had his. The withheld truth stood between them now, contaminating neither and touching both.
“If I say no,” he said slowly, “I lie.”
Eleanor’s expression trembled.
“If I say yes, I reduce what happened between us to an operation, and that is also a lie.”
“Then tell me which part was true.”
“All of it.”
“That is impossible.”
“No. That is why it hurts.”
Gabriel moved one hand through his hair. The gesture disordered what his valet had arranged. He did not care.
“I wanted access to the code. I wanted to understand whether your father controlled you. I wanted to know whether you could enter the club without becoming a danger to yourself and everyone with you.”
“And the lessons?”
“I agreed because you were right that we needed one another.”
“And the kisses?”
“I wanted you.”
“The carriage?”
“I wanted you.”
“Behind the curtain?”
“I nearly forgot every reason we were there.”
“Last night?”
Gabriel stepped closer despite himself.
“Last night had nothing to do with Hargreaves, Julian, the Mercury Club or your father.”
Eleanor’s breathing changed. Desire remained between them, hot and unwelcome.
The memory of her naked body seemed to occupy the space beside the argument.
Gabriel could see the pulse moving beneath her collar, knew the taste of the skin there and remembered the sound she made when his fingers moved inside her.
Her gaze dropped briefly to his mouth. Then she turned away.
“You are skilled at making truth sound like seduction.”
“It is not.”
“You have spent years ensuring no one can distinguish the two.”
The sentence cut deeper than she knew. Or perhaps she knew exactly. Gabriel looked at her back.
“My father was charming,” he said.