The Spy Who Loved Her by Aydra Richards

Author:Aydra Richards [Richards, Aydra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

He didn’t want to do it.”

Emma blinked at the clear, precisely enunciated syllables, such a rarity from Kit that she could almost believe she was in the company of someone else entirely. Oddly, Rafe’s sudden departure had left her feeling both bereft and furious all over again. He had earned the upbraiding she had meant to give him, and he had deprived her of the opportunity.

“He didn’t want to do it,” Kit repeated, more firmly this time. “So if you wish to place blame, it belongs to me.”

Emma’s stomach roiled. “He didn’t want to bed me?” The very thought sickened her, that she might have been party to something far more sordid than she had ever imagined, even if unintentionally.

A hoarse bark of laughter eked from Kit’s throat. “No, the poor bastard always wanted that,” he said, as if it ought to have been somehow elucidating. “He didn’t want to deceive you.”

“Then why did he? Why did you? I had thought—” She cleared her throat to speak around the lump of pain that had risen in it. “I had thought you had at least a little more respect for me than that.”

“To protect a different lie,” he said. “That’s the thing about lies. Keeping them straight is a dreadful business. The first one—the first lie was to protect you. And it happened ten years ago.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, though that vaguely sick feeling within her stomach only grew.

Wordlessly, he set the book that Rafe had given him into her hands, and she stepped out of the shadows and into the thin sliver of moonlight that shone through the window, the better to see it. A fresh surge of fury coursed through her at the sight of it; the leather cover, stiff with age and disuse. “He—he stole this from me?” she asked, in a fragile little voice. “He stole my husband’s journal?”

“I asked him to,” Chris said. “Hell. I told him to.”

“Why?” It was as if there was something hanging there in the air between them, a horrible thought dangling just above her head. Just waiting for her grasp it. “Why would you ever?”

“Open it,” he said. “I know you haven’t. But you need to understand.”

With a sense of trepidation, she turned the leather cover, saw the familiar slant of Ambrose’s handwriting. At first she thought it a trick of the lingering darkness, but even when she squinted and pulled the little book closer to her face, still she could not read it. “It’s nonsense,” she said, baffled. “It’s—it’s just gibberish. Why would he have written something so utterly unintelligible?”

“It’s not nonsense,” he said. “It’s a cipher. One that has thus far resisted all of our efforts to break.”

“But why would…” The words faded into the dead silence between them, trailing off as that horrible thought drew nearer and nearer. Until at last she had it there in the palm of her hand, wrapped within the clutch of her fingers. “Oh, lord. You’re spies,” she said. “You, and Rafe—and my husband?”

“Yes,” he said.

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