The Lady Who Came in from the Cold(8)
“We have to talk,” she began.
“My study,” her husband said curtly.
He turned, his back a wall to her as he led the way. She followed, her heartbeat measuring every step of the way. She sent up a desperate prayer.
God, if you can hear me, please let Marcus forgive me. I know I’m not good enough for him, but I vow I’ll change—turn over a new leaf, do anything at all—to win him back.
Marcus closed the door, sealing himself and his wife in the dark paneled room. He’d chosen his study because of the privacy it offered and because he conducted his business affairs there. Over the past fortnight, when his anger had finally abated somewhat, he’d come to the grim conclusion that he’d been far too gullible, too soft and trusting, when it came to his marriage. He’d been so smitten with Pandora that he’d let her run roughshod over him. From now on, he needed to approach his relationship with his wife the way he did other aspects of his life: with a cool head and unwavering authority.
He wouldn’t let himself be blinded by love. Not any longer.
At present, he was confronted with the unpleasant task of discerning the truth so that he could make decisions about the future.
He went to his desk. He leaned against the front edge, his boots planted solidly as he gazed down at her. Seated in a chair facing the desk, Pandora was as beautiful and sultry as ever, but she also looked… tired. There were smudges beneath her eyes, her cheekbones more prominent as if she’d lost weight. He steeled himself against concern, against her beseeching expression.
“Marcus, you have every right to be angry at me—” she began.
“Yes, I do.” It took willpower, but he managed to sound calm. “That is neither here nor there, however. The problem that lies before us is the future: that of our marriage and children.”
“If you can forgive me, I promise that I’ll do whatever—”
“You will be quiet and listen to me.”
At his tone, her indigo eyes went wide. Good. She needn’t think that she could manipulate him—as she’d apparently been doing for the entire length of their relationship. Icy fury gripped his gut. He’d no longer be her puppet, an unwitting toy in her games.
“I have questions to ask. You will answer them,” he said. “Based on your answers, I will decide upon our future. By the by, if I detect so much as a hint of a lie, I will begin divorce proceedings and scandal be damned. Do I make myself clear?”
Her throat worked, her cheeks paling. “Very.”
“Good. Let’s begin with your name. Your true name.”
“It’s Pandora,” she said.
At least she hadn’t lied about that.
“But Hudson wasn’t the name I was born with,” she added in quiet tones.
Anger surged; he tamped it down. “What is your real surname?” he said coldly.
Her lashes lowered, fluttered against her creamy skin. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t play games with me,” he warned. “What do you mean you don’t bloody know?”
“I mean I don’t know who my parents were.” Her bosom rose and fell; her eyes met his. “I was born a bastard. At the orphanage where I was raised, they told me my mother was a prostitute, and I was an unfortunate consequence of her profession. She left me there when I was a month old; I have no memory of her. Apparently, she told them she’d named me Pandora because I brought her a world of trouble.” She paused. “They gave me the surname Smith at the orphanage because no one knew who my father was.”
Shock percolated through Marcus. Of all the explanations he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this. He stared at his wife—the very image of a fashionable lady—and couldn’t reconcile it with the past she’d just revealed. She was illegitimate… had been abandoned to an orphanage? Before he could recover, she went on.
“By the time I was ten, I was making my living as a flower girl in Covent Garden. No, that’s not precisely true.” Her lips pressed together before she said, “I sold flowers, but most of my earnings came from being a pickpocket.”
Witnessing what he had as an officer, Marcus didn’t think he could be struck speechless. Yet there he was. All capacity for speech… gone.
“I was rather good at it. Small hands, quick reflexes.” Her lips tipped up, but it wasn’t a smile. “Stealing kept my belly full, gave me a roof over my head at night. It wasn’t the easiest life, but it wasn’t the worst. Then I met Octavian.”
Marcus’ hands clenched the edge of the desk. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what was coming next. Didn’t like the quiver she was clearly trying to hide in her voice, the shadows gathering in her eyes.
“He was a spymaster for the Crown. He’d chanced to see me at work, and apparently I impressed him with my skills, my ability,”—her voice caught ever so slightly—“to survive. He offered me a way out of the gutter: a position on his team.”
“You were ten,” Marcus bit out.
“Close to eleven. And definitely,” she said, her tone flat, “wise beyond my years.”
“What business did this Octavian bounder have for a young girl?”
“At first, I mostly observed and ran errands. But Octavian was grooming me for bigger things. Given that he was a spymaster and bachelor, he couldn’t look after me. So he put me under the care of a couple named Harry and Flora Hudson.”
Her supposed parents, the in-laws Marcus had never met. The ones who’d apparently died and left her in a boarding school abroad.
Grimly, Marcus said, “The Hudsons were spies as well?”
She nodded. “Harry was an agent—and since Flora was devoted to her husband and refused to leave his side, she became one, too. Their good blood and Harry’s interest in archaeology provided the perfect cover for their espionage work. I traveled with them, and they trained me, raised me as their own. I owe them everything.” Her ivory throat rippled, her voice emerging in a whisper. “Harry was killed not long after Waterloo. A carriage accident. He’d fought so hard for peace and didn’t live long enough to enjoy it. After that, Flora lost the will to go on.”
Marcus’ chest clenched at the sheen in Pandora’s eyes. He couldn’t deny that she had been through much—so much that he could scarcely fathom it. At the same time, fury surged that she’d kept this—all of it—from him. That she hadn’t trusted him… that she’d betrayed the trust that he, like a great bloody fool, had given to her without reservation.
The galling truth was that he was weak where she was concerned. Even now, as she laid out the ignominious facts, the countless lies she’d told him, he had the inconceivable desire to take her into his arms. To tell her everything would be all right. To protect the vulnerability he’d sensed in her from the start.
He quelled the instinct and went to the window, putting distance between them. Staring out into the autumn garden, he tried to absorb some of its calm. The gilded serenity that was a universe away from his own seething turmoil.
“How long were you a spy?” he said.
“When I turned thirteen, Octavian judged me ready for missions. He gave me the code name Pompeia. I worked for him until just before I met you at the Pilkington Ball.” A hesitation. “Do you remember it?”
Of course he bloody did.
“Did you engineer that meeting?” he said curtly. “Was our marriage a part of your new disguise? A way to get out of the spy business?”
“No. Marcus,” she said, her syllables quivering, “please believe this, if nothing else: I fell in love with you from the first moment we met. I gave up espionage because of you. Everything I did was because I loved you so much and knew that you’d never love me back as Pandora Smith. I had to make myself a better woman for you—”
“So you lied to me because you love me?” His eyes sliced to hers. “Pretended to be a debutante—a pure and untouched lady to win my heart?”
Her eyes glimmered. She pressed her trembling lips together… but she didn’t deny it.
For him, that was the most painful truth in all of this. He wished she might have just stabbed or shot him instead. Because the thought of any other man touching her…
“How many?” He forced out the words.
A pulse leapt in her throat. “Marcus—”
“How many?”
“Three,” she whispered. “The ones named in the letter.”
Pierre Chenet. Jean-Philippe Martin. Vincent Barone.
The names, branded on his brain, blazed red-hot. Those bastards had made love to his wife, the woman he’d believed to be exclusively his. They’d known the sweetness of Penny’s kiss, the unspeakable pleasure of being inside her—
“It wasn’t lovemaking.” Her plea broke through his swirling vortex of agony. “It was… one time, with each of them. There was no pleasure involved—it was the opposite. Back then, I thought of it as completing a mission. It was the only life I knew. I didn’t think I…”—her voice broke—“deserved any better.”
He didn’t want to feel empathy for her. Didn’t want the maelstrom of emotion that accompanied the destruction of his world as he knew it. His much-vaunted self-control was already pushed to its very limit.