He did not hesitate. “Because I have been nothing but his good soldier for years. And it is time.”
“For what?” she asked. “To ruin him?”
“To protect myself from him.”
She shook her head. “Chase will never hurt you.”
“You don’t know that,” he said. “You are blind to his power. To the things he does to keep it.” He waved a hand at the door. “Have you not witnessed it? The way he plays with lives? The way he bolsters the men belowstairs? The way he tempts them to wager until they’ve nothing left? Until all they have belongs to him?”
“It’s not like that.” It was never so cavalier. Never so unplanned.
“Of course it is. He deals in information. Secrets. Truths. Lies.” He paused. “I deal in those things as well—which is why we make such a pair.”
“Why not leave it at that?” She didn’t want it to change. Everything else was shifting beneath her, around her. “You are well compensated. You have access to information throughout London. You ask, you receive. News. Gossip. Tremley’s file.”
He stilled. “What do you know?”
She narrowed her gaze on him. “What are you not telling me?”
He laughed at that. “The sheer sum of what you will not tell me, and you have the gall to ask for my secrets?”
She buttoned her shirt, protecting herself in more ways than one. “What is your relationship with Tremley?”
He met her gaze without hesitation. “What is your relationship with Chase?”
She was quiet for a long moment, considering the next. Considering the implications of her truth. Finally, she said, “I cannot tell you.”
He nodded. “And so it is.”
She stilled, watching him. He, too, had secrets. She’d known it, but she’d had no proof. But now, she did. And while the discovery should have made her immensely happy—as she was not the only one who spread lies between them—instead, it made her devastatingly sad.
Perhaps because his secrets would keep hers locked away.
Neither of them was honest.
There was no point in defining the way she felt for him.
And certainly no reason to define it as love.
Duncan West had saved her a great deal of heartache, she supposed, ignoring the tightness in her chest. She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “That is that, then?”
He stood, pulling on his own shirt and buttoning his trousers, which she realized he’d never fully removed. She supposed he had left them on in case Chase entered. In case he had been required to give pursuit. He wrapped his cravat carefully, watching her as he completed the economical movements from memory, without the aid of a mirror.
As she willed herself not to beg him to stay.
When he was finished, he lifted his coat off the floor and shrugged it on, not buttoning it.
Stay. She could say it. And what?
She looked away.
He pulled his cuffs to bare an even inch of crisp white linen at the edge of his sleeve. When he was through, he looked to her. “You choose him.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“It’s exactly that easy.” He paused. “Tell me one thing. Do you want this? Do you want to be so thoroughly entwined with him?”
Not anymore.
Who had she become?
He saw the reply on her face, the frustration, the confusion, and he turned to steel, hiding all emotion from her. “Allow me to leave him a message, then. Tell him I am through being beholden to him. I am done. Today. He can find another to do his bidding.” He unlocked the door. Opened it.
“Good-bye, Georgiana.”
He left without looking back, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
She watched that door for a long moment, willing any number of things to happen. Willing him to return. Willing him to take her in his arms and tell her it was all a mistake. Willing him to tell her the truth. Willing him to kiss her until she no longer cared about this world, this life, this plan that had become so important.
Willing him to want her enough for all their secrets.
To love her enough.
Knowing that it was impossible.
She took a deep breath, and sat at her desk, extracting a piece of paper, considering the blank expanse for a long moment, thinking of all the things she could write. All the ways she could change their mutual course.
What if she told him everything? What if she put herself—her heart—in his hands? What if she gave herself to him?
What if she loved him?
Madness.
Love between them would never work. Even if they found space and time to trust each other, he was not an aristocrat. He could not give Caroline the future Georgiana planned.
There was only one way that would keep her secrets safe.
That would keep her heart safe.
She reached for a pen, dipping the nib in ink and writing two lines.
Your membership has been revoked.
And you will stay away from our Anna.
Our Anna.
The words were a joke at best, the last vestige of a girl’s silly desire. She’d always secretly desired the possessive, wanted to be wanted.