She shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Tell me about this shadowy past of yours.”
“I don’t kiss and tell.”
“Neither do I.”
“Then I suppose we have nothing more to say.”
“I suppose.” She stood. “Switch.”
He rose and made to move past her, but she put a hand on his arm, and he looked down at her. The hood of her cloak had fallen back from her forehead, revealing her upturned face. Her dark eyes sought his.
Duncan had the urge to put his arm about her, but he held back. “What are you doing?”
“If you don’t know,” she said, “I doubt the veracity of your claim to a checkered past.”
“Oh, really?”
Lucy wasn’t the only one who appreciated a challenge. Duncan was game from time to time. He wrapped his arm around Lucy’s waist and pulled her hard against him. The little gasp of surprise she gave only emboldened him. “You’d like proof?”
“Yes, please.” Her voice was low and sultry. The air around them seemed to heat, the breeze turning warm and tropical.
Duncan yanked the hood off her head and wrapped a hand in those soft brown curls. Then he bent and kissed her lightly, almost teasing her with the faint brush of his lips. She moved closer, wanting more, and he pressed his lips more firmly against hers, giving her what she wanted, but only just barely.
Her hand came up and around his neck. “Duncan,please,” she said. How was he supposed to resist that?
He released her hair and cupped her face, kissing her more deeply, nudging her lips open so he might taste her. She tasted him back, her tongue tangling with his. He hadn’t expected her to be a novice at kissing—she was seven and twenty and an agent for the Crown—but he also hadn’t anticipated his own reaction to her boldness. His cock went immediately hard, and his mind began to imagine ways to toss up her skirts and take her then and there.
He slid the hand at her waist down, cupping her buttocks, and she moaned quietly. Duncan wanted to moan himself, but he had to put an end to this or she would know just how little he had to pretend to be a scoundrel. Slowly, he drew back, pausing to lightly bite her lower lip, then releasing her.
But Lucy didn’t let him go. She held on and used the hand at his neck to pull him down again, wanting more of him. Duncan would have given in if he hadn’t heard the faint sound of footsteps in the distance.
Lucy, consummate agent that she was, heard them too. Both of them froze and then, as one, moved back into the shadows. Slowly, Lucy pulled the hood of her cloak up and moved to crouch behind the bench. Duncan joined her just as a figure stumbled out of the garden adjacent to the house.
The figure’s cloak had caught on something—a bush or thorn—and he or she was shaking the cloak back into place. Duncan didn’t want to think about what might have happened if the figure hadn’t been momentarily deterred. Would they have missed seeing him or her altogether? Would they have been caught kissing? What a scandal that would be—a brother and sister locked in a passionate embrace in the middle of the night.
They’d have to admit they weren’t siblings, and the mission would be compromised.
He should have never allowed Baron to send him on this mission with Lucy. He should have admitted his feelings for her, his attraction to her, was a liability. Too late now. He couldn’t leave even if he wanted to—Lucy grabbed his arm—and he didn’t want to.
“They are making for the house,” she whispered, her hand still on his forearm.
“I see that. Threat assessment?”
She hesitated as they both watched the figure approach the front door.
“Minimal at this time,” she answered. “Whoever it is, is returning to the house, not breaking in.”
Duncan agreed. The figure couldn’t know the door had been left unlocked unless he or she left it that way, and the way he or she approached was too confident. Duncan and Lucy didn’t move as the figure stopped at the door, glanced over his or her shoulder, then quietly opened the door and stepped inside.
The door closed behind him or her.
Lucy released Duncan’s arm. “Thoughts?”
“First of all, if that’s our would-be assassin, he or she is living in the house.”
“It could be a servant out for a midnight tryst. It might even have been Lord or Lady John.”
“Doubtful as they are aware of the danger to the family right now.”
