Chapter Two
Duncan could not believehis good fortune. He immediately set down his next knife and followed Lucy up the slight hillock. She was walking quickly and seemed unhurt after her earlier fall. His heart had leapt into his throat when he’d seen her go down. But here she was, ignoring the mud on her cheek and the leaves in her hair and walking as quickly as always. Sometimes he let her think she was faster than he, but the truth was he had longer legs and could easily catch up to her.
He told himself to take a breath, not to make too much out of this meeting with Baron. Yes, the meeting could mean he’d finally be given a mission. Yes, this could mean the mission was with Lucy. And, yes, at one time he might have been accused of looking for a reason, any reason, to speak with Lucy every single day. Not so the past few months. He’d been trying to focus on his skills and his lessons and think of her less. He was not an idiot, and he knew she didn’t like him. He didn’t know why, but her dislike had seemed to grow, gradually forcing Duncan to admit his fantasies of her falling in love with him were not to be.
The irony that he was in love with a woman who couldn’t care less about him was not lost on Duncan.
“Baron wants to see us?” he asked Lucy when he was walking in step with her.
“As you heard,” she said, keeping her gaze on the farmhouse.
“Any idea why?” Duncan asked. “Or did he not say?”
“He has a mission for us.”
Duncan almost missed a step. A mission? He’d hoped but not believed. He’d been waiting for over a year for a mission. But wait...Lucy saida mission for us.
“What do you meana mission for us? We’re to be partners?”
“That’s right,” she said curtly.
Now Duncan did miss a step, almost pitching forward as his boot caught on a rock. This really was the best news of his life, but if he broke his arm on the way to accept, he’d ruin it all. Lucy looked back at him and shook her head. Clearly, she thought he was a big, ungraceful lout. He had to pull himself together. Duncan righted himself and fell in step beside her again. “I see,” he said in a tone he might have used if he was studying botany. “Do you have any other details of the mission?”
She stepped onto the porch of the farmhouse and whirled to face him. Duncan was still on the first step and had to look up at her for a change. Her glossy brown hair was in a simple tail down her back, but it swung around to fall over her shoulder in chocolate waves. Her brown eyes were the clear of a topaz he had once seen in an expensive jewelry set, and they seemed to spark at him like a jewel when the sunlight hit it just right. He knew she had dimples, but she wasn’t smiling now, and he’d have to imagine them. It wasn’t difficult as she smiled all the time—at everyone but him.
“Listen, do not make more of this than there is,” she told him.
Duncan blinked at the sharpness in her voice, realizing he had been staring at her like a lovestruck boy. That description wasn’t farfetched. She was so beautiful; it was easy to get lost in looking at her. Over the year and a half that he’d known her, he’d tried to forget about her. He’d focus on work or ask Mr. Qwill for challenging codes to decipher at night so he wouldn’t think of her. He often succeeded in putting her out of his mind, sometimes for days or even a week or more. But then she’d say something witty or clever or dazzle him with her quick grasp of a language, and he’d fall in love with her all over again. It was a repeating cycle, and Duncan didn’t know how to break it except to play her games.
Lucy’s games seemed to involve trying to best him at each and every turn. At first, Duncan had thought it was entertaining to see who could decode a message faster or make it through evasive maneuvers with the best time. Competing against her took his mind off the other things he’d like to do with her, but now he wondered if she hadn’t taken the game too seriously.
“I don’t know enough about the mission to make much of it yet,” he said carefully.
“That’s not what I meant.” She leaned down, and he forced himself not to inhale what he knew would be a sweet, feminine fragrance. “I meant, you and me working together. I know you think you are better than I am at...well, everything. But I don’t need a protector, and I won’t be your subordinate in this.”
Duncan blinked in surprise. “I would never—”
“Good. Then we are equal partners. Agreed?” She held out her hand, and Duncan stared at it stupidly for a moment before he realized she wanted him to shake it. He did so, looking at her small, ungloved hand in his.
