“Why is that?” Duncan asked.
“Supposedly this is where Henry the Eighth stood to watch for smoke from the Tower of London, a sign that Anne Boleyn was dead.”
“Coward,” Duncan said.
Lucy turned sharply. “Why do you say that?”
“If he were any sort of man, he would have been present for her death. He ordered it. It’s cowardly to go hunting instead and make someone else do your dirty work.”
“You think he should have taken the axe to her neck?”
“No, but he should have been made to witness her death. Just three years before he’d loved her enough to break with the Pope and the Vatican. Was it really love or only lust?”
“He was a man, so it was probably only lust.”
Duncan moved to a bench in the shade of a large tree and sat down, staring out at the view of the park with London in the distance. “You have a poor view of men.”
“I shouldn’t have said that aloud.” She turned to him, hands still on her hips. “I have a bad habit of saying whatever is on my mind. I blame my mother.”
“Why is that?”
“She always speaks her mind, and my father values her thoughts and ideas. They’re equals. I suppose I thought every man was like that until I left home and joined the Home Office.”
“Ah.” Duncan could just imagine her at eighteen or nineteen, striding confidently into the Home Office, expecting her thoughts and ideas to be respected. “I imagine you very quickly learned that most men want women to keep quiet and fetch tea.”
She gave a short bitter laugh. “I understood my place quickly enough, yes.”
“And yet you found a way to prove yourself, else you wouldn’t be here. How did you do it?”
She turned back to the view. “We are supposed to be exploring the grounds for other possible rendezvous points. Not talking about our pasts.”
Duncan rose. “We can walk and talk.” He offered his arm, but she waved it away. “I really am curious. I came from the Foreign Office myself. It wasn’t hard to distinguish oneself there. There’s always a crisis on the Continent and someone is needed to gather information or intercept missives.”
“I’m sure you did more than merely gather information. You were the undersecretary to the Foreign Minister.”
Duncan gave her a sharp look. “How do you know that?”
“I can gather information as well. I gathered quite a lot of information for the Home Office. I know all sorts of secrets about dukes and wealthy titans of industry.”
“I’m sure you do.” He gestured to an arbor at the base of the ridge. A profusion of purple flowers he didn’t know the name of climbed over the arch of a wooden trellis. Lucy stepped inside, examining the ground for any recent signs of occupation. Duncan followed, but the interior was quite overgrown, and they were pushed close together.
“This looks unpromising.”
“I agree.” She followed him out, but her skirts caught on a branch, and she stumbled. Duncan turned and caught her, grasping her elbows. For a long moment, their gazes met. Duncan’s eyes went to her lips. It would be so easy to tug her close and kiss her. They were well away from the house. He could take his time exploring her lips, hold her close, run his hands over her lush body.
Abruptly, Lucy pulled away and made a show of dusting off her skirts. They continued on, Lucy taking more care with her skirts now and still refusing to take Duncan’s elbow.
“But it was the criminal underground in Portsmouth that earned me notice,” she said, as though that highly charged moment between them hadn’t occurred and they were still speaking of her time in government.
“Criminal underground?” Duncan said.
“That’s right. The details aren’t important, but we had confiscated a number of crates of Portuguese Madeira. Customs was furious because somehow the Madeira was making it into the country without being taxed. I traced the crates back to Portsmouth. It turned out a criminal group from London had set up operations there and was using the old smuggling caves to bring Madeira as well as Chinese silks and Spanish lace covertly into the country.”
Duncan stopped. Lucy glanced about. “What is it? Those trees over there?”
He shook his head. “That was you?”
A crease appeared between her eyes.
