Page 72 of The Bachelor Spy
Had the traitors caught them? Blast. They’d been too obvious. Too unguarded.
And now the mission was compromised.God, forgive me!
“I know you’re both in there,” came the most unexpected voice from the other side of the door.
And the shock not only loosened his jaw but nearly shocked a laugh from him.
Grace.
“And I heard part of what you were fighting about,” Grace continued, her tone remarkably cheerful for someone who’d just locked two spies in a closet.
“Grace?” Blake barely managed the name.
“It sounds as if the two of you are working together for the same purpose.” The sound of something scraping across the floor before pressing against it came next. “Whatever that fully is.”
Had she just put a piece of furniture against the door? “So it doesn’t do any good not to talk about how to help each other, especially when we are inside a house of very brave and wounded soldiers.”
Blake and Evie exchanged glances in the darkness.
“My lady.” Blake tried for an entreaty.
“Don’t ‘my lady’ me, Blake.” Determination rang in her voice. “I know that if you’re both spies you could get out of that closet in no time at all, but I’m determined to at least try to make you see sense if I can.”
“Grace, this is hardly—”
“And now that I know I’m not going mad imagining mysterious goings-on,” Grace said, still sounding entirely too pleased with herself, “I’m going to bed. I’ll see you both in the morning. Try not to kill each other—or break any more furniture. Mrs. Powell and Mr. Brandon would be very upset about it. Good night!”
Her footsteps retreated down the corridor, leaving behind a silence so profound Blake could hear his own heartbeat.
And then, despite everything—the suspicion, the fear, the five months of grief—the laughter released from somewhere deep in his chest.
“Your cousin’s wife just locked us in a closet,” Evie said in bewildered tones.
“Yes.”
“And you’re laughing about it?”
He snickered again. “I am.”
“She’s …”
“Yes.” Blake reined in the laughter a little, searching for an adequate description for Lady Astley but coming up empty.
“I like her.”
His laugh escaped fully then. “So do I. Which is why we should probably sort this out before she comes back and does something even more dramatic.” He sobered slightly. “Or before she needs us and we’re stuck in a closet like a pair of amateurs.”
He felt Evie shift in the darkness, turning toward him. “So partners again, are we?”
“Sounds like the wisest option for this mission.”
Silence. And then she stepped nearer, close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her, towing him and his heart toward her like a magnet pulls metal.
“And after the mission? What do you want then, Stephen?”
She knew him too well. Knew his tells, of which he was certain there were too many to name at the moment.
And she was going to make him say it. To his own surprise, he wanted nothing else. Candor. Directness.
