Twice Tempted

Book 6: Drake's Rakes

by Eileen Dreyer

Genres: Historical Romance; Regency Romance

Synopsis

Fiona Ferguson's troubles began with a kiss . . . It feels like a lifetime ago that Alex Knight saved Fiona from certain doom . . . and stole a soul-shattering kiss for good measure. Wanting nothing more than to keep her safe, he left her in the care of her grandfather, the Marquess of Dourne. But Fiona was hardly safe. As soon as he could, the marquess cast her and her sister out on the streets with only her wits to keep them alive. Alex has never forgotten that long-ago kiss. Now the dashing spy is desperate to make up for failing his duty once before. This time he will protect Fiona once and for all, from a deadly foe bent on taking revenge on the Ferguson line-and anyone who stands in the way . . .

Release date: November 25, 2014

Publisher: Forever

Print pages: 401

Sample

Prologue

Hawesworth Castle, Yorkshire


Lady Fiona Maeve Ferguson Hawes received her sentence in a white room. White marble, white brocade, white porcelain, white-painted oak. The cold, spare temple to her grandfather’s pretensions.


Walking so silently she failed to strike an echo from the gleaming floor, Fiona came to a stop at the edge of the Aubusson carpet. She wanted to worry at the ivory muslin of her dress. She wanted to run upstairs and throw herself on her bed, where she could sob herself dry. Instead, briefly, she pressed her hand to her chest, absurdly afraid that the chaos that battered her would spill out all over her grandfather’s stark marble floor.

She couldn’t seem to draw a good breath. She hadn’t since Ian’s friend Alex Knight had told them the news. Since he had ridden away again, taking with him the last of her childhood dreams.

Oh, Ian.


Gone. Her brother was truly gone. He had left before. He had fought in the king’s wars since she had been a child. But he had always come home. He had always done his best to keep track of his twin siblings, and do his best by them, especially after mama had died.

No more. This time, Fiona and Mairead would be truly alone, especially when her grandfather delivered the verdict he was so anxious to make.

“You took long enough to get here, girl,” he barked, rising from behind his massive desk and stepping forward.

“I was seeing off Alex Knight,” she answered with a dip of a curtsy. “Considering he was kind enough to deliver the news of Ian’s death in person, I assumed that you would not wish me to stint on Hawesworth hospitality. Was I mistaken?”

She was rewarded with the cold glare that had once made her tremble.

“I hope you didn’t waste your time setting your sights on him,” the old man said, his voice thick with disdain. “The likes of him will have nothing to do with the likes of you.”

She refused to flinch. “He left unmolested.”

If he had been the kind of person to react, her grandfather would have gone red. As it was, he froze into a tower of disapproval. Hands clasped behind his back, he stood straight as a subaltern on parade, the sun limning his pure silver hair and magnifying the immense dignity of his person.

To be truthful, Fiona’s grandfather could have stood in a barn naked and disheveled, and it would still be obvious that he was the current holder of one of the nation’s most illustrious titles. He carried the marquessate of Leyburn in his bones, in tendon and viscera and brain. And he never ever let anyone forget it. Especially the misbegotten twin granddaughters he’d been forced to take in four years earlier when they’d had nowhere else to go.

“I give you enough credit to know why I called for you,” he said, his voice crisp.

She had known before Alex Knight had finished giving his news. “I imagine you intend to find a way to blame Mairead and me for Ian’s alleged crime.”

“Nothing alleged about it,” the marquess snapped. “You heard his friend. Pulled a gun in front of a shipful of witnesses and tried to shoot the Duke of Wellington.” He snorted, shaking his head. “I should have known he was a traitor.”

You should know even now that he wasn’t.


“As for you…” The marquess pulled out his watch and flipped it open. “You have about twenty-five pounds of accumulated pin money between you both, which is yours to keep, along with what you can carry.” He snapped the watch closed. “I have an appointment in Leyburn in an hour. I don’t expect to see you when I return.”

“What about Mairead?” Fiona asked, hands clenched to hide their trembling. “Do you think she can simply wander the roads?”

He shrugged. “By your own account, she’s done it before. Wouldn’t have even known there was a life like this if I hadn’t interfered. Besides, it saves the embarrassment of trying to foist her off on society.”

Of foisting either of them off. Something he never would have done anyway, which they both knew.

“I have done my duty,” he insisted as if he’d heard a protest. “That is all that can be asked. This family goes back to the Conqueror. I will not have it fall to scandal.”


And the scandal of two granddaughters who had survived on the streets could be erased if the girls disappeared as if they’d never come.

Fiona fought a flood of panic. Where would they go? It had been so long since she had kept them safe out on the streets. Eight long years. Had any of her skills survived? Her instincts? Where could twenty-five pounds take them?

Well, standing here soaking in the marquess’s contempt would offer no ideas. Without another word, Fiona turned for the door.

“Where will you go?” he barked.

Fighting for calm, she turned back and lifted an eyebrow, unaware how identically she copied him. “I don’t believe that can be of any interest to you, sir.”

Home, her heart cried. Get ye back to Edinburgh, where you know the streets and the people and the price of a meal.


“Of course it is of interest to me,” he snapped. “I demand to know that you won’t do anything more to sully my name.”

Glad to at least get a bit of petty revenge for all the slights she had suffered under this roof, she smiled. “In that case, Grandfather, I fear you are doomed to suffer disappointment.”

And without another look at the grandfather she had once thought would be her salvation, Fiona Ferguson walked out, shutting the door behind her.

Chapter 1

Four weeks later


It took a lot to surprise Alex Knight. But there he stood in the White Salon of Hawesworth Castle staring like a simpleton at the hall door that had just slammed in his face.


“Bloody hell.”

Three days of hard riding to bring the Marquess of Leyburn the best news possible, and the old bastard had blindsided him.

Standing alongside him, Chuffy Wilde gaped like a landed trout. “Bit dense, I know,” Chuffy said, scratching his nose with a pudgy finger, “but did the marquess just say he threw his granddaughters out into the snow?”

“Yes,” Alex answered, still staring after the old man. “I believe he did.”

Throwing open the doors, Alex strode into the hallway to find the marquess climbing the sweeping white marble staircase, his hand on the polished rail, his back as rigid as his morality. If the old tartar hadn’t been moving, Alex could have easily mistaken him for one of the statues that lined the steps.

“A word with you, sir.”

The marquess didn’t stop. “I have said all I wish to.”

“Perhaps you did not understand me,” Alex said, his voice terse. “Your grandson is alive and exonerated of the charges of treason. Ian has even been commended by the Duke of Wellington himself for his courage. Surely that is excellent news.”

Not from the old man’s expression. “Do you perhaps believe me to be hard of hearing?”

“I believe you must have misunderstood me, or you would never have walked away without securing the safety of your granddaughters, as any gentleman would.”

His expression frozen in disbelief, the marquess stalked all the way back down the stairs. “You question my honor, sir?” the old man demanded in glacial tones. “Mine?”


“A man of honor,” Alex retorted, “would not have abandoned the women under his care, no matter the provocation. Where are they?”


The marquess lifted a vague hand. “They left after your last visit. It is no longer my affair.”

That took Alex’s breath. He’d heard the term “seeing red.” He understood it now. Delivering the news of Ian’s death was one of the hardest tasks Alex had ever taken on. Fiona had been devastated by it. And Alex had left her. To this man.

“Do you mean that you threw your granddaughters out of your house the same day they learned that their brother was dead?”

The marquess’s expression grew, if possible, colder. “You are new to your title, Lord Whitmore,” he said. “Perhaps when you have worn it a bit longer, you’ll begin to comprehend just what is owed to it. My line has been unblemished for eight hundred years. It will remain so.”

The silence was shattered by an explosive laugh. Alex turned to see Chuffy bright-eyed and chortling. “Beg pardon,” he apologized with a wave of his hand. “Hilarious. Saintly family and all. Leyburn title is as straight-laced as Prinny’s parlor. Chock-full of pirates and brigands. Pater told me so.”

“Fribble,” the marquess spat. “Your father must despair of you.”

Chuffy’s smile only grew. “Does. Have a question, though. He’ll want to know. Ferguson’s exonerated. Why ignore the girls now? Bad form and all.”

“He is still a spy,” the marquess snapped. “No gentleman,” he said, glaring at Alex, “lowers himself to such behavior. As for his sisters…” He shrugged. “They are probably already back on the streets from which they came. I have found another heir. You may tell them. What those Fergusons do now is not my concern.”


Alex blocked his way. “Four years ago, at your behest, I brought your granddaughters to you. How can you just throw them out like this?”


“They survived just fine before, and they should have no trouble surviving now. The skills that kept them clothed and fed before I found them are never forgotten by women like that.”

Alex went cold. He had met Fiona only twice, but each time he had come away respecting her more. What kind of monster could look into those glorious blue eyes and not see the bone-deep honor there?

“Exactly what do you mean, sir?” he asked, his voice dangerously quiet.

The marquess’s smile was sour. “Come now, Whitmore. How do you think those two ate when they were living on the streets of Edinburgh? Kind Scottish fairies did not drop apples in their laps.”

Alex struggled to breathe. “They were no older than fourteen when Ian found them and got them into Miss Chase’s Academy.”

The marquess sneered. “Plenty old enough for that business, sir. And don’t think I am being dramatic. That she-wolf pulled a knife on me once, did you know that? She carries it in her garter. My secretary once forgot himself enough to challenge her to a shooting contest. He lost. He was lucky I didn’t dismiss him on the spot. She was lucky I didn’t toss her out onto the moors. And I haven’t even had the nerve to find out what other ‘talents’ she possesses. Well, no more. I will not feel threatened in my own home.”


Chuffy was shaking his head. “Won’t keep Ferguson away. He’ll find out. Wouldn’t be here when he comes, I were you. Bit protective and all.”

The marquess glared. “I don’t care if your father was my friend. Get out.”

Chuffy blinked. “Not without the ladies.”

“I told you. They’re not here.”

“Got to be somewhere.”

Somewhere. Christ, Alex thought. How would he possibly find them? It had been four weeks.


“If we don’t find those women,” he promised the old man, “Chuffy and I, along with every one of our associates, will spend every day and every farthing we possess between us ensuring that the ton knows exactly what happened here. You will be more vilified than Princess Caroline, and twice as unwelcome. I also wouldn’t count on supplanting Ian in the succession. He has friends, too.”


Alex saw the threat reach the marquess. The old man paled; his eyes narrowed. Fortunately for him, the old man refrained from delivering another opinion. With no more than a jerky wave of his hand, he stalked up the stairs.

“Don’t know about you,” Chuffy said, pushing his glasses up his nose, “but I think it’s time to talk to people who really know what goes on.”

*  *  *

They spent the next four hours interviewing the staff and came away with no more than outrage, grief, and carefully couched fury at their employer. Fiona’s abigail sobbed, chef all but shattered his chopping block as he slammed down his butcher knife on unsuspecting mutton, and the butler, a stiff-rumped old tartar with a profile like a penguin, methodically tore apart the linen handkerchief he had been folding. Alex had a feeling that if a vote were held, every person on that estate would have walked over a burning marquess to hand Lady Fiona a glass of water.

It didn’t help him find her.

“Tha’ll bring them safe home,” the housekeeper begged, fierce brown eyes awash in tears. “Won’t ’ee?”

Alex lied, unable to admit to either of them how slim his chances were. “I will. Do you have any idea where they went after they left here?”

“Coachie took girls to Black Swan in Leyburn.”

“And from there?”

She could only shrug, looking even more lost. “Stage goes all over, think on.”

No one else could offer more. So Alex and Chuffy began at the Black Swan, a gray coursed rubble stone building that anchored the market square of Leyburn. The proprietor, a thin, rather somnolent man of a height too great to fit beneath his own doors, remembered helping the women onto the London coach. Beyond that, he could say nothing certain, except that Lady Mairead had been sore distressed and Miss Fiona quiet, as usual.

With night coming on, the men had no choice but to secure rooms and repair to the taproom, where they were served full mugs of ale and a serviceable game pie. They spent dinner at a scarred oak table by a desultory fire trying to decide how to proceed.

“No friends to go to?” Chuffy asked, his attention on his food. “Your sister heard from her? School chums and all.”

“No. Pip would have alerted me. Especially if she learned that they’d been evicted from their home. Pip has a finely honed sense of justice.”

The first time he’d met Fiona had been in response to his sister’s sense of justice.

Chuffy grinned. “Little spitfire, Pip,” he said, pushing at his sliding glasses. “Popped me in the nose once for insulting the Ripton chit.” He rubbed at that appendage. “Not intentional, o’ course. Had no idea she was so shy. Never forget now.”

Alex was nodding, but he really wasn’t paying attention. He was remembering the first time he’d seen Fiona Ferguson four years ago. She had been sixteen and running away from the school her brother had put her in. Alex, hung over and surly from too much brandy the night before, had gone after her at Pip’s insistence.

And then, chasing down the coach he thought might be carrying her, he had seen Fiona lean out the window. Tall, stately, with a square face, high cheekbones, and startling blue eyes. A mature beauty on a deceptively fragile girl. And the most glorious red-gold hair he’d ever seen, gleaming even in the rain like precious metal. She had been as bold as brass, fearless, focused on finding her sister, whom she thought was in some kind of trouble. She had fit that glorious hair to a farthing.

But when he’d seen her four weeks ago, she had changed. Quieter, tidier, as if she were a foot squeezed into a too-small shoe. That barely tamed light he had unconsciously sought in her stunning blue eyes had been gone, replaced by a disturbing placidity. She had been expensively clad and shod in Indian muslin and kidskin, groomed to a fare-thee-well. And oddly pallid.

What had happened in the last four years to douse that ineffable spirit? A spirit that had survived a childhood of hardship, upheaval, and death, all by her sixteenth birthday.

Why had Alex not realized that Fiona’s promising future had gone wrong? Had she even had a season? Suddenly he couldn’t remember. Certainly not when his sister Pip came out. The year after? He had been on the continent through much of that season, interceding between Wellington’s paymaster and the Rothschilds.

He was furious, suddenly. At the marquess, at the vagaries of life. Mostly, at himself. At his assumption that the only thing Ian’s sisters had needed four years ago had been warmth and a full belly. That when he had brought Fiona to that great house in the Yorkshire dales to meet her grandfather, he had delivered her to paradise.

After all, she and her sister had spent their lives scraping by, alone except for a brother who was never there. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a family again?

But he had judged her family against his own, and he knew perfectly well how unfair that was. He had the love not only of his mother and sisters, but a stepfather who had taught Alex most of what he knew about being a gentleman. To Alex, the greatest gift a person could be given was a family. He’d forgotten that not all families were worth coming home to.

It was Chuffy’s portentous throat-clearing that yanked Alex back from his thoughts. He looked up to discover a middle-aged man standing at their table, his curly brimmed beaver clutched in his hands.

“Lord Whitmore?” the man asked. At Alex’s nod, he smiled. “Oh, thank heavens. I was afraid I’d missed you.”

Alex and Chuffy both stood to receive the unprepossessing gentleman, Chuffy’s napkin still tucked into his neckcloth.

“Can we help you?” Alex asked.

The man put out his hand. “Gilbert Bryce-Jones. The marquess’s secretary. I just returned to find the marquess ready to lop off heads and the staff all in a fuss. Seems a pair of gentlemen called his lordship to task for failing his responsibilities.”

Hands were shaken, names exchanged, and outerwear removed. Reclaiming his seat, Alex took a draught of his ale and evaluated the newcomer, who seemed interchangeable with most other secretaries he’d met. Trim and tidy, with unremarkable features and neatly cut, mouse-brown hair, as if seeking anonymity.

“Bryce-Jones?” Chuffy asked, fork and knife back in hand. “Know your family. Good ton, no luck with money.”


Bryce-Jones chuckled, but Alex caught a glint of discomfort in his gray eyes. “You’re absolutely correct, my lord,” the secretary said, his right hand brushing against his marcello waistcoat, as if expecting to find something there. “I am fortunate that my cousin the marquess was kind enough to give me a position.”

Chuffy shook his head. “Not kind at all. Cheese-paring old misery guts. Must be sharp in the brain box.”

Obviously uncertain how to react to Chuffy, Bryce-Jones turned to Alex. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you came. Although I doubt I could have been more help.”

Alex waited for the innkeeper to bend like a slow crane to deposit Bryce-Jones’s ale on the table and leave before answering. “You truly have no idea where the women went?”

“No.” Bryce-Jones picked up his mug, but didn’t drink. “I can’t begin to tell you how worried I am about them. If it were in my power, I would have sent Bow Street after them. If only I’d been here…”

“You weren’t?” Alex asked.

Another sorrowful shake. Another quick swipe at his vest. “In London for the marquess. I came home to find Ladies Fiona and Mairead gone and the staff inconsolable.” He leaned in as if sharing a secret. “They were greatly loved.”

“Even Lady Mairead?” Alex asked. “I’ve heard she can be…difficult.”

“You don’t know her?”

“We’ve never met. I was looking forward to it.”

Bryce-Jones smiled, his expression almost paternal. “Lady Mairead is…special. I worry about her, though. She doesn’t do well when she is forbidden her routine.”

As if in response, Chuffy began scratching the side of his nose. Alex paid attention. Usually when Chuffy started worrying at his face, something bothered him.

“Mrs. Weller said the marquess’s grandson is alive and vindicated,” Bryce-Jones said. “That is wonderful. When should we expect to see the viscount?”

It took Alex a moment to realize that the man was speaking of Ian Ferguson. When Alex had been introduced to him, the Scot had been no more than a lucky street gypsy from Edinburgh who had chivvied and lied his way into a commission in the Black Watch. Even when Ferguson had learned that, far from being a bastard he was the heir to a marquessate, he had never thrown his position around.

“I don’t know when he’ll be released to return home,” Alex said.

Bryce-Jones nodded. “Of course. I hope then the marquess can make his peace.”

“Can’t ’til we find the girls,” Chuffy said, pulling off his glasses and wiping them with his handkerchief.

“I don’t know if this will help,” Bryce-Jones said, reaching into his jacket, “but they had quite a correspondence.”

Alex’s head snapped up. “Who?” he asked. “The twins?”

Bryce-Jones pulled out a packet of letters and handed them over. “Some odd characters, from all over. No one we ever met, of course. Could they have sought refuge with one of their correspondents?”

Alex picked up the packet and began to riffle through it. There were about eight envelopes in all, a few from foreign countries. Alex recognized a few names and frowned.

“Have you read these?” he asked, looking up.

The secretary smiled. “The ones in English. They’re fascinating, aren’t they?”

Alex nodded, his focus on a return address in Slough that belonged to a familiar name. Caroline Herschel. The letter was in German. More important, it seemed filled with complex mathematical equations.

“Well,” he said, checking a few more addresses. “It’s a place to start.”

“Please keep me apprised.” Bryce-Jones frowned. “I realize the marquess seems intractable, but he’ll want to know.”

“If you’d like,” Alex said, his attention now on a letter from Pierre LaPlace, who was saying something about black holes. “I’ll give you my card…oh, no, wait. They’re up in my room.” Scraping his chair back, he stood. “Chuff?”

Chuffy’s head snapped up and he blinked. “Keep you company, Bryce-Jones.”

Alex took all the time he could. It was an old tactic. If Chuffy gave the signal, it usually meant he needed some time alone with the person they were interviewing. He rarely failed to learn something interesting. It was amazing what people told Chuffy.

By the time Alex got back, Bryce-Jones was sitting back in his seat, his ale mug in his hand, smiling. Chuffy was checking his pocket watch, which he’d pulled from a plum-and-silver-striped waistcoat.

“No, no,” he was saying. “Appreciate the offer. Late. Need to be up early.”

“Here’s my card,” Alex said without sitting.

Bryce-Jones was forced to stand to accept it, and Chuffy followed suit. After that it took only five more minutes to get the secretary out the door, after which Alex and Chuffy secured a bottle of brandy and glasses to take upstairs.

“What did you find out?” Alex asked as he followed Chuffy into his room and shut the door.

Chuffy stretched out on Alex’s bed as if it were his own. “Closemouthed as that minx fella.”

Alex couldn’t help but smile. “Sphinx, Chuff.”

His eyes opened. “Egyptian cove? Furry hands?”

“The same.”

He nodded. “That. Didn’t even admit that he hates the old man. Does. Thinks he’s smarter. Probably is.”

“And?” Alex knew there was more. There always was with Chuffy. Getting it was like bringing in a recalcitrant trout, though.

Chuffy was scrubbing at the side of his nose again. “Not sure. Marquess stiff-rumped as a deposed king. But something in the way Bryce-Jones described him made me think there’s more. Lion?”

Brandy bottle in hand, Alex paused. That would certainly alter the picture, now, wouldn’t it? The Lions were the group of highly placed aristocrats Alex and Chuffy had been investigating over charges of possible treason when they’d been pulled to deliver Ian’s good news to Fiona.

Fiona. Dear God, where was she?


“I haven’t heard anything that might implicate the marquess,” Alex said, his gut sour with dread. “But you’re right about his attitude.”

Alex handed Chuffy a glass of brandy and some of the letters Bryce-Jones had given him. “What do you make of these?”

One look had Chuffy sitting up. “Zounds.” Opening the letter more fully, he shoved his glasses atop his head and held the paper close, as if the German would be easier to translate. It took a minute of reading before he looked up. “Do you know what this is? And from whom?”

“Equations of some sort,” Alex said, pouring them both out a tot of brandy and handing Chuffy his. “From someone named Gauss.”

“Someone?” Chuffy set his glass down untasted. “Only one of the greatest mathematicians of the age. He seems to be debating a theory using Euler’s formula in something…I’m not sure what, though. I don’t recognize it.”


This time Alex admitted surprise. “You? Impossible.”

Chuffy was nibbling on his thumb, his lips moving as he scanned the letter. “Astronomy ain’t my field. Need to ask the pater.”

Alex nodded, not understanding any of it but the fact that it took complex mathematics to get Chuffy to speak in complete sentences.

“Didn’t you say they lived in the streets?” Chuffy demanded. “How could they have learned this? It’s advanced, even for me. Have to be wrong.”

Alex downed his drink and poured another. “Not wrong. Their mother spirited them to Scotland when they were young to save them from their father. You remember Viscount Hawes.”

Chuffy shuddered. “Didn’t die soon enough.”

“Ferguson supported them all with army pay from the time he was fifteen. He came home some time later to find his mother dead and the girls living under a bridge. But as I said, they were already twelve or fourteen or so. The marquess didn’t step in until Hawes died and left him without heirs.”

“Might have known.”

“Tell me these letters will help us find them.”

Chuffy was shaking his head, his focus obviously on the squiggles and letters and numbers. “Depends on whether they feel comfortable battening down on any of these folk. Not sure I would, but I’ve never had the nerve to correspond, either.”

Alex separated out a few letters. “Fiona bought coach fare to London. A few of these addresses are in the vicinity. We might as well look there first.”

Chuffy began to carefully fold his letter. “Read the others later. Right now, need to do some more work on those blasted ciphers.”

Alex looked up. “No luck?”

“Dead annoying. Have half a dozen messages. Have a whole bloody poem full of keywords. Nothing seems to fit. Awful poem. Hurts my eyes.”

Alex cuffed him on the shoulder. “Well, if anybody can crack the thing, it’s you.”

It was the Rakes’ greatest secret. No one who met Chuffy would think him a code-breaker without equal.

Chuffy frowned. “Feel like Octopus, solvin’ riddles all the time.”

Alex tried not to smile. “You mean Oedipus? Well, it could be worse, Chuff. He did solve the Sphinx’s riddle and get the fair princess.”

“Don’t want a princess. Want to sleep.” Handing over the letters, Chuffy gave a mournful sigh. “Might have known it’d be back to the minx fellow.”

Alex grinned. “The Sphinx is actually female.”

“Figures.” Chuffy shook his head and slid his glasses back into place. “At least I don’t have to tell Drake we’re deserting the princess’s house party. I’ll let you do that.”

Alex felt a new weight drop on his chest. An old weight, really. A weight Chuffy didn’t know about. “I’m not sure Drake will understand.”

Chuffy gave him a look that reduced him to a first-former. “Gentlemen first, old lad. Spies second.”

Gentlemen first. But was he? Alex wondered.


The truth twisted in his gut like bad meat. Gentlemen didn’t betray their friends. Gentlemen didn’t sell their souls to retrieve incriminating letters. Alex had done both not a week earlier, at the house party he and Chuffy had been monitoring. But at the time he had convinced himself that he could save Ian once he’d saved his own family.

It hadn’t worked out that way.

Alex couldn’t shut his eyes without seeing Ian Ferguson torn and bloody and bowed from his encounter with Minette Ferrar, only still alive because others had found him. He couldn’t think of what he’d done without wanting to vomit.

Every day he promised to make it up to his friend somehow. And now, already, he had failed him again.

He had to find Fiona for Ian.

He had to find Fiona for himself.

“Indeed, Chuff,” he said, downing his drink as if the matter were that easy. “I wouldn’t be able to face my father if I deserted two innocents just to save the nation.”

Chuffy gave that little huff of his as he bundled the letters. “Others can save the nation. No one around for the ladies. Not worried, thou. . .