Lu-chee-ah. He used the Italian pronunciation, letting his tongue caress the sound of it, savoring the intimate luxury of her name. In their line of work, names were death warrants and he’d protected hers with his very life, whether she knew it or believed it or not. Maybe someday he’d tell her what he’d endured on her behalf, but not today, not when such a disclosure would only serve to raise her suspicions further.
“Rule number two,” Lucia quoted, eyes flashing. “The game is never really over.”
Lord, he’d taught her well. Too well, it would seem. She was not simply going to hand over her envelope, but it was reassuring to know that after all these years she still had it and it would be sealed, untouched. Still, reassurances were not enough. They never were. He needed that envelope. It had been a quest, a personal mission. For his own sense of closure and perhaps even for hers, they needed to open the last envelope and put the ghosts of the past to rest. He’d promised Jonathon’s family nothing less.
He also needed it for her safety. That was the other reason he was here. Danger was on his heels. He had only tonight and tomorrow to protect her and lead the danger away. When all was well, he could return and act on his desires. Everything hinged on Lucia’s willingness to part with the envelope.
Ronan rose, it was time to take charge, gun or not. He pushed aside the twinge of guilt that always accompanied any reminder of Jonathon before it could become a blinding black wall of remorse. There were so many regrets when it came to Jonathon. He never should have let him play, no matter how good he’d been at the game.
“It is gratifying to see that you’ve been so well schooled,” Ronan said softly, “but I think you misjudge my business.” Would she notice he did not deny her claims? He reached inside his coat, knowing full well Lucia’s eyes followed his every gesture with sharp awareness. He dangled a pocket watch from his fingers, letting her take in the singular beauty of the item: the cover in gold with two raised figures of young Greek men on either side of a bell done in copper, the thin, elegant chain weaving across his knuckles. The unmistakable winding key dangled from the chain in slim simplicity. He saw the moment in her eyes when she recognized it and Ronan knew he’d chosen the gift wisely. What she wouldn’t do for him, Lucia might do for a memory. She was not so different than himself in that regard.
* * *
“Jonathon’s watch,” Lucia breathed. Her eyes began to sting, the sight of the watch conjuring a thousand images: Jonathon’s golden head tossed back in laughter, Jonathon bent neck or nothing over his horse as he took a reckless hedge in the Viennese woods; Jonathon elegant and composed at Vienna’s finest dinner tables; Jonathon waltzing, all grace and ease. She pressed her free hand to her stomach to quell the lurching. But she couldn’t stop the last image: Jonathon falling, his body bloody and torn from the gunshot as he’d staggered toward her in the ballroom, his golden glory destroyed in one lethal moment. The guilt rose. If you had stayed, you would have been killed, too, came the usual argument, the one she regularly used to beat back the remorse. Tonight the argument was impotent. St. Simon had stayed and he’d lived, proving her argument false.
Her eyes darted back to St. Simon. “His watch is your business?” She hated how her voice trembled with uncontained emotion and that her mind seethed with suspicion. Had he brought the watch in the hopes she’d open the secret compartment behind the face because he couldn’t?
He nodded, his voice low and private, his words measured. “I thought you’d want it. You and he were close. I thought it might offer some comfort.” They weren’t quite the words she wanted to hear: The game is over, there is no other reason for my coming. Or better yet, I’ve come for you, to see if there’s anything between us besides the heat of the game.
The last was hypothetical conjecture on her part. St. Simon had never once made inappropriate overtures toward her, as so many other gentlemen had. That didn’t mean he was innocent of interest, however. He was guilty of having followed her with his eyes in Vienna’s crowded ballrooms with a predatory look that went beyond the need for basic surveillance. More than once she’d caught him staring at her in an unguarded moment, a moment that was always so quickly masked she questioned whether it had ever happened.
Those moments were never acted upon. The game did not advocate for such a liaison between compatriots. The game was everything to a man like St. Simon, as deep in his loyalties to England as he was in his passions. Engaging feelings meant engaging danger. There was enough danger as it was without adding to it, especially when the object of one’s affections was La Mariposa, Vienna’s most beautiful woman, and the most deadly.
St. Simon stepped close enough to drop the timepiece in her hand, the gun between them forgotten. The watch was warm from the heat of his body as she ran a finger over the cover. She found the hidden catch from memory but did not spring it.
“There’s nothing in it, I am sorry to report,” St. Simon offered in deceptively soft tones, reading her thoughts. Then again, maybe it wasn’t deception. He’d loved Jonathon too, as much as she. He’d protected Jonathon as much as she had. Except at the end. She’d chosen to protect herself. She shook her head and tried to give it back. “You keep it. He was your friend too.”
St. Simon’s hand closed around her fingers, wrapping them over the surface of the watch. The feel of his hand on hers sent a tingling warmth up her arm. “Please, he would have wanted you to have it, and it’s taken me long enough to find you.” He offered a small smile, looking handsome and sincere, a look that had been the downfall of women across the continent. But that didn’t stop a hunger from stirring in her belly. St. Simon in her bed would be a heady experience indeed, and one a long time in coming.
Lucia shook her head. She’d been alone too long. But that didn’t make her stupid. Neither was she about to go to pieces over Jonathon’s watch. If that disappointed St. Simon, so be it. Moved as she was by the gesture, she didn’t believe for a moment bringing the keepsake had been St. Simon’s only motivation. The game might indeed be over. But there was a new game afoot. She was about to bet her life on it. Lucia moved to the sideboard and began her ploy with six simple words. “May I offer you a drink?”
Lucia opened the cupboard to reveal a well-stocked cabinet full of liquors. Without waiting for an answer, she reached for a bottle and two small tumblers that held no more than a swallow or two at a time. She poured in plain sight of St. Simon, out of habit to assure the drinker the liquor was not poisoned, and offered him a glass. “A toast then, to Jonathon.”
St. Simon took the glass, caressing it ever so slightly between elegant fingers that promised to deliver exquisite decadence to any body part they touched. “To Jonathon, who was arguably the best of us.”
Lucia downed her drink in a single effort and swallowed hard against the strong liquor going down. St. Simon followed suit, swallowing with an appreciable smile. “Zubrovka, unless I miss my guess.”
She nodded and poured them another, gesturing that they be seated. “Shall I ring for food?”
“Heavens, no, it’s bad luck! Have you forgotten the old superstition about drinking vodka with food?” St. Simon laughed away her offer, taking the second glass. “You remembered this, though.” He made a toasting motion toward her with his glass. “There’s nothing like Polish bison-grass vodka.”
St. Simon’s favorite. Of course she remembered. She remembered all the little things that made up the sum of men: the cigars they smoked, the liquors they drank, the colognes they wore, the tailors they preferred. Such knowledge had kept her alive, made her invaluable to men, made her worth saving, and more than once that knowledge had given her the ultimate key to any man: control, the one weapon she never surrendered. She’d surrender her gun before she’d surrender that. Control made
