"Is there a particular reason you're telling me this?"

"There is." Whit tapped his finger on the edge of the chair. "Your mission required you to spend a good deal of time with my sister while she was here. I saw the looks that pa.s.sed between you at meals and over games of chess in the parlor. I know my sister. I know her heart." He stopped tapping. "I know you broke it."

A demand of satisfaction from Kate's brother, Hunter thought with resigned disgust; it was a fitting end to the courtship. "Took you long enough to seek me out."

"I wanted to think the matter through, and give you time to do the same."

"Time changes nothing."

Whit surprised him by shrugging. "I'm not quite as eager to call you out as I was eighteen hours ago."

"Generous of you."

"Not really. Mirabelle promised to take our son and emigrate to the Americas should I try it."

"Ah."

"She did give me leave to b.l.o.o.d.y your nose a bit, though."

"Have done with it then," Hunter invited with a wave of his hand. He didn't bother getting up. No point, really, if he was just going to fall back down again.

Whit sat up in his chair, and his voice grew cold. "Is there a particular particular reason I should?" reason I should?"

Hunter was just sober enough to know when a diplomatic reply was in everyone's best interest. "Broke her heart, didn't I?"

Whit, apparently satisfied by that answer, snorted and leaned back once more. "By the looks of it, she broke yours as well."

"Don't have one to break."

"If I believed that, even for a moment, I'd not have let you within a hundred yards of my sister."

"You don't know me as well as you think."

"I do." A small smile pulled at Whit's mouth. "You've what-five, six months left of your obligation to the War Department?"

Hunter bolted upright, waited for his vision to catch up, then demanded, "You know? You know and would allow me to have anything to do with your family?"

Whit's smile grew. He motioned toward the decanter of brandy. "May I?"

"What? No. Yes. I don't care." What the devil was the man talking about?

Whit helped himself to a small drink and returned to his chair to sit back and let out a long contented sigh. "I've been waiting a good while to have my revenge on William."

"Revenge?"

"You'll be wanting your own soon enough."

Hunter was vaguely aware of grinding his teeth. "What do you know?"

Whit took a sip of his drink. "I know you financed, among other things, a very successful smuggling operation for a time." He took another sip. "I know you were apprehended with some of your goods, and that among those goods was correspondence between a French patriot and an English spy." He took yet another slow sip. "I know those letters were planted."

"They b.l.o.o.d.y well were," Hunter snapped. At least, they had been in the sense that one of his men had acquired them without his permission or knowledge.

Whit's smile grew into a positively wolfish grin. "They were planted by William."

A long period of silence followed that announcement. Whit continued to sip his drink. Hunter stared at him, his sluggish brain struggling to catch up to his hearing.

"You lie," he finally managed.

Still grinning, Whit shrugged and finished his drink. "Ask William yourself. He intended to tell you in a couple months' time."

Hunter went back to staring as Whit set his gla.s.s aside and rose from his chair to take his leave. He paused at the door and turned back. "Regardless of your reasons for working for the War Department, you've been an extraordinary agent, Hunter. The best...aside from Alex and myself, of course. And you've been a good friend."

"Because I helped make you rich."

"That didn't hurt. Neither did stepping in front of that bullet for me."

Hunter resisted the urge to shift in his seat. "Just a scratch."

"Sober up. Get to London." Whit's grin returned. "Give William my regards."

The ride from Pallton House to London took six hours by horseback. Hunter's head throbbed as every hoof beat against the road. He'd averaged it out to be roughly three hundred sixty beats per minute, sixty minutes an hour, for six hours. That was roughly one hundred thirty thousand throbs. And he was going to b.l.o.o.d.y William's nose for each and every one of them.

It mattered little to him that William hadn't been the reason he'd reached for the brandy, nor that it hadn't been William he'd thought of while he'd spent half the day trying to undo the damage that brandy had done, nor that it hadn't been William he'd thought of during the vast majority of the long ride. It was William who was going to pay.

And now that he was perfectly sober, he decided to make Whit pay as well. The man had known of William's treachery and not said a word until now. What sort of good friend kept secrets such as that? It was possible, of course, that Whit had only recently learned of the deception, but that minor detail wasn't going to save him.

Fuming, throbbing, and eager to make William pay for both, Hunter climbed the front steps to William's town house, lifted a fist to pound on the front door, then paused.

There were questions he wanted answered and if those answers turned out to correspond with what Whit had told him, he wanted satisfaction. The latter was easily obtained with his fists, but the first would be troublesome to acquire from an unconscious man. Even a man with a broken nose could be difficult to understand.

He'd give William a chance to explain himself, he decided as he pounded on the front door. Perhaps he'd have a little fun with the man first-let him squirm a bit. Then Then he'd b.l.o.o.d.y his nose. he'd b.l.o.o.d.y his nose.

A maid showed him in and ushered him down the hall to the study where William sat working behind a desk piled with paperwork.

"Mr. Hunter to see you, sir," the maid announced before taking her leave.

"Hunter, my boy." William barely spared him a glance. "You're late. And you look like h.e.l.l."

"I was drunk."

That got the man's full attention. "Were you?"

"Very," he a.s.sured him and took a seat in front of the desk.

"Any particular reason?"

"None whatsoever." He stretched his legs out before him. "Just fancied the idea."

"I see, and did this idea occur to you before or after your mission was officially over?"

"Before," he lied. "Well before," before,"

"I see," William repeated and narrowed his eyes. "Habit of yours?"

"I wouldn't call it a habit, not really. I'm more of a dedicated hobbyist." He raised his brows. "Problem?"

William set his pen down, hard. "Have you forgotten your obligation to me? To the War Department?"

"No. But I have decided to no longer meet it."

"You'd risk the hangman?"

"No," he said clearly. "Apparently, I wouldn't."

William opened his mouth, closed it, and sat back in his chair with a disgusted grunt. "d.a.m.n Whit. I should never have told him." Whit. I should never have told him."

"d.a.m.n you!" Hunter snapped, straightening in his chair. "You lied lied to me." to me."

William heaved the sigh of one very much put open. "Yes. Yes, I did. Extensively, in fact."

"You planted evidence that marked me as a traitor."

"Strictly speaking, it wasn't planted. Never left my pocket. I just pulled it out-" He broke off at Hunter's narrow-eyed glare. "Very well, I planted it."

"I thought I'd been an unwitting traitor." That had eaten at him, the notion someone had gotten the better of him, that someone had used him. "I thought I'd hang." That hadn't sat well with him either. Nor did the realization that someone had had used him sit well now. used him sit well now.

He jabbed his finger at William. "I should call you out."

"You'd certainly hang for shooting me."

He jabbed his finger again. "I should beat you senseless."

"Might want to hold off on that until I explain why. Or don't you want to know?"

Hunter snarled but dropped his finger. "Why, then?"

"Because I wanted you as an agent and, at the time, it was the only way to gain your cooperation." William gave Hunter a pointed look. "Would you have come to work for the War Department simply because I had asked?"

"No."

William nodded. "I needed you. You are one of very few who can move about in every level of society as if it was his own, because at some point, every one of them was your own. You've been, among a mult.i.tude of other things, a pauper, a thief, a merchant, and by the time you were brought to my attention, a guest at some of England's most elite tables."

"Is that why you didn't confiscate my wealth?" Hunter demanded. "Because you knew I'd need it to find any level of acceptance in the ton ton?"

"Well, that, and because I do have some some sense of fair play. It was never my intention to punish you, merely make use of you." sense of fair play. It was never my intention to punish you, merely make use of you."

"Do you expect me to express grat.i.tude for that?"

"For that, no. For giving you the opportunity to prove yourself, yes."

"Sanctimonious a.s.s," Hunter snarled. "Prove myself to whom? You? The Prince Regent?"

"To yourself," William informed him. "Admittedly, it wasn't for your own well-being that I planted the letters, but it worked out to your benefit all the same. Your obligation to me-"

"There was no b.l.o.o.d.y obligation."

"Your perceived obligation, then," William corrected. "It gave you time away from your less savory pursuits. It gave you a chance to become the man you believe you've only pretended to be."

Hunter gave himself a moment to try to decipher that last bit. "What the devil does that mean?"

"It means you're a good agent, Hunter. One of the most reliable I've ever had."

"I haven't had a choice, have I?"

"Certainly you have," William countered dismissively. "You could have left. Nothing stopped you from simply disappearing years ago."

"And have your men hunt me down like a fox run to ground?"

William waved that argument away. "You know how to stay hidden, how to evade."

"From the likes of McAlistair?" The man had been an a.s.sa.s.sin. A highly successful a.s.sa.s.sin.

William seemed to think about that, scratching at his nose before his face split in a sudden grin. "I'd have paid good money to see a contest such as that. It would have been epic."

It would have resulted in the death of one or both of them. "You're positively macabre, aren't you?"

William shrugged. "It's the nature of the business. Speaking of which...I'm retiring from it."

"I..." Hunter bent his head to pinch the bridge of his nose. Just like that, the man wanted to change the subject. "I'm delighted for you. Or I express my deepest condolences, whichever you prefer. May we return to the matter at hand?"

"It is the matter at hand. I'm naming you as my successor."

His head snapped up. "What? Me? What the devil for?"

"Because you're a good man, a trustworthy agent. Didn't I just mention that?"

"I..." He held a finger up. "A minute."

He needed a d.a.m.n minute to wrap his throbbing head around the bizarre conversation. William had planted evidence, misled and used him, and was now offering him a position of exceptional prestige and power. There were, he decided, only so many surprises a man could absorb in a short amount of time. William, no doubt, was aware of this.

"Make no mistake," Hunter said in a cool tone. "We're not finished with the matter of the planted letters. But to address your attempt at changing the subject-Whit, Alex, and McAlistair are fine agents as well." They were also better men, but he wasn't about to begin a discussion on that. "Ask one of them."

William shook his head. "This isn't a job for a peer. It requires one be a mite...flexible, shall we say, in one's morals."