“The rolling of the ship does not sit well with my stomach.”
He ran a hand through his inky locks, the gesture rife with frustration. The movement of his arm was graceful, the large biceps flexing powerfully. Simon bore the form of a common laborer, which attracted more women than it repelled. Lysette admired it with the same offhand attention with which she contemplated death.
“Does our arrival tomorrow . . . disturb you?” he asked grudgingly.
“Would it plague your conscience if it did?”
The glare he shot her made her laugh.
She knew he regarded her with wary confusion. He sensed the division in her caused by her lack of memory, but he had yet to learn the reason for it. Lysette viewed her missing past as a vulnerability, and she had learned—in the most heinous fashion—that she could not afford any further liabilities beyond her gender.
“You do not even attempt to be likable,” he complained.
“No,” she agreed, moving to occupy the only chair in the room, a walnut spindle-back with a contoured seat. They shared a fairly comfortable cabin and yet the first days had been some of the tensest in her short recollection. She was not accustomed to keeping such close quarters with men, especially over a length of time. “You will be free of me tomorrow.”
“Ha!” Simon sat on the edge of her bed to remove his boots. A hammock slung across the far corner served as his sleeping place. It swung gently as the ship rolled, a sight that often lulled her into daydreams of a brighter future. “I would have been free of you in England, if you had not been lying, deceiving, and making mischief the entire length of our association.”
“That is my livelihood, mon amour.”
“Soon to be inflicted on some other unfortunate soul.”
“Your hypocrisy is impressive.”
He glared. “I resigned my commission before leaving England. I am returning you to France only because of my men. If not for them, I would be elsewhere. Far from you.”
“Ah.”
While she wore a mocking smile on the outside, on the inside she admired his loyalty and sense of responsibility. His underlings—a dozen men who had worked covertly on his behalf—were now being held against their will as insurance for her return. His resignation freed him from any obligation for their safety, yet he pressed on, regardless.
“As to whether or not I will be free of you tomorrow, I doubt it. This will not be a swift exchange,” he said, surprising her. “I will see all of my men first. Should one of them be injured, we will wait for his full recovery before proceeding. In addition, we must negotiate the terms for Jacques and Cartland. Much will depend on how cooperative Comte Desjardins is.”
“And if you do not regain all of them?”
Simon glanced at her. “Then, your people will not regain you.”
“Perhaps you will never be rid of me.”
He growled. “That would not be pleasant for you.”
“Oh, I might beg to disagree. You are pleasing to the eye and you maintain a surly sort of charm.”
When other men would have made her life a misery, Simon had seen to her comfort and care, albeit grudgingly. His tarnished honor fascinated her. Lysette had spent their time together attempting to discern what fueled him. If she could discover that, the knowledge would be to her advantage.
“Witch,” Simon muttered in response to her taunting.
She placed her slippered feet atop a roughly hewn wooden footstool with a silent sigh. Did she have a family or anyone to care for her and miss her? Did someone pine for her and wonder at her disappearance from their lives? She had no notion of what motivated a man like Simon, what roads in life had led him to hire himself out for money, but she knew what motivated her—the desire to regain the knowledge of her identity. She required funds and resources for such an undertaking, and the skill to kill anyone who impeded her quest.
When she had set out for England with Simon, she’d planned to return under far different circumstances. The Comte Desjardins had promised her freedom in return for the identity of the mastermind behind Simon’s spying in France. Instead, she returned a prisoner.
“Eat,” Simon ordered, gesturing to the table.
Lysette considered demurring again, then decided she did not want to spend her last night arguing with the only person in the world she liked at all.
So she obeyed, pushing thoughts of the morrow far from her mind.
Chapter 3
The knock came to the door of Simon Quinn’s Parisian home at exactly eleven o’clock in the evening.