The Unexpected Wife - Jess Michaels Page 0,14

I have certainly made your life more…complicated.”

“Not on purpose, I don’t think. But yes,” she conceded.

He sighed. “Then what would you like to know?”

She worried her lip for a moment, a distracting action to say the least. Then she shrugged. “How did you become an investigator?”

Owen’s brows lifted. He hadn’t expected that question of all questions. But he had an answer. “I didn’t start that way. I was actually the man of affairs for Lord Livingston. I helped manage his estate and finances, took care of odd jobs he felt were beneath a viscount. I was good at it, but not particularly engaged by the vocation. He wasn’t particularly fond of a young lady his eldest son had taken an interest in, and one day he asked me to do a little looking into her background and her activities.”

Her mouth twisted a little with displeasure. “You were to spy on her.”

“I suppose that is one way to put it,” he conceded. “I thought of it more as doing due diligence. The lady would become viscountess one day and a marriage to the son came with a great deal of money and power. It wasn’t entirely cruel for Livingston to want to know more about her intentions. I did the work, dug into her past and her present. I found I truly enjoyed it.”

“So you are nosy by nature?” she asked.

He smiled. “A little. But it was more that — I was assembling a puzzle. I’d get a piece of information—was it important? How would it fit into the overall picture? Sometimes I wouldn’t know until days later when I had five more pieces of information, and suddenly it became clear what the first piece meant.”

“You light up when you talk about it,” she said with the flutter of a smile. “It’s apparent you still have a great passion for the work.”

He shrugged. “I do. It is my calling, I suppose, if you want to put it in somewhat religious and extremely dramatic terms.”

“You are lucky to have one,” she said, and glanced out the window at the streaking rain. “Gentlemen have that option more often than ladies. I’m supposed to see marriage and motherhood as my calling. But it can’t be every lady’s calling, can it? That you as a man can contain such multitudes and I can only have one future laid out before me?”

He frowned at the sadness in her expression as she asked the question. “I don’t believe that. You clearly contain multitudes.”

She snorted out a little bitter laugh. “I will have to now. This scandal will destroy all possibility of the life that has always been expected of me. Perhaps I should say a thank you to my…husband or whatever we’d like to call him.”

“You’re looking for the positive.”

“What other choice do I have?” She sighed and then straightened up. “And now I have taken us off topic. You were telling me how spying on a potentially wayward lady turned into a career and I interrupted.”

He hesitated, for his desire to push further on her was pulsing. Yet her face was a mask that told him she wanted space. Needed it, perhaps. And he didn’t want to make this worse for her. She was vulnerable, and if his story evened the score a little then it was worth the telling.

“I suppose I couldn’t hide my excitement from the viscount as I worked on the investigation, because when it was over he offered to sponsor me in starting my own business where I would do so permanently. I accepted. He helped introduce me to potential clients and spread the word that I was trustworthy and discreet when needed. And then he set me free.”

“And here you are,” she said. “Whatever happened to the lady?”

He laughed. “She was doing nothing untoward. In fact, she was very much in love with the gentleman. They married and Lord Livingston adores her now. She teases me mercilessly about my grand investigation every time I come for supper.”

“So Livingston is a man willing to admit he was wrong, too.” Celeste shook her head. “As rare as a sprite. How wonderful to have such a benefactor.”

“Indeed. He was a friend when I needed him and he hired me as his man of affairs. And he was my friend when he gave me the tools to my own freedom.”

“You needed him?” she pressed.

He drew in a long breath. Here was where he would make himself vulnerable. He told himself it was only to balance