Mistress of Sins (Dredthorne Hall #3) - Hazel Hunter Page 0,41

surely and silently as Greystone did when he led her out to the stairs. When they reached the second floor he gestured for her to stop while he moved onto the landing. Once he determined no one else occupied the floor, he beckoned to her, and took her into his bed chamber. Once he closed the door Greystone quickly checked the safeguards he had left behind. The undisturbed markers told him no one had yet searched the room.

“In here,” he told her, picking up a lamp and walking into the dressing room.

Jennet had no notion of what Greystone had hidden in the small room, and wondered what could be so important that he would risk both their lives to retrieve it. She watched him as he picked up and moved aside the wash stand, and then knelt on the floor. After removing a cut section of floor board, he reached down and drew out a long, scuffed leather case with the most peculiar straps.

“We will have to wait before we try to leave the hall,” he told her. “Once they have finished searching the first floor, they will go to the hidden library to question us. That will be our chance.”

Her brows rose. “That is why you broke off that tool in the lock, to hamper their entry.”

Greystone nodded, and gave her a look of approval. “Such impediments are often the best distractions.”

From the case he took out a coil of wire, some vials filled with clouded liquid, and several palm-size blades that had no hilts. He put back the vials, but tucked the rest of the items into his belt and pockets. He then produced a pair of long-barreled pistols and a small sack, from which he drew a handful of heavy, sharp-studded brass rings.

Jennet had never seen so many weapons or such unattractive jewelry.

“Why would a spy need eight ugly rings?” she demanded in a whisper.

He made a fist and tapped the base of his knotted fingers. “When I wear them and hit someone, they do a great deal of damage.”

Appalled now, she drew back. “You said you played a merchant in France. Merchants do not beat people.”

“I play a merchant so that I might travel freely.” He checked the pistols, but his mouth flattened. “Do not ask me more.”

He kept fending off every inquiry she made, as if she were some stranger to him. It was not to be borne.

“I consented to have you kill me if we are caught,” Jennet reminded him. “I woke you in the library. Before that, I gave myself to you in the hot house. I have trusted you, far beyond my better judgment, yet you persist in concealing yourself and your actions from me.” She folded her arms. “I am asking more, sir.”

He set aside the pistols and came to close the door to the bed chamber. “Keep your voice down.”

She hadn’t realized she was almost shouting at him. As he moved toward his ghastly collection of weapons Jennet took hold of his arm to stop him, and stood on her toes to put her mouth next to his ear.

“This is about you, Liam, not me. Since the day you left I have wondered what, exactly, made you do it,” she said in her lowest, sweetest voice. “If nothing more, I have earned the truth. Before either of us flee or die, you will tell me the reason why you left Renwick. Or I will put on your ugly rings and hit you until you do.”

Greystone drew back, walked to the other side of the dressing room, and then returned to her. The look on his face was one of exasperated resignation.

“I am not merely a spy.” He finally met her gaze, his own shuttered. “If you must know, then I will tell you. I serve the crown as an assassin. I am known as the Raven.”

Jennet had thought she could not ever feel as angry as she had after they had made love, and she had struck him in the face. Alas, she had been wrong. “You left me to do this. To become this…this…Raven. So you could go to France, and spy, and kill people.”

“My targets have been dangerous and vicious men who would do their worst to ensure Bonaparte’s victory,” he assured her. “Interrogators, torturers, and the very worst of brutes from the battlefield. I took no pleasure in it, but for every life I have taken, I have saved thousands.”

“That is not the material point here.” She