Seducing the Spy Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn't what he'd meant to say at all. Damn his curiosity. It had a life of its own sometimes.
    She leaned her head back and shut her eyes. "I'm weary because it is three bloody miles to your house from here and I was not feeling well to start."
    Stanton blinked. "You
walked
three miles? From Mayfair?"
    She opened her eyes. "No. However did you pass your mathematics courses in school? I walked six miles—three to Mayfair and three back. I would count it on my fingers for you, but I have only five." She shut her eyes again. "I shouldn't be at all surprised if you possessed one extra on each hand, however. Something must have been holding you back from your studies."
    Stanton was not accustomed to being mocked. In fact, he had very little experience with it at all. It was most unpleasant, yet curiously stimulating. He could quite honestly say, if he were asked, that he was not bored.
    The woman sighed and stretched, right in front of him. "I'm bored. Go away."
    Stanton had not been asked to sit and he had the feeling that he never would, should he stand there until he was white-haired. So he sat, for possibly the first time in his life, uninvited. "Lady Alicia, you came to me with a wild story about overhearing a conspiracy—"
    She grunted. She actually grunted. Distracted, Stanton lost his train of thought. Then he shook off his revolted fascination and found the thread again. "You give me the sketchiest of details and then you turn right around and walk out of my house. It took me hours to track you down. No one seemed to know what happened to you after—" He halted. Perhaps that was best not mentioned.
    Her eyes flew open. "After I whored myself to a simpleton stablehand, you mean?"
    "I do not mean to offend—"
    "Oh, bother. Of course you mean to offend! Why else bring it up? It didn't work, for it was a pathetic effort indeed. Your mother must be proud to have a son so thoroughly mannerly that he cannot insult even when he tries." She pushed herself wearily to her feet. She staggered slightly and Stanton swiftly rose to help her. She snatched her elbow from his helping hand. "Don't touch me. It only makes it worse."
    "Makes what worse?"
    She widened her eyes at him. "Goodness, six-fingered and nearsighted. No wonder you live alone." She turned her face back to the fire. "I'm ill, you cretin. My head is pounding, my throat is on fire, and if you don't leave now I'm planning to vomit on your boots."
    "You never told me how you came to hear of this conspiracy."
    She closed her eyes and leaned her head carefully against the back of her chair. "You never asked."
    She would try the patience of a stone. Stanton forced himself to harden. "How did you come to hear of this conspiracy, then?"
    "While I was vomiting."
    Stone. Cold, hard, impervious stone. "And where did this take place?"
    She wrinkled her brow, thinking. "The majority of it took place in my bedchamber. Then, when I could not bear the chamber pot any longer, I took it to the privy."
    What an outlandish idea. "Why did you not have your maid take it to the privy?"
    Her eyes opened. "Ask Millie to go out in the dark when she can scarcely see her way in full daylight? Nor is Millie my maid. At one time she was my governess, then my companion, but I do not employ her now. I support her. She had nowhere else to go when I was shunned. Even if her professional reputation had survived the ruination of mine, she is too infirm to begin again."
    So she was at least responsible to her dependants, which was the first intimation that there was anything admirable about the creature.
    While he regarded her silently, she rubbed at a crumbling bit of paste on her nose. It fell, leaving the tip of her nose ludicrously bare, pink in the midst of the white mask. He had the sudden image of a white cat, glaring at him through mystical green eyes. All she needed was the whiskers.
    He probably ought not to look too closely. He might find them.
    "So, you took the noisome pot to your