The Impostor Read Online Free PDF

snap her neck. Do as Francis, his oldest friend, the only person in the world he trusted completely, had told him to do. It would not be difficult. He had killed women before, during the war, French spies sent to infiltrate the Omega Group.
    This would be no different. This was war like any other, though it was not fought on battlefields, but in dark alleys and in the shadows of the night. If Tessa Ryder intended to kill him and betray her father’s country, he could not let her live.
    But in that moment, staring down into that fragile face, her Byzantine eyes seemed to gaze at him from out of an old dream. He hesitated.
    Beneath him, she felt slender but undeniably female. To his surprise and self-disgust, his body reacted to her closeness, to the feel of her soft form beneath him.
    Evidently, it had been too long since he’d had a woman.
    At that moment, the carriage turned a corner so rapidly they were both thrown to one side. Sebastian lifted his head, turning his attention to the streets gliding past the open window. If, as he had directed his coachman, they were heading home, they should have arrived by now. But they were no longer in Mayfair. Instead, the carriage barreled east along the river toward the docks.
    “Where are we going?” he demanded in a low voice, slamming the impostor’s head against the floor again. “Did you bribe my coachman? Where is he taking us?”
    In the changing shadows her face reflected her confusion, her brows drawing together, her mouth falling open a little as she struggled to breathe. “I don’t know,” she gasped. “Truly, I don’t. It wasn’t me. I didn’t talk to your coachman at all.”
    There was no time to question her further, to weigh the veracity of what she had told him. Instinct told him he must act now, and fast. Still holding her down, he unbuckled his belt.
    Then, forcing her around and onto her knees, he lashed her wrists together and pressed his knee into her spine before retrieving from beneath the seats both his walking stick sword and the dagger that still protruded from the little beaded reticule.
    She made a soft sound of pain as he held her against him, the knife pressed firmly to her throat.
    “I’m going to make the coachman stop,” he said in her ear. “You can come with me quietly, or I’ll slit your throat now.”
    His breath stirred the tendrils of soft curling hair at her nape. She nodded once to indicate she understood. Still holding her firmly, her back pressed flush against his chest, he sent an illusion upwards to the coachman as he sat in his box.
    It took only a heartbeat. The coachman shouted and swore, pulling on the reins hard to keep from running into the tall stack of wine barrels Sebastian had placed in the center of the road.
    Then, casting a second illusion of black shadows to cloak their movements, Sebastian kicked the door of the carriage open and shoved Tessa out ahead of him in the dark night.
    She nearly stumbled on the steps, but he kept a tight grip on the belt, holding her upright. By the time the carriage had negotiated the illusion of the wine barrels and picked up speed again, he had dragged Tessa into a narrow alleyway.
    The fog was so thick near the river that the darkness looked smoky and curdled. They stood in a narrow street of tall houses, and the air reeked of fish and filth. He recognized the docklands. He had visited this part of London often during the years of the war, to gather the rumors and information that flowed through the seedy underbelly of the city.
    Where was the carriage heading? How long would they have before his coachman and whoever had paid the man realized the carriage was empty? He kept his grip firmly on the ends of his belt, which still held Tessa Ryder’s hand securely behind her back. Was she lying when she said she had not diverted the carriage’s route tonight?
    Keeping the knife flush against her throat, he pulled her close to him and gazed back toward the street. He could still