Celeste Bradley - [The Liar's Club 03] Read online

  Rose steadied her nerves with all the will in her soul. She would not react, would not give the advantage. This was simply another sort of attack, after all. Besides, she was much practiced in the art of concealing her emotions.

  Except for that tiny portion of her that thrilled to his closeness, that noted the virile scent of well-warmed man, that longed to push that single dark lock back from his forehead, that was achingly aware of his near-nakedness…

  Rose pulled herself from that fruitless world of fantasy with an exertion of will. “Having trouble finishing a sentence, Tremayne?” She affected a bored tone. “Then again, the aristocracy doesn’t precisely breed for brains, does it?”

  For a moment, she thought he might actually laugh. Then his expression returned to that manipulative smirk that swayed so many women but only left her cold.

  “I have an idea. Why don’t you wrap your hands around my thick…hard…” He plucked a weapon from the rack. “Staff?”

  “A charming heroine and a dashing spy hero make The Pretender a riveting read…entertained me thoroughly from beginning to end.”

  —Sabrina Jeffries, USA Today bestselling author of After the Abduction on The Pretender

  “With delicious characters and a delectable plot, Bradley delivers another enticing read.”

  —Romantic Times on The Spy

  This book is dedicated to Hannah,

  who decided that one of the spies should be a girl.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Epilogue

  Preview

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Celeste Bradley

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  ENGLAND 1813, AUTUMN

  His naked, sculpted chest gleamed in the candlelight. His shoulders, broad and muscled, narrowed to a hard waist and flat belly. He was tall enough to make her feel small, although she wasn’t, particularly. His gray eyes watched her as intently as she watched him. She didn’t want to miss a thing—not the way his tousled dark hair hung over his brow, not the way his chest rose and fell with his quickening breaths. Especially not the way his sweat-dampened breeches clung to powerful thighs that were already braced to receive her advance. She knew his form well, knew the feel of him, the shape of him. Yet there was always more to learn.

  Rose couldn’t blink, couldn’t look away. Her eyes became her only conduit to him as she shut out everything else. There was no London, no England, no war. There was only this man—this beautiful, half-naked man who gazed at her with such intensity.

  She stepped closer. Careful. She mustn’t seem too eager, nor too nonchalant. If she was to fulfill her wish here in this dimly lit room, she must play wisely and well.

  His chest swelled as he inhaled and the golden glow from the candles played like music over his hot and rippling body. He exhaled in a rush.

  She almost smiled. It was a sign.

  As he moved toward her, she spread her knees and readied herself. Her patience had repaid her, for as he wrapped his arms about her—

  She rolled him cleanly over her shoulder and tossed him hard to the mat beneath them.

  Collis Tremayne lay there, gasping back the breath that had been knocked from him by the fall. Rose Lacey, former housemaid turned spy trainee, only cocked her head down at her opponent and folded her arms.

  The hand-to-hand combat trainer stepped forward and grunted. “Should have rolled out of that fall,” Kurt said.

  Kurt was the premier assassin of the Liar’s Club, the band of Crown spies that operated behind the facade of a gambling hell that stood opposite the school. Who would ever have thought it? Assassins and spies had become everyday associates of Rose’s ever since the day she’d been liberated from her former position and installed as the first woman ever to be trained to be a Liar.

  Kurt, who also cooked for the mixed band of gentlemen and street thieves that made up the Liars, was very, very good with puff pastry and anything bladed and sharp. Ever a man of few words, the scarred giant turned his back and returned to his place along the wall.

  The weapons training room, or the arena, as Kurt had dubbed it, was the largest portion of the cellar of an unassuming building in a not-quite-respectable area of London. Of course, it no longer resembled a place for storing root vegetables and casks of ale. Pity about that ale. Rose wiped perspiration from her face with the back of her forearm. She truly could use a pint about now.

  Currently the stone walls were adorned with racks of weapons and other training accoutrements. Against one wall stood a rack of straw-stuffed canvas figures that served as the enemy for students too likely to kill one another accidentally. She herself had graduated from dummies very quickly, thank you very much.

  Fortunately, there was plenty of room for errors, as the great space was broken only by six thick oak foundation pillars that supported the building above. Alarmingly painted targets adorned another wall, while above it all hung a rather medieval candleholder that reminded Rose of the giant oaken cranks that had once lifted a castle’s drawbridge. It held forty candles or more, which she knew because she paid her board at the school by cleaning it as well.

  Most of the students lived at the school and did as she did. Tiny bedchambers had been carved from the top-story attic. A bit cramped, it was true, but Rose felt the charm of her very own room more than made up for the lack of space.

  And Kurt lived there, when he wasn’t tending the kitchen of the other establishment. She glanced at him, awaiting further instructions. The giant instructor made all the other students lined up against the wall look like children. Some of them were, compared to her and Collis. They two were the oldest in the group by several years, having both come late to the school.

  To the world, it was known as the Lillian Raines School for the Less Fortunate.

  To those few who knew better, it was the Academy, the training ground for the most elite gang of thieves and spies ever in the service of the Crown—the Liar’s Club. Rose and Collis, all of them, were the next generation of this mixed band of badness and bravery.

  That is, if they didn’t kill one another before graduation.

  A rumble came from Kurt. Rose nodded. She looked back down at her opponent. Collis Tremayne, the stuff of a maiden’s dreams. Even with one arm rendered useless Collis was a prime specimen of manhood.

  He was quite tall, making Rose feel like standing as straight as possible to make up for her own middling height. Some said he looked like the younger brother to his uncle, Lord Etheridge, and he did, in a literal way. Collis had the thick, nearly black Etheridge hair and the pale gray Etheridge eyes, though not as eerily silver as his uncle’s. Collis was far more high-spirited and playful than his unc
le. Too playful by half, if anyone were asking Rose’s opinion.

  Handsome, charming Collis was also the heir to the great fortune and title of Etheridge—and the bane of Rose’s existence.

  He’d caught his breath at last. Rose offered him a hand up. He grinned up at her. “Now, if only you fought in skirts, being tossed to the floor might be a pleasurable experience. I might at least be paid for my troubles with a glimpse of those lovely ankles.”

  Rose snatched her hand back. “Oh, but trousers keep off the vermin and other pests,” she said pointedly.

  “Again,” came Kurt’s order from the shadows. “You’re two and two. Last fall.” The great candle-bearing wheel above them hissed and flickered as Rose and Collis circled each other again.

  “Don’t give it away, lad.” Kurt’s rumbling advice seemed to come from all directions. “You’re gusting like a bellows afore you rush her.”

  Blast. Rose wished Kurt hadn’t told Collis that. It was her best clue. Collis was far stronger than she was, even with his disabled arm. She was perhaps a hair quicker, but that was only from years of dodging blows and gropes from her employer and his son, Louis.

  Former employer, that is. Dead and gone now, and good riddance to the evil and traitorous Mr. Edward Wadsworth. No longer was she a poor little housemaid, beaten for every petty or imagined offense.

  Nor would anyone ever beat her again. She was fast and she was smart, too smart to allow herself to be ill-treated evermore.

  Rose pulled her mind from the past and set herself firmly into the present. There was only Collis. He tossed back the dampened lock clinging to his brow and she was put in mind of a sleek and spirited stallion. Magnificent, unbearable Collis…

  He rushed her without any sort of warning. She had no time to sidestep, no time to react in any way but to shrink back. Old memories, old fears, old reactions took her over. She ducked wildly, without reason. His attack bowled her over, tumbled her back—

  And rolled him directly over her and flat onto the mat once more. It took a moment before Rose realized what had happened.

  She’d accidentally won. Collis had expected resistance, had expected a countermove. His speed and force had been so great that he’d done himself in, rather like swinging too hard at something that suddenly isn’t there.

  She looked up from her own crouch to see Kurt standing over them. Kurt’s scarred and craggy face used to be difficult for Rose to look at directly, although now he seemed as familiar and comfortable as the shabby furnishings of the training arena.

  The man only grunted once at Collis, although he sent Rose a piercing look that told her he had seen her instinctive cower.

  But Collis hadn’t, thank heaven. Rose raised her chin, defying her own weakness. She shouldn’t think about Collis as if he were an ordinary man, who might take the fancy of an ordinary girl. She certainly shouldn’t allow thoughts of him to distract her in the middle of training.

  Collis rolled over to stand, using his good arm to brace his rise from the mat. Rose took a step toward him, her hand out once more.

  Collis’s head came up as her next step rustled the straw-filled mat. She thought she saw struggle on his face before he dredged up a teasing grin. “Your match, Briar Rose.”

  Rose stiffened at Collis’s reminder of her origins. Briar—a weed, a pest to be rooted out of any respectable garden. Her chin rose and her eyebrows crept to a haughty level she had learned from the finest of British butlers. “Imagine that,” she drawled in her best upper-class mimicry. “Bluebloods still bleed red.”

  Collis brought his knuckles to catch the drop seeping from his split lip. His eyes widened comically at the smear of blood.

  The other students were preparing for weapons practice. Gleaming pistols came from their boxes. Rags and oil emerged to clean the deadly things. Rose grimaced. She was good with the defensive weapons, good enough to deflect even Kurt’s blows on occasion. Still, the servant girl within flinched from handling the pistols. Firearms belonged to the Quality. Mustn’t touch.

  She knew Kurt despaired of ever making her an offensive operative. Even with all the extra training he’d provided her, she could not bring herself to attack. It was just as well, for she had the feeling he’d wanted her as his own apprentice. He considered her servant skills a major advantage in getting close to a target, then getting away. Rose’s stomach churned. Rose the Assassin? Ew.

  But Rose the Spy…perhaps. If she could keep in mind the woman she’d become.

  She’d been contrary enough as a child. When she went into service, she had learned that it would not serve her well to be so stubborn. Many lashings later, the rebel within had been mostly quelled.

  Until Clara Simpson had happened upon her. Rose had been crying alone on her little pallet in the attic, where she’d been banished after one too many clumsy incidents. Many times she wondered why Mr. Wadsworth didn’t simply sack her, but so many servants came and went in that household that she mused that he probably thought he already had.

  After all, it wasn’t as if anyone called her by name. She was addressed as “You there!” or “Girl!” so often that at night she would repeat her own name to herself in the dark, just to remind herself of the sound of it. Perhaps a tiny rebellion after all.

  Widowed political cartoonist Clara Simpson had swept in like an avenging angel, with sympathy and stolen food and the outlandish request to take Rose’s place. At first Rose had been only too happy to slumber away the hours when Clara worked as maid, for it seemed she could never sleep her fill. Then one day, her spirit strengthened by rest and the treats that now came her way, it occurred to Rose to wonder what it was that Clara found so fascinating within the Wadsworths’ household.

  Curiosity had stirred from some forgotten corner of Rose’s mind, sharpening her wits and brightening her existence with the game of hide-and-seek-information. At first there was so much she hadn’t understood, complicated concepts that rang meaningless on her ears—until she began to study at the Liar’s Academy.

  A great deal had come clear during her lessons in politics and history, dangling bits that only spurred her to further effort in order to provide the context needed for the information that she already held.

  Wadsworth had been dirty indeed, leader of a group of treasonous plotters known only as the Knights of the Lily, a reference to the fleur-de-lis that was the emblem of French royalty. The group had been squelched once before, years before Rose’s time there, but Wadsworth had been left untouched for reasons of political benefit. Untouched but not unwatched.

  But the evil Mr. Edward Wadsworth was dead now, killed at the hands of Lord Etheridge himself while he was rescuing his beloved Clara.

  Rose wanted to be like Clara more than anything in the world. Clara had a mission, a purpose in life. Her drawing talent had done more than support her in her widowhood; it had given her a way to strip the pretty veil away from the dirty doings of the Quality, to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves.

  Having a husband who was mad for her didn’t hurt, either. Lord Etheridge was as aristocratic as any man Rose had ever seen, but she didn’t hold it against him. No one who loved that much could be all bad. Odd how a bloke’s armor chinks told you more sometimes than his strengths did.

  At his urging, she’d been happy to flee the Wadsworth house to find refuge with the warm and gracious Lady Raines.

  When she’d diffidently knocked at the service entrance of that fine house months ago, she’d had no hopes of anything but a meal and perhaps a position in the scullery where she wouldn’t be worked too hard or fed too little.

  She’d been welcomed, fed, and interviewed in the first hour. Agatha Raines had eyed her closely, asked her several pointed questions, then clapped her hands with glee and announced, “You’ll do very nicely indeed.”

  Within days Rose had found herself installed in her own cozy room in the school attic and pressed into tutelage under various outlandish teachers. Kurt, of course, taught her hand-to-hand
fighting and weapons. Feebles had shown her the ins and outs of picking pockets. Button had instructed her in costume and disguise and how to learn to play any character by observation and emulation. The shy and earnest Fisher had drilled her on codes and mapmaking. Lady Raines had taught her how to speak and move and conduct herself no matter at what level of society she found herself.

  Entirely willing to be seduced by the kindness surrounding her, Rose had thrown her very being into improving herself in any way her teachers wanted, despite the oddness of the requests.

  Rose felt as if she had been a parched and dying plant, suddenly blessed with all the water and care she could desire. She expanded—she grew—if she could have put forth flowers to reward her benefactors, she gladly would have.

  So now, with a deep breath, she took up her pistol.

  And promptly dropped it. She could hear Kurt’s gusting sigh from all the way across the arena. She sent him an apologetic shrug.

  Oops.

  Collis slung a piece of toweling over his shoulder, watched Rose Lacey fumble her pistol, and grunted in sympathy. He knew how embarrassing clumsiness could be. His left arm would never be whole and his balance was still uneven without the use of it. Hence this afternoon’s trouncing on the mat. He’d get better. All he needed was time.

  Perhaps.

  He looked away uncomfortably. Perhaps.

  He himself wasn’t required to sit firearms practice, thank the fates. He’d grown up shooting for pleasure on the Etheridge estate and knew his pistols inside and out.

  Absently he rubbed the shoulder of his deadened arm. Although he had no feeling from the joint down, the muscles above there ached as badly as did the rest of his body from hitting the mat often and hard.

  Briar Rose had enjoyed that, he just knew it. There was no hiding that spark of victorious light in her eyes when she bested him. Her lips would relax and quirk just a bit to the left and her lids would drop slightly to shield her triumphant gaze—and Collis would know she was crowing inside.