The butler hovered in front of a closed door, clearly trying to protect it and hide that fact as well, but he was not as good a poker player as Backman was.
Stuart stepped around him, knowing the butler would not dream of touching him unless he had specific orders from his master. The door was not locked and he stepped inside, barely surprised to find Bian sitting at the well-appointed dining table there. Baring’s secretary, Kirkham, shot to his feet as Stuart entered and with a neat half-step, put himself between Stuart and Bian.
Bian also rose to her feet. It bothered Stuart more than he cared to analyze right then that she stayed behind Kirkham.
“Your home away from home,” he told her, not attempting to hide the contempt in his voice. The anger was provoked by the way she hovered behind Kirkham, as if he might harm her in some way. The idea offended him. It hurt. “I might have saved myself the trouble of enquiring after you at your own residence.”
“It isn’t what you think, Stuart.” Her voice was quiet but without weakness. He had not frightened her in the least. “Patrick is—”
“Bian, no,” Kirkham snapped. He looked Stuart in the eye. “What do you want? And how dare you barge in here like this?”
Stuart looked at the two of them, puzzled. “Another secret, Bian? Is that all there is to you? Secrets and falsehoods? What lies between you and Kirkham that I cannot know?”
The accusation pulled her out from behind Kirkham. Bian took another step toward him and stopped. “Nothing lies between us that Patrick will care for me to admit aloud. For his sake I will not speak of it. But it is nothing I am ashamed of, or that you need to fear.”
“And I am to take your word for it?” Stuart pushed his hand through his hair. “What am I to do with you, Bian? I cannot bind you to me. You run away as soon as I try. But I will not let you slip out of my life as easily as you arrived. I refuse.”
He saw her swallow and the sudden glistening of tears in her eyes. The tears startled him. And they injected a large shot of guilt into his anger, making it roil inside him like a restless beast.
“Sometimes the world has a way of deciding for you, have you noticed?” she said and the tears slid down her cheeks. She did not move to wipe them and Stuart fisted his hand against the need to take her in his arms and remove them for her.
As suddenly as the fury had arrived, it departed. He took a deep breath. “What must I do, Bian? Tell me. I am upon your territory now and the game is unknown to me. But I would play your game if that is the way to keep you with me.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do this. Not now. Please, you must give me time.”
“Time for what?” he demanded, trying to keep the sharpness out of his voice.
There was a cough behind him and he whirled, caught by surprise. The butler stood there with a silver tray and a white letter upon it. Stuart hadn’t heard the door open, or the butler approach. He had been focused completely upon the dismay in Bian’s face.
Bian gave a small gasp. “The response! Already!” And she stepped around Stuart and reached for the letter.
“Begging your pardon, Miss. The telegram is for Master Kirkham.” He held the tray out to Kirkham.
“A telegram for me?” Kirkham’s brow lifted as he unfolded the letter. He walked over to the tall window for better light, adjusted his glasses and read. Stuart clenched his fist, fighting impatience. A telegram meant urgent news. He could hardly intrude on Kirkham’s attention until it had been dealt with. He glanced at Bian. She was watching Kirkham with peculiar intensity.
He recalled her words when he had first entered the room. It isn’t what you think. If they were not lovers, then what were they, precisely? There was something between them, something that included shared secrets.
Kirkham made a small noise, almost a gurgling in the throat and reached for the window frame, which he leaned against weakly. His face had turned very white.
“Patrick!” Bian hurried to his side. “What is it?”
He swallowed and pulled himself together. He curled his hand around her elbow and his hand trembled. “I have bad news, Bian. It would be best if you seated yourself.”
“Just read it!” Bian said shortly, pulling her elbow from his grip. “Tell me. Don’t leave me waiting like this.”
He stared at her and Stuart guessed he could not find the words. Finally, Kirkham held the telegram out to her and turned away.
Stuart watched her read the telegram, feeling a strange helplessness. He knew that grave events were upon them but could not guess their shape. Instead he was filled with a shapeless sense of doom, which gave him no course of action. So he stood and watched Bian grow as pale as Kirkham. She reached for the nearest chair and lowered herself into it, still reading. Until, finally, she let the telegram slip from her fingers and flutter to the floor.
“Dear God,” she whispered. “He is dead!” And she buried her head in her hands. Kirkham squeezed her shoulder, even as he stood staring sightlessly out of the window.
Unable to simply stand by while disaster afflicted her so, Stuart strode forward and scooped up the sheet that had bought such despair and put it on the table beside Bian. “What is it? Tell me,” he pressed Bian, picking up her cold hand.
“You’d better read the telegram yourself,” Kirkham said. “It says everything.”
Bian picked up the telegram and handed it back to him and her big eyes were limpid with unshed tears. “I know you respected him too,” she whispered.
His heart already racing, Stuart read the telegram.
Regret to inform that Nathaniel Richard Kirkham II, Duke of Pemberton, Baron Kirkham, was arrested by Chinese authorities last Thursday and charged with acts of espionage against the empire. Documents found in sea chest. After short trial, he was executed by beheading yesterday morning. Regrets. Piggott-Smythe.
Stuart read the telegram twice, trying to absorb the wealth of information it conveyed. “Who is Piggott-Smythe?” he asked.
“My father’s secretary,” Kirkham said, his voice thick with unexpressed emotion.
Stuart absorbed the fact. “So…he was the Royal Talisman.” The fact filled him with immense sadness. “I cannot believe that he is dead. But this…must have been a price he was willing to pay for his country, Kirkham. He was an honourable man.”
Bian lowered her hands to her lap. “I don’t believe it. He was no more a spy than the Queen of England.”
Her fierceness prompted Stuart to ask the question that had been pushing at him. “You knew him,” he said. “You knew him very well.”
She nodded. “He was my father.”
As shock slammed through him, Bian fell back against the chair, biting her lip against tears as she stared up at Kirkham, who stood staring steadily out of the window, his face still pale with shock.
Stuart found himself on his feet again, backing away from the pair at the window.
Her father.
The fact unlocked a wealth of information—secrets—about Bian, that he might have seen for himself if he had watched just a little more closely instead of simply railing at her for her secrecy. Of course she was surrounded by secrets! Her whole life was a secret.
He looked from Bian with her Asian features, to Patrick Kirkham, a fine sample of British manhood. Nathanial Kirkham sired them both but they had different mothers. Therefore, Bian was a bastard—a love child…and a secret one. Kirkham had seen to her raising and her education but her place in society was of necessity undeclared.
Miss Bian.
Although, considering the company she kept and the lifestyle she enjoyed, Kirkham had championed her and made sure she was accepted by society despite her heritage, and despite never being able to claim his name.
I am Bian, she had introduced herself. No last name. She did not have one that she could use.
She and Kirkham were half-sister and brother. No wonder she had sheltered here whenever she needed a bolt-hole. Who could she trust more, with her father still posted in China?
Her father, the spy. Despite Bian’s protest, Stuart knew his guess had been right all along. Nathanial Kirkham was the Royal Talisman, the hero who had kept Britain out of the war with France, who had been building such a glowing reputation for his abilities to acquire information that served his country so well.
Bian rose to her feet and rang the bell for the butler. When he appeared, she held out the telegram. “You may read this, so you can grasp your master’s situation. Then would you find him a large decanter of brandy? Thank you.”
The bewildered butler took the telegram, staring at it as if it were a hissing snake.
Bian turned to Stuart and took his hand. She looked up at him. “Will you come with me?”
“Anywhere,” Stuart said truthfully.
She led him up the stairs to a small second bedroom, cosily appointed but bereft of personal details. Her room, when she sought sanctuary here, Stuart guessed.
He had no time to take in more detail, for Bian turned to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Please, just hold me,” she murmured.
Willingly, he held her. He rested his cheek against her hair, which smelled faintly of lilies. The scent suited her perfectly. He could also smell her own special essence and it stirred him. He tried to push the desire away. Now was not the time, although it was curling through his body insistently.
Bian moved restlessly against him and looked up. She tried to smile. “Kiss me.”
“Bian, you are not yourself.”
“Actually, I have never been clearer in my heart or my mind. My father died before his time. He had so many plans…” She swallowed. “So many things he did not do, that he held himself away from because of duty. I will not make his error.” And she reached up to slide her fingers into the longer hair on the back of his neck and pull him down to her level.
He let her have her way. Willingly. And he found his hands on her waist, sliding around to her back, to tug at the dress strings, as her lips pressed against his mouth and her warm tongue swept against his.
They undressed each other as fast as the cumbersome clothing would allow, their fingers trembling, as they whispered reassurances and encouragements to each other. Finally he had her naked and picked her up to cradle her against his chest. She rested her hand against his chest. “The bed, yes.” Her lips curled up into one of her smiles that made her eyes dance. “For the first time, the bed.”
The reappearance of that smile made his heart sing. He laid her on the bed and covered her with kisses. He left her breasts until last and lavished attention upon them with his hands, teeth, lips and tongue. After a few minutes of the concentrated torture, she was writhing and moaning beneath him, her hips pressing against his thighs where he straddled her. The soft push of her hips was an erotic signal that seemed to surge straight to his cock. He had never been harder in his life. Everything he did to Bian seemed to build his own desire.
For the first time he understood that he was not simply about to have intercourse. He was going to make love—in the way the maidens’ forbidden novels described.
Bian reached for him, curling her small hand around his shaft and pulling him down between her legs. He positioned himself above her and slid into her slick, waiting channel. The heat of her enveloped him and for a moment he thought he might orgasm purely from the delight of being inside her.
Her legs lifted up around him, settling him deeper inside her. He rocked against her, building the delightful rhythm of stroking and she encouraged him with little cries.
Her pleasure was the greatest goad. He watched the building of excitement in her face, in the little crease between her brows and the way her hips moved in helpless thrusts beneath him. He knew a moment before Bian when her orgasm was upon her, for the tight sheath of muscles surrounding him spasmed and tightened in a hard ripple. Her eyes widened in surprise. “Ohh!” she gasped, her fingers flexing against his shoulder. Then she was caught in the peak, shuddering through it, her breath taken away.
Stuart bent his head to breath in her scent and let his own climax take him. It was the sweetest pleasure he had ever experienced.
He did not want to withdraw from her, or for the moment to end. He settled his weight on his elbows to protect her and so that he could linger a while longer. With his face buried in her hair, the heat of her surrounding him and the echo of her heart in his ears, it was easier to speak the terrifying words that had haunted him for three days.
“I love you, Bian. God help me, I do.”
She did not pull away from him, or gasp in shock or distaste. She caressed his neck but was otherwise silent.
“I would not have you leave me,” he finished. “The other terms are yours to arrange to suit yourself but that one is mine and I will declare it to the world.”
“The world will punish you for it.” Her voice was thick with some emotion and he looked at her then, surprised into it.
Tears glistened in her eyes but she blinked to rid herself of them. “I am a bastard, Stuart. You understand what that means to your peers, better than I do. If you associate yourself with me in any permanent way, they will ostracize you for it. They will hound you to the ends of the earth.”
“Not if you married me,” he said. “That is a union they cannot dispute.”
She was very still. “You cannot marry me,” she said at last.
“Are you married to another?”
“No.”
“Then I can. I will.”
Her tears escaped her, then. They slid from the corners of her eyes. He licked the salty pearls, kissed her temple.
“I can’t say yes, Stuart. It would be the ruin of your reputation, your career. Your family—”
“Can all go hang,” he finished. “I will not insist on having your agreement right now. I said I would take you on whatever terms you care to dictate and I mean it. But I will never stop asking. Not until the day you say yes.”
“And if that day never comes?”
“Then I will have enjoyed my life with you in it, regardless.”
She reached for him, pulling herself up on top of him so that she looked down and the ends of her hair tickled his chest. She was a featherweight and his cock stirred, still buried inside her. This way, he could see where he penetrated her and it was an erotic view. He gripped her slim hips, moving her above him, eager once more.
“You have a man’s appetite,” she said with one of her smiles, as her hips shifted to stroke his swollen member.
“You enhance it,” he breathed.
Then there were no more words but the long slow ascent to climax again. This time it was deeper, more satisfying. Moving.
Later, as the long afternoon shadows spilled across the counterpane, she curled up inside his arms, her body cupped by his, while he learned of her childhood in Vietnam. He knew she lay that way because just like him, she could not speak the words while looking at him, because she feared his reaction to them. But what Bian spoke of seemed to be the stuff of legends and fairy tales…except that this was Bian’s personal history and very real.
“Thieu Triu, the second-last emperor of my birth country, had many sons, including Prince Nguyen Công To. The Prince was a favourite of the emperor, so the emperor consulted with his mandarins and Nguyen Cong To was made king of a land in the south, near Cambodia. Cong To ruled wisely and listened to all who came to his lands and eventually, he became a Christian and changed his name to Nguyen Christopher.” Even the way Bian was relating the story of her life made it sound like a fairy story. Her voice had taken on a cadence and rhythm that made her sound like a narrator of a play.
“Among the travelers to the king’s lands was an English diplomat, Lord Nathanial Kirkham, who preached moderation lest the mandarins and kings of Vietnam stir the anger of their French masters with their excesses. The king listened and so did his favourite daughter, that he called Tuyet. Tuyet means ‘snow white’ in his language. Tuyet and Lord Kirkham fell in love but when he was posted to Peking, she could not go with him, for she was with child.”
“You.” Stuart whispered the word. He feared to halt her tale. He desperately wanted her to continue speaking, for these were the secrets that had shielded her from him.
“Yes. My mother was the king’s favourite and although he was a Christian, he had a Confucian upbringing. My mother was allowed to continue living in the palace with the rest of his children and women but I was never spoken of. I never met the king.” She took a breath. “I lived with the other children and was educated as they were. But my mother also taught me how to read and write English and made me read European history—in English. She kept contact with my father, through letters and sometimes, actual visits, when he would slip across the border from Cambodia. His last visit was when I was five. I remember it. He and my mother were very sad, which I did not understand. My father gave me many gifts and told me he loved me and then he went away again. Not long after that, my father married the English heiress he had been betrothed to when he was born and she had a son two years later.”
“Patrick,” Stuart breathed, as all the facts began to fit together.
“A year after Patrick was born, my mother died of consumption. I was there, holding her hand.” A tremor ran through Bian and Stuart shifted her so that she was closer to him, her back against his chest. Her hand pressed his. “My mother’s last words were of my father and she died whispering his name. So I wrote to him, using the address she had me memorize long ago and I told him of her passing and her last words. Within a month he returned to the palace and negotiated with the king. He took me away with him and brought me to England.
“I was old enough then to understand that my relationship to the Duke of Pemberton had been kept a dark secret and must remain that way. Because I loved my father, I worked to ensure I did not ruin his reputation, because his reputation was what made him powerful and allowed him to achieve so much for Britain in the places he worked—China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Siam, Korea.”
Stuart kissed her brow. “You were courageous, for one so young.”
“I have always felt much, much older than I really am,” she said quietly. “Which was just as well. I did not have friends my own age, growing up. I lived in a big cottage in the Cotswolds, with a nurse and a governess, Bridget. Bridget was a distressed noblewoman, who had besmirched her reputation. I learned that it had not been an unkind circumstance that led to her downfall.” Bian looked over her shoulder at Stuart, and he saw she was smiling – an impish grin. “Bridget was a liberal thinker. Just like you and Aiden, you might say.”
Stuart found himself smiling back. “Liberal thinking, the way you mean it, can be extraordinarily difficult for a woman to maintain. Bridget clearly wasn’t quite discrete enough.”
“Oh, she was careful enough. But a jealous lover revealed her true nature in a way that the rest of society could not ignore. She was ruined. But she was kind and she was very intelligent, although she had not been educated beyond the necessary accomplishments of a lady. However, her reading and correspondence with some of the most forward looking people made her a liberal thinker of the most extreme kind.” Bian looked over her shoulder again. “Of course, now I’m talking about her mind.” She gave a short laugh. “She taught me everything she knew and the necessity of being discreet, for women are not treated kindly in this world.”
“Everything she knew?” Stuart teased.
“Everything,” Bian repeated flatly.
Stuart felt his brow lift. “Your father approved this education?”
“I believe he knew I would be in need of an extraordinary education, given my extraordinary heritage,” Bian replied, somewhat coolly. She pushed her elbow gently into Stuart’s side. “You have benefited immensely from that education. Do you have any cause for complaint?”
Stuart shook his head. “On the contrary.” He stroked his fingers over her hip. “So you lived with Bridget...?”
“So we lived quietly and I spent most of my time reading and asking impossible-to-answer questions of Bridget. And occasionally, very seldom, my father visited. Finally, when I was sixteen, I was permitted to study at Cambridge, with the proviso that I assured everyone there I was at least nineteen. And so I finished my education at the lady’s college there and on my twentieth birthday, I traveled to China to join my father. Most of the diplomatic corps in China assumed I was a secretary, or nurse, or perhaps even a secret lover parading as a secretary or a nurse. The Chinese, many of them, were able to see my resemblance to my father and understood the truth. But the Chinese are even more diplomatic than the English and it was never spoken aloud. And so, for several years, I have traveled with my father and served him as I could.”
Stuart sensed there was more to her story but that the telling of it had ended. There were more secrets, then. But he was content—more than content—with what she had entrusted him with this day.
He held her to him. “Thank you,” he murmured.
She turned in his arms and buried her head against him. “I have never told anyone before today.” She was trembling.
“Not even Patrick?”
“Not all of it. He loves his mother and loved and respected his father. I would not take any of that from him.”
“But he accepts you.” Stuart remembered how Kirkham had stepped between him and Bian.
“At first, he tolerated my presence. But we have had reason to work together since then. I believe he respects me, now.” Stuart could almost feel her smile.
“And who could not respect you? You are beautiful, intelligent and a most independent-minded woman. I have never met anyone like you.”
“I’ve learned to hide my true nature behind a mask, so that society will accept me within the limits they will tolerate one of my stature.” Her smile faded. “My father propelled most of that acceptance. Now I must find a way to force them to accept me on my own merits, if I am to continue my work. My father would have insisted I carry on.” Sadness flooded her features.
He quickly changed the subject, to bring back her smile. “Now I understand your name. ‘Bian’ means ‘secretive’, or ‘hidden’.”
“You know Vietnamese?”
“Just a little. Enough to be understood,” he said in Vietnamese. At her delighted smile, he added in English, “I was posted to Saigon for a year. It seemed to run counter to my assignment not to learn the language. How can you get to know a people you cannot speak to?”
She laughed and reached for him.
There was a soft knock on the door. Patrick’s voice filtered through the oak. “There’s another telegram, Bian. You must read it.”
Bian blinked at the blazing sunset glaring through the tall windows, until the maid pulled the curtains.
Patrick held out the thick, folded document. “It’s for you,” he said simply. “From Piggot-Smythe.” He glanced at Stuart. “Would you like privacy?” he asked her and she knew what he was thinking. The contents of this telegram would be about Stuart. It would be best to remove him until she had had time to absorb what it might say.
“No, please stay,” she told them both as she unfolded it. “I would prefer the company.”
Stuart rested his hand briefly on her shoulder, then pointedly moved to the furthest corner and pulled the curtain aside to study the view outside the window, giving her both privacy and the comfort of his presence.
Patrick took the long taper from the maid, showed her the door and took over the lighting of the candles and lamps. They were alone in the room.
With her heart thudding hard, Bian read the long missive.
“Stuart S-B posted Canton. Aiden S-B posted Taiwan. Both under-secretaries to their ambassadors. S.S-B visited Kirkham week before Kirkham arrest. Trial was closed but insiders cite proof against Kirkham 1) constant travels about China conversing with high officials both favoured and not, 2) Chinese security documents in hidden compartment of sea chest.
“Will be returning to England within the month. P-S.”
Bian realized her hand was shaking and put the sheet down. There was a roaring in her ears, that echoed the thunder of her heart beat. She felt ill.
“Bian?” Stuart said sharply, stepping toward her. She lifted her hand, to hold him back and she clutched the arm of the chair with the other. “I think…I think you must leave, Stuart. This concerns family business, that I must discuss with Patrick.”
Patrick and Stuart exchanged glances. It was a mute, male assessment. Stuart must have found reassurance in Patrick’s stare, for he nodded. “All right, I will go, then. But I will return tomorrow morning as soon as decency allows.”
She was too sick to answer. Instead she nodded, the most she could achieve. Cold sweat was prickling hard along her neck.
But Stuart was next to her, crouching to bring his face level with hers. “Tell me you can bear this alone…whatever this is. Tell me you can, or I won’t take another step away from you.”
She summoned up the will to speak. “I can bear this,” she lied and looked him straight in the eye. “It is a shock, that is all.”
Finally, he stood and then slowly turned and walked away. He shut the door after him but not before she saw him look back, the blue eyes trying to look through her, to drag the truth from her that way.
Patrick sat on the chair beside hers. “What is it?” he asked.
She handed him the sheet and rested her forehead against the heel of her hand, finally allowing herself to feel the full impact of the telegram. “It was me,” she croaked.
Patrick whistled as he finished reading—a long, low, hard note. “How was it you? How could anything you’ve done have created this…disaster?”
“The high officials. The dinners, the tours around northern China, visiting cities and officials and being so sociable.” Bian spread her hands, indicating how obvious it was. “It was for me, Patrick. I was there with him for every single visit. He was simply being a good diplomat and learning about his country. I’m the one who was making friends, gossiping with the wives, watching, putting two and two together and writing it all down for Richard.”
Patrick tapped the edge of the sheet against his fingers. “Gathering intelligence is perfectly legal. You weren’t stealing secrets.”
“But put it together with the documents in his sea chest and it makes the proof against him utterly inarguable. Someone put those documents there, Patrick. I know the secret compartment Piggot-Smythe is talking about. He only kept one item in it. It was something that was dear to him. Not documents.”
“The item. It was something of your mothers?” Patrick’s cheeks flushed as he asked. For him, Bian’s heritage was still a delicate thing.
“Yes, it was. A jade tiger with ruby eyes…she’d had it made especially for him, to bring him luck. He kept it with him. Always.”
“Why hidden, though? It sounds like the sort of thing one would keep upon a mantle.”
“It was inscribed with their names and mine, with descriptions of the depth of her love for him. And a call to God to reunite them in Heaven for all eternity.”
“Ah… Yes, that would be something he’d need to keep hidden.” Patrick cleared his throat and focused on furiously cleaning his glasses. “Then Sutherland-Bruce must have put the documents in the compartment. Father already suspected he was betraying English secrets. He sent you here to confirm it. So Sutherland-Bruce gathers up incriminating Chinese documents and puts them into the compartment before he obediently returns to England. And he must have hinted to the Chinese before he left. The arrest barely a week after he left is very suggestive.”
Bian nodded. “Yes, but who did hinted to the Chinese authorities? Stuart, or Aiden?”
He shrugged. “Stuart, of course. Piggot-Smythe says he was there the week before Father’s arrest.”
“But when you had Lord Baring ask the Home Office here in London, they said that Stuart had been here for nearly a month. It was Aiden who had been home only a few days.”
Patrick blinked. “Good God,” he said softly, wonder colouring his voice. “You think some sort of…masquerade has been going on?”
“I think that’s exactly what has happened,” she said. “Aiden visited my father, pretending to be Stuart. Stuart was posted to Canton, so he would rarely have called on my father. Piggot-Smythe would not have been able to tell the difference—these two are peas in a pod, Patrick. Even I was confused at first.”
“What tipped you off, then?” Patrick asked curiously.
She felt her own cheeks bloom with heat. “He looked at me with the same lust as Stuart but in his eyes there was no…”
“Warmth?” Patrick suggested.
“Love,” Bian replied.
Patrick’s gaze skidded away. Then he made himself look at her directly. Firmly. “So you can tell them apart but others who do not know them intimately would not.”
“Exactly. So Aiden pretends he is Stuart and visits his ambassador. One last official visit before returning to England. While he is in the residence, he finds a way to place the documents in the compartment—”
“How would he know it was there?” Patrick asked.
“It was hidden but not impossible to find,” she answered. “I found it, after all.”
Patrick gave a low, almost silent laugh. “Of course you did. So Aiden found the compartment, placed the documents in it, and let the Chinese know where to find them. He hurries back to England and reverts to Aiden when he arrives, while the Chinese quickly do his work for him and remove the biggest threat to his role as a treasonous, lying, amoral son-of-a-bitch.”
“Patrick!” She was shocked at Patrick’s curse and the vehemence of his anger.
He held up a hand. “Forgive me. This man, whichever man it was, was the man who arranged to have my father executed.”
“It was Aiden,” she said flatly.
He looked at her with a wise expression. “You would like it to be Aiden. But what if the reverse happened? What if Aiden was the first to return to England and Stuart actually did do this thing?”
A chill rippled down her spine before Bian could gather her wits about her enough to refute Patrick’s question. “The Home Office said—”
“They reported that one of the brothers returned several weeks before the other,” Patrick overrode her. “But you only have Stuart’s word that he was the first one to arrive in England.”
She squeezed her temples with her fingertips. “Why would he lie about it here, if he did not in Peking? If he had really been trying to avoid suspicion, he would have presented himself to my father and Piggot-Smythe as Aiden. But he did not.”
Patrick’s smile widened. “And here is another thought, darling sister. What if the man you have taken to your bed isn’t Stuart at all? What if it has been Aiden all along?”