Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(26)

Griffin took a drag of his cigarette and exhaled slowly. “I don’t know if I could do the same. The thought of marrying anyone—let alone a saucy American wench suspected of treason—is enough to make me ill.”

Treason.

Hearing the word in correlation with Daisy was like a dagger’s honed blade into his gut. “I don’t think she knows anything Carlisle suspects her of knowing.”

His friend stared at him, his look speculative. Almost suspicious. “You don’t think so? Did you bloody well read the report he sent to the League?”

Of course he had. The letter had arrived transcribed in careful code that to the outside observer would have seemed unassuming as a maiden aunt’s tepid scrawl. But in truth, it had contained privileged information. The same information about Daisy that Carlisle had fed him previously. Connections to an Irish shop girl suspected of working with the dynamitards, a broken betrothal to a Fenian leader. Nothing new, and nothing substantial.

His friend’s probing gaze made him take another swig of spirits. “I read it.”

He’d read it twice and then burned it, just as he did with all League correspondence.

“And?” Griffin raised a brow, raising his cigarette back to his mouth for another puff.

Sebastian fought the absurd urge to take one of his friend’s cigarettes from the paper sleeve on the table and smoke it himself. Perhaps it would calm him, but ever since the fire, he hadn’t been able to countenance bringing any sort of smoke into his lungs. It made him cagey, took him back to the day he’d almost died.

He settled for whisky instead. “And it’s flimsy evidence at best, Griff. I’m not saying I trust Daisy, but neither do I believe it’s in her nature to plot to kill innocent civilians.”

No, he realized as he spoke the words aloud. Nothing in his dealings with her had shown she possessed the capacity for cruelty, or the ability to hurt others without compunction that he’d witnessed in so many other foes over the years. She was an odd woman, sometimes bold and blazing with daring and passion, other times haunted by the brutalities she claimed to have received from her father. He longed to believe her innocent, to accept everything she’d told him as truth, and the knowledge was an unwanted revelation to him.

For there was something she was keeping from him. She had lied to him earlier, boldly and without compunction. That small hesitation had given her away.

“Have you bedded her?” His friend asked baldly into the silence that had descended upon them.

The need to defend her honor rose within him. He was an oxymoron if one ever lived. “No,” he snapped. “Not that it is any of your concern.”

“You want to bed her,” Griffin concluded.

Correctly, damn his hide.

“No,” he lied. “I don’t bed pawns. I never have.”

The last bit was truth, at least.

“She’s a beauty.” Griffin ground the nub of his cigarette into a silver ashtray. “Had half the men of the ton sniffing her skirts. Christ, you must have heard the rumors about her. She couldn’t be an innocent maid by this juncture. No one would blame you for wanting a taste yourself.”

Of course he’d heard the rumors. Had seen with his own two eyes the way she led men on a merry dance, lured them in with her wiles. Kissed them. But something uncoiled within him then, some burning need to defend her, a searing outrage on her behalf. The Daisy Vanreid who had asked him if he had ever hit a woman had been desperate. And she didn’t deserve the scorn of any man. He believed her. Against all reason and ration, he believed her.

“You go too far,” he warned his friend. “The lady is my wife.”

“Not truly.” Griffin’s expression turned from scornful to incredulous as he scoured Sebastian’s countenance. “Bast. You’re defending her like a man who’s smitten. Are you mad?”

How ironic that his friend had reached the selfsame conclusion as he. What was it about Daisy that undid him? His mouth curled into a grim, mirthless smile. “Likely.”

“Bed her then.” Griffin took a long pull of whisky. “Get her out of your blood. But you’d best sleep with a dagger under your bloody pillow.”

Sebastian finished the dregs of his second glass. By now, the stuff had finally begun to do its work, filling his veins with a calming languor. Drinking himself into a stupor seemed like a good course of action for the evening of his wedding day. Perhaps it would keep him from making any greater mistakes than those he’d already committed. “Griff?”

Griffin stared into the fire in the grate, seemingly mesmerized by the dancing flames. “Aye?” he grunted without looking up.

“Go to hell,” he said without heat.

His friend’s dark eyes met his, as he raised his glass for a mocking salute. “Already there, old chap.”

Though Griffin spoke the words casually, Sebastian knew his friend suffered from demons wrought by what he’d seen and done, just as they all had. Griffin had never been the same after returning from Paris. He had been a young, optimistic operative caught up in the siege and taken hostage by the French. When Sebastian and another spy had finally located and freed him, Griffin had resembled nothing so much as a beaten, emaciated corpse.

In the Special League, there was always a price to pay, and each member had paid their fair shares in pounds of flesh.