To Kiss A Spy by Jane Feather Read Free Book Online Page A

gaze she had never felt as she did now. Owen d’Arcy’s desire would burn, would devour. She had the fanciful notion that if she was ever touched by that desire she would cease to exist as the person she knew. And deep within her she understood that this was what made Owen d’Arcy a dangerous man.
    Cedric came in with hot water and the moment passed, the connection was broken. But something lingered in the air, and the page glanced curiously at the couple beside the fire. Then Owen without urgency moved backwards, away from Pen.
    “Set the water on the table, Cedric, then go down to the kitchen and help Mistress Rider with the sack posset.” His voice was calm and neutral.
    Pen opened her mouth to say that Cedric should stay. She didn’t want to be alone with Owen, alone while he ministered to her hurts, put his hands upon her body as he would have to do. But then she didn’t know how to express this to the page without it sounding either silly or insulting. Instead she watched Owen’s hands as he unclipped the velvet sheaths that held his rapier and dagger and laid the weapons on the table beside the hot water.
    Those hands were so long and slender, so fine boned. A musician’s hands, she thought. Rather like Philip’s. But Philip had been more hesitant in his movements, less sure. He would not have handled arms the way Owen d’Arcy did. As if the rapier and dagger were extensions of himself.
    “Do you live here?” she heard herself ask in an attempt at ordinary conversation.
    “Mostly, when I’m in London . . . although tonight I had other plans.”
    “I disturbed them then?”
    “They’re all the better for being disturbed,” he responded, his eyes smiling. “Would you remove your headdress? It will be easier for me to work.” He spoke casually as he shrugged off his black velvet cloak. The crimson lining glowed in the candlelight as he tossed it carelessly onto the bed. He turned to the basin of hot water on the table. The firelight sparked off the gold thread in his black doublet, gleamed in the black enamel clasps of his black silk shirt.
    Such a contained figure, she thought. Contained and yet surging with vitality and purpose. Such a man could be irresistible if he chose to make himself so.
    Almost as if she were dreaming Pen stood up and removed the jeweled circlet that adorned her hood. She laid it carefully on the wide mantel above the hearth, then unpinned the hood and the crisp white coif beneath. She laid the long gold pins beside the circlet, and the hood and coif on the chest at the foot of the bed. She felt curiously naked. Her hair was parted and looped over her ears, and a whisper of a draft from the shuttered window touched her bare neck and throat.
    In the same silence she resumed her seat on the stool before the fire and folded her hands in the lap of her gray damask gown.
    Owen came over to her holding a steaming cloth that he’d dipped in the hot water. “Could you tilt your head to one side?”
    Pen did so, closing her eyes because it seemed easier not to look at him as he bent over her, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek.
    He worked swiftly, surely, offering no apologies for hurting her as he cleansed the dried blood from the open wound. The stinging was inevitable and Pen was glad that he didn’t refer to it, merely got on with the task as quickly as he could.
    “What instrument do you play?” she asked, breaking the silence that had become uncomfortable for her, although not, she suspected, for him.
    He paused in his ministrations and asked with a note of surprise, “What makes you think I play at all?”
    “You do, though, don’t you?” she challenged, opening her eyes and turning her head to look at him so that his hand dropped from her neck.
    “Yes,” he agreed. “I play the harp. Could you bend your head again? I’m almost finished.”
    Pen obeyed. “The harp. That’s an unusual instrument. I thought maybe the lute or the