“Montfort.”
“He was passing through the territory when he picked up a rumor about an Englishman in the area. When he found me, he said I was an English soldier.”
“But”—Isabel’s eyebrows drew together in bewilderment—“you were thought dead for over a decade.”
“Another bit of intelligence from your source, I presume?”
She shrugged, unabashed.
“Montfort didn’t tell me the full story of my true identity. He left out that I was Captain Lord Percival Bretagne. He gave me the opportunity to continue serving my country.”
“This is when you became a spy.”
“My newly acquired Spanish was useful, along with the French I’d retained. There are any number of ways a man can be an asset to his country. Some operate in the light, like soldiers and diplomats. And others do their work in the shadows.”
“And you became one of the latter men?”
He wanted to draw closer to Isabel. Instead, he used that energy to retreat to the window on his side of the loft. Here, he could speak the words he needed to make her understand. “I did.”
“But what of your memory?”
“It came to me at night, in my sleep, but nothing I could hold onto in the light of day.”
“Then how—?”
“Do you know of Lord Nicholas Asquith?”
“I’ve heard the other ladies speak of him.”
“I had been doing Montfort’s dirty work for about a year when I traveled to Vienna during the Congress. I was there to keep an ear out for what was being negotiated in the shadows. It was only by chance that our paths crossed. Nick knew me in an instant, as we were brothers by law. Our wives were sisters.”
“Is there no one in England who isn’t related?” Isabel asked, exasperation in her tone. It was charming.
“Not in the ton.”
Her seriousness returned, and she plucked out another stem of straw. “Lord Nicholas Asquith helped you recover your memory?”
Percy nodded. “Montfort had been keeping me secluded from anyone who would know me.”
“Oh, what a cruel thing.”
“Nick concocted a plan to stage my death for Montfort’s benefit.”
Isabel’s brow lifted to the ceiling. “How . . . how bold.”
“Aye, that it was. In truth, I didn’t think it stood a chance of success.” Percy shook his head, still in wonder at the luck of it all. “But it did.”
“And it freed you from Montfort. Yet—” A tense beat skipped past. “Yet you didn’t return home immediately?”
At last, they had reached the moment, the one where Percy would reveal his true self to Isabel and sweep that soft look from her eye. “Before I hied off to Spain, I was a terrible husband. Did your source tell you that?”
“I believe it was implied.”
“I caroused every night. I placed reckless wagers on anything that moved or breathed. I had a mistress.”
“Oh.”
Had she flinched? He should warn her to brace herself, for there was more.
“By the time I left England, I had a wife who couldn’t stand the sight of me. And when Nick told me I had a daughter, I knew I’d make a terrible father. Olivia certainly didn’t need me, so I stayed on the Continent and embedded myself in the small network Nick had formed, which operated without Montfort’s knowledge. I could protect England and my family, and not trouble them with my continued existence.”
“I can see a nobility in that reasoning.”
“There is but one problem.” Still, she didn’t understand. Well, she would. “It was a lie.”
“A lie?”
“I stayed in that life for one person. Myself. Not for England. Not for my family. I’d formed an addiction to the life of espionage.”
Isabel opened her mouth to speak and hesitated. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“It seduces you in. Gets your brain moving and your pulse jumping. I’d become a necessary man. For the first time in my life, I was useful. I didn’t know the first thing about mattering in England, but on the Continent, with my memory fully returned and as part of Nick’s network, I did.”
At last, he’d arrived at the essential truth of the choice he’d made. The truth he’d never spoken aloud to anyone. The truth that filled him with shame every time he saw his daughter. “I stayed away because it was the easier path.”
Isabel’s eyebrows crinkled together. “Easier? I would think the life of a spy a sight more difficult than the life of an entitled lord in England.”
“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. Staying on the Continent was much easier than returning to England and attempting to forge a useful life here. And it was much easier to stay away than to return and right the wrongs I’d done to my father, my wife, and my daughter when I’d abandoned them for the glories of war.”
Isabel’s direct, green eyes locked onto his, searching him, seeing into him, down to his shameful, rotten core, he was sure of it.
“And yet”—she took one step, then another, and another—“here you are. In England. At your father’s estate. Sharing the same air as your daughter.”
As she closed the distance between them, Percy felt the change in his body, its reaction to her. The rush of his blood. The coil of his muscles. The race of his heart.
“You are here, doing the hard work.”
Percy wanted to break from her gaze, at the grace she offered, but he couldn’t. By increments, she continued moving toward him, slowly as one would with a feral animal, and, with each step she took, her power over him increased.
“Last night,” she said, “I noticed that you and Lucy were different with one another.”
“Aye, we—” He was having a difficult time getting the word out. “We’ve reconciled, or have started, at least.”
Closer, Isabel stepped, now not five feet from him. “And how does it make you feel?”
He understood what she wanted him to say. That he felt right. That it was the first time in over a decade that he’d felt so. He turned away from the thought, not ready to accept her absolution. “How I feel about it is of no consequence. Only Lucy has that right.”