For Your Arms Only by Linden, Caroline (best fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

used to controlling himself since then, though. A spy learned to keep his thoughts and feelings to himself. “Of course. Forgive me for taking an interest.”

“I am sure it will pass in short order.”

“Julia, shall I apologize again?” he said curtly.

“Whatever for?” She turned to face him, eyes wide in feigned surprise.

“I didn’t come home to argue with you,” he snapped in spite of himself. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing—Nothing at all!”

“I see.”

“How could you?” She shook her head. “Things were so much easier when we thought you were dead.” Alec froze. Julia’s face turned deathly pale, but she put up her chin and glared at him. She did not retract her words. His own sister, the girl who had once adored him and teased him and written tearstained letters to him in Spain, wished he were dead.

Carefully, deliberately, Alec put down his cup and walked from the room.

He rode like the demons of hell pursued him. The horse was Frederick’s, long-limbed and sedate, but under Alec’s hand he stretched his stride and fairly flew over the hills and meadows of Penford. By the time Alec pulled him up on the edge of the ridge, the horse was lathered with sweat and breathing as hard as Alec himself.

He swung down from the saddle. His last few years had not included much riding, but his body remembered the rhythm well. As they’d charged up the last hill, his memory flashed vividly back to another charge up a hill, with French bullets whining past him and artillery shaking the ground. He’d had a saber in his hand and the bloodlust of battle in his heart, and no real inkling of what was to come. What a bloody fool.

Alec wound the reins around his hand and walked, cooling the tired horse after his run. He rarely thought about his army days anymore; it was a distant memory, a long-ago life that had little bearing on the present. He turned and surveyed the rolling, verdant lands of Penford, his inheritance, his home. The sight inspired nothing within him. It might have been any piece of land, in England or Belgium or the distant reaches of America for all the meaning it had to him now. For too long he had been no one, not an officer, not a gentleman, not even Alexander Hayes but Alec Brandon, imposter and spy. Now he didn’t quite know who he really was.

The horse tugged against the rein, stretching his neck for a bite of grass. Alec roused himself from his thoughts and turned back to what he did know. He still had Stafford’s business to attend to, and right now it was a more attractive proposition than anything that awaited him at Penford. With a pat to the horse’s neck, he mounted again and turned in the direction of the Turner property.

Sergeant Turner had taken Brighampton, a modest estate just a few miles from Penford. In truth it was more of a farm than an estate, but Alec noted the fields were not well-tended as he rode past them, taking the shortest path instead of going by the main road. Nor did he see anyone working in the fields, another sign that the sergeant’s absence was trouble. Who would lease a farm like Brighampton and then not farm it? And when he came in sight of the house, other signs of neglect became apparent, from the overgrown shrubberies to a shutter hanging loose.

The house sat on the edge of a small copse of trees, a cottage really. Behind it were a squat stable and a few other outbuildings, with a large vegetable garden that did look neat and tidy. From the other side of the trees spread a wide meadow dotted with grazing sheep. The sergeant appeared to have done fairly well for himself at some point. Perhaps he just didn’t intend to farm the land. Alec catalogued other details about the property as he rode up, trying to form a view of the missing man and his situation before hearing from his family. But then a strange sight caught his attention, distracting him from conjectures about the Turners.

A man was sneaking out of the stable. There was no doubt of it, from the way the fellow glanced left and right every few feet. He was a big man, broad in the chest, with long arms hunched close up to his sides and a cap pulled low over his forehead. Alec couldn’t see his face, but when the man sidled around the corner of the stable and took off at a run, he nudged the horse to follow. It could be a servant, shirking his duties…but Alec’s instincts said not. Better to take a look and find nothing amiss than to let someone significant slip away.

The man had disappeared into the woods by the time Alec reached the edge of it. He pulled up at the trees, which were quite dense, and stared into the shadowy woods. Birds chattered in the branches and a rabbit darted under a fallen log, but there was no sign of the suspicious character. Alec turned and rode back to the stable, wondering what the man had been doing in there so stealthily.

It was a modest stable. There were two horses in the stalls munching on hay, but the rest of the stable was empty and apparently unused. Alec moved slowly and silently, peering into empty stalls and around corners, trying to see what could have attracted a man who ran off into the woods. It looked very ordinary, neatly kept although far from filled. He could see no signs of damage or anything maliciously done. The man couldn’t have been carrying anything large. If he weren’t a thief or a vandal, what could he be?

He heard the whisper of a footstep just before the question came from behind him. “May I help you, sir?”

Slowly Alec turned, put on guard by her tone of voice. Frigid with scorn, it wasn’t nearly as