Free Beauty and the Spy by Julie Anne Long

houses and friends. But then, suddenly, like an exclamation point: a naked viscount!
    He grinned and set the sketchbook aside, doused the lamp, and closed his eyes.
    The light in the room hadn't changed when he opened his eyes again; clearly he hadn't been asleep long. But there was a different quality to the silence now… as though something new had been introduced into it.
    His senses sang a warning. Holding his breath, he scanned the room through slit eyelids.
    And saw a tall shadow next to the bureau.
    In one swift motion, Kit seized the knife, rolled from the bed, and clamped his arm around the throat of the intruder from behind.
    "Move and your blood will be everywhere ," he murmured.
    A male hand clawed vainly at Kit's arm. For a long moment, the two men stood locked together in a knot of tensed muscles, their breathing rasping the air.
    "Ease up, Grantham," the intruder finally choked out.
    Kit's grip slackened a fraction. " John ?"
    A silence.
    "K-kit?" John Carr choked out.
    "Ye-e-s," Kit confirmed incredulously.
    Another silence.
    "Are you naked ?" John Carr sounded horrified.
    Kit pushed John Carr away with a snort and jerked his trousers from his chair. He thrust his legs into them and then lit the lamp next to his bed, and the light swelling into the room revealed his best Mend since childhood standing in the center of it, rubbing his throat ruefully.
    "John Carr. Thought I smelled goat."
    His friend gave a short hoarse laugh, hoarse because a powerful forearm clamped across the windpipe could do that to a voice. "Christ. So you're a pirate now, are you, Kit, with that bloody great cutlass or whatever that is? ' Move and your blood will be everywhere , '"he imitated.
    "It's a cheese knife, John. And it's a hot night A man can sleep naked in his own room ." Apparently, he couldn't be privately naked anywhere in Barnstable today. "How did you get in?"
    "Window open just a hair in the nursery, and you know that tree outside of it—"
    "Ah." He nodded appreciatively. Kit did know the tree. Very cooperative tree, that one. He'd shinnied up and down it to go in and out of the nursery window numerous times as a boy when he was supposed to be sleeping, or being punished for some other childish transgression. John had come in and out of that window numerous times, too. In due time, they'd both been caught at it and thrashed, naturally, because Kit's father had always been one step ahead of him.
    There was a silence.
    "John, why the hell —?" Kit made a sweeping gesture, indicating the absurdity of the question.
    John Carr, dressed in boots and dark trousers and a dark coat of light wool—the better to blend into shadows and scale trees, presumably—pulled out a chair and straddled it backward. "You weren't supposed to be here."
    Kit didn't honor that with a reply, so John tried again. "I'm on assignment, Kit."
    "You're on assignment. In my bedroom. In Barnstable."
    "Yes."
    Kit stared at his friend. John had always been the handsome one: tall and hard, dark-haired, dark-eyed. His features achieved that magical balance of rugged and refined guaranteed to set feminine hearts aflutter.
    But most people began babbling when faced with a few moments of Kit's silent blue stare.
    John stared levelly back at him.
    And suddenly, foreboding prickled at the back of Kit's neck. "You'd better tell me."
    John lowered his head briefly, deciding. Then he lifted it again, his expression carefully bland, which Kit disliked immensely. Kit and John never used their spy faces with each other. "I'll tell you what I can."
    "Am I under investigation?" Kit heard the incredulous tension in his own voice. "Does my father know?"
    "Why would he know? Because he's omnipotent?" A whiff of rivalry hung about those words. John's father was a baron who enjoyed gardening; he was not one of the most powerful peers in England.
    "He'd definitely like us to think so," Kit said mildly.
    John couldn't help but grin at that. "All right, I'll tell you why I'm