Free A Spy's Honor by Charlotte Russell Page A

what’s missing here”—she squeezed his hand—“than what is present here and here.” She touched his forehead and his chest in turn.
    “Did I mention how much I missed you, Mother?”
    “Not once in all your letters, you shameful boy.” Her smile counteracted her words. “I am so glad you are home. Now we have two occasions to celebrate.”
    Leave it to his formidable parent to forgo beating around the bush. He forced himself to say the words. He might as well repeat them ad nauseam. Perhaps such penance would take the sting away. “Claire is getting married.”
    “Kensworth is a fine young man. What pleases me most is seeing Claire enjoy life once again.” She laid her fingers on his arm. “After you left, she was blue-deviled for an entire year.”
    What was he to say to that? He had expected his mother to pile on the guilt about his long absence, not about Claire. He glanced around the room and found her talking to her sister, oblivious to his presence. In the end, he resorted to Shakespeare and mumbled something to his mother about, “All’s well that ends well.”
    “Indeed,” she replied. “You cannot have been too attached, ending the engagement as you did and then leaving for the Continent so soon. Really, what could have possibly developed between the two of you? You were thrown together for such a short time.”
    John ground his teeth. If his mother thought a man couldn’t fall for a woman in a day or two, she was sadly mistaken. He could argue against every sentence his mother had uttered, but he childishly picked the most inconsequential. “We were not truly engaged.”
    His mother eyed him with a wide and guileless gaze, but he saw the shrewdness lurking. She wanted to trap him into revealing how he really felt about Claire.
    But Claire was marrying someone else. His feelings, past or present, were irrelevant. All he’d had on the Continent, all he would ever have, was the memory of what little time they’d had together. In that carriage.
    “Ahem.”
    John blinked, returning to the present at the quiet intrusion. “Beg pardon, Mother.”
    She tilted her head as if sizing him up. “Well, at last you are home to look for a bride. I hope the thought of marriage will encourage you to settle down in England. You do realize I am not getting any younger? Neither my heart nor my frail body will be able to tolerate another one of your jaunts around the world.”
    Ah, there was the guilt he had anticipated. Over this he had no trouble feeling contrite, for he had treated his mother and the rest of the family shabbily. “I am sorry. I regret not coming back sooner.”
    If he’d come back sooner, perhaps they would be celebrating his marriage to Claire. His gaze strayed to her again, and in the flickering candlelight she glowed with a golden, angelic haze. Damn his timing. He shoved that useless thought aside and looked at his mother, her smile soft and proud, her body, except for the slightest bits of silver running through her dark hair, barely showing any sign of aging.
    How could he tell her he would return to the Continent to spy after his current mission was complete? He couldn’t. Not yet.
    Her sharp motherly gaze penetrated his defenses like no other. “Are you in financial straits, John? Is this why you want an heiress?”
    No, he wanted Claire.
    Stubborn brain. “No, Mother, my pockets are fine.” The inheritance bequeathed him by his father sat untouched, for the salary from the Foreign Office covered whatever meager expenses he’d encountered while on the road. “I was merely teasing about the heiress part.”
    He adjusted his spectacles and looked around the room. Claire leaned against the wall, gazing out the bow window and looking anything but happy and blissful, as his mother had described her. Her father had died shortly after their debacle, a much more likely cause for her low spirits back then than his departure.
    “Excuse me, Mother.” Whatever she wasn’t, Claire was