"So you've been his mistress for years," Rafe repeated, his eyes like ice. "Do you know who he works for?"
"The British, of course. Robin is as English as I am."
"Even if that's true, nationality means nothing to a mercenary. He probably sells to the highest bidder, and has been using you as a dupe." Rafe's eyes narrowed. "Are you sure that he is English?"
Maggie exploded. "You ignorant fool! Your accusations are absurd, and I won't listen to them."
She spun away, but Rafe grabbed her by the arm. "Absurd? Where does your money come from? Who pays for the silk gowns and the carriage and the town house?"
She jerked her arm free. "I do, with what I earn from the British government."
"Are you paid directly?"
After a pause, Maggie said, "The money comes through Robin."
It was exactly as Rafe expected. "I wrote Lucien and asked how much the government has paid you over the last dozen years. It came to about five thousand pounds, not enough to keep you for a year in the style you live in."
Her eyes widened, but she refused to back down. "Perhaps that is all Lord Strathmore has paid, but there must be other British agencies that need information. Robin probably deals with several of them."
Though her words were defiant, he saw that she was shaken by what he had revealed. Pressing his advantage, he said, "I admire your loyalty. Nonetheless, the odds are that Anderson is the spy within the British delegation, and that he is almost certainly involved in the conspiracy against Castlereagh. The only question is, are you his knowing accomplice, or his pawn?"
"I won't believe it!" she said furiously. "Robin is the best friend I've ever had, and if I must choose between believing him and believing you, I choose him. Get out of here!"
Until now Rafe had restricted himself to telling his suspicions of Anderson's loyalty, but Maggie's refusal to believe ill of her lover shattered his control. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he demanded, "Why him, Margot-why him and not me? Is he a matchless bed-mate? Do you think you love him, or is it because he has supported you in such elegance?" His fingers tightened on her arms. "If it's money you want, I'll pay your price, no matter how high it is. If it's sex, give me one night, then decide who is better."
He drew in a raw, unsteady breath. "And if you're defending him from blind loyalty, think hard about whether a traitor is worthy of such allegiance."
She laughed in his face. "You dare ask why I prefer Robin? It was he who saved my life and gave me a reason to go on living. As God is my witness, I'd rather be the pawn of a traitor than the mistress of a man who accused and judged me without proof, a man whose insane jealousy drove my father to take me away from England."
Her voice dropped, and he saw bone-chilling rage in her face. "My father would not have been murdered by the French if it hadn't been for what you did, Rafe. For that alone, I can never forgive you.
"As for your vain, masculine egotism-I don't care if you've learned your skills in the bed of every slut in Europe. I'd never give myself to a man without love,and you're incapable of loving anyone. You're a selfish, arrogant, conceited rakehell, and I don't ever want to see you again. Now let go of me!"
She raised her arms and tried to break his grip, but Rafe was too strong for her. He slid one hand behind her head and turned her face up to his. Hoarsely he said, "Oh, God, Margot, don't fight me. I just want to keep you safe."
He kissed her fiercely, hoping that passion would dissolve her opposition. As always when they embraced, heat flared between them, swift and impossible to deny.
She struggled violently at first, but as he held her steadfast, she softened and began to respond with an intensity that matched his own. Her tongue entered his mouth and her hand slid down his body between them, seeking.
When she touched him, he groaned and hardened under her caress. This was how they were meant to be-loving each other, not fighting. He eased his grip and began running his hands down the swell of her hips.
She took advantage of his relaxation to jerk her knee up in a savage street fighter's trick. Sickeningly aware that her passion had been a ruse, he twisted away barely in time. Her blow landed on his thigh instead of smashing his genitals, but he saved himself at the cost of losing his hold on her.
As soon as Maggie freed herself from his embrace, she dashed across the room to the pier table and yanked a pistol from the drawer. Then she whirled to face Rafe. "Get out of here, and don't ever come near me again! If you make any move to hurt Robin, I will have you killed." Though her voice trembled, the gun she held with both hands was lethally steady.
Rafe stared unbelievingly at the pistol. "Maggie…"
"Stay where you are!" She cocked the hammer. "I warn you, if you injure Robin, you will die even if I am dead myself. I know how to arrange an assassination, and there will be nowhere on earth distant enough for you to hide. Now take your clumsy amateur spying and your jealousy and your absurd accusations and go back to England!"
She was bluffing, he was sure of it. The gun probably wasn't even loaded.
He took a step toward her, and she pulled the trigger.
The roar of the gun was numbing in the enclosed space. He felt the vibration of the ball as it struck near him, and debris struck his calf.
At first he thought Maggie's shot had gone wild. Then he blinked the stinging smoke from his eyes and saw that she had fired into the black king, which had been lying on the carpet near his foot. The ball had splintered the antique chess piece into a thousand fragments. An admirable bit of marksmanship; it was obvious that she could just as easily have put the bullet into his eye.
By the time he raised his gaze, she had expertly reloaded and trained her weapon on him again. "As you can see, I haven't forgotten my marksmanship," she said grimly. "If you try anything, the next ball will go into you."
He weighed the odds of trying to take the pistol away from her, but there was a wide expanse of salon between them, and murder in Maggie's eyes. He damned himself for the idiotic folly of attacking Anderson as he had. It would have been difficult to convince her of her lover's duplicity under the best of circumstances. By muddying the evidence with his jealousy, he had lost any chance of changing Maggie's mind.
Nonetheless, with as much calm and conviction as he could muster, he tried. "For your own sake, Maggie, don't trust Anderson. Though I may be a jealous fool,I told you the truth about him. Do you want Castlereagh, and perhaps others, to die because you're too stubborn to see Anderson for what he is? He's the only lead to the conspiracy that we have, and we should get Wellington to detain him for questioning."
"You haven't convinced me, your grace," she said, her smoky gray eyes as hostile as her words. "As I said, spies must talk to everyone, especially suspects like Lemercier and Roussaye. As for the money-you may be too rich to realize it, but most of the world must be practical about such sordid things. Selling the same information to more than one of Napoleon's enemies might be simply good business, not treason."
"But you're not sure, are you?" Rafe said softly, sensing the bravado that fueled Maggie's defense of Anderson.
At his words, she tensed, and he wondered how light the trigger was on her pistol. He felt a flicker of cool amusement at the thought that the noble Duke of Candover might be killed in a vulgar lover's quarrel- with the added irony that they were not even lovers.
Breasts rising and falling with agitation, she said, "You could produce iron-clad evidence and a dozen unimpeachable witnesses that Robin was a traitor and I might possibly-just possibly-believe you, but I would still not come to your bed. Will you leave on your own, or shall I ring for my servants to throw you out?"