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His jaw tensed and the tiny muscles of his face tightened, emphasizing its rugged planes.

“Let’s forget why for the time being. Who? Who put you up to this charade? I’ve abandoned the hypothesis that you work for a foreign government. That conjecture—like my initial misbelief as to your identity—depended on an overestimation of your capacities.”

“You’re right.” She averted her face. “A spy needs a brain.”

“My conclusion exactly.”

She mashed her lips together. Why should this hurt above all?

“We’re agreed, then, that politics is beyond your range.” He pressed on inexorably. “Unless—do you speak Chinese?”

She fought the urge to duck her head. Would he bring up each of her lies?

“No, you don’t,” he said with a mock sigh. Teasing without warmth. It was very close to ridicule. She opened her mouth to protest, but what could she say?

He clicked his tongue. “Tomas will be so disappointed.”

“I speak French,” she said, and winced at the inanity. Meeting his eyes was a mistake.

“Enchanté.” His voice was dry as sand. “French is preferable, I assume, if you make your living blowing into men’s ears until they give up trade secrets. Out with it. Who hired you?” He took a step toward her. “Edevane?”

“No one.” The words broke from her. “No one hired me. It just happened. That day in Bodmin . . .” She blinked rapidly against the rising tide, another surge of tears. “I crossed the platform to get away from him, my husband. I put the train and a few dozen yards between us, but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go on, I couldn’t go back. I felt hopeless.”

All that, at least, was the truth. She trained her eyes on the river. Each droplet would drift until the end of time, might ripple into the Amazon, might rain down on Hong Kong.

She drew a breath.

“And then you were there,” she said. “You came out of the trees, like in a fairy tale. You called to me. You wanted to believe I was someone else, your precious Mrs. Pendrake. I went along with it, that’s all.”

She knuckled her eyes, a childish gesture that made her scowl, self-conscious. Gone were the days when her tears worked miracles.

He gave an ironic laugh. “Christ. How perfect. It’s all been a whim, then.”

“It didn’t feel like a whim. It felt like . . .”

He cocked a brow, and she had to force herself to keep going.

“It felt like fate.” Her voice rasped. “I forgot that, for me, fate is nothing but disaster. I should have run into the woods, run from both of you.”

“Indeed you should have.” The sneer had become a snarl. “We wouldn’t be together in these woods now, having this unpleasant conversation. I would have gone back to Truro to look for a letter from Muriel Pendrake explaining what detained her and advising me of her new date of arrival. She and I might this very moment be out on the moor making a study of the bog pimpernels in the hollows or the lichen turf on the high tors.”

“I meant no harm.” She said it quietly.

“What did you mean?” He considered her. “I’m curious. How on earth did you expect this to end?”

She swallowed. “In fairy tales, people transform.”

Dear God, had she said it aloud? Retreat. Retreat for her sanity. Retreat before she spoke more nonsense.

She edged backward, the corner of a stone pressing her instep, causing her breath to catch. Too much walking, dancing, scrambling about, had rubbed her feet raw.

He slinked forward, closing the distance she’d opened. His eyes were hard, but those profuse, curling lashes—they were silken, soft. Gentling his gaze.

“I had this notion . . .” She went cold, then hot, but she couldn’t stop the words. “I imagined . . . that I might transform. That I might become Muriel, if I wished hard enough.”

“What then?” His look had altered subtly.

Everything.