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“I know the distinction.”

She turned towards him. Baines’ expression was serious. “You told people that mill owners intended to reduce wages and that merchants were holding grain while families went hungry. You did not tell armed men where soldiers would be stationed or when magistrates intended to arrest them. There is a difference, Judith, and you know it.”

“Supposing the difference matters less than I believed?”

“It matters more.”

She wanted to argue, but there was nothing careless in his certainty. “You always make matters sound simple.”

“No. I make them sound simple when they are complicated because otherwise I should become Renforth, and one Renforth is quite sufficient.”

A laugh escaped her. Baines smiled, but only briefly.

Judith became very aware that they were alone. The stream moved quietly behind him, and the last of the light caught the brown in his eyes. His hair had been disturbed by the ride and the damp air had encouraged the slight wave at his temples. She had seen him disordered before. She had seen him muddy, tired, laughing and angry. She had never wanted to touch him quite so badly as she did now. The thought ought to have shocked her, but instead it felt inconveniently inevitable.

“Baines?”

Something in her voice changed his expression. He took one step towards her and stopped.

Judith could have moved away. She did not.

His hand rose slowly, giving her every opportunity to object, and touched the side of her face. His thumb rested just below her cheekbone, warm against skin cooled by the evening air.

“You should tell me not to do this.”

Judith looked at him. “You have not done anything yet.”

His mouth curved faintly. “That sounds dangerously like permission.”

“I thought you were supposed to be observant.”

Baines kissed her. There was nothing careless in it.

Judith had expected, if she ever permitted herself to imagine such a thing, that Baines would kiss as he did everything else—with confidence, charm and some infuriating awareness of his own effect. Instead, the first touch of his mouth was almost cautious, as though the man who laughed at danger had suddenly encountered something he feared to mishandle.

The tenderness of it undid her. She caught the front of his coat and kissed him back.

Whatever caution had restrained him disappeared. His other arm came around her, drawing her closer, and Judith forgot the clasp, the traitor, Scotland and every sensible reason she had ever constructed for keeping Major Baines at a safe distance. She had spent years being useful, controlled and entirely capable of managing herself. None of those qualities prepared her for the astonishing warmth of being held by a gentleman as though he had wanted to do it for a very long time.

When they finally drew apart, Baines rested his forehead lightly against hers.

Judith became conscious of her hands still gripping his coat.

“This is inconvenient,” she whispered.

His quiet laugh warmed her cheek. “I have been telling you that from the beginning.”

She smiled and lifted her head.

Baines looked at her in a way no man ever had—not as Sir Lionel’s capable niece and certainly not as the woman who managed Blackthorn, remembered accounts, solved other people’s difficulties and ensured everyone else had what they required.

He looked at her simply as Judith. The realization was both frightening and exhilarating.

CHAPTER 13

Baines had expected the trap to fail in any number of ways, most of which he had discussed with Renforth and several of which he had invented merely for the pleasure of irritating his superior. He had considered the possibility that no one would repeat the false information at all, which would prove only that the person they hunted possessed more caution than they had credited him with. He had considered the rather more useful possibility that one of their three invented destinations would appear precisely as planted, thereby giving them a direct line back to the guest who had heard it. He had even allowed for the possibility that the traitor would recognize the deception and respond in some more personal fashion, though Renforth had declined to find Baines’ suggestion of attempted murder encouraging.

He had not expected all three lies to return to them combined into one. After the guests had retired, Baines left the house to meet up with his troop while Judith had been occupied with a household matter.