Her shock was evident, and painful to see—why hadn’t he had the courage to tell her before now?—but he pushed forward before she could speak—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he stumbled forward. It was so damnably hard to find to find the right words.
“I…I never thought you could…” No, that wasn’t right. It hadn’t been a resistance on her part. “I thought perhaps you shouldn’t…” No, pointing out why she shouldn’t was a terrible idea. He blew out a frustrated breath and tried again. “I was resigned, almost, to not having you. But you…you changed things. You gave me…things.” Oh, bloody hell. “You made me laugh. You gave me hope. And love.”
He looked down at his hand, flexed his fingers. “It is one thing to…to not reach for what you desire. It is another to let what you have…what you love, go without a fight.” His gaze came up to settle resolutely on hers. “I’ll not let you go without a fight. You’ll listen to what I have to say.” Suddenly remembering that his high-handed tactics were in part responsible for his current groveling, he added a belated, and somewhat anticlimactic, “Please.”
It was clear by her serene expression that sometime during his spectacularly dreadful speech, Evie had gotten over her shock. She stared at him in silence for a moment, then cocked her head to the side, and asked, “Do you know what I find troublesome?”
Did the woman want a list?
She didn’t wait for his response. “That you should claim to love a woman in whom you have so little faith.”
He started at the accusation. “I have every faith—”
“Then why insult me?” she demanded. “Why imply the love I’ve offered you is so weak, so fickle, that I would toss it and you aside because of a murky time in your past? And without even allowing you a word in defense?”
It was a trifle more than “murky,” as she so delicately put it, and he had no defense to speak of, but McAlistair knew better than to argue against himself. “My apologies.”
“Accepted.” She held out her hand expectantly.
Though it cost him to do so, he fished the key out of his pocket and handed it to her. He watched, a little baffled, as she simply palmed the key.
“Aren’t you going to unlock the door?” he asked.
“No, I want to finish this.”
“What happened to trust and—”
“I’m not the one in the habit of hiding away.”
He might have been annoyed at the sentiment if he hadn’t seen the corners of her lips twitch. She was teasing him.
He took a seat next to her and took her hand to press a kiss into her palm. “I don’t deserve what I intend to keep.”
She smiled a little and closed her hand as if to keep the kiss. “Whether or not you have me and whether or not you’re deserving is still up for debate. I believe you were telling me what sort of soldier you were.”
He nodded and sat back, but he kept hold of her hand.
“I worked for William Fletcher, for the War Department. I accepted missions to…to…”
“Assassinate,” she prompted.
He nodded. “Yes, but only those whose actions endangered the lives of our own men—spies and traitors. Those who couldn’t be brought to trial because of their rank, or because they were not British, or because of information they would reveal.”
“John Herbert’s father?”
“A prominent member of the War Department,” he said. “He sold a list of agent names to the French. Several of those agents paid for his betrayal with their lives. I didn’t kill at random, Evie, or for money. I was paid, I wouldn’t have you think otherwise, but I didn’t kill for money. I believed in what I was doing.”
“I see.” Evie stared at their joined hands. The idea of executing a man without a trial troubled her deeply. The fact that every soldier who fired a shot on a battlefield did essentially the same thing was cold comfort.
“War is a dark and ugly business,” she murmured.
“It is, yes.” He gripped her hand tighter. “And it is easy…too easy, for a young man to grow comfortable in that darkness. After a time, it is easy to forget it is another life taken.”
“Is that why you stopped?” she asked, looking up. “Why you wouldn’t tell me of this?”
There was a long pause before he said, “I failed in a mission. I killed the wrong man.”
Her heart contracted painfully in her chest. “You…”
“That surprises you.”
“I…yes,” she admitted. “It shouldn’t, I suppose. You’re only human, after all, and humans make mistakes. But when that mistake results in the death of an innocent man—”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” he corrected, his voice growing cold. “Not in the sense you mean. And he wasn’t innocent.”
“I don’t understand.”
He nodded, but it was a moment more before he spoke. “You asked earlier if the Burnetts had ever been found.”
She shook her head, clearly confused by the jump in topic. “You said no.”
“I lied.”
McAlistair steeled himself against the hurt in Evie eyes. The truth, he reminded himself. All of it.
“I found him. In the very house of a man I’d been sent to silence. He was living under an assumed name and working, of all things, as a tutor.”