She smiled a little and dipped her head, but when she spoke her tone was carefully bored. “I suppose you live alone?”

“Yes.” An admirable attempt to fish for information. “I could never ask a wife to subject herself to the demands of my work.”

Lottie glanced away. “Of course.”

He ignored the stirring in his chest that came when he uttered the word wife and pushed ahead. “Your uncle explained what I was doing, then?”

It was common knowledge that Sir Alfred had the admiration of the queen and the ear of the prime minister, but few really knew how far his influence extended. He had spent the better part of his adult life spying for the Crown and championing the use of both foreign and domestic intelligence in affairs of state. Though the practice had flourished during the Napoleonic wars, since then England had fallen behind the comparatively advanced operations of adversaries like Russia and Germany. Those in power were slowly coming to see the value of such information, but missions were still underfunded and mostly undertaken by amateurs––wealthy, well-connected gentlemen who wanted a little adventure. Alec was one of the few men who had been specifically recruited for such work and highly trained. At some point Sir Alfred had let his niece further into the fold, but Alec had no idea just how much she knew.

Lottie didn’t meet his eyes. “He told me enough. And it was rather easy to piece the rest together after you left.”

“But you didn’t know I had gone to Italy,” he prodded.

She was quiet for a long moment. “I never asked. For all I knew, you were in London this whole time.”

Alec inhaled deeply, trying to keep his irritation in check. How could she think such a thing? “I haven’t set foot in England since I left,” he said through clenched teeth, but Lottie merely shrugged and took a sip of tea, as if it made no difference. That stung more than it should have. He hadn’t come here to reopen old wounds. But then they shouldn’t even be having this conversation. She was supposed to marry fabulously, take her rightful place at the top of society, and have a veritable litter of children by now. Yet here she was, trying to undermine her own future.

Did she truly not want those things? Or had she been led astray and then abandoned by another man? Neither possibility was appealing; the latter for the obvious reasons, as well as other, less obvious ones Alec would rather not explore. But at the thought of the first possibility, a dull pain began to bloom in his chest until he smothered it. Like all the others.

For if she did not want that glittering London life, what had all this sacrifice been for?

Lottie broke the tense silence. “I will go with you, but only on two conditions.”

Alec set down his teacup, grateful to be distracted from such unnerving thoughts. “Anything.”