The question, jokingly plied as it had been, had jarred her. Why shouldn’t she marry someone like the marquis? He was diverting and charming, quite intelligent when he chose to be, and underneath the layers of fashionable dandy, he hid quite a sensitive soul.

Because he’s in love with someone else.

Because he’s not a sultry-as-sin duke who wants to put you in restraints…as you desperately want him to.

Her knees had gone weak, causing her to stumble.

“Ah,” Tremblay had said, watching her like a hawk. “You’re waiting for a certain English peer to make his move, is that it? Mon Dieu, but that man is a bastion of ice. Your dour duke wouldn’t know passion if it hit him with the stick lodged up his arse.”

Bronwyn had giggled and then blushed, the reply on the tip of her tongue that beneath his impassive exterior, the frosty duke ran unspeakably hot. His passion would put this Frenchman to shame in a heartbeat. “No, it’s not what you think.” She had blushed, irritated that she was so transparent when it came to the vexing man. “It’s not like that.”

“You don’t want him?” Tremblay had asked.

Now, that had been a loaded question in itself. Did Bronwyn want him? Yes, it was indecent how much she craved him at any given hour of the day or night. At night, in dreams, her body was his in every carnal way. But beyond her very visceral fantasies, Thornbury was a hardened ex-spy whose progressive views about women would never extend to her, by virtue of who she was. A peer who would never allow her to be who she needed to be.

Not a duke’s daughter.

Not a duke’s sister.

But a woman operating under her own willpower and her own governance. A kestrel—a bird of prey—was meant to fly, and Thornbury wanted to clip its wings and put it in a cage. Bronwyn wasn’t stupid. She’d always known that her identity as the Kestrel could not exist forever, but she wanted to end it as she’d begun…on her own terms.

What if she truly was in danger as Thornbury claimed?

The memory of those men chasing her through Philadelphia made her grow cold, but she was over three thousand miles away now. That threat was now behind her, and until she heard back from Wentworth, she had to stay one step ahead of the duke.

She had sent a carefully worded message to Wentworth via her old friend Sesily in London, letting her know that she had completed the mission and was staying with her aunt in Paris. The message was scrambled and could only be decoded with a special cipher. Bronwyn hadn’t dared to expand on the fact that her identity had been compromised by the infamous team from the Home Office, but she hoped that Sesily would reply soon.