The Danger of Desire Read Online Free

the maidservant she was dressed up to be, planted within the traitor’s house to steal all of his secrets, not just the ones he happened to carry out of the Admiralty in his coat pockets.
    All he had to do was catch her.
    She was already moving quickly down the sidewalk, away from the constable. Hugh immediately crossed between traffic at Charing Cross and followed her onto the Strand, weaving his way around shoppers, beggars, and tradesmen. He was forced to pick up his pace to keep her in his sights. It was a hell of a strain on his already fatigued leg, but he was a bloody officer of the navy—the senior service—he’d be damned if he couldn’t keep up with some light-fingered slip of a girl.
    She kept on, purposeful and steady, without a hint of urgency, until she glanced back at him. He instinctively tried to hide himself, shying into the doorway of a building before he was seen, but he saw the knowledge he was on to her darken her eye before she ducked immediately between buildings and disappeared into the Kings Mews.
    Hugh was forced to an awkward jog to the entryway of the mews. But she was easy to spot here, and her face, pale with terror as she turned round to watch for him, was like a beacon amid the darker sea of hats and horses. He jostled his uneven way after her, dodging hoofs and weaving his way across the open yard to where she again disappeared into the back of a building.
    It was a linen drapers warehouse. Bolts of cloth, arranged on racks and piled high on countertops, obscured his view and hid her from him. Hugh stopped, wary lest he should pass her by, or she should try to double back into the pell-mell of the mews. So he did what he had learned to do at sea, and searched for stillness. By concentrating on the stillness, his eye was drawn to the contrast of the least flicker of movement. And there she went, a silent wisp of worn, dark fabric, stealing swiftly down an aisle toward the front of the building. He damned his aching leg and clawed upwind after her.
    He was almost at full sail now, pushing the limit of his ability, chasing after her, but she was quick as a running tide, flowing in and out of doors and around corners as surely as water racing downstream. Out onto St. Martin’s Lane and across, swinging around the far side of the church building, rushing toward the warren of streets and alleys that ran between Long Acre and Covent Garden. The strident ache in his leg intensified into a sharp, digging pain as he abandoned all caution to pelt across the churchyard and turn round the back of St. Martin’s Church just in time to see the foam of her skirts whip behind the wall of Moors Court. He accelerated and gained some ground, closing enough distance to watch her head down for New Round Court.
    She, too, had abandoned all pretense and was running flat out. She must have had the bloody map of London in her head for she flitted through every narrow, obscure alley and passageway and knew every unlocked gate and twisted path, leading him on a goose chase that had him panting for breath to keep up.
    But still he pushed on. She was too good a find, too perfect a match for his needs, to give up now—his bird-almost-in-hand, if he could stay with her. He was a grown man, a hardened veteran of the French Wars, a captain of His Majesty’s Navy, in the prime of his life, and even with a stiff, shrapnel-filled leg, surely he could outrun a malnourished slip of a rapscallion girl.
    Damn it all to hell. He clenched his jaw over the pain throbbing from his leg and flung himself up another blind alley. And thanked his lucky stars she had finally made a mistake.
    The door she had counted on at the back of the narrow alley was locked. She was trapped. Hugh slowed to a walk and began to close the remaining distance between them. She was breathing hard from the exertion, and her exhalation rose and frosted the air above her head like a net. The brick of the next building ran four stories straight up on one