Page 90 of Almost a Bride
“I’vebeen Spencer more often during the last two years than he has, apparently. It didn’t even occur to me to correct a beautiful woman for such a simple mistake, not when you were so…concerned for me. I just wanted a little brotherly kiss.”
At his wicked grin, she felt a blush of mortification suffuse her cheeks. She leaned back in Spencer’s embrace and looked up at him. “I thought he was you—”
Spencer sighed and framed her face with his hands. “Do not apologize. Alex has always enjoyed pretending to be other than he is.”
“And you have not?” Alex scoffed. “We were both always so good at pretending—’tis what landed us so secret a mission.”
“Us?” Spencer echoed.
Alex spread his arms wide. “But it was so treacherous and difficult to pretend to be you—especially after that scandal of your interrupted wedding.”
Roselyn stiffened and Spencer shot his brother a frown.
Alex’s eyebrows rose. “Ah, so you are that Roselyn.”
“And there have been so very many Roselyns?” she teased Spencer.
“Of course not,” he said gruffly.
Alex smiled. “Maybe not for you then, but now…”
Roselyn could not keep her gaze from straying to Spencer’s brother. Though their faces were identical, Alex wore his hair shorter, swept back off his face to reveal a pearl earbob dangling from one ear.
“So you were the ‘Spencer’ behind every scandal that reached my ears,” she said slowly.
“Only the recent ones,” Alex answered with a grin. “Before that, Spence managed all his own scandalizing.”
“Roselyn,” Spencer murmured against her hair, “I’m sorry I did not warn you about my brother. But tell me now how you escaped? I searched for you for hours, thinking—God, I cannot bear to repeat what I was thinking.”
He shuddered against her and she held him tighter.
“I came here to recruit men and organize a wider search,” he continued. “Then I began to hear that someone had been searching for me, and I left messages for you—” He glared at his brother. “Andyouwere off at another party, and were no help to me at all!”
Alex straightened. “And how was I to know you’d returned?”
“Spencer,” Roselyn interrupted. “I was lucky enough to escape the thief and find friends in Southwark.”
He heaved a sigh and held her even more tightly. “I’m so glad you’re well,” he whispered, and the hoarseness of his voice made a sweet ache tug on her heart.
“By the time we returned for you, you were gone.” She closed her eyes and let the feelings she’d denied flood her mind.
She loved Spencer.
There could be no other reason for this trust she now placed in him without proof, no other reason that she’d felt like giving up if she lost him. He’d had the courage to answer his country’s call, even when he’d been hurting. He had kept his humor and charm, even when he thought he might die.
Roselyn was back at the beginning, giving her heart to a man and hoping he could be trusted. But Spencer was not Philip Grant, and she was no longer the immature girl who reacted angrily when she didn’t get her way. Spencer was now a part of her, body and soul. She loved him.
“We’re both fine now,” he said softly, and she clung to him with gratitude to God for keeping him safe.
Alex pointedly cleared his throat. “My turn for answers. So you’re alive, Spence. I was beginning to wonder.”
As Spencer faced his brother, Roselyn stayed beneath his arm, at his side. She realized that this was the first time the brothers had seen each other in well over a year. But there were no hugs, no warm greetings. She sensed a wariness between them.
Spencer briefly told his brother everything that had happened to him as a British agent, as well as Roselyn’s encounter with Rodney Shaw.
Alex’s frown deepened and he rested his head back against the pillow. “So this Shaw is going to claim that you murdered all those British spies, and you’re going to claim that he did it.”
“ ’Tis not a claim,” Spencer said tightly. “I saw it—and he tried to do the same to me.”
