The Trouble With Misbehaving. Victoria Hanlen

she’d also been shipped off to rusticate in another country. Such drastic measures often came with an untimely pregnancy. While his brother advised him against getting mixed up with C.C., he’d not even hinted she’d been with child. Could this have been another delicate situation his family concealed?

      When they reached the second floor, the words slipped out. “Did he get you with child?”

      C.C. gasped and quickly peered around the empty corridor. “Of course not!” she hissed. “That is the most brazen question anyone has ever asked!”

      “Maybe so, but somehow you know of my mistress, my son…and their deaths. Shouldn’t I be equally well informed about you?”

      “So you retaliate with insult, Captain?”

      “More along the lines of establishing a baseline of knowledge about one another.” C.C. probably didn’t know how lucky she’d been. Her lover’s lack of fecundity prevented even more despair. Clearly the scandal still hurt and humiliated. But admitting she regretted deeds that devastated her life and that of others had moved him. It took real courage to own up to one’s mistakes. He knew well that familiar territory.

      No wonder she kept most men at a distance. He’d be willing to bet the man in her love triangle had pursued her until she’d finally weakened. Beau had known men who’d made sport of making certain unattainable women fall in love with them.

      They used them badly and then boasted of their conquest while tossing them aside. For some reason, knowing of her internal scars gave her external perfection more dimension. Life’s knocks had forged a hard center, and he was curious to know how many more layers lay between.

      Tenderness wound through his heart. Admiration for C.C. had taken root in the oddest of places. Places he’d never considered romantic or even desirable between a man and woman. Yet at this moment, he felt a kinship. Like him, she’d endured disastrous, life-changing blunders and mustered the strength to admit her remorse.

      Upon reaching her door, Beau leaned in for a kiss.

      C.C. straightened abruptly. “Good night, Captain.” The curt note in her voice and unyielding body language reined in his amorous advance.

      Somewhat crestfallen, he made a slight bow. “Good night, madam.”

      While unlocking his door, an unmistakable chill strafed Beau’s shoulders. Peering behind him, a rather nondescript fellow climbed the stairs. It was the man from the supper room who’d been scribbling in a journal over dinner. On reaching the top step, the bloke abruptly turned the opposite direction down the hall.

      Though the man had given him no real reason, years of keeping track of his surroundings stamped his visage into Beau’s memory. There was something very Pinkerton about the fellow. The Union hired such men to spy on the Confederacy. Known Yankee sympathizers had set up shop in Liverpool with a goal to stop shipments flowing into the south.

      The idea of someone trailing him to this outside of nowhere seemed ludicrous. But prison had taught him spies were very real and quite like dung on a shoe. Even though you thought you’d scraped them off, their stench continued to follow you around.