The Impostor by Lily Lang Page A

“Have we met before, Miss Ryder?”
    She went very still. “No, my lord,” she said.
    The door shut behind her. She was gone.

Chapter Six
    Tessa was still shaking as the butler showed her upstairs to a darkened bedchamber, lit a few Argand lamps, and then shut the door quietly behind her, leaving her alone in the flickering light. When he had gone, his footsteps receding down the hallway, she sank down onto the bed, wrapping her arms tightly around herself.
    She had succeeded. After days of anxious searching through a strange and dangerous city, she had found Sebastian, warned him of the danger encroaching and he had believed her. He had not known her, but he had believed her, and she could only pray it was enough, that what she had told him would keep him safe.
    But now she had a new problem. Sebastian had no intention of leaving London, and as long as he was determined to discover the truth of the missing and dead members of Omega Group, she must remain with him. To protect him. To protect her father.
    She closed her eyes for a brief moment and dropped her head into her hands, wondering what she would do. By now, her father would have discovered she was gone. No doubt he would guess, also, why and where. But what choice had she had, when she learned Sebastian was in danger? She would sooner have cut off her hand than see him come to harm.
    To distract herself from the terror of her own thoughts, she looked around at her surroundings. The room Sebastian had given her was the loveliest room she had ever seen, lovelier even than Jane Cameron’s bedchamber. It was beautifully, airily furnished in shades of blue and gold, with graceful furniture carved out of dark wood and polished to a high sheen. The carpet underfoot was thick and soft; the curtains made of some heavy, luxurious material. The windows looked out into a large, quiet park below.
    Tonight, for the first time, she had lived in the Earl Grenville’s world—the staggering luxury, the extravagant balls, the beautiful women. She had never seen this aspect of Sebastian’s life before.
    Of course, she had known from the first he was one of the richest and most powerful men in England, but wealth and titles meant little in the midst of war. The life they had shared on the Continent had been one of hardship. They had been equals in their suffering and deprivation.
    Years ago, when they had been in Spain and Portugal, she had never permitted herself to imagine his life after he returned to England. With death hovering so close to them, she had always lived in the present. Their dances had been danced around campfires beneath the star-flung skies. Their reality had been one of constant danger and bloodshed, of snatched rest and stolen moments, of long, bruising marches beneath the brutal sun.
    But tonight, she had fully appreciated for the first time just how false that reality had been. This, she thought, hugging her arms to herself, was where he truly belonged, amidst the finest houses, the finest carriages, the finest things money could buy. She thought of the small cottage in Wycombe with its leaking roof and rough-hewn floor; she thought of the dirty London inn she had been occupying, the only one she could afford.
    She had done the right thing, all those years ago, she thought. She was no fit wife for Sebastian Montague.
    She undressed in the flickering lamplight, peeling away the borrowed dress of some coarse material the housekeeper had sent up, until she stood naked in the center of the room. As she did not expect whoever Sebastian had sent to fetch her valise would return anytime soon, she put on a dressing gown she found in the wardrobe.
    For the first time in weeks, she realized how exhausted she truly was. She had been apprehensive for so long, suffered under such an agony of anxiety, feared so constantly that she was too late, she had been unable to sleep well. But Sebastian was safe and alive and well, and she had delivered her warning. She could