An Officer but No Gentleman by Bronwyn Scott Page A

for his skill with weapons on horseback. He’d worked hard for that reputation, learning early on that without a title, perfection was his only route to respect.
    Channing just smiled. “Exactly. As I said, you’re perfect. Don’t you even want to know where she’s going?”
    “It won’t make a difference.” There was only one place Grahame wanted to go, only one place that had any need for his unique skills, but it was a continent away and it would mean leaving Channing, something he was reluctant to do. It would leave Channing shorthanded at the agency. Channing had always been loyal to him. Now he had a chance to return the favor by staying.
    “I think it will,” Channing said quietly. Grahame tried not to shift in his seat. Channing’s incessant smiling was making him nervous. He liked Channing Deveril immensely but Channing had an unnerving talent to literally read people like books, which was a good thing, Grahame reasoned, because Channing didn’t read. It wasn’t that he couldn’t read, the man was certainly literate, he simply didn’t. But that talent was deuced awkward when it was turned on him. It meant Channing knew something he did not and that made Grahame uneasy, indeed.
    “All right then, tell me.” The room had suddenly become fraught with an invisible air of anticipation. Grahame far preferred the foe he could see.
    Channing pulled out another file from his desk. He pushed it toward him and spoke one word into the tense silence. “Vienna.”
    Of all the words Channing could have spoken, this was the one he couldn’t resist. Vienna, home of the Spanish riding school, the very place that had written two weeks ago and asked him to come for an interview on the eighteenth of the month. They thought perhaps they could use an instructor of his caliber on horseback and with his distinct specialty in sabrage, a gentleman’s art to be sure.
    Vienna represented everything he’d been chasing since he’d known what it was he hungered for—the chance to belong, the type of belonging that came with a sense of permanence and respect, not because of birth but because of skill.
    Grahame blew out a breath and gave in to the urge to shift in his seat. He crossed and recrossed his legs. He wasn’t like the others here: not like Channing, an earl’s second son, or Jocelyn Eisley, heir to an earldom, or even the recently married and retired Nicholas D’Arcy who was at least the son of gentry. He, Grahame Westmore, was nothing. He’d earned his commission, not bought it. He’d fought for his leg up in the world every step of the way. To have been an English officer and to now be invited to the Spanish riding school in Vienna, was the best he could hope for, a dream, really, for a boy of his humbling beginnings.
    “You know very well what that means to me,” Grahame said slowly. “I would escort the devil himself in order to get to Vienna.”
    Channing nodded. “Then I’ll take that as a yes. But you’re cutting it pretty fine. They’ll expect you to arrive on time if you’re serious.”
    Grahame gave a tight grimace. He knew what it meant to escort the devil. There’d be hell to pay.

Chapter Two
    What the devil was going on down there? The sound of barked orders and the hurried march of booted feet on hardwood floors brought Elowyn Bagshaw to the balustrade overlooking the townhouse foyer. Below her, footmen carried boxes and trunks out the door, maids scurried to and fro with last-minute packing supplies. Everyone was organized and purposeful in their tasks, the chaos of moving minimized with efficiency and it was all wrong , every last bit of it, starting with the fact that they weren’t moving.
    At least not today. She should know. She’d been moving her father’s household since she was fifteen. Boxes and trunks weren’t scheduled to be loaded until Thursday and by all accounts, today was Tuesday. She knew exactly where to place the blame—Captain Grahame Westmore, a man she’d met