The Lady Machinist (Curiosity Chronicles Book 1) by Ava Morgan Page A

proximity to him. Her life and work had no place for such volatility, but with Rhys, those passions found their home.
    She scrambled to deflect his observations. “Don’t speak to me of secrets. Today’s events revealed things about you, too. ”
    He lifted his eyebrows. The rest of his chiseled features remained immobile. “Was that why my bookcase was open?”
    Lydia stood at the precipice of the hole she just dug for herself. She couldn’t walk away from the edge now. “I found your COIC mission papers,” she confessed.
    “You’ve been spying.” He availed himself of his ardor before her eyes, though some of it lingered in the tenseness of which he held his body and in his measured stare.
    “They fell out of the bookcase when the ship took cannon fire. I wasn’t spying, but according to those documents, you were. In the Mediterranean and in East Asia, to be specific.”
    “By Order of Her Royal Majesty, I’m an importer of international goods as well as secrets.”
    It stunned Lydia that he didn’t make any denials. She remained at the wall. “You lied to me. You did come to Aspasia to spy.”
    “My mission was to procure those automatons. Nothing else.” He reached the door of the room in two long strides. The breadth of his shoulders left little space between him and the doorframe. “I operate in affairs of state. You saw diplomacy during our negotiations, but my COIC duties can involve far more. Sometimes reconnaissance, and, as today’s skirmish illustrated, the use of force.”
    She took a deep breath of tension-riddled air. “Would you have resorted to force if King Sabba refused to sell the automatons?”
    “I would have made a different offer.”
    “I’m hardly comforted by that admission.”
    Firm resolve settled on his face, closing off the remaining traces of warmth that he’d shown her just minutes before. “You’ll have to accept that there are things about me you can never know.”
    She raised her chin in defiance. “Even if I had chosen to remain in your arms?”
    No qualifying answer came from Rhys. “As you said, we breached protocol. It won’t happen again.”
    “Never,” she affirmed. It hurt to hear his declaration, but despite her mixed emotions, she had no choice but to agree. It was the right thing to do, even if it felt wrong. She bit down on her lower lip, which was already starting to bruise. “And I don’t say that just because of duty. I can’t embrace a man who abides in secrets.”
    “You just did,” he pointed out the obvious with sharp alacrity.
    “Don’t jest. You know what I mean. Despite my lapse in letting you hold me and put your lips on mine, I could never allow it to go farther. I may be widowed, but I haven’t divorced my principles.”
    “Principles, I understand. But is that what you consider what we shared? A lapse?” His anger brimmed as he latched on to the one word that demoted the emotions they just experienced. Lydia realized then that she used the wrong term, but it was too late. Rhys smoldered.
    “In that case, I am even more motivated to find our coordinates speedily. I won’t have you suffer these lapses for much longer.” He closed the door with a quiet but affirmative click.
    Lydia locked it after him and stood listening to his receding footsteps in the rain. His words had a right to sting her. She rejected him. Disappointment crept into every fiber of her body. She just saved herself from committing a big mistake. So why did she feel as though something were lost?
     
    #
     
    Rhys forgot his lamp. He left it on the chart table of the navigation room, but decided not to go back for it. Lydia made it very clear that she had no desire for him to come near her again tonight, and never in the fashion that took place.
    Cold rain knifed through his shirt as he navigated past the tarp covers lining the quarterdeck. The downpour was ill effective at cooling his anger or the racing fire in his blood that one taste of Lydia’s lips