By the time Vale's men had finally retired for the night, Wren felt as though she'd run three miles uphill in someone else's shoes. She collapsed into the nearest chair in the small private sitting room off Kane's study, silk skirts pooling around her, and pressed both hands over her face.
"I invented an aunt," she said, muffled, into her palms. "I invented an entire woman named Cordelia who apparently raised me on an estate that does not exist, in a territory I couldn't find on a map, and he knew. He knew the whole time and he just let me keep talking."
"You were extraordinary," Kane said, and there was something in his voice — warm, genuinely startled — that made her lower her hands to look at him.
He'd shed his formal coat, sleeves rolled to his forearms, sitting across from her with
