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convincing?”
    “Convincing?” He turned slowly to regard her, trying to conceal the emotions washing through him. Lord, she looked so unsure of herself. As if her gray dresses had been armor, and that armor had been stripped away.
    Soft . That was the word that came to him. Underneath that prickly, fierce exterior, she was soft . He could see it now, with her hair loose and waving over her shoulders. With all that vulnerable white skin exposed.
    With her eyes gleaming, almost pleading with him.
    Oh, she was not Sal. Sal was . . . Sal was hard.
    No, Sal was hardened . That was the word. He saw it now, crystal clear, in the contrast: Sal had carried her armor within her very skin, everywhere, always. There’d been a constant barrier about her, a forbidding challenge in the set of her jaw, a look in her eye that said her claws were bared. Her fierceness had gone down to her very core. Whereas this young girl . . .
    The differences between Miss Covington and Sal fairly screamed at him.
    Yet Jenny, her lady’s maid, had been fooled. Jenny, who knew Sal so intimately, said it was like having Sal here again. If Jenny could be fooled, then others could be fooled as well.
    His instincts as an agent kicked in.
    He’d been at the Game far too long to deceive himself. Back in Helm’s office, he’d seen something in Miss Covington, something fierce and steely. A different fierceness from Sal’s, but formidable nonetheless. Surely that had not all depended on her attire.
    The task might be even harder than he’d thought. They might yet be forced to abandon it. He hoped they’d abandon it. But duty was too strong in him to ignore her potential.
    A good agent never undermined his partner. Never. If this mission went forward, loss of confidence in her ability to impersonate her twin could be fatal, to one or both of them, to agents all across the field, and their chances were slim enough as it was.
    If what he truly wanted was to end this now, to send this soft girl somewhere safe and make his own endless, waking nightmares go away . . . well, he forced those feelings down. Crushed them, pummeled them, beat them into pulp.
    And if it meant the last little vestige of his heart was to be crushed, pummeled, pulped along with them— well , the most cynical voice within him said, that might be a nice side benefit . Be rid of the damn thing, once and for all .
    He smiled, the sort of lazy, aristocratic smile Miss Covington no doubt expected of him.
    “The resemblance astonishes, my dear,” he assured her. “Aside from the length of your hair, you look like your sister. To the most precise degree.”
    Miss Covington let out a sigh, seemingly gratified, and blushed again. She turned and regarded herself in the cheval glass. “Did she look just like this? Truly?”
    The intense way she studied herself betrayed no trace of vanity, and it struck him that Miss Covington hadn’t seen her twin sister since late childhood.
    It was her sister’s image she was seeking in her glass.
    A chill went down his back. He was very much afraid of what he would see next, what he did indeed see next. Damn it all —tears springing to her eyes.
    He was not in the habit of comforting women. In truth, he spent little time with the sort of women who needed to be comforted. He greatly disliked the sensation it was creating in the center of his chest.
    Before he considered what he was doing, he’d reached out his hand and touched his fingertips to Miss Covington’s shoulder. She tensed a bit, but she let his fingers rest there a few moments as she dashed her tears away.
    Without a word, he dropped his hand back to his side. Even such a little touch was something Sal would never have accepted from him. Sal would have swatted his hand away. Stamped a heel into his instep. Snapped an elbow into his ribs. All while calling him vile names in a remarkable assortment of languages, for daring to imply there was anything vulnerable about her.
    The two of them had