In The Assassin's Arms (Daggers 0f Desire Book 1)

by Katherine Hastings

  “Very impressive, John Wesley Douglas. They trained you well.” She grinned like a happy cat who had just caught a mouse. Confounding woman! Just when he thought he understood her actions, she turned on a dime and did the last thing he’d ever expect.

  “Tell me who you are,” he demanded, and pressed the dagger deeper into her skin, nearly causing it to tear. “How did you know I was coming to this room? Did the barkeep warn you?”

  “You used to be so much better at hiding, John. Either you lost your touch, or I got better at seeking. I could see you up against the wall across the street as clear as day.”

  John looked at her perplexed. What in the hell was she talking about? “How do you know me? And why do you keep calling me by name? Tell me who you are, woman, or I will take your life right here!”

  “You didn’t used to be this serious,” she said with a faux pout.

  “Are you with the Liberta? Tell me!”

  “And if I am? Then what? You Lions will run me through just like you did my father?”

  John stared down into her icy blue eyes. The playfulness disappeared and a cold gaze, like the arctic waves, washed over them.

  “Your father? What are you talking about, woman? Who are you?”

  “Who I am is none of your concern. All you need to know is that I did not kill your friend, and there is a rat deep in the midst of your organization. Perhaps you should stop trying to pin the blame on me and scuttle home to ask your father.”

  John looked across the soft curves of her face. She was not lying. This he could tell. If she hadn’t killed Henry, then who had? What did she mean by her cryptic words about his father? What did he have to do with Henry’s murder? His mind reeled as he tried to make sense of her riddles. Still confused, he took his focus off the dagger he had pressed to her throat for only a moment.

  A moment he never should have allowed to pass between them.

  She didn’t hesitate. With one quick motion, she pulled free and swept the dagger from her neck, knocking John off with a crack to the side of head. She flipped backward, landing on her feet and stared at a bewildered John.

  “Catch me if you can,” she said with a quick wink.

  He lay motionless on his back as she flipped her cloak up over her long red waves, and disappeared down the hallway, hopping over the bannister of the stairs.

  “Charlotte?” he mumbled to himself, and the face of the red-haired girl he’d once adored flashed in his mind. She’d uttered “catch me if you can” a hundred times the summer they had spent together in their youth. The long red hair, the death of her father. Those icy blue eyes. It had to be.

  It couldn’t be.

  It’s her, you dolt.

  “Charlotte.” He said it again, letting the name roll off his tongue like a verbal caress, certain this time of the mysterious woman’s identity. But how could it be Charlotte, and what deep hatred did she harbor for his family that would cause such vengeance?

  John rubbed his head. It throbbed from the initial blow she had dealt him when he entered the room. He had spent the past seventeen years wondering what had happened to her. The last time he’d seen her, she was being carried away from the body of her fallen father. She had been whisked off the property and his inquiries into her whereabouts over the years to his father had been met with nothing but silence and dead ends. Everyone had insisted her whereabouts remained unknown.

  Yet here she was. He had to admit she had grown into an exquisite and apparently formidable woman... and a Liberta at that. John couldn’t doubt her skills at combat were those of the equally impressively trained faction his family had battled for centuries. Charlotte. A Liberta. His mind reeled. And what had she meant about his father? The elder Douglas had always been an honorable man and he shook off the notion that his father had anything to do with the death of Henry... or her father at that. It couldn’t be true. He needed answers and the woman who held them had vanished again.

  John spent the next several days combing the streets of London for any sign of her. Despite the knowledge his search was in vain, he forged on. If a member of the Liberta wanted to disappear, just like him, they could vanish. He knew he had only found Charlotte because she had wanted to be found. But why, he couldn’t help but wonder?

  Like a scorned dog, he slinked into a dark tavern on the shady side of London. He had vowed he wouldn’t return home without her, but he wondered now if that meant he would be forever at bay from the home he loved. He wished he had run her through when he had her pinned to the floor but something in him had chirped in his ear that she’d spoken the truth. She hadn’t killed Henry. But if she hadn’t, who had?

  Sitting in a dim corner, he lay his head down on the table, letting the gin wash over him in relaxing waves. Since he couldn’t return home without being dishonored, perhaps his destiny was to become a washed-up drunk on the streets of London. John sighed into his arms. When he reached the peak of self-pity, he decided it was best if he went and sulked in seclusion. He would take that bottle of gin straight back to his room. He lifted his head and sat back with a start. Charlotte’s red lips were the only thing visible from beneath her crimson cloak as she sat across from him.

  “Charlotte!” he exclaimed, and then cursed himself for not better concealing his excitement and surprise. He cleared his throat. “That is you, is it not?”

  “Took you long enough.” Her full red lips seemed to drawl out every word before turning up into a taunting sneer. “I’ve gotten better at hide-and-seek, haven’t I?” She pushed her hood back, those familiar blue eyes sparkling back at him.

  He couldn’t decide whether to push his gin aside and hug her, or draw out his sword and skewer her.

  “Charlotte. How? But I don’t understand. I haven’t seen you since...”

  “Since your father killed my father after inviting us into his home under the guise of a truce? Yes. It has been awhile.” The playful demeanor once again turned to cool indifference, but John could sense the rage bubbling right beneath the icy surface.

  “Charlotte, I don’t know what you are talking about. Was your father Liberta as well? How was it that my father didn’t know and invited him into our home?” John’s mind was reeling, searching for plausible answers.

  “Your father was well aware of who my father was when he invited us into your home. He invited us there under the guise of working out a treaty. My father was the Grand Master of the Liberta, and against advice from his council, he took your father up on his offer. It ended with his blood spilled on your luxurious Lion carpet. Did your father not tell you of his ruse when you came of age and found out our destiny, just as I did?”

  John sat silently, his mouth falling open. He remembered the day with vivid clarity. It was his first time seeing a dead body... now the first of many. The day was seared into his mind... Charlotte’s shocked and tear-soaked face as she was whisked away, out of his home and out of his life forever.

  Until now.

  “Charlotte, my father is an honorable man. If he’d offered hospitality to you and your father under a truce, he would have never breached your father’s trust and slain him. He is not that kind of man. You must believe me.”

  Her calculating gaze swept over him. He couldn’t remember a time since he had entered his training and become a skilled assassin, when he had met a pair of eyes that made him shudder like hers did.

  “Well, John, if not your father, then who? Who broke my father’s trust and slew him like a dog in the streets?”

  “I don’t know, Charlotte. I truly don’t. But regardless of what happened, you had no right to break into my home and take out your revenge on Henry!” He suddenly remembered why he’d traveled to London. A bitter rage overwhelmed him as he glared at the harlot who had slain his kin. He’d do well to remember the danger lurking just beneath her stunning exterior.

  “As I told you before, I did not kill your friend. If you must know, I breached your defenses to steal your key, break into your father’s office,
and find proof of his murder of my father. While I searched his drawers, I heard footsteps coming. I slipped out the window and hung from the lower ledge when I heard a tussle begin. I heard the voice of the man who killed Henry and I will remember it until the day I die. He said: ‘You will not dishonor us again, Henry, with your treacherous ways.’ I didn’t stick around to see who had done the killing. The extensive staff that roams your halls would find the body quickly, and I needed to put as much distance between myself and your estate as possible before anyone could point the finger at me as the most likely suspect. Hence, why we are sitting here now.”

  John searched her face for signs of malice or mistrust but found none. He had to keep in mind, however, that she was Liberta. She was as skilled in deceit and lies as she was with a sword.

  “I don’t believe you, Charlotte. It seems a very convenient story to fast-talk your way out of certain death for Henry’s murder.”

  She tossed her head back. A low, throaty laugh escaped her luscious lips. John cursed himself again for finding attraction to her in the midst of a completely untenable situation.

  “Dearest John, if I had killed Henry and they had sent you after me to avenge him, don’t you think I would have just dropped from the rafters and delivered a fatal blow instead of just a bonk on the head? I have watched you search for me over the past two weeks. I could have killed you a dozen times over if it had been my desire. Call me sentimental, but I couldn’t bring myself to kill my darling John Wesley Douglas.” She paused and leaned forward. “Unless you prove to become an actual thorn in my side, instead of the pesky, buzzing of a mosquito I would consider you now. I spared your life hoping perhaps you would be the one Lion to see things as they are, and not how you have been brainwashed to think they are.”

  John studied her face but only found more questions rather than answers. She was right. She could have dropped down, planting her dagger deep in his throat and ended his search for her right there. But she hadn’t. She had also pinned him first, bruised as his ego may be to admit it, and again she had spared his life. Perhaps her words were peppered with truth. Charlotte spoke in riddles, and every word that dripped from her gorgeous lips led to more confusion.

  “Okay, Charlotte.”

  “Charlie.”

  “What?”

  “You can call me Charlie. No one has called me Charlotte since I was fifteen.”

  “I find your story hard to believe... Charlie.” He drawled over the newfound name of his oldest friend.

  “Believe what you will, but Henry’s killer is still at-large, and you are not sitting across from her, even if you don’t readily believe it. Trust me. If I had killed Henry, I would happily admit it before running my dagger through your heart.”

  The sting of her callous words rocked him back on his heels. How was this imposter his Charlotte, the sweet girl he had spent countless hours chasing through the fields and gardens? How had she become so calculating and hardened?

  “You could try, Charlotte... I mean Charlie. But you would fail.” His face flushed with anger when she laughed again from the depths of her gut. She really believed herself superior to him. “You may remember me as an awkward, fumbling boy but I have become the top assassin of the Lions. Do not continue to press on my generosity in letting you insult me.”

  “Oh, John. I don’t doubt you are quite a sight to see in battle, but I am far more lethal than you will ever be. You only sit here because of my compassion, and the hope that our bond earlier in life will hold fast, and you will help me find my father’s killer.”

  “By your father’s killer you mean my father? Why in bloody hell would you think I would help you bring him down?” He nearly pushed the table over as his fury boiled hotter.

  “Well, if he is as honorable as you say, then why don’t you put your money where your mouth is? Help me locate the assassin, and either clear his good name or watch me slit his deceitful throat.”

  Sitting motionless, he contemplated her offer. Her unfounded allegations vexed him. His father was a good man. He was certain of it. If he had invited her father, the Grand Master Liberta, into his home, he would never have stooped so low as to breech even the most tenuous of truces and kill him in such a cowardly fashion. He spoke about a truce with the Liberta twenty years ago, and the words rang through his ears. It must have been her father that had started the talk of a truce all those years ago. He had never heard mention of him, but the pieces of the puzzle were starting to snap together.

  “He recently spoke to our Order, much to their disapproval, of making a truce with the Liberta. He would not slay your father or Henry. I would stake my life on it.”

  “And his? Would you stake his life on it?”

  John watched the contempt twist in her face. The mere accusation made his blood boil again.

  “Yes. I would stake his life on it. I know him. He would never have committed crimes under trust or murdered his best friend. I will take you back to my home and we will clear not only his name, but yours. Then we will find the man who has breached the trust of my organization. Henry’s killer will be brought to justice... as will your father’s. Do we have a deal?”

  Charlie tapped her fingers on the table and tipped her head, looking him over once more.

  “You have a deal, John. I will travel with you back to your estate but you must conduct your investigation without my presence becoming known. They would hang me on sight if you were to divulge my location. Clear his name or condemn him to death. My dagger will slit the throat of the man who took my father’s life, whoever it may be.”

  “You have yourself a deal, Charlie,” he said, grasping her deceptively delicate hand in his. He still questioned the sanity of his decision to work in harmony with her, but this was his Charlotte and if there was any truth to her words, he would need her contribution to bring down the traitor in their order.

  “Where and when shall we meet?” he asked.

  “I will find you,” she said, and with a whoosh, she disappeared out the door.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHARLIE STRODE THROUGH the London streets, away from the new inn she’d secured since John had discovered her. While she had known he was in town searching for her, she had to admit she was impressed he had actually found her. In the past, she’d not been found unless she wanted it. As she had told John earlier, she had gotten far more adept at hide-and-seek after her two grueling years in training for the Liberta. After finding out about her heritage and her place in the Liberta on her eighteenth birthday, she had spent countless hours piecing the clues back together around her father’s murder. All signs had pointed to Robert Douglas. She had vowed to avenge her father, and she would slay every member of the Lions if that’s what it took.

  Charlie stepped out of the bustling city to the stables on the outskirts of town, the site of her clandestine meeting with John. As she glanced around the area, she noticed her grey mare, Duchess, tacked and already being held by the groomsman she had paid earlier. She took the reins from him and slid her hand down the mare’s dappled neck, stroking her soft coat as she whispered soothing greetings.

  “You’re late.”

  Charlie kept herself from jumping at the sound of John’s deep voice. She turned to see him mounted on his dark bay horse. He cut such a dashing figure on the sleek gelding, it set her heart to racing. The schoolgirl crush had fled on the wings of adult desire, and the sensations her woman’s body felt now stirred even her hardened heart.

  His dark brown hair was pulled back into a short queue that rested on top of his broad shoulders. She stopped for a moment to admire his wide chest, accentuated by the cut of his tapered coat that also emphasized his toned stomach. He had grown into quite an impressive man, and she imagined women swooning at his feet. Chasing the thought away, she shook her head, wondering why she didn’t like that idea at all. John had inherited his family’s sharp, chiseled face and straight, proud nose. His green eyes looked even more stunning highlighted by his long, dark las
hes. She cleared her throat and tried to regain her composure instead of staring at him like a star-struck schoolgirl. He had proven to be more formidable than she had expected, and she wouldn’t make the mistake of letting her guard down around him.

  “Good morning to you too, John,” she said, swinging herself up onto her mare with ease. “Are you nervous about what our little adventure may reveal?”

  “Not at all. I’m quite confident you will find my father innocent, and with any luck, we can get to the bottom of your father’s murder... and Henry’s. That is, if we can work together without killing each other.”

  “We’ll see.” She smirked and spun her mare around to head south to Brighton.

  “That’s a beautiful animal you have there,” he said.

  “This is Duchess. I won her in a game of cards.” She proudly stroked the impressive animal.

  “Duchess you say?” he asked with a smirk.

  “Yes, why?” she asked, not unaware of his amusement.

  “This is Duke,” he said, patting his bay gelding on the neck. “Duke and Duchess. What are the odds? Perhaps they are fated for one another.” His eyebrows wiggled in jest.

  Charlie couldn’t contain her answering eye roll. “Fate? There’s no such thing. You coming?”

  She watched as John stifled a smile and kicked his gelding on, quickly passing her by when Duke broke into a canter. Charlie shook her head as she leaned down and scratched her mare on the neck.

  “I’ve always been faster than him, girl. Let’s show him what we’ve got!” Charlie clucked to her mare and felt Duchess leap into a powerful gallop. She raced down the road, closing the distance with every stride. John glanced over his shoulder, his brilliant green eyes sparkling with a challenge as he realized she was gaining on him. His gelding lurched forward but was no match for the speedy Duchess.