by Anne Mallory
“I would like to go over this matter with you myself, Mr. Merrick, if you don’t object.”
“I do.”
Damn tilting head. “Is it because I am a woman?”
He leaned forward past the light of the candles and into the shadows between them. “That you are sitting alone in a room with me? Or that you are trying to negotiate with me?”
“Do you seek to protect my virtue?” Her lips curled, without a trace of guile. It was alarming. “I knew you would prove to be an honorable man.”
Dark, dark words rose, and he swallowed them again. Forcing them back down. They would prove more dangerous to him than to her, if accepted. “I am a vile man.” He gave her a feral smile, letting the darkness rise. “The absolute worst you will ever meet.”
“That is absurd, Mr. Merrick.” The darkness froze, then began undulating, snapping at an unseen threat. “How do you know what kind of men I might meet in the future?”
Tilting head, tilting head, tilting head . . . it would feature prominently in his nightmares tonight.
“As to my virtue, I would like to keep my reputation intact, of course. But time proves itself the enemy. What good is an unsoiled reputation if my father is thrown into prison to rot and my mother and I are tossed to the streets? I daresay a good reputation will not survive such circumstances. Therefore, I would rather hammer out details, if you please. I am willing to offer much.”
The Paces were in danger of losing everything. He didn’t need to look at whatever it was she had brought with her. He knew the business of everyone of social, political, or financial importance in London. It was part of the job of running it all behind the scenes.
“Even had I a care for your circumstances”—most men would be cowering under the silken words, yet she perked up as if he were being complimentary—that he did care—“your company has become an investment security risk.”
“We’ve had an unfavorable year because the speculation fund has been tied to the company’s finances, it is true.” She nodded decisively. “But our company produces the finest carriages in England, and we are on the mend.”
Truth. From her, and in the black-and-white figures. Things would turn around for the family if they could keep her father from prison and hold to their current bandaged course for six months more. Get the collateral needed to stay afloat, then once more enjoy the long-term gains Pace had established a decade ago. Their products continued to be unparalleled. Pace carriages were legendary in their quality.
Andreas owned five of them.
It was the financial speculation that was the problem. Whatever had beset Pace’s financial sense in the previous year had doomed the company.
Though Pace had retreated from the public eye six months ago, and had begun making safer, wiser decisions once more through correspondence and courier, sources suspected the son was behind much of it.
It had been enough to keep the company afloat and the rumors from fully blooming. But the sharks were circling—with Viscount Garrett at the front, angling to become a controlling shareholder in the carriage company that helmed Pace’s businesses. Andreas could almost commend the viscount, and his conspirators, for the painstaking way they had engineered the entire scenario. Getting Pace right where they wanted him.
Desperation sometimes bred cleverness after all, it seemed. Andreas would never have linked intelligent creativity to the viscountcy. Ruthlessness and cruelty were the traits bred into the Garrett coat of arms.
“And we are determined to steer our own course,” she said. “It will be a profitable one for you, I assure you. The company will bounce back stronger than ever.”
The Paces had somehow kept Garrett just out of reach of the company for months. It had been the only reason that Andreas hadn’t crushed them yet—for he wouldn’t let Garrett get his hands on a roughened gem like that, then leave the gem unbroken. Wouldn’t let Garrett rebuild his finances like he’d be able to do should he land the Paces free and clear. Andreas had been steadily draining the man for far too many years to simply let him have such a ripe plum.
One all the riper once Andreas had seen . . . her.
The plum had stayed out of Garrett’s reach, though. And Andreas had wondered if it might stay . . . unsqueezed.
Then Christian Pace had poked his head out too far and been taken care of, throwing everything into turmoil.
“There is just the matter of payments,” she said, seemingly having no problem with his continued silences.
Yes, payments. The son’s . . . disappearance . . . had changed matters, and Andreas had covertly purchased and consolidated Pace’s debts so that he could pull the company and family under his control at any time. If Garrett got ahold of the company, Andreas would crush him in one final fell swoop.
He examined the woman across from him. Andreas should have given Garrett the opportunity, then done it already. That he had not yet taken that path irritated him on a fundamental level that he did not wish to examine.
He shook the dark thoughts away. The Pace fund numbers would be out in a month. Once they became public knowledge, events would explode. Andreas was already anticipating the direction of the eruption and had his pieces in place.
“I have a payment schedule plotted out here. You will make less in the short term, but I have”—she coughed and he narrowed his eyes—“it will benefit you greatly. My father has put quite a bit of thought into this and believes that the increased payments on the back end will repay you fully with significant interest. Our company will be fully solvent in a year.”
It would fit Andreas’s plans for the company to be dead in a year and to take Garrett to the grave with them. He could still do it. He had their debts.
“In a year?” he asked, watching her expression. He found himself unaccountably interested in the thoughts of someone else for once. “How?”
Brilliant, upward turn of lips, eyes open and expressive. “The fund needs to be diverted and divested, of course. Then the books need to be updated and our expenses better tracked. All of which Christian was doing, and now Father is completing. We need to show that the structure is sound and future growth is inevitable. Sound enough to remove us from the danger of Lord Garrett’s machinations.”
Lies mixed with honesty. Not interesting usually. From this woman, very interesting.
“Lord Garrett’s machinations?” He watched her closely. “Do you have proof of such?”
“I have a sound feeling on the matter.”
“Feeling? Feelings have no place in business.”
“No? Then when one man throws a punch at White’s because of business dealings, there is no emotion involved?” She looked at something in the corner behind him. “Or revenge? Does that not spring from emotion?”
He stiffened. He couldn’t help it.
“Does it?” He tapped a finger, then stopped the telltale sign, focusing the darkness. “And in addition to a piece of these potential future profits I will get—you?”
“Yes.” She gave him a soft smile.
“You propose to whore for me?”
He had chosen the words deliberately. Her smile slipped, and she looked at him for a long moment, and for the first time he had no idea what was going through her head.
“No. I did not mean it in that manner, though I see now how you might have interpreted such a thing from my words.” Bloody head tilt. “Is that what you require? I don’t know that I’d be very good at it, as I lack the necessary experience.”
“Then why would I want you?”
“You have no love for Lord Garrett. I am willing to share information with you. I kn—” She smiled suddenly. “That is, we would like immunity for his sons but will help you with the viscount himself.”
Coldness swept him. The beautiful curve of her lips was almost enough to make him miss the slip. But that hadn’t been what she had been about to say. It was the part of her answer he most needed to address. But saying anything further would only bring attention to it.
<
br /> It looked like he’d finally need to send in some cleaners to the Pace household.
“And I can offer other services,” she said. “I have a good head for when to make deals, for instance. For discovering the intentions of others.”
He couldn’t help himself, the overwhelming darkness breaking to shards for a moment. “You? You are good at discovering the intentions of others?” He laughed. Hard. He was so unused to the action, that it hurt.
“I am.” She watched him calmly. “For instance, I know that you are interested in the company for reasons other than ones you would presently state. You not only have helped to consolidate our debt, you have heavily invested in both the company and fund through single share buys, though I”—there was an odd pause he could barely pay attention to over the sudden sharpness in his gut—“I, I know my father has managed to keep you from obtaining a controlling interest in either, despite your words on our company’s and fund’s investment risk.”
The shards sealed back together—thicker than before. He watched her for twitches. She stayed still, watching him back.
She knew.
She knew something. Knowledge that could be gleaned from a note from her brother or from observing part of her father’s correspondence. Something entirely innocuous, connecting his name with other information. He had been very, very careful to cover his tracks.
“You only invest in ventures you feel wise, with future profits on a scalable range,” she said, fingers clasping more securely.
Her problem was that she seemed unable to stop speaking when she truly wanted something. She lacked that cue of social control that dictated silence in variable negotiating conditions. That lack, along with her extensive and knowledgeable verbiage, allowed him to fit pieces together into an interesting picture. He remembered everything he read. And she had paused far too suspiciously on multiple pronouns.
“You have been writing to me in lieu of your father.”
It was her turn to freeze, eyes wide. About goddamn time too.
She could have argued that she simply read all of her father’s correspondence before he sent it, but her reaction killed any refutation.
“You are James Pace. Others have speculated that your brother was leading things. But it was you all along.” Handwriting, timing, need. “At least for the last six months, you have been acting as your father.”
His reevaluation of her was quick, but not as sharp as it would be in other circumstances. Blunted edges and a trace of uncertainty would need to be ruthlessly squashed later, but he had enough to work with for the moment. No one but Roman had ever survived against him.
His laughter emerged darker and far more familiar this time. Dark silk wove from his tongue. “Forgery and impersonation.” He leaned forward, letting the dark smile curve. “I could have you or your father arrested or ruined for worse.”
She pulled herself together more quickly than he was used to with opponents. She didn’t confirm or deny it. Her eyes simply held his. “You could, but I do not believe that will serve you best.”
“You don’t know what would serve me.”
“Me.” She folded her hands together, her eyes still meeting his. They were outwardly calm, but there was a vibrating energy underneath. The damn woman didn’t follow any sort of normal script, but she wasn’t unaffected. “I . . .”
She hesitated for a moment then her whole body seemed to push forth. “I have reached a mutually agreeable business correspondence and relationship with you in the last few months, even if under a somewhat cloudy guise. And I hope that knowledge will make it apparent that I can and will serve you. Well.”
He pressed down on the automatic reaction of his body. He had gotten rid of people for decades without trouble. One wisp of a girl would be no different, no matter the underlying grit she continued to show. “You have obviously not thought through ways I might require you to serve.”
He let his eyes drift over her. “And without your consent on the matter. I could extinguish your life this instant should I choose. With one flick of a switch. Or I could push you against this desk right now, strip your virtue, make you unmarriageable for anyone. You could scream and scream, and no one would come to save you. Not from me. Not here. Here, where you’ve so willingly offered yourself. Where I could so easily use you, then toss you away.”
She twitched. Good.
“My brother’s language is . . . was . . . foul at times, but yours, sir, contains a new level of filth for me.”
The clock in the corner issued its first chime. He stiffened. Had she been in his office that long? What was he doing? Goddamn woman and his goddamn issues.
“I am foul. Now get out.”
She gaped at his tone, and the first inklings of true uncertainty gleamed in her eyes. For some reason it angered him as much as it darkly pleased him to finally see it there. “I . . .”
A rustle of sound at the door extinguished all emotion, smothering it by a solid wall, pulling his senses around it and into sharp, pointed focus. Too late for her to leave.
“Do you know why I have been keeping to shadow, Miss Pace?” he asked, almost conversationally, as he extended his right hand toward the candle’s flame and slid the blade down his left wrist and into the belly of his palm, fingers curling around the tip.
The uncertainty in her eyes grew at the abrupt change in tone. He would have reveled in it a moment ago. “I had a thought that perhaps you were either overly dramatic or physically scarred somewhere I can’t immediately see, Mr. Merrick. Either is a possibil—”
The gaslights near the door shattered. He flicked his fingers forward, the blade slicing through the air, and the man who broke the lights hit the floor amidst the glass. Andreas was around the desk and pushing Phoebe Pace from her chair before she fully knew what was happening. Before the reflection of light extinguished completely from widened eyes as he snuffed the candles on his desk.
The back section of the room was cast into darkness as he pulled back quickly into the shadows, away from her. Pushing her to the floor had cost him the view of the door and the easy answer as to how many people were now in the room. The air near his uncovered throat rippled, the bullet passing within an inch, as he stepped through the smoke produced by the retort of the first shot, then the second. A darker pillar of shadow broke the wall of midnight. A quick flick of his wrist, and it folded into the dark of the floor.
The board three over from his right foot creaked. He threw out the heel of his hand and snapped the neck of the second man and gutted the third who had crept behind—the man shouldn’t have taken such a job with a wheeze in his chest. Andreas flattened himself against the wall, flipped his last knife, and listened.
Too easily dispatched. The thrill of the hunt pressed, as expected, but something tightened underneath his deadened feelings.
The whimper was loud. The scrape of the edge of her slippers as she was pulled upright.
“Show yourself, Merrick, or I’ll gut her.”
He knew that voice. A head shorter than himself, he’d be three inches taller than Phoebe Pace.
“I care nothing”—he threw the knife as hard as he was capable—“for her.”
A body hit his desk. He waited until he heard the quick intake of soft air. He moved to the desk, relit the first candle, then pushed the body to the floor. Normally, he would retrieve his blade, but he watched her instead. That insect had looked that way, eyes so wide, as he’d raised a hand to squash it.
He motioned to the door. “Get out.” The familiar smell of gunpowder finally penetrated his senses fully. He lit the other two candles. The wax hissed faintly.
“You saved my life.”
He reached for the bellpull and gave it a yank.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t clean.” He didn’t know why he answered. But the statement was true. He didn’t, not anymore.
He didn’t need to look at her to know what she was doing. Everyone who wasn’t used to it stared at the
bodies. Sometimes they had to be pulled away, eyes unmoving.
“They are dead. You killed them.”
“Get out.”
“You saved my life.” He could hear her step closer, her voice uncertain. “I owe you my life.”
He liked neither the wonder nor blankness he heard mixed in her voice.
“Doubtful.” He sneered at her and saw the reflection of the mixture on her face, eyes and lips wide. “Perhaps your virginity. They would have likely found that a good reason to leave you alive. Are you going to owe me that?” He let his lips twist, heavy and sardonic, watching her. “No? Then get out.”
“That is awful.” There was still a tinge of awe present, though.
His palms flattened on the desk, and he leaned forward into her space, wanting, needing to wipe away any good feeling she might have concerning him. “And it is the only sentiment of which I’m capable. I never invited you into my room. Leave.”
“Someone tried to kill you. Your wrist!” She touched his hand, and he went stock-still. She leaned over to examine it, the top of her head brushing beneath his nose. Only his sudden immobility stopped him from violently pulling away. “From the candles?” Had she bathed in bloody honey? “How did you get this burn?” Her gloved finger pulled along the flesh beneath, carefully not touching the burned skin.
He abruptly pulled back. “Leave.”
“You need help.” She grabbed her bag. “I have liniment at ho—”
“Leave.”
More digging. “I can help you.”
“I don’t need help.”
She paused and looked up. “Someone just tried to kill you. Five—five—men tried to kill you.”
“And six will tomorrow. Now get out.”
“Even if you won’t accept aid, I still need to speak with—”
“Your debts are resolved.”
“What?” Her eyes went wider than they had when seeing the bodies.
He grabbed the folder from his desk—for the past few weeks he had always had it near, tempting him—and thrust it toward her. “Here are the majority of your markers, now leave.”
She stared at the folder, not touching it. “You accept the terms? But I haven’t even shown you—”