by Anne Mallory
He mentally went through his correspondence. Roman wasn’t due back for another three weeks. And Charlotte would get some ridiculously yappy dog, but even if she did, it would be taken to the Grosvenor Square house where they lived.
Yap, yap, yap.
If one of the boys had picked up a stray and thought to hide it in Roman’s rooms, there would be bloodshed.
A deep voice shouted something, followed by a crash.
Yap!
He narrowed his eyes and put his hand upon the handle to Roman’s rooms. It turned beneath his fingers and honey brown hair pushed beneath his nose. He pulled back, nearly stumbling.
“Oh! Mr. Merrick. I didn’t see you there.”
He stared at her. His living nightmare. Hair unbound and curling around her shoulders.
She wedged her body into the crack of the door, blocking his view behind with her simple dress . . . was that a nightdress? “Welcome back. I . . . I thought you would be back two days from now. Perhaps I might speak with you later?”
Something wiggled under her thin skirts, and he could only stare as a scraggly mass of brown fur dove forward, furry paws extended. He reacted instinctively, bending and catching the thing by the scruff of the neck as it tried to surge past him.
“Oh! Mr. Wiggles.” She gently extricated the . . . thing trying to bite him . . . from his grip. The ends of her locks brushed his wrist as he rose. He straightened quickly, stepping back, as if bitten after all. “Thank you. He has been into everything. I swear, when we got him we thought he would help with”—she pulled her rosy lips between her teeth—“that is, we thought he’d be better behaved. I must admit I haven’t had time to properly train him.”
“Why is your . . . dog . . . here?” he asked stiffly. It was far from the most pertinent question, but he thought asking the question of why she was here might emerge less . . . evenly.
“Oh, well, when you ordered us out of our house, we needed a safe place to stay, you see, and . . .” She cocked her head. “You look awfully tired. Perhaps we should discuss this in the morning?”
“We will discuss this now.”
She shrugged. “I spoke with your men. They said your brother had abandoned his apartments here.”
Abandoned was not the word he would have chosen. He reached down to rub his leg before he realized what he was doing.
“He now resides with his wife,” he said tightly.
She nodded. “I wish to rent his rooms.”
“What?”
“It is perfect. It will better allow me to repay my debt to you, and it is far closer to the financial area in order to complete our transactions.”
“No.”
“Well, you see, I must admit, we’ve already moved in.” Brilliant smile. “It would make things much simpler if you just agree.”
“No.”
“It’s the perfect solution really. You said I needed to leave to parts unknown. And what’s more, I figured you wouldn’t burn down your own building.” An even more brilliant smile.
He stared at her, opened his mouth to say something extremely cutting, then closed it again.
He wasn’t going to continue this conversation in the hall where anyone under either landing could eavesdrop. And definitely not with the light shining behind and through that thin . . . thing she was wearing, silhouetting the lines of her body.
He turned on his heel and walked to his door farther down the hall. He could hear her shuffling around in the doorway—probably with that dog—then following him. He paused at his outer door. His personal rooms . . . and Phoebe Pace . . . no. He swiftly walked to the steps instead, taking the stairs jarringly—going down the stairs was always the toughest action he undertook, and when he was out of sorts, it was worse. He made it down the steps to his office on the floor beneath without mishap, though, thank God.
He hated having anyone in his rooms, so he’d easily separated the spaces right from the beginning. That way anyone reporting to him during the day stayed out of his personal areas.
And he had never had to worry about someone reporting to him like this.
He made sure the door was closed behind her and all three locks engaged before moving to his desk.
“Why are you here?” he asked roughly as he sat on the other side, trying not to pay too much attention to her until he realized she had somehow managed to don a dowdy full-length robe. Relief was quickly dashed as he saw the ledgers on her lap. How had she managed to grab them so quickly? Perhaps she kept them stuffed under her shift in an invisible pocket. Perfect to extract at any notice.
No. There had been nothing beneath. The image of her silhouette burned into his brain.
“Are you alone?” He didn’t know why he asked.
“No.”
He fell back quickly to safer questions. “Why are you here?”
“The Watch was coming—”
“Why are you here?”
She touched the cover of the top ledger. “Well, we owe—”
He thrust out a hand in the universal motion meant to stop someone from continuing. He had never killed anyone with paper. He briefly contemplated the mechanics of it.
No, paper would be too hard to execute. Besides, she was going to be the end of him, not the other way around, of that he was certain. “That also isn’t why you are here.”
She studied him, head tilting to do it. “No.”
He tapped a finger on the desk. Brilliant or daft. “Why are you here?”
Her eyes met his squarely. “Because no one would think we were staying here.”
Not daft.
He narrowed his eyes as his mind connected threads and possibilities. “All of your trips here—your debts to be repaid—you were setting this up. Seeing if the building met whatever criteria and plan you had.”
“That would be Machiavellian.”
“That is not a denial.”
“I am firm in my desire to repay our debts. As to our staying here, we hardly make a ripple. Neither of my parents needs to leave your brother’s rooms.”
He watched her through narrowed eyes. “Do you hold them hostage in the attic?”
Her mouth parted, bottom lip dropping. “Do I . . . what?”
The drapes were always pulled, the father emerging only six times in the last six months. And no one who worked there could be bribed. That wasn’t normal. She wasn’t normal. He thought of her far too often for her to be normal.
“Of course not.” But her expression was off. Way off. “They are just solitary.”
Her eyes were too bright. It was unnerving considering the subject she was avoiding.
“You are lying.”
“Yes. And you are quite fearsome.” She looked quite cheerful again, as if his being fearsome was something of an asset. “I would like to take advantage of that as well.”
Being silent around this woman was better than gawking like an idiot.
“Charlotte Chatsworth, I mean, Charlotte Merrick . . . I’ve seen dangerous-looking men cross the street to the other side when they see her. It is a horribly kept secret that your brother threatened the entirety of London on her behalf.”
“That is Roman.”
“Yes. But I can’t imagine that you do not scare the trousers off London’s population as well. More so even.” This was said cheerfully. Again. “And so we would like to rent your brother’s rooms.”
“No.”
Head tilt. “Why not? He lives elsewhere.”
“Because as much as you would obviously like to think otherwise, it isn’t outside of the realm of possibilities to others that you would be here.”
Cornelius was not an idiot. He would know who had dispatched his men outside the Paces’ home as soon as it was reported. If anyone made it to report.
“Who would think that?” she asked.
But it was an answer he could not, would not, give. For other questions would tumble forth, questions he also could not answer. Not without divulging the larger picture. To all the factions that were
actually involved in this situation. Who would use her family and her to destroy each other.
People like him.
She cocked her head at him. “Who would think that?” she repeated. “The people you have saved us from each night, and me each day? Those people?”
He stared at her, his heart not beating in his cold, dead chest. “What?”
She stared at him, without answering, her gaze clear, a smile half-lifted upon her lips.
He flattened his hands against the desk instead. “You make no sense. Why do you return here? What part of ‘assassination attempts’ that first night did you not understand? The part where there was a knife against your throat?”
“You invited that attempt.”
“What?”
“You knew it was going to happen,” she said calmly. “You tried to encourage me, for lack of a better word, to leave. I must tell you that if you had said, ‘Five armed men will enter the door to this office in the next five minutes,’ I might have been more receptive to your encouragement. You have a problem with communication, did you know?” Head tilt.
“I would be happy to stop communicating altogether,” he gritted out.
“Oh, no, but I wouldn’t like that at all. I think you are growing remarkably well.”
“I would not wager on such a thought. Do you know what I am thinking at the moment, Miss Pace?”
“Something unpleasant concerning my ability to breathe, I’d wager. But I’d also bet you know when most of the attacks on you are going to happen.” Head tilt, head tilt, head tilting his world. “Do you wish for death, Mr. Merrick? Or do you require the rush that accompanies such attacks?”
“What?”
“I’ve heard of such things, of course. And experienced quite a quickening of the heart myself that night, I must tell you. I’m not sure I would woo a second such event, however.”
His knuckles hurt. “Then you would be foolish to stay here.”
“Oh, does that mean you are receptive to the request then?”
“Are you mad?”
“I believe that is the first time you’ve asked me that, Mr. Merrick.” This was said cheerfully as well. “I’m quite impressed. Most people give in during the first conversation.”
He decided not to respond. He tried to loosen his fingers instead.
“We find ourselves fugitives at the moment, Mr. Merrick.”
“You are not. Your father is.”
“Yes. But that means we all are. We would not let Father go alone,” she said softly.
“You are a fool.” Yet something tightened in him. He believed her. The blackness swirled, gasping.
“I believe we have been over this.”
“Why didn’t you go to the country? Hide somewhere far from London. This is where you are in the most danger.”
She tilted her head again, and something in her gaze warmed. He hurriedly pushed the emotion away from him, even as it just kept coming from her. “Yes, and then what? Wait for someone to save us? For someone to prove that Father is not the guilty party while he rots in jail?”
“If he is not, eventually it will bear out.”
“Now who is being the foolish one, Mr. Merrick? You do not believe that.”
Of course he didn’t. He wanted her twelve counties away, and damn the consequences.
“Someone is trying to kill you, someone is trying to get rid of us.” She nodded. “And you have been helping us, all on your own. All in all, it would be easier to join forces in thwarting such attempts.” She nodded. “Mutual benefit.”
He felt something surprisingly like dread build within him. The tightening of melded circumstance. The smell of home-baked pastries, foul and seductive. “Go to the country. Let events unfold, create new identities, and forget about everything else. Your life will be far lengthier. You have a little over ten thousand pounds from your accounts this week hidden away. Take it and go. Your craftsmen will be hired by others. They are the best. No one will go hungry.”
She looked at him, seemingly unsurprised that he knew their financial situation so well. Her gaze moved to something over his shoulder, and she said nothing for long moments. It unnerved him far more than anything else. There was an old spirit there, peeking out behind the normal innocence of her gaze.
She smiled but didn’t successfully banish the shadows this time. “But it would be hardly fair to leave in such a way and it would negatively affect our workers. As much as I would like them to be, circumstances aren’t quite as simple as you are trying to suggest. And you well know this.”
“For you all matters seem simple.” She was infecting him. He had just muttered.
“I wish that were true. I wish we could retire to Norfolk, to Essex, to Somerset, and leave the rest behind.”
“Go then.”
“No. We would eventually be recognized. Word travels fast.”
“Go across the ocean. America. Australia.”
“No.”
“Why?” His voice was harder than he had thought it would be.
She looked at him steadily, with eyes far older than they should be. “In addition to our business concerns, my brother’s disappearance was well timed. Though I sometimes play the muggins, Mr. Merrick, I am not one.”
He grew cold. One finger twitched toward the mechanisms on his desk. “And you hope to find his killer? You think the events connected.”
She looked away. “Yes,” she whispered.
“You still hold hope that he is alive.”
She looked at her hands, folding them together on top of her books. “I hope, Mr. Merrick. Simple hope. But it has been well over two months, and at this point it would do little good for someone to have held him for that period of time. And . . . and I hired men. They confirmed that someone matching his description had been shot on Blackfriar’s Bridge.”
He tapped his finger more violently—in order to keep it above the desk top. “And? That’s it? No description of the person who shot him?”
“No. The man who claimed to have known that information disappeared before I could speak with him. The information trail has closed quite tightly.”
His finger stopped tapping as hard.
“Though I have been speaking to people again,” she said.
Itching twitch. Her actions with his men and helping around the hell suddenly gained subversive meaning. He had concentrated so much on her being near him that he hadn’t thought enough of why she was always around. What had he been thinking? That it was his charming personality causing her to seek out the people around him? “You are hoping to find another informant?”
“Or to flush out the guilty.”
He picked up his pen and carved a coded message to Roman, who was thankfully far, far away at the moment. “Working the East End of London for information? And you claim not to be the fool.”
“Perhaps.” He could hear her swallow, her delicate throat working. “Perhaps I am.” She leaned forward, her scent growing stronger. “But can you not say the same, that you would not try to find your brother if he went missing? To discover what had happened to him?”
Dark thoughts churned, and he pinned her with his blackest scowl, expecting her to cower. But there was something almost elemental in her that loosened under his look, that caused the hope on her face to lift. What the devil?
“Yes, you would.” She nodded and looked relieved. Everything in the odd signals she gave, and the antithesis to her words screamed at him. Danger. Everything about her was dangerous. “I see it. And I have to know, Mr. Merrick. I made some . . . hasty inquiries—foolish, as you’d say—in the first weeks after Christian disappeared that lost me a few opportunities I might otherwise have had.” She paused and looked down. “It was a loss of innocence I would have rather kept. Not knowing whom I can trust.”
“You are a fool if you think to trust me,” he said coldly. Bright brown eyes full of trust. Words that damned.
“Am I? Perhaps. But I find myself in need of an ally, and despite so
me of your more beastly tendencies, you have actually been quite accommodating.”
His men had been accommodating. He was going to have a small talk with the lot of them tomorrow.
She smiled, a small, shadowed smile. “You have, though you might not admit to it.”
Something about the shadows bothered him. He was used to seeing them—everyone around him had secrets. But this woman . . . six weeks, no, eight weeks prior, she had been full of life and open desire.
Irritation curled. Or something close enough to it that he identified it as such. “And why should your fate matter to me?”
“Mutual benefit, as I said previously.”
“You are going to save me from a knife in the dark?”
“It is my hope to be able to save you,” she said quietly.
“No.” He physically felt the echo of the word, the recoil.
“I have incentives for you.” She opened the top ledger. “It will be profitable for you to allow us to stay. Very profitable. Let me show you how that will be so.”
“I am going to burn your ledgers,” he said, almost pleasantly.
She paused, then peered up at him. “Truly?”
“Truly.”
She carefully replaced the book on the short stack on her lap. “I believe that you will, at that, Mr. Merrick. Well, then I must strictly appeal to your emotions.”
“I await with bated breath and heightened suspense.”
She smiled at him, face softening further. “You are very amusing when you choose to be, Mr. Merrick. It would benefit us both if you would continue to be more conversant, of course.”
He had already spoken more here than he had in the past seven days total.
“No? Pity.” She looked at her lap for a moment, then met his eyes again. “What do I need to do in order for you to allow us to stay?”
“There is nothing you can do. And you play a deadly game trying to find out what happened to your brother. You may find everyone around you dead or gone while you are still holding your game pieces.”
He saw her breath hitch, a motion that vibrated up from her chest to her chin.
“Your brother Roman—”
The inactive ice in his veins changed to another variety entirely—spiked and deadly. “He has nothing to do with any of this,” he said harshly. Considering the consequences and possible pitfalls, he needed to make that very clear.