Scoundrel

by Zoë Archer

  Bennett deciphered both codes and darkness. He had a way with shadows, ever since he was a boy, completely at home within them, while most others embraced bright daylight. In darkness, he found pockets of space, niches through which he fit himself like a key into a lock. Perhaps it was its own form of magic. He didn’t question it. When the time was ripe, he moved forward, dissolving into the night.

  His boots made no sound as he edged closer to London’s tent. The guards paced back and forth, rifles ready, eyes piercing the darkness. Only a breath of a moment, the smallest lacuna as the guards passed, and Bennett crept past them. Under the heavy canvas of the tent. He slid inside, exhaling, then smiled. Almost as delicious as easing into a woman.

  The close air inside the tent smelled of sleeping woman, of London. Sweet and spicy. His body tightened, knowing she was near.

  His eyes had already adjusted to the dimness, so he could see everything plainly in the tent. The desk, the trunks and books. Two cots. One empty. London lay across the other.

  Soft and low, she breathed in the rhythm of slumber. Bennett stole his way to stand beside her, gazing down at her. She dreamt, the fans of her eyelashes gently flickering as she moved through the space of dreams. Her mouth pursed, released. His throat constricted. He was a lucky, lucky son of a bitch. He’d done nothing in his life to earn the privilege of seeing London Harcourt sleep, for she was as lovely and seductive as a sylph.

  Bennett sank down to his knees.

  She lay on her back, her hair loose about her shoulders in waves of silk, one arm upraised and curved around her head in a gesture of unconscious grace. Upon her stomach curled her other hand, rising and falling with her breath. The forms of her legs shifted underneath the fabric of her skirt. In the quiet of the tent, the intimate sound sent excruciating pleasure shooting through him.

  Her shirtwaist had been cast off. Above the waist, she wore only her chemise and a lightweight corset. His mouth watered. He wanted fiercely to lick the skin of her bare, pale shoulders, the honeyed expanse of flesh above the chemise’s neckline, delve his tongue into the shadowed valley between the small, perfect rounds of her breasts. His fingers twitched, desperate to finish unfastening her corset, peel it away to reveal the woman underneath. She would be warm and pliant yet firm.

  He could take her, now, as she slept in this tent. Slip his hands up her skirt, between her legs, tease her into slick readiness before he slid his aching cock into her. Her orgasm would wake her just in time for his release.

  You’re a bastard and a cad, Ben, he thought. And you picked the worst time to cultivate scruples. Idiot.

  Instead of putting his lips to hers, he covered her mouth with his hand. Her eyes opened immediately, her body tensing.

  “They’re just outside,” he whispered.

  When she nodded, he removed his hand and craved the feel of her lips against his palm again. He moved back slightly as she swung her legs around, sat up, and looked at him. For a moment, they each did nothing but stare at the other.

  “I am surprised to see you here.” Her words were barely audible.

  “You thought I’d toss the world’s problems into your lap and skip away to my next seduction.”

  When she did not answer, he knew she entertained that very possibility.

  “Think what you like of me as a man.” He eased from kneeling into a ready crouch. “But I’m also a Blade. We have codes and honor.”

  “Honor enough to kill.”

  So. She knew. He refused to look away. “If we must. The Blades hold life sacred, but there are times when we’ve no choice.”

  “The needs of the many, et cetera.” Even in a whisper, her voice cut. There was a new hardness in her that hadn’t been there a few days ago. “When did you know?” she asked. “Was it in the marketplace in Monastiraki? The garden of the hotel? Did it amuse you to flirt with the widow of the enemy you had slain?”

  “After I left you in the garden,” he said. “I heard you with your father and Fraser. That’s when I knew.”

  She tipped up her chin. “On the caique. You said nothing about it. You…kissed me, knowing.” She neared a shattering point, her words were so brittle.

  “We made the gods jealous with such a kiss.” And carved him apart, but he hadn’t minded the sacrifice, not at all, and that surprised him.

  “You killed Lawrence.”

  He nodded.

  “Why do you not defend yourself?”

  “Because it’s done. And it had to be done.”

  London glanced down and noticed she wore no shirt. She quickly stood and grabbed the shirtwaist. She tightened the fastenings of her corset, then slid her arms into the sleeves, saying, “What a wonderful thing it must be, to be a man. To act and damn the consequences.” She began to button the shirt with quick, precise fingers.

  He also rose to his full height and stalked to her. “Every day I live with the consequences.”

  “While women like me live without their husbands, their fathers and brothers.” Finished buttoning, she tucked the shirt in, sealing herself off.

  “That’s right,” he answered, clipped. His anger surprised him. He never got angry. “And you’re right in the middle of them, giving them a soft place to lay their heads after a hard day of thievery and subjugation and murder.”

  She turned away. A palpable hit. Yet he took no pleasure from it.

  He saw, draped over a corner of the desk, the gold scarf he’d tied around her waist in Monastiraki. She’d kept it, and kept it close.

  She saw the direction of his gaze, and flushed.

  “London,” he said.

  “They were wrong, you know.” She fiddled with the books on the desk, aligning them. “They believed I could translate the ruins, brought me all the way to Greece. But I can make no sense of them.” She waved at the laid-out papers. “The words have come, yet they tell me nothing.” She gave a harsh rasp that might have been a laugh. “So the joke is on everyone, especially me.”

  He suppressed the urge to put his hands on her shoulders, comfort her. Instead, he said, “Show me.”

  She pushed the papers into his hands, then crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the desk, facing him.

  For some moments, the only sounds came from outside the tent as his most hated enemies ate their supper of roast lamb, laughed, and talked of astronomy. A revolver was holstered on Bennett’s belt. He could simply walk outside and start shooting. The guards would kill him, of course, but not before he took out at least Edgeworth and Fraser. Without them, especially Edgeworth, the Heirs would be crippled, giving the Blades a much-needed advantage.

  But he’d spoken the truth to London. Blades had a code. And it did not condone deliberate, callous murder. No matter what London Harcourt believed.

  He studied the papers and her feminine but purposeful handwriting. What she had translated created sentences, yet they were as opaque as ebony. Voices split cypress. Old chorus grasps water. The dolphin pathway sings.

  “A riddle,” he said. He handed her the papers. “Blades see them often, searching for Sources. Damn ancients loved their riddles. Nothing better to do with their time.”

  “Then perhaps the Blades can solve this riddle, for I cannot.” She set the papers down, and her expression was closed off as she turned her eyes to Bennett. “You can’t stay. Sally will be back any moment. She’ll alert my father if she finds you here.”

  “Take me to the ruins,” he said.

  Her eyes flew to his. “Why? You’ve seen everything.”

  “I need to see the ruins, themselves.”

  She stared at him, shuttered and unreachable. He suspected she would refuse him. Then, after a pause, she said, “Guards are everywhere. I don’t know how you got here, but it’s impossible for two of us to get by unnoticed.”

  “I accept your challenge.” His smile had no warmth, but it proved to him that he was still himself, the man who smiled at impossibilities.

  He was confident, she less so. London
donned her dark gray jacket to hide the whiteness of her shirtwaist. She denied him the intimacy of watching her put up her hair, leaving it loose around her shoulders and down her back. She had long passed the point of decorous behavior—it mattered not at all, not out on this lonely scrap of rock, surrounded by murderers and scoundrels.

  They hunkered together in the darkness of her tent. Day turned his head to the side, as if listening to the night, his eyes far off but focused. To signal readiness, he held up a hand. She remembered the feel of it against her mouth, the rough palm to her lips as she woke. She had not been afraid, for she knew his smell and taste at once, and thought herself a fool for the comfort his presence brought. Now she crouched with him, waiting to spring from her prison, waiting for a moment of opportunity that only he could sense.

  Something changed. London could not tell the difference from one second to the next, but suddenly Day nodded at her and held up the canvas wall, ushering her out. Her father, Fraser, and Chernock sat around a campfire, smoking cigars. The fire flickered gold and red light over the rocks, casting long, demonic shadows. A nightmare landscape in which she would surely be caught, if not by her father, then by the men with rifles who never seemed to tire. But Day took her hand, lacing his long fingers with her own, and drew her away into the night like Hades claiming Persephone as his netherworld bride. No one heard them leave. She let out the breath she held.

  A crust of moon turned the rocky plains of Delos into the bottom of the sea. She and Day swam quickly through the silvered air, and he held her tight when she misjudged a distance and stumbled in her dainty, useless lady’s boots. His grip was strong, sure, deceptively trustworthy. Without him, she felt sure she would drift into the current, but she wanted her own ballast.

  She whispered direction, expecting at any moment the sounds of the Heirs shouting, gunfire, pursuit. Yet Day had taken the night for his own, possessed it, and they slipped through hollows of time toward the ruins. Here and there lay scattered relics of ancient holy temples, a statue’s dismembered torso, a cluster of stones marking a long-vanished road.

  “This is it,” she whispered when they reached the ruins.

  Within the excavated pit, the columns gleamed white as bones. Day leapt down into it, then reached up to help her. His hands clasped her waist as he easily bore her weight. Her body slid against his on her descent. He was as solid and lean as she remembered, yet she felt as though she’d barely comprehended its potential. His eyes gleamed in the darkness, fastening onto hers.

  She pulled away when her feet touched the ground. Every space felt too close, even this one.

  “Have you a lantern?” she asked.

  “Better,” he said.

  From inside his jacket, he produced a small brass cylinder. In the dimness, London saw two little glass compartments within the cylinder, and a tiny knob between them. The glass compartments held some kind of liquid, and, when Day turned the knob, a few drops from one compartment dripped into the other. He tightened the knob, then shook the cylinder. The liquid within one glass compartment began to glow an eerie green.

  London marveled. “Magic?” she asked quietly.

  “All science. I can’t claim ownership of the idea. It’s the work of Catullus Graves.”

  “Another Blade?”

  “Our genius in residence.”

  In the cylinder’s light, the pit gleamed acidic green, otherworldly, and the columns seemed luminescent. Spectral light turned the precise planes of Day’s face into a warrior’s mask. She felt herself in some faerie king’s derelict palace, and Day the deposed ruler come to claim his birthright. She shivered, then reminded herself he was only a man.

  He stepped toward the columns, holding the brass cylinder aloft. “The writing’s on every side.” His hands gently touched the marble, feeling the inscriptions.

  “Yes, but no matter how I’ve arranged the sentences, they make no sense.”

  Day stepped back, his eyebrows in thoughtful downward angles. Backing farther away, he slowly circled the columns, edging sideways in a clockwise direction. His movements held an animal fluidity that was impossible not to watch. She almost believed he had been created as a torment just for her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Finding the viewing point.”

  “The what?”

  His words punctuated his movements. “Damned ancients.” He edged farther. “Always putting in some little catch. Can’t make it”—another shift to the side—“easy on a fellow. They especially loved. Tricks of the eye. Wait. Yes. There!” He stopped, standing on the other side of the columns. “Come and see.”

  London hurried over to him. She stood beside him and stared at the columns. She expected revelation, but was disappointed. “They look the same as before.”

  He put his hands upon her shoulders and pulled her closer. She stiffened. “Easy,” he murmured. “I’m not going to ravish you.” Then he added in an undertone, “Yet.” He positioned her so she stood in front of him, though he kept his hands upon her shoulders, and his body warmed hers through the layers of her cotton clothing. “Now, look.”

  She did. And could not stop her slight gasp.

  The words had arranged themselves.

  “I didn’t think you could read this dialect,” she said.

  “I can’t. But I know a deciphered code when I see one. Tell me what it says.”

  She read, “Upon the island in the form of a dolphin, find there the stream that sings. Its voice will guide you farther to the terrible waterborne gift of the golden god.”

  “‘Terrible gift,’” he echoed, wry. “Of course. They’re never happy little trinkets.”

  “It was there the whole time,” she said in wonderment. She turned slightly to consider him and knew she looked reluctantly impressed. “You’re much cleverer than you look.”

  “I hear that often.” He chuckled, then grew more contemplative. “But it was you who unlocked the words. A capital partnership, you and I.”

  That was true. Even beyond him discovering the ruins’ viewing point and her translation, they shared an even exchange of ideas, neither in command of more than the other. Unlike her father and Fraser, Day did not treat her like a breakable bauble, nor did he consider her gift with language to be an unearned aberration. But she did not feel he respected her. He hoarded knowledge. He’d known the truth about Lawrence’s death and had said nothing to her. And, there was no way around it: he was a killer. A man who killed other men.

  “Sometimes,” was all she allowed him.

  Day suddenly frowned. He took a piece of heavy cloth from his pocket and wrapped it around the brass cylinder, cutting off its light. London’s eyes could not adjust fast enough. Darkness swallowed them. She felt his hand on her wrist, pulling her somewhere, and she had no idea what was happening.

  Then she heard it. A man’s footsteps running in their direction. The glow of a torch dawned over the lip of the pit, and then there was Thomas Fraser, a burning torch in one hand, a revolver in the other.

  “London! We’ve been looking everywhere for you!” Fraser glared at Bennett Day. “So it’s you, Day,” he sneered. “Might’ve known if there was a woman involved you’d come sniffing around.” He aimed the gun at Day.

  London tried to pull Day toward the nearest wall of the pit so he might climb to safety, but he abruptly released her wrist. She lunged for him and grabbed only air. He wove through the columns toward Fraser. Fraser fired at him, and chips of marble from the columns and granite from the pit flew into the air. She clapped her hands over her ears from the awful sound of the gunshots, so different from the muffled pops of hunting rifles she’d heard before on her family’s Somerset property. A whiz and pop next to her head had her crouching low, shielding herself. Gravel rained down on her.

  “Watch the ricochet, idiot,” snarled Day. He drew his revolver and fired back, causing Fraser to duck and hold off his own gunfire. Day ran straight for the pit wall at Fraser’s feet, and, in motion
too quick for her to see, leapt up the wall and grabbed Fraser’s ankles. Before Fraser could kick him away, Day pulled on his legs and the other man tumbled into the pit. His torch and gun followed.

  Flickering torchlight revealed the forms of Day and Fraser locked in combat. They struggled for Day’s revolver, and it went spinning away. Each man threw punches, drove elbows into stomachs, and struggled for dominance. London gaped. She’d never before seen two men fight, not like this. Once, she’d spied upon her brother training in pugilism, but that seemed genteel compared to what she saw now. This meant death. Vicious, deliberate death. And Fraser and Day knew what they were doing, both were skilled fighters. Clothing ripped. They swore. They drew blood.

  Fraser was bigger than Day, but Day had speed and precision. They pummeled each other without mercy, scrabbling in the dirt, grunting in pain and anger. One of them would die if something wasn’t done.

  Locked together in combat, both men froze when they heard the sound of a revolver’s hammer being cocked. Looking up, they saw London with the gun in her hands, pointing it in their direction. She’d never held a firearm in her life, and hadn’t counted on how heavy it was. She struggled to keep her hands steady. The heaviest thing she’d ever held was a huge seventeenth-century tome on Parthian.

  “Stop,” she said.

  Fraser smirked, while Day looked grim and taut, knowing it was very likely she might shoot him, her husband’s killer.