by Gaelen Foley
“Hold on. Beg your pardon, Lady Burke, but you’ve lost me. You ‘took a case’? How’s that, then?”
She lifted her eyebrows in surprise, a sardonic smile skimming her lips. “Ah, right. I forgot. It always confounds the stronger sex to find a female with a brain and a purpose of her own. Let me catch you up, then. A few years ago, after my husband’s death, I found myself at liberty to follow my own interests as I pleased.”
Widow, Nick thought, barely hearing the rest. Praise God.
“Now, this may shock you, Lord Forrester,” she continued, “but life for an intelligent woman of my station can soon grow exceedingly dull.”
“And thus adultery is the ton’s favorite sport,” he countered with a ready smile. “So I’m told.”
She shrugged. “Some ladies do embroidery work to fill up their time; others devote themselves to works of charity. Or gardening, or gossip as their favored pastime. For me—” A guarded gleam came into her eyes. “I became interested in helping people who’ve been victims of crime or some similar injustice. It entertains me to investigate the facts behind their various misfortunes and, where possible, discover the responsible party, sharing this information with the authorities.”
He furrowed his brow and stared at her, intrigued. “So, what, then? You’re some sort of a . . . lady detective?”
He had never heard of such a thing, but this designation seemed to please her. “Yes, I suppose I am. Don’t look so shocked,” she chided, a hint of defiance in the lift of her chin. “I can do as I please with my time and my fortune. Who else will help the lower orders when they are wronged and too frightened to come forward? Or God forbid, a woman who should have troubling questions concerning her husband. I help those—discreetly, of course—who have nowhere else to turn.”
Nick decided on the spot that he adored her. He made no further sport of her little Bow-Street-ish endeavors. “So where do I come in?”
“I understand from your work in the field that you developed a number of assets among the criminal underworld in London and abroad.”
How the hell does she know that?
He was not foolish enough to ask impertinent questions, though, if there was a real chance that she could get him out of here.
“Correct.”
To the criminal underworld, he was Jonathan Black: assassin for hire and Very Bad Man.
“You gained the trust of people who trust no one,” she continued. “I need you to use those connections on my behalf.”
“Which connections? Can you be more specific?”
“Not at this time.”
“I see.” He folded his arms across his chest as he mulled it. “So, I take it this missing person’s case of yours took an unexpectedly nefarious turn?”
“Yes.”
“It must be dire, indeed, or you could have simply taken the information to the lads at Bow Street.”
“That would not be adequate.” She hesitated. “Lord Forrester, I have uncovered a trafficking ring abducting young girls and selling them overseas. Miss Perkins is not the only young girl who’s disappeared in recent weeks. I have managed to learn that the head of the ring goes by the nickname of Rotgut. His true name is unknown. He’s English, and he captains a ship called the Black Jest. That’s all I know about him, except for one additional fact. That he is currently set to sell his captives on the underworld auction known as the Bacchus Bazaar. I understand you’re familiar with it.”
Nick cursed under his breath.
She lifted an eyebrow in grim agreement.
The Bacchus Bazaar was a secretive, underworld auction held every other year, where the top dealers in all sorts of illicit goods gathered to trade their wares, make deals, settle scores, and form alliances.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do if you decide to help me,” she continued. “Time is short. The auction is set for the first half of December.”
“Did you manage to get a game piece yet?”
“Well, I did, but that’s the trouble. It’s disappeared, along with my assistant, John Carr. He went missing a week ago. Considering the nature of the people we are dealing with, I am not optimistic.”
“You think he’s been murdered?”
“Or added to the roster of captives to be sold.” She paused. “He’s a very beautiful young man.”
“I see,” he murmured, indeed, probably more than she cared for him to see. Namely, that the worldly widow did not merely “entertain herself” investigating crimes, but also by enjoying the services of some young, pretty-faced cavalier serviente. Who had blundered in some way and mucked up all her progress.
If she was telling him everything.
Which she obviously wasn’t.
Fair enough.
Nick did not know why he should be so irked to hear about her toy boy, but it helped him step back from the snare of her beauty to think a bit more clearly about all this. And remember his own interests.
“Without a game piece, I am stymied,” she said, heaving a sigh of frustration as she paced the other way. “I’m shut out from the next round and can’t move forward. I know the rendezvous point is in Paris, but if I don’t present the game piece when I get there, they won’t tell me the location of the Bacchus Bazaar.”
“Er, they may also kill you,” he pointed out dryly. “You can’t go in there acting like an insider and not present your proof.”
“That’s why I need you. I need to get my hands on a second game piece, and you’ve participated in the auction before, from what I understand. Time is of the essence. These girls have no hope if we don’t act. So will you help me?”
In light of his own unpleasant circumstances, Nick eyed her warily, fighting the inborn urge to rush to the aid of a damsel in distress. Instead, he simply drawled, “What’s in it for me?”
She smiled in cynical amusement. “I thought you’d never ask.” Then she pushed away from the bars and paced slowly back and forth before his cell.
Nick watched her with riveted attention.
“You can get out of that cage today, as I said, Lord Forrester. And if you’re a very good boy, you won’t ever have to come back.”
“Really?” He held his breath, shocked.
“Once our mission is completed, the Order has agreed to give you back your freedom—on certain conditions, of course. Put you on parole, as it were.”
“How in the world did you do that?”
“Well, as it turns out, I’m not the only one who’d like to see you freed. I understand the graybeards have been under constant pressure for months from your fellow agents. Lord Beauchamp and Lord Trevor Montgomery in particular have been campaigning without ceasing behind the scenes, trying to gain you an early release.”
He was stunned all over again to hear this. They hadn’t told him. They mustn’t have wanted to get his hopes up.
“And you did take that bullet for the Regent,” she added.
“Damn,” he mumbled, still shocked. Mired in shame over his failures, abandoning his blood vow, Nick had assumed that his brother warriors agreed that he had only got what he deserved, landing in this cell. But they wanted him out?
After what he had done?
He was touched—and slightly chastened—to hear it. But maybe he should have trusted a little more in their loyalty to him, even after his own to them had faltered.
Obviously, his going rogue last year had never been meant to hurt them, nor, of course, to betray his bloody country. He just couldn’t take it anymore.
Turning mercenary had simply been a way to make some money so he could then retire to a beautiful island somewhere. West Indies, maybe. No more killing, no more treachery. No more playing dark chess games in foreign courts and living the sort of life where he was constantly looking over his shoulder.
All he had really wanted was to be le
ft alone.
But nothing was ever simple.
Instead, like a dupe, a fool, a mark, he had unwittingly been pulled into an underhanded scheme to frame the Order for the assassination of the Prime Minister.
Of course, it had come to naught. Lord Liverpool was alive and well at home even now, probably eating a beef pie and dreaming up new ways to oppress the ordinary Englishman, Nick mused with his usual cynicism.
Beauchamp had thankfully pieced the conspirators’ plot together even before Nick had any idea of how he was being used. His trusty mate had managed to pull him out of the mess he had unknowingly got himself into. To the relief of them all, the sinister plot had fizzled.
But at the last moment, when the conspirators knew their plan was null, one of them had whipped out a pistol in range of the Regent. Nick had seen the gun and acted automatically. Thus the bullet in the belly and the national acclaim.
The glory for his “noble deed” only shamed him the more, for the public had no inkling of the rest of the story.
That bullet had actually saved him from the full fury of his superiors, however. Otherwise, the graybeards might well have put him in front of an Order firing squad.
Agents were held to the highest of standards, and the Order punished its own perhaps even more severely than it punished its enemies.
Obviously, Nick would not have murdered the jackass Prime Minister for anyone—if he had known beforehand who his target was to have been. The type of clients who hired assassins to kill people for them, after all, were not terribly forthcoming, as a rule. Information was doled out bit by bit. He had been sent to London to await further instructions.
Thanks to Beau’s hunting him down and warning him how he was being set up, the dark venture had never come to fruition. Nevertheless, at the very least, Nick knew he was guilty of dereliction of duty.
And poor judgment.
And probably laziness, too, among a bevy of other sins, faults, and failings.
Indeed, the worst part about being locked in this cage was that there was no way to escape himself—a man for whom he had lost all respect.
Lady Burke was still explaining. “My request for your assistance in this matter was simply the last straw from the graybeards’ standpoint.”
Nick frowned, wondering how she even knew the agents’ irreverent nickname for the Elders of the Order.
“Obviously, they see that this is for a good cause, rescuing these unfortunate girls,” she continued. “So they’ve agreed to hand you over to my custody. You are being given a chance to redeem yourself, my lord. I suggest you use it well.”
He lowered his gaze, a little overwhelmed by this unexpected chance at redemption. Then he shook his head. “I still don’t understand. Why would they listen to you?” He looked at her again sharply. “How do you know about contacts I developed in the field? Who are you?” he demanded in a low tone.
She gazed at him for a moment with an odd mix of pity and mistrust and, once again, left him in the dark. “If you agree to take this mission, Lord Forrester—and I can’t imagine that you’d refuse, given your options—then you must understand first and foremost that you will be taking your orders from a woman. Namely, me. I trust that won’t be a problem?”
He shook his head warily. Wouldn’t be the first time, he thought in chagrin. The queen of the mercenary army he had got mixed up in was a woman, after all.
Of course, that hadn’t worked out very well.
“So what is your decision?” she demanded in a taut voice. “Mind you,” she interrupted before he could answer, “I won’t put up with any nonsense. I must be frank, Lord Forrester—may I call you Nick? I’ve done my research on you, and I already know all your tricks.”
Oh, I doubt that.
“So don’t even think about trying to deceive me,” she continued. “In all, we shall get on handsomely, I think, as long as you’re a very good boy for me and do exactly as I say.”
“Or what?” he challenged in a low tone. Because such instructions went against the grain of every atom in him.
“Or I’ll shoot you in the head,” she replied without a trace of humor.
Nick was fascinated in spite of himself but didn’t trust her by a mile. “Who are you, exactly?”
“I’ve already told you. My name is Virginia Stokes, Baroness Burke. Gin to my friends.”
“Baron Burke . . . your husband,” he murmured, searching his memory. “I’ve heard the name, but I don’t believe I ever met the man.”
She pursed her lips, as though holding back a comment.
Judging by her expression, it was something along the lines of, You weren’t missing much.
Seeing that he had read that assessment on her face, the mysterious Lady Burke looked away.
“Wasn’t he a nabob?” Nick knew that the Order had a few men based in India. “Was he an agent? One of ours?”
“God, no.”
“Are you?” he persisted in a whisper, leaning his forehead against the bars.
There was an edge to her smile as she glanced wryly at him. “You know the Order does not allow women to serve in that capacity, my lord.”
“Then who the hell are you?” he exclaimed, pulling away and banging the bars in frustration. “Answer me! I can see there’s plenty you’re not telling me—”
“You will be given information as it’s needed, Lord Forrester.”
He glared at her, seething as he strove to figure her out. For all he knew, this could be another trap.
He had many enemies out there to this day. Or the Order could be testing his loyalty. He might be an idiot if he took the bait. “I’m sorry. I just don’t understand what’s going on.”
“No, I don’t imagine that you do. You’re just going to have to trust me, I suppose.”
“And why would you trust me?” he countered. “You see where I am. I don’t deny that I belong here for everything I’ve done.”
“What you’ve done?” she echoed in surprise, her blue eyes flashing with a sudden angry gleam. “You’ve served this organization and the Crown since you were younger than John Carr. And this is the thanks they give you? A bloody cage?”
Nick was taken aback to realize for the first time that she was not angry at him, but for him.
He wasn’t quite sure what to say. “I deserve it.”
“For wanting to quit? For getting tired of it all?” she countered passionately, to his surprise. “For having your heart broken too many times, facing down an evil that other people don’t even know exists? Oh, Nick.” Gazing at him, she shook her head almost tenderly, and he went half-mad with the need to figure out where he knew her from.
Then she gave it away softly. “Nick, Nick, Nicholas.”
The phrase jerked his head up and put all his defenses instantly on high alert.
Only one person used to say that to him, in tones of fatherly affection . . .
The only father figure he had ever known. The first and possibly the last person who had ever believed in him.
His handler.
Oh, how he’d let the old man down.
He gripped the bars intensely, staring at her. “Who are you?” he demanded in a savage whisper. “Either tell me now, or take yourself out of here. Quit playing games.”
She was unmoved. “Do you want to know why I’m giving you this chance? Yes, I do need the game piece. But the reason I’m willing to trust you is because my father did. Explicitly.”
“Your father?” He swallowed hard, his brain unwilling to accept this revelation.
She finally relented, lowering her mask of cool control just a bit. “My mother’s the Countess of Ashton, and though I am acknowledged as the offspring of her husband, the Earl, the truth is, thirty years ago, Mama took a braw Scotsman for a lover—an Order agent, who sired me. My natural father was you
r handler, Nick. Virgil Banks.”
His jaw dropped.
Virgil’s daughter? So that’s how she knew so much . . .
“Now, for the last time, will you work with me or not?” she demanded in a hard tone—that suddenly made perfect sense.
Good God! Speechless, Nick could only stare. Before his untimely death, Virgil Banks had been a legend of the Order. The taciturn Scot been like a father to all “his boys,” the highborn lads he had handpicked to be trained and turned into agents. The canny spymaster had taught them everything they knew. But . . .
Virgil had a daughter?
“He never told us!” he blurted out. “We were like sons to him. I mean, I thought he kept the secrets to the mission side of things. But—he never said a word!”
Her lips twisted ruefully. “Would you? Think about it. If you had a daughter, would you introduce her to someone like you?”
“Hell, no,” he said without a second’s hesitation.
“Well?” She chuckled.
He let out a short laugh, as well, just barely managing to shake off his astonishment. “Well, I’d do anything for the old man.” Including keeping his daughter from getting herself killed. “Of course you’ve got my help.”
Clever as she was, he doubted the lady investigator had any real idea of the sort of people she was dealing with. Only the worst of the worst attended the Bacchus Bazaar.
But if he had this one chance left to do something good, maybe even save his soul, he’d keep her safe. Keep her out of her own investigation as much as possible . . .
Meanwhile, she held his gaze with a sweet, girlish blush filling her cheeks, relief easing into her blue eyes. “Oh, thank you! I was so hoping you’d say that. It’s a lot to take on by oneself.”
“I know,” he answered softly.
“I’ll go get the guard,” she said. “Let’s get you of there, shall we?”
He nodded. When she turned away, Nick stared after her, still entirely astonished.
Well, so much for bedding her, he thought wryly after a moment. He had enough problems without also being haunted from beyond the grave by her father’s angry ghost.