by Gaelen Foley
He shrugged. “At least a little.”
“I can easily get you some help. I have a fellow, Haynes, retired Bow Street Runner who sometimes—”
“No.”
She stared at him. “He’s very capable.”
“Indeed?” he murmured with a bit of a leer.
“That’s not what I meant!” she shot back hotly, realizing the unspoken accusation in his answer. “You think I’m a real trollop, don’t you?”
“Takes one to know one,” he drawled.
Struggling for patience, she refused to be offended since it was clear the jackanapes was trying to make her angry. “Mr. Haynes is in his sixties, Lord Forrester. You, on the other hand, act like you’re about thirteen.”
He snickered.
She ignored it, jaw clenched. “So, I ask you again. How much trouble do you anticipate in procuring this game piece for me?”
“Nothing I can’t handle. Don’t worry, you’ll have it in your hand by this time tomorrow night. And then I guess that means our business together will have been concluded.”
“Yes,” she murmured warily.
That was their agreement. Still, vexing as he was, it was strange how quickly she had got used to having him around. “Where will you go when we’re finished? Have you got a place to stay?”
“Beauchamp’s house for a day or two, most likely. His wife was always kind to me. Well, at least she tolerates me.”
“The other Order wives don’t?”
“They don’t know me. And for my part, I don’t like strangers.”
“I see.” Gin mused on what she knew about their tight-knit little group. “Beauchamp seems a lot of fun,” she said at length.
Nick snorted wryly. “Most women think so.”
“Many ladies were quite crushed when he married Lord Denbury’s niece. We’ve never been introduced, but I’ve seen her now and then in the ton. She strikes me as a clever, lively, young woman. I’d like to meet them both sometime. I was never allowed to when my father was alive.” She looked at him expectantly.
But if she was hoping for Nick to take the hint and offer to do the introductions, she was dreaming.
He shrugged, slouching in his seat, his hands lightly clasped across his chiseled stomach. “Do as you like. They’re often enough in Society.”
Patience, patience, she told herself.
“Is there anyone you’d like to see in London?” she tried again a moment later while the moonlight slanted in through the carriage window and played across his sculpted face. “I’d be happy to take you about in my carriage. Any family you’d care to visit?”
He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.
“Come, there must be someone,” she persisted, unsettled by the undertone of bitter mockery in his low laugh.
Finally, Nick relented. “I don’t know,” he mumbled with a shrug, glancing out the window at the dark, silvered countryside. “A few friends, maybe. They’re rather sickening, though,” he remarked, staring wistfully into the distance. “Newlyweds. Babies on the way.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Sounds boring as hell to me, but if that’s what a man wants out of life, then bully for him.”
“What do you want out of life?” she pursued, out of curiosity.
He flashed a dark smile. “Out of life.”
“Nicholas, don’t say such things,” she chided in mild exasperation. “You don’t mean that. You could’ve killed yourself by now at any time if you really wanted to.”
“Eh, hope springs eternal.” He eyed her dubiously. “I ask you the same question: What do you want out of life?”
Gin considered the question for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t really care. As long as I can make my own decisions, I’m content.”
“You do like being in control, don’t you?” he murmured, studying her from the shadows.
“It’s better than being someone else’s pawn.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he answered dryly. “Do me a favor. Try not to overcontrol your son, or he’ll hate you by the time he’s twenty.”
“What? Phillip would never hate me! I’m his mother! He’s a good boy.” She scoffed. “What sort of blackguard hates his own mother?”
He just looked at her.
“Oh, dear.” She sat back as understanding dawned. “Why do you hate your mother?”
“I never said I did.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He shook his head. “I don’t hate her. I don’t understand her, that’s all.”
I don’t understand her, either, Gin thought. What sort of mother could hand her young son over to the Order?
In this case, to Virgil, in his role as Seeker.
A sense of gravity washed over her as she wondered if a part of Nick hated his beloved handler, too—the man who had recruited him for the Order when he was just a boy. The one perhaps most to blame for Nick’s early loss of his innocence. Virgil was gone now, so whatever buried anger Nick might still feel toward her father, maybe all he could do now was take it out on her in some small way.
And that made one thing very clear: It seemed there wasn’t going to be any lasting sort of bond between them, after all. It was a sobering realization, and rather made her heart hurt.
She let out a sigh, and for a long moment, they rode in silence, lulled by the clip-clopping beat of the horses’ hooves and the rolling sound of the wheels beneath them on the smooth, macadamized road.
At length, she looked at Nick inquiringly. “So you have no interest in continuing this quest with me once I’ve got the game piece?”
“Not really, no.” He sized her up with a keen stare. “Were you planning on forcing me to? Will you be changing the rules of our agreement midway through?”
“No, of course not.”
“Good.”
“But . . . you have many skills that ought not to go to waste. It’s a good cause. If you changed your mind, I’d make it worth your while.”
“Pardon?” he echoed, lifting his eyebrows with a wicked smile of innuendo.
She gave him an arch look. “I mean I’d pay you.”
“Oh,” he said with a show of mild disappointment, the rogue. “No thanks.”
She stared at him. “Hmm.”
“Hmm, what?”
She shrugged. “It’s just that I would’ve thought a man who spent as many years as you have fighting evil would’ve cared a little more about these poor abducted girls.”
“Well, life is sad.”
“Nick!”
“What? It happens all the time, this sort of thing. Cry about it every time, you’ll spend your life in tears.”
“So you really don’t care about them?”
“We’ve all got our problems. Don’t worry, I’m sure he’s got them on a ship somewhere headed for the Bacchus Bazaar, once they learn the location. They’re safe enough for now, I should think. As long as they don’t give him any trouble, they’re in no immediate danger, I assure you.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Nobody wants to buy a girl who’s starved thin and bruised purple. They’re his merchandise, this Rotgut fellow. He’s got a vested interest in treating them well. Plump and rosy, they’ll fetch a better price,” he added, “especially since most of the buyers are probably Turks.”
She stared at him in disbelief. Even though she realized he was only speaking in terms of how the slaver viewed his kidnapped girls, Nick’s callous indifference was more than she could stand. “Good God.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because I am starting to wonder if your time as a spy robbed you of all humanity and left you incapable of any human feeling!”
“Of course it did,” he answered coolly, staring at her. “What else did you exp
ect?”
“Oh, my God.” She shook her head in shock, then signaled her driver to halt.
When he did, she got out of the vehicle and slammed the door behind her, muttering “fiend” and climbing up to ride on the carriage roof.
Maybe he had only said those things to get rid of her, but she didn’t care. Better the starry chill of the late-autumn night than the bitter coldness of his heart.
This man was clearly beyond her power to save.
Good riddance.
“More room for me,” Nick said cynically, just loud enough for her to hear up on her perch among the luggage. “Heh.”
Well, he trusted he had succeeded in pushing her away for good this time.
Mission accomplished.
When she had gone, he folded his arms across his chest, stretched his legs out, crossed his ankles, and rested his feet on the bench across from him, which she had vacated.
He shut his eyes stubbornly and attempted to go to sleep. But his churning thoughts still roiled.
Daft woman. Really, what did she take him for, a monster?
He was not continuing this quest with her because he fully intended to handle the foul business alone.
It was much too dangerous for a woman. Being Virgil’s daughter did not change the fact that she was still a civilian.
The wilderness would just have to wait.
Somewhere along the way, or maybe from the very moment she had got him out of his dungeon cell, this quest to penetrate the vile, biannual Bacchus Bazaar and free those girls had become his mission, not hers.
As was proper.
Hell, Virgil would haunt him from beyond the bloody grave if he allowed his handler’s daughter anywhere near that twisted gathering.
No, she’d be staying home for this one.
She might not care enough about her own safety, but her son needed her alive and well. He’d take care of this himself.
It was as good as done.
The next day, they arrived at Gin’s smart London town house. Bleary-eyed from travel, she suggested they take a few hours to rest so they would be fresh for the late night ahead. They’d both have to be at their sharpest. By late afternoon, they were making their final preparations before finally setting off for the Topaz Room that night.
At last the hour had come: Midnight.
Gin was secretly rather amazed that she had got this far—that her plan was working. She had persuaded the graybeards to let her borrow Nick, and here they were, approaching the Topaz Room even now.
She should have a game piece in her hand before the dawn. And she had better. For the stakes were much higher than Nick had any idea.
She had no desire to tell him the rest of the story, especially since he was planning on leaving after this task was done. Maybe he’d have changed his mind if he knew about her father’s journal, but unpredictable as he was, it was impossible to guess how he might react.
The thought of John Carr’s treachery and the potential catastrophe quietly waiting in the wings to unfold made her shudder.
She thrust her secrets out of her mind for fear Nick might read them somehow in her eyes with his spy skills. Instead, she focused on the task at hand.
They were presently gliding across the Thames in a slow-moving ferry. A brisk night wind raked across the river, while the moon shone down on them like a malevolent eye. Nick sat in front of her, quiet and remote, tension thrumming through his big body.
She could see his readiness for battle in the broad lines of his shoulders as he leaned into the boat’s motion.
Ahead, twin lanterns marked out the riverside dock belonging to the Topaz Room, just as he had described.
The ferryman drew them on inexorably toward it, and the closer they got, the more Gin shivered with nerves and uncertainty.
The gambling hell was a brown brick building, quite plain from the outside. The lights glowing in the curtained windows reflected on the river’s streaming current.
“Is this the place?” asked Haynes, seated beside her.
Gin nodded. She had called in the retired Bow Street Runner despite Nick’s insistence that he didn’t need any help.
In his early sixties, the gruff, burly Liam Haynes was an experienced thief-taker and private investigator whom she sometimes hired to follow leads that she could not take on herself, for one reason or another.
She appreciated his experience in dealing with the criminal world. Haynes was armed to protect her if she needed it, as well, a gun concealed in the roomy pocket of his long, wool greatcoat.
Gin, likewise, had tucked a little silver pistol into her reticule, but neither of them were as heavily armed as Nick.
At last, the ferryman maneuvered his boat up to the private, wooden dock reserved exclusively for visitors to the casino. Other boats were moored along the creaking wooden dock for the same purpose, their bored, shivering pilots waiting to take passengers back to the north shore of the Thames when they wished to go.
Their ferryman managed to find a slip and tossed a loop of rope over a weathered upright post along the lanternlit dock. Then he nodded to them that it was safe to disembark.
Nick turned to Gin, his eyes blacker than the night; they glinted with savagery in the lanterns’ glow. “This won’t take long. Wait here.”
She gritted her teeth.
He started to climb out of the boat, then stopped, glancing over his shoulder. “What are you doing?” he asked as he noticed her right behind him.
“What do you think? I’m coming with you.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Oh yes, I am.”
“No,” he repeated crisply. “That’s not going to work. Lowell knows me. He doesn’t know you.”
“So? You’ll be my escort for the evening,” she replied in a blithe tone, taking his arm.
He glowered. “I don’t want you going in there. It’s not a place fit for a lady. Wait here in the boat. Haynes, keep her out of—”
“Excuse me! All right, you want to have this out?” she challenged Nick. “We both know what’s really going on here. You don’t want me to come because you’re still angry about what I said yesterday about Phillip. But, fine. Rather than let you jeopardize the mission with your mood, let me explain to you what I meant.”
“I know exactly what you meant,” he clipped out coldly. “So why don’t you sit back down with Mr. Haynes and let me go and do the job you got me out of prison for?”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she retorted while the startled wherrymen looked on. “I should just sit down, be quiet, and do as I’m told. After all, I am only a woman. Sorry, did you think you were in charge?”
Nick rolled his eyes skyward, beseeching heaven for patience.
Gin was not trying to be difficult. But she really had no choice. It was for Nick’s own safety and the sake of the mission that she had go on in there with him.
Only, she could not tell him why.
Obviously, she could not send the man into the Topaz Room alone, when the fact was, she had only told him half of what was really going on.
Before guilt over her deception could set in, she hiked up her skirts a bit and stepped past him out of the boat, climbing up onto the dock.
“Don’t worry, Lord Forrester. You won’t have to put up with me much longer. Just keep up your end of the bargain, and you can be on your way. In the meanwhile, I am not in the habit of sitting around like some docile little miss waiting for my big strong man to manage my affairs. We’re doing this together. This is my mission, lest you forget,” she added, turning back. “You’re just along to smooth the way and do the introductions. Now let’s go. Wait for us,” she ordered the ferryman, then she nodded farewell to Haynes and pivoted, her skirts swirling around her legs.
“Virginia!”
Behind her, sh
e heard a low curse, a creaking of wood, and a sloshing of water as Nick sprang out of the ferryboat and followed her.
The long, floating dock snaked and wobbled under their angry strides, but neither of them faltered as they marched toward solid ground.
Her heart pounded, but Gin did not look back.
A show of strength seemed imperative right now; she sensed that if she faltered in this key moment, he’d surely wrest control from her, and that she refused to allow.
“My lady!” he called sarcastically.
She refused to look back. “Come along, my dear!” Taking the same, stern tone she used on Phillip, she kept her stare fixed on the back door of the gambling hell. “I won’t get in your way. I just want to make sure the questions I need answered get asked properly.”
“You think I don’t know how to do my job?” he demanded as he approached from behind her.
“Don’t be tedious, of course I do. I just want to size up Mr. Lowell with my own two eyes.”
“Well, the size of him is sure to make a lasting impression,” he muttered. “Virginia, wait.” He grasped her arm above the elbow, turning her to face him. The lanterns’ dim illumination slid over his sleek black hair in shades of indigo and auburn; it limned his chiseled profile with a glimmer of gold as he glared at her. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Don’t I?” she replied archly.
“What vanity makes you imagine that an underworld kingpin is going to sit there and simply answer your questions—what, out of the goodness of his heart?”
She cocked her head to the side in defiance, but no ready answer came.
“Hugh Lowell rules like a fat, ruthless, little despot over his domain in there,” Nick informed her in a low tone, nodding toward the plain brick building. “There is no chivalry in him for you to exploit with your feminine wiles. So if you assume that you’ll just bat your lashes and charm him the way you did with the Order graybeards, you are deluded. Firstly, women are not his vice.
“Secondly, if they were, the upper floor above the gaming hell happens to be a bordello. He is surrounded day and night by beautiful girls, who are younger and a great more accommodating than you—”