Mission_Improper
Page 19
Gemma winced. “I’d continue sparring, but I
don’t think I have the temper for it this morning.”
The baroness smiled, and Ingrid realized the
two of them knew each other quite intimately.
“Meeting in two hours," the Baroness said to
Ingrid. "We need to discuss what to do about the
Ulbricht situation.”
“Kidnap him?” Ingrid suggested.
“Kindly ask him to provide more detail about
this SOG?” Gemma added.
Ava frowned. “That sounds like torture to
me.”
“Ulbricht’s a powerful lord,” the baroness
replied. “I’m not suggesting anything until
Malloryn approves it.” She glanced at Ingrid. “Do
you know where Byrnes is?"
"Probably at the Guild."
"Then find him," the baroness said.
"As you wish," Ingrid muttered to her back.
She looked around. "I suppose I've been given my
marching orders."
"Good luck,” Gemma called. “Byrnes looked
like he went home in a hurry last night. Something
you said?”
The last thing she needed was the rest of the
company thinking there was something going on.
Ingrid forced a smile. Malloryn would be certain
to hear of it then. “Probably. But then, with Byrnes,
it often doesn’t take much.”
HE WASN'T difficult to track from the Guild.
Blue bloods might have no personal scent, but
they absorbed the scents surrounding them. Byrnes
was leather, steel, and oil, with the faintest hint of
the cinnamon he sometimes chewed. That scent
was engraved on her skin, on her memory. Ingrid
growled under her breath as she stared up at the
building in front of her.
She'd never have thought it to be here.
Ingrid found him in the third room along the
top floor of Miss Appleby's Home for the Elderly.
Or more specifically, she tracked him there by his
voice, which was strangely soft and lyrical,
reading some sort of romantic comedy about a Mr.
Darcy. She'd never considered his to be the kind of
voice one could listen to for hours, but as she
paused by the door she heard something there she'd
never heard before. Warmth, perhaps. A trace of
gentleness, as if he'd let down his armor, revealing
hints of the man within. It reminded her of the way
her mama had read to her as a child before she
went to bed.
The door was cracked. She almost didn't hear
the soft footsteps approaching until the door
spilled open and Byrnes stared out at her, still
reading.
Their eyes met, his blue and cool, and
narrowing faintly. There was a much-loved book in
his hands, and she couldn't stop herself from
peering past him.
Ingrid caught a glimpse of blankets and a bed,
and a frail hand resting upon the covers, and then
Byrnes stepped forward, shielding the occupant
from view.
"What are you doing here?" he whispered.
"I followed you."
"Clearly."
Frustration surged. "The baroness requested
your presence for a meeting with Malloryn."
"Tell him I'm occupied." His mouth thinned to
hard lines. "Go home, and—"
"Hello?" called a frail voice. "Hello?"
Byrnes paled and swore under his breath.
Then he shot her a look so severe that she almost
stepped back. "Keep your voice lowered, and don't
make any sudden movements. And for God's sake,
if you tell anyone about this I will wring your
bloody neck."
Swinging the door open, he gestured her
inside. "My mother," he breathed, before raising
his voice. "Moira?"
Mother? Ingrid's gaze shot to him in shock.
At first glimpse, the woman in the bed was
much older than she'd expected. Long white hair
streamed over her shoulders, and she wore a
blank, faded expression, her mouth hanging slightly
open.
"She doesn't like loud noises, or new
experiences," Byrnes warned. "It scares her."
"Is she—?"
"Moira," he greeted, easing his hip onto the
bed and taking the older lady's hand. "You have
another visitor. This is my friend. Ingrid."
The very idea that sardonic, sarcastic Caleb
Byrnes could be this gentle was like discovering
that a vampire could tuck its child into bed
tenderly. Knock me over with a feather.
Heart pounding in her ears, Ingrid summoned
a smile. "Hello, Mrs. Byrnes. It's a pleasure to
meet you."
The old lady gaped at her, and Ingrid realized
that she wasn't that old after all. Worry had etched
those sharp lines around her eyes, and her slack
mouth spoke of an oft-broken jaw, not feebleness.
"She won't reply." Byrnes cracked the book
open, finding the passage where he'd been reading
and resuming in a soft voice that was almost
hypnotic. "...I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr.
Darcy has no defect...."
"WHY DON'T you call her 'mother'?"
Byrnes scowled, thrusting his hands into the
pockets of his coat as he stepped off the curb and
negotiated the busy London traffic. "Quite frankly,
it's none of your business."
Ingrid's lips pressed together, and he realized
he'd made a mistake. Catching her wrist before she
could turn to go, he stared down into those bronze
eyes. "I don't like talking about her," he admitted,
and even that admission scraped him raw. "Now
come on, let's get this over with."
"Byrnes!" A hand reached for the edge of his
coat.
He kept walking, but it came again, and
reluctantly he stopped. He wasn't entirely certain
why he felt so angry. Perhaps it was the
reappearance of Debney into his life, scratching
the scabs off old wounds and reminding him of a
past best left hidden. Perhaps it was his mother's
inevitable decline. She hadn't even recognized him
this morning. He was losing her. Inch by inch,
memory by memory. The nurses all claimed that his
mother knew him, but every time he visited, his
mother greeted him with a “Hello, dear,” that
sounded like a familiar greeting, until one realized
she said the same thing to everyone.
Even him.
His mother couldn't remember his name.
Hesitant bronze eyes came into view, framed
by wisps of hair that had fallen loose from her
ruthless chignon. Ingrid. Who threw him into
turmoil with just her mere presence.
It was all part of it; this maelstrom of emotion
that knotted him up tightly.
"Fancy a walk along the Thames?" she asked.
"We have to meet with Malloryn."
She hesitated. "You're right. But we've got a
half hour, and this won't take us too far out of our
way. And I think this is important. You're not
thinking clearly at the moment. I know how it feels
when emotion overpowers you."
"I'm not emotional."
"You're angry." Those dangerous eyes
watched him, but there was no judgment there.
Byrnes swore under his breath, raking a hand
through his hair.
"You need to have your wits about you if
we're dealing with vampires and who knows what
else. Come." Her fingers curled through his.
"Come and walk with me."
And God help him, he went.
"I COME HERE when I want to think," Ingrid told
him, pausing along the banks of the ruins of
Westminster and turning to face the Ivory Tower
that ruled the city.
The marble gleamed in the weak morning
sunlight, hurting Byrnes's eyes a little with its
brightness. Once upon a time, it had been a symbol
of brutish oppression, a sign of the power the
prince consort had wielded over the humans,
mechs, and rogue blue bloods of London. Now it
was a sign of hope. Or it was supposed to be.
Byrnes felt nothing as he stared at it, but there
was something about Ingrid's hushed confession
that drew his gaze back to her. The light gilded her
face too, but he had more interest in staring at the
soft curve of her rosy lips and the honeyed slant of
her cheekbones than at any stone monolith. "Why
here?"
"It reminds me of them," she replied with a
quiet yearning.
"Who?"
"My parents," Ingrid whispered, still staring
up at the Tower, as if lost in memories from long
ago.
And he was suddenly struck with a sense of
uneasy kinship. Ingrid was verwulfen and of all the
species that inhabited Britain, they had been
persecuted the most, for they alone had the strength
and power to overwhelm a blue blood. Hundreds
of verwulfen had been slaughtered at Culloden by
the Echelon's war machines, and they'd been kept
as slaves or in cages as curiosities ever since.
He'd never asked where she came from, or
what her life had been like. Ingrid never showed
even a hint of vulnerability, but it was there now,
and it made him uncomfortable.
"This was where the raiders who stole me
from my parents brought me ashore," she told him,
wrapping her arms around her middle. "I don't
know how old I was. Rosa thinks that I was
perhaps five, though verwulfen children grow
larger than others." She glanced up at the Tower
again, her voice lowering. "I just remember feeling
terrified. I didn't know where my parents had gone,
or why these strangers had taken me. They'd run me
down in the snow near my home, and chained me,
taking me aboard their ship and delivering me
here. My father had been out hunting with me that
day. I-I don't know what happened to him."
He felt ill. "Ingrid—"
"There was a market here," she said,
gesturing about the stone cobbles. An Egyptian
obelisk peered down at them. "They were selling
all manner of things: screaming monkeys, beautiful
macaws, parrots who swore like sailors, a pair of
snarling baby leopards who smelled as terrified as
I felt." With a swallow, Ingrid met his gaze, her
own eyes suspiciously shining. "And I was in a
cage right next to them. I kept stroking one of the
leopards through the bars, for she was so scared.
So little. I wanted to let her know that it would be
all right, but it wasn't—"
"Ingrid."
"And that was when Lord Balfour appeared.
He sat astride this enormous horse, and he peered
down at me with such coldness that if felt like my
heart stopped. And then he bought me for a hundred
pounds." With a fractured laugh, her gaze danced to
his. "I can remember every inch of what Balfour
looked like that day; the imperious hook to his
nose; those black, emotionless eyes; the cut of his
black coat, and the gold serpents embroidered
there. But I can barely recall my mother's face. I
don't remember my father either—"
"Ingrid, stop." Byrnes caught her hands,
stepping closer. He couldn't stand much more of
this. Their eyes met. "Why are you telling me of
this?"
There was a raw, hunted look in her eyes. "I
took some of your privacy from you. And you were
angry. I just thought... if you understood where I
came from.... I would never cause any hurt to your
mother, or—"
"I'm not angry with you." Byrnes's gaze
dropped to the way his thumbs were stroking her
leather-clad knuckles.
"You were."
"No. I'm just...." With a muttered curse word,
he turned away, facing the Thames. "I wasn't
expecting to see Debney the other night, and my
mother's deteriorating, and... I can't do anything
about it. Nobody can. The doctors call it dementia,
and say that it’s just age taking its toll upon her,
but... it feels like I'm burying my mother, day by
day." The words were raw, harsh. Their admission
ripped his chest open. "Her body is still there. Her
heart still beats, but my mother's gone. She's just a
shell, a marionette now."
"Byrnes." A soft hand touched his back. A
hesitant hand. "She's young to be suffering from
dementia."
The words choked in his throat and died
there.
"I could see the scars," Ingrid whispered,
"and the lump on her jaw, and her nose—"
"That's enough." He burst away from her,
breathing hard, as memory assaulted him.
“Don't you ever tell me what I can do to my
own son,” his father bellowed in his mind, as he
lifted his clenched fist against her that last time.
If only Byrnes hadn’t roused his temper that
day. His mother would still be here.
No. No. He wasn't going there. Not today.
With a hard swallow, Byrnes forced himself to turn
back to Ingrid. "Her dementia is not natural," he
finally said, when he thought he could control
himself. "It's the result of years of being my father's
punching bag. The last time he hit her... he did
some sort of damage to her mind. The doctors
didn't think she'd wake, but eventually she did, two
weeks after she fell. They had to drill burr holes in
her skull to remove the pressure, and... she was
never the same. Not really. Sometimes you'd see
her in her eyes, but most of the time she was a
blank canvas, staring at nothing. It grew worse
over time. Now she has no idea who I am, or
where she is. Debney feels some sense of guilt, so
he pays her upkeep. I wouldn't take a shilling from
those pack of vultures, but damn it..." His nostrils
flared. "They owe her. I can't give her back her
mind, or all the years Lord Debney stole from her,
but I can force them to acknowledge what he did to
her."
"I'm sorry."
A hand slid over h
is. Byrnes looked down
sharply, then up at her face. Those amber eyes had
softened, and she stared at him with a haunted
expression that made all of his insides knot up.
Without saying a thing, he squeezed her hand.
And it felt so bloody right that he suffered a
moment of doubt.
"Have you ever tried to find your family?" he
asked, letting out another harsh exhale as the hard
lump in his throat threatened to overwhelm him.
"I tried. Last year.... That's what I needed the
money for, in that case we worked together."
It felt like a fist to the gut.
"I lied," she admitted. "I told Garrett and
Lynch that you were no help in finding the Vampire
of Drury Lane. I needed all of the bounty to
purchase my passage to Oslo, and to pay people
there for information." Her lips pressed tightly
together. "It was wrong of me—"
"No." He cut her off with a tight wave of his
free hand. "It was the truth. I let my arrogance and
my competitive nature affect my case. You did all
of the hard work. You found the bastard, and hence
you earned the bounty."
"But your mother," Ingrid protested. "I saw
the Home. It has to cost you a significant sum. I
hate the thought that I took money you needed, for a
fool's quest."
"Debney set up a trust for her years ago.
Don’t worry about it."
The cool breeze stirred strands of her honey-
brown hair across her forehead, and for a moment
he was tempted to brush them back behind her ear.
"You look thoughtful," he said instead.
"I was just thinking that we seem to have a
few things in common," she replied. "It explains a
great deal about you."
"Such as?"
"Why you always seem so aloof," Ingrid said.
"I'm not always aloof." And now he was
thinking of last night, of all the things he'd admitted
to her. She'd been flushed with heat and relaxed,
the smell of too much brandy on her breath. Ingrid
in a state of flirtatious relaxation was a dangerous
thing.
"True," she admitted. "Sometimes you play
nice."
"When I want something."
"You're holding my hand right now, Byrnes,
and I don't think it's because you want something."
Her gaze turned thoughtful. "Why is it so difficult
for you to admit to the gentler emotions?"
Hell. There was no answer to that. He'd
shared enough today. And that itch was back:
irritation making him shift. "It's not difficult," he
argued. "But you seem to think that I've felt them