by Zoë Archer
Dalton smirked. “Think you could?”
“Consider everything we’ve done tonight,” she said. “What we’re capable of.”
His nostrils widened, his lips compressing. Yes, he understood exactly how Nemesis operated. They had him well and truly trapped. And he didn’t like it.
She couldn’t blame him. Her own life had followed a course of her own choosing for that very reason. Freedom was a rare delicacy for most women. Sacrifices had to be made in order for her to taste that delicacy. She never regretted those sacrifices, for the end result was infinitely better.
Dalton had been imprisoned, and now Nemesis had him caught once more. No one would care for the circumstances, and a man such as him would chafe like a wild bull beneath the yoke.
“Say all this works, say we do bring Rockley down, I’d better get something in return.”
“You’re in no position to make threats, Dalton,” Simon clipped.
Hostility snapped between the two men like a whip.
Though she seldom played the role of peacemaker, she had to diffuse the tension before Simon and Dalton began to throw punches. “You might get a chance to start over.” She added quietly, “And justice for Edith.”
Dalton became as mute and still as a mountain. As forbidding as one, too. How would they ever control him? He had broken himself out of prison for the chance to kill Rockley, a feat few could achieve. The irony almost made her laugh. By proving he was exactly the man Nemesis needed, he had also proven he would not easily submit.
The train began to slow, and the conductor walked past, calling the name of the stop.
As the station slid into view, she and the others eyed the platform, searching for waiting police. The only people standing on the platform were a few weary travelers and an old woman with a battered pram. Instead of a baby, however, the pram held paper-wrapped bundles. Pies. Passengers stepped out of the stopped train to buy pies from her, tearing into them before they even got back onto the train. Not everyone could afford the dining car, and it was likely closed at this hour.
Eva pulled a handful of coins from her reticule and handed them to Simon. “I think we could all use something to eat.” She nodded toward the old woman.
He stood, but not before grumbling and giving her a sour look. Marco chuckled as Simon hopped off the train.
Dalton drummed his fingers on his knee, his gaze vigilant.
When Simon returned, he carried an armful of pies, all but throwing them into everyone’s laps. “Hope everyone likes mutton. If you don’t, too bloody bad.”
“What excellent service,” said Marco.
“And so courteous,” she added.
Still scowling, Simon unwrapped his meal and took a bite. “Sod off,” he said deliberately through his food. He accompanied this charming request with a spray of crumbs.
After the stationmaster made a final announcement, the train pulled from the station.
Marco dug into his food, and she pulled open the paper to break off pieces of savory pastry. As she nibbled, her gaze kept straying to Dalton. The pie looked like a fairy cake in his large hands, and he stared at it.
Longing gleamed in his eyes.
Prison diets didn’t include mutton pies. At best, a convict could hope for a few ounces of boiled meat thrice a week, maybe a bit of cheese. The rest of their food was gruel, tough bread, and potatoes. With a diet so austere, a mutton pie would look like a dish straight from the queen’s own table.
So why wasn’t he eating it?
His gaze kept darting to Marco and Simon. Not precisely as if he were afraid they’d take his food, but distinctly uncomfortable with their presence. Oddly, he didn’t look at her. Just the other men.
She sifted through her memory for some clue as to why Dalton couldn’t allow himself to eat, no matter how much he wanted to.
And then she understood why.
Slowly, she slid her foot across the floor, then nudged Marco’s boot. He frowned at her. In response, she flicked her gaze toward Dalton, back to Marco, then to the door of the compartment.
He raised a brow. Are you sure?
She nodded.
With a shrug, he stood. Herein lay one of the many benefits of working closely with the same people for several years. Words were often unnecessary.
Marco gave Simon a speaking glance. Another silent exchange, this time between the two men. Dalton watched it all, but said nothing. At last, Simon relented, and also got to his feet. He followed Marco out of the compartment, but not without sending Eva a look weighted with significance.
Poor Simon. He’d been brought up to think women were delicate, fragile creatures that had to be sheltered and protected like so much china bric-a-brac. Decades later, with ample evidence to the contrary, he still struggled.
Simon and Marco drifted down the passageway, carrying their dinners. They had left the door to the compartment open.
Dalton stared at her. “How’d you know?”
“I read reports about prisons. Before we—”
“Baited me to break out.”
That was the truth, and she didn’t feel the smallest twinge of embarrassment. “If Nemesis planned on employing you, we needed to get a sense of where you’d been, how you’ve been living.” She glanced down at the wrapped pie. “Convicts eat alone in their cells.”
Five years had passed since he had eaten in anyone’s presence. It would take more than a few hours to break him of the habit.
“I can’t leave you here alone, though,” she said. He could try to escape.
He shook his head. “It’s different with a woman.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “I should hope so.”
Slowly, as if uncovering a forgotten treasure, he unwrapped the pie. His fingers stilled. Without looking up, he muttered, “Thanks.”
A single word, reluctantly given. Yet her heart contracted sharply. She tried to push away sentiment, for she had a job to do, and she’d do it well. She always did. His simple, unadorned gratitude touched her, though.
Working with Dalton was going to be far more challenging than she’d planned.
He moved to take a bite, but his gaze flicked back to her. She noticeably looked away, staring out the window. Yet the darkness outside and brightly lit interior made the window a mirror, and she watched him eat his first meal outside of prison.
With the first bite, his eyes closed. A groan echoed in his chest. A sound of deep, sensuous rapture.
Unexpected heat uncurled in her belly, settling between her legs. If she wasn’t watching him eat, she would have believed him in the throes of sexual ecstasy. The window’s surface reflected Simon’s concerned face as he peered into the compartment from the open door—and no wonder. Likely both he and Marco thought Dalton had her pinned beneath him, making up for five years of enforced celibacy.
But no, Dalton merely ate. Simon disappeared to allow him privacy, and Eva almost joined him. Yet she couldn’t move, couldn’t look away, her pulse a thick beat through her body.
She expected him to devour his food in a few quick gulps. Instead, he took his time with it, breaking off pieces of pastry as if to feel its texture, and licking his fingers slowly. Impossible for her to watch his tongue and lips without thinking of them on her.
Damn him, why couldn’t he behave only as a beast? Why did he have to reveal unforeseen depth of feeling and sensuality? How was she to deal with him, when he refused to conform to her fixed beliefs?
Despite his slow consuming of his meal, it was only one mutton pie, and he finished it with obvious reluctance. Before he could lick the paper, she said, “Have the rest of mine.”
He gazed at her, offended. “I’ll not grab food out of a woman’s hands.”
“The woman in question isn’t very hungry, and her food would go to waste otherwise.”
Though he had to still be ravenous, he didn’t move to take the offered pastry.
“Don’t be a prideful ass.” She held her food out to him. “Considerin
g how we’ve got you over a barrel, this can be some compensation.”
“A pie doesn’t make up for you lot blackmailing me.”
“It’s a start.”
He continued to stare at her until, finally, he took the food. Their fingers brushed as he did so. They had touched before, yet each new contact seemed to create new pathways of sensation, expanding farther and farther through her body.
She pulled back, her hands folding in her lap, and she fixedly stared out the window. This time, she did not watch him eat, but tried to pick out details from the night-swathed landscape rolling past the window.
“The canteen is still in Marco’s pack.” Were they close to Grantham yet? She hoped they were. Everything would become secure and orderly once they returned to headquarters.
She couldn’t stop herself from watching him drink. A few droplets of water ran down his chin and along his throat to disappear beneath the knotted neck cloth.
He replaced the canteen, but found the flask. His eyes met hers in the glass. The flash of his grin made heat move through her all over again—brutal thugs didn’t grin like scoundrels, full of wicked intent. This one did.
He took a pull from the flask and gave an expressive shudder. “Even on Rockley’s penny, I never had liquor like this.”
“Marco enjoys fine spirits.”
“Here’s to Marco, then.” He raised the flask before taking another drink. Then he capped the flask and returned it to the pack. She had expected him to down the whole thing.
“Without offering a drink to the lady?” She gazed at him severely.
His eyebrows rose. “Didn’t think ladies liked spirits.”
“This lady does.” She held out a hand.
He passed her the flask, and watched with naked fascination as she uncapped it and took a good, long swallow. She couldn’t remember appreciating a drink more. The grappa burned like redemption.
“I’ll be sure to remember Marco in my evening prayers.” He purchased grappa regularly from an importer, claiming that his Italian blood couldn’t tolerate coarse English whiskey. Ridiculous, particularly since she had witnessed him drain more than a few glasses of whiskey at the end of an especially difficult assignment.
After taking one more sip, she gave the flask back to Dalton.
At that moment, Marco and Simon returned to the compartment, closing the door behind them. Spotting his flask in Dalton’s hand, Marco scowled and snatched it away. It seemed to be a measure of Dalton’s improved humor that he didn’t plant his fist in Marco’s face.
“How does this Nemesis operation work?” he asked. “You run adverts in the paper: ‘Downtrodden? Want justice? Nemesis, Unlimited has all your vengeance needs. Find us at the corner of Dean Street and Fetter Lane.’”
Marco rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. We started finding clients just by keeping our ears to the ground, using our sundry connections to find out when someone was being wronged. After our first few cases, word spread. Former clients bring us new cases, and we still use our connections to find those in need of help. No advertising necessary.”
“Ever turn anyone down?”
“All the time,” Eva said. “Some people think Nemesis is their own personal bully squad. They want us to collect debts or throw acid in a rival’s face. But we work to obtain justice for those who have been truly wronged, we don’t deal out thuggery. Yet there’s always legitimate work for us, and we usually take on several cases at once.”
“Can’t imagine that these clients of yours pay handsomely.”
“We take small remuneration for our services,” she said, “but Nemesis is funded out of our own pockets.”
Dalton snorted. “Bad business model.”
“It’s not about the money.” Simon’s lip curled. “It never has been.”
Dalton looked patently skeptical. “Tell me what happens when we get to London.”
“We review options, devise strategies.” Simon neatly flicked back the tails of his coat as he took his seat. “Plan our course of attack.”
“Based on information that I give you. And then?”
“And then … Nemesis will do its job.”
“After that?” Dalton demanded.
“We can’t think beyond our immediate goals,” she said. “Otherwise, we lose focus.”
Dalton’s mouth curled. “No need for you lot to worry about the future. You don’t have the warders biting at your heels.”
“Earlier this evening,” she noted, “you seemed willing to die to get vengeance on Rockley. A few weeks of uncertainty is nothing by comparison.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. “This is why I don’t like mixing with clever people. They twist you around so much you don’t know your nose from your arsehole.”
“What an enchanting image.”
Silence pressed down in the compartment. They all seemed to run out of words, as though a tap had been opened and everything worth saying drained away.
She burned with impatience to reach headquarters so they might begin the next stage of their plan. The others must have felt the same way, all of them restive, legs crossing and uncrossing, knuckles cracking, fingers drumming on kneecaps or any available surface—the dozens of small yet irritating ways men channeled their pent-up energy.
Dalton seemed torn between restlessness and exhaustion. With his arms still folded over his chest, he kept glancing around as if anticipating an ambush. But then his eyes drooped shut. An instant later, he snapped them open, fighting sleep. Yet escaping from prison and a long chase across the moors had taken their toll. No matter how he struggled, sleep dragged on him.
At last, he could fight no more. His head tipped back, leaning against the seat. Dreams began at once, his dark eyelashes quivering. What did he dream of? Murdering Rockley, most likely. Or maybe he dreamt of his sister. The file contained only the most basic information: Dalton and his sister had different fathers, and their mother had died some time shortly after Edith’s birth. They had grown up in East London. At an unknown point, Edith had become a prostitute, Dalton a thief and then a bare-knuckle boxer in underground fights before finally being hired as a bodyguard by Rockley. Whether the siblings were close wasn’t covered in the report. Edith meant enough to her brother to warrant attempted murder.
Or maybe Dalton dreamt of someone else. A sweetheart, perhaps. He hadn’t said anything about a woman waiting for him, but that possibility couldn’t be ruled out. A man like Dalton wouldn’t want for female company. He’d be irresistible to any woman with a taste for danger. Almost every woman craved a dangerous man.
Not me. I’ve enough of it in my work. Don’t need it in my lovers.
Yet she watched him sleep, watched the softening of his face, and how, when he wasn’t scowling or cursing, his mouth verged on sybaritic.
A sharp jab in her side pulled her attention away from Dalton. Simon frowned at her.
“Be on your guard,” he whispered, throwing a significant glance toward Dalton.
“I’m always careful,” she whispered back.
“There’s a first time for everything.”
She made a hand gesture learned on the London docks. Yet the warning was a good one. If this mission failed, everyone in Nemesis would wind up either in prison or dead. The stakes were far too high to rely on something as fallible and easily fooled as the human heart.
CHAPTER FOUR
He didn’t trust anyone, least of all her. Jack watched Eva’s face as the train slowed, looking for any hint of what she might be thinking. She kept her expression so damn cool, though. She could be planning his murder or an afternoon tea. Either was a possibility. Her gaze stayed on the windows as the platform at King’s Cross Station slid into view. She and the two blokes kept themselves alert, wary. Jack did the same.
The bits of sleep he’d had on the ride had revived him. He no longer felt like his eyes were full of sand. So he stopped looking at Eva and stared out the window, too. Despite the lateness of the h
our, people milled on the platform, waiting for the train. No gang of coppers there to arrest him. He stayed cagey. The police could be lying in wait. If they thought he’d go down without a fight, they’d soon learn their mistake.
“Keep yourself easy.” Eva reached across the compartment and laid her hand atop his, startling him. Her fingers tried to pry his fist open. They couldn’t. “Act like an escaped convict, and that’s precisely what everyone will see.”
“Think I don’t know that?” he growled back. But he relaxed his hands. He felt a stab of disappointment when she took her hand away and smoothed it down the front of her skirts, as if to wipe away the feel of his skin.
The train stopped with a hiss. Marco, Simon, and Eva stood. Drawing a breath, Jack stood, as well. Simon moved out into the passageway and opened the door. He glanced up and down the platform, illuminated by hundreds of gaslights.
“We’re clear.” Simon placed his hand on his pocket and stared at Jack. “Make a break for it, and I’ll unload my gun into your back.”
“Keep threatening me,” Jack answered, “and I’ll feed you your goddamn gun through your arse.”
Scowling, Eva stepped between them. “The both of you, enough chest-beating. Our cab’s waiting.” She shouldered past Simon and stepped out onto the platform. Jack followed, giving Simon a glare and an extra shove with his arm as he moved past the blond toff. Jack had to give the bloke some credit, though. He didn’t move an inch when Jack shoved him, and Jack hadn’t been gentle. Strong, that one. Couldn’t trust a man like that.
The clock in the station declared it to be half past two in the morning. Only a few dozen people moved around the platform instead of the usual mobs waiting for trains to take them north. He’d been to King’s Cross a dozen times, maybe more. Even so, he hadn’t been in a huge train station in years. Unease gnawed on the back of his neck. The very size of the place made him edgy, with its massive vaulted ceiling. His too tight suit already made him feel squeezed. This made it worse, his heart pounding as if trying to force its way out of his chest.
“Let’s go.” Eva led the way down the platform, with Simon and Marco staying close at Jack’s heels.