by Zoë Archer
“She got a man?” he asked.
Frowning, Simon lowered the magazine. “Eva’s private life is her own.”
“So,” Jack said, raising one eyebrow, “you don’t know.”
“Of course I know. As much as she tells me,” Simon added on a mutter.
“Keeps herself close.” Jack watched as the tailor continued to make adjustments on his clothing, little nips and tucks whose purpose only Olney seemed to understand.
“Trying to get her to open?” Now it was Simon’s chance to lift a brow. “I’ve news for you, Dalton: it won’t work. Eva’s the toughest woman I know. Hell, she’s the toughest person I know, male or female.”
“Someone hurt her,” Jack guessed. “Someone in her past.” The thought made his fists clench with the need to beat the bastard, whoever he was.
“Nothing so melodramatic. She simply…” He shrugged. “She doesn’t trust many people. That’s how she’s always been. The most unsentimental woman I’ve ever met. Won’t form intimate attachments.”
It sounded very much to Jack as though it meant Eva didn’t have a man. Which made him glad, indeed.
“You tried, though,” he said. God knew that if Jack worked side-by-side with her, day after day, he’d try to form an intimate attachment. Hell, he’d only known her for less than a week, and he couldn’t stop wondering about the taste of her lips, the texture of her skin. His nights had become damned restless because of her.
Just because she kept everyone at arm’s length didn’t mean she lacked desire or passion. He’d seen it, felt it. But she couldn’t keep it buried forever.
Simon straightened, tugging on his coat. “I might have. But she rightly pointed out that people who work together oughtn’t mix the personal and professional.”
Jack snorted. “Maybe it’s on account of her type not being polished toffs. Maybe she needs someone a bit more rough around the edges.” He studied himself in the mirror, in his strange piecemeal evening clothes.
“Dalton, if you were any more rough, you’d be serrated.” Simon’s reflection appeared in the mirror behind Jack. They couldn’t be more different, him and the fair-haired nob. Even the easy way Simon wore his perfectly tailored, fashionable clothes showed how unalike they were.
Jack never let himself feel ashamed or small because of his low background. He couldn’t change the particulars of his birth. Nobody picked who their mother was going to be, whether she was a genteel lady or a whore. Far as he could tell, there wasn’t much difference between either. Both were just women. Neither good nor bad.
Fathers were even more unpredictable. He didn’t know who his was, and neither had his ma. Could’ve been a navvy who dug trenches to build roads, could’ve been a lord looking for cheap pleasure far away from Mayfair’s knowing eyes. Whoever he was, he never knew that his one night with Mary Dalton eventually brought Jack into the world.
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was who Jack was now.
He’d spent the past five years wanting only one thing—to destroy Rockley. That hadn’t gone away. But a new fire burned within him, just as bright.
He desired Eva. Wanted her to want him.
Uncharted territory, this. She might not fancy him. Could give him the cold shoulder. That’d be a bad business.
He’d just have to make sure she wanted him in her bed.
Looking into his own eyes, he vowed that he would succeed in all his goals.
* * *
Jack had faced off in the ring against Iron Arm McInnis, a bruiser with a 35–0 record. He’d taken on three blokes armed with knives and broken bottles in an alley brawl. Hell, he’d confronted the possibility of death or imprisonment as he’d walked, manacled, into the courtroom.
His heart beat harder now than it ever had. He thought it would burst through his chest, right through the starched shirtfront he wore.
Pacing around the parlor in the Nemesis headquarters, he kept checking the clock on the mantel. She’d be here any moment.
He started to rake his hands through his hair.
“Don’t!” Marco yelped. “You’ll get pomade all over your gloves.”
Jack’s hands paused in midair, then he slowly lowered them. “Never going to get used to this,” he muttered. Pomade slicking his hair back, white gloves, starched collars and shirtfronts. Slick-soled shoes that gleamed like ebony mirrors. The kind of clothes worn by the upper crusters he’d see through doorways, windows. Not his own sort.
“You don’t have to get used to it,” Lazarus said, sitting beside the fire. “It’s only for tonight.”
Right. It was a disguise, meant only to get him into the ball at some gentleman’s house, where he’d find Gilling. And then, they’d proceed with the next step of their plan.
Many things could go wrong tonight. He could be barred from getting into the ball. Gilling might not be there. Or Gilling would be there and shout the house down the moment Jack made his move. The investigation against Rockley could collapse, leaving them with nothing and no means of bringing him down.
But what truly made Jack’s skin feel tight with nerves, what made his heart pound, was thinking about what Eva might do when she saw him in his new evening clothes. Would she laugh at him, say something snide about stuffing a bear into silk and wool? It oughtn’t matter what she thought. Yet it did.
Footfalls sounded on the stairs. A man’s and a woman’s. She was here. Simon had gone to fetch her, and now he was back. With her. Their muted voices came through the door.
Jack stopped his pacing and stood in the middle of the parlor. He felt big and ham-fisted, uncertain. But his chin rose and he pulled his shoulders back when the door opened and Eva appeared.
She stopped abruptly, causing Simon to nearly collide with her. When she didn’t move any further, Simon sidled around her and into the flat. But what the blond toff did after that, Jack had no idea. All he saw was Eva.
He felt as though someone had punched him in the chest. Hard. He couldn’t speak or breathe. Could only stare.
She wore a dress of shiny golden fabric, with dark blue velvet ribbons along the low neckline and trimming the ruffles of her skirts. Golden beads glittered on the front of her gown. She’d put fresh flowers in her elaborately pinned hair, roses with pale yellow petals. The dress left the slopes of her shoulders exposed, and even in the harsh gaslight, her skin gleamed like a pearl. Long white gloves came to just above her elbows, and the skin of her upper arms was just as gleaming as her neck and shoulders. Her neck was bare, but she wore a glittering pair of earrings that caught the light with each turn of her head.
It wasn’t the fanciest dress he’d ever seen—the ladies from the other night had had more ruffles and bows and beads—but, by God, he’d never seen any woman look more beautiful.
“I see”—she cleared her throat when her words came out in a rasp—“Olney managed to get your suit ready in time. He did an … excellent job.”
There wasn’t a full-length mirror in the flat, and Olney had delivered the evening clothes. Jack had caught glimpses of himself in some of the smaller glasses but he had no idea what he looked like once he’d put everything on.
Judging by the way Eva looked at him now, he looked like a juicy steak, and she was starving.
Her gaze moved over him, and he felt it as surely as if she’d taken off her gloves and run her hands up and down his body. Her appreciative look lingered on his shoulders, then traveled lower, down his chest, and lower still. She wet her lips. In response, his cock thickened, snug against the wool. He clenched his teeth to keep from groaning aloud.
If he’d felt awkward before, now manly confidence surged through him. He liked the way she stared at him. An improper look if ever there was one. And the ideas spinning through his head weren’t proper, either. They were downright indecent.
Did she have silken drawers on underneath that gown? Were they white, pale blue? Trimmed with ribbons or plain? He wanted to grab up big handfuls of her golden skirts and find out.
“What a pretty gown,” Harriet said, coming out of the kitchen. She approached Eva and tugged playfully on the narrow band of her sleeve. “What on earth are you doing with it?”
Pink crept into Eva’s cheeks. “It was an indulgence. I’ve no real need for it.”
“You do tonight.” Harriet glanced back at Jack, who still couldn’t move or get his mind to function, and winked. “If a gown could be a weapon, yours is a Gatling gun.”
Jack felt more like he’d been knocked clean off his feet by a sledgehammer.
“When are we going to see you in something like that, Harridan?” Lazarus chuckled.
“Be grateful that you won’t,” she fired back. “Because if you did, you’d expire of ecstasy on the spot.”
Simon held up a printed card. “Present this invitation to the butler, and you’ll be permitted entry. Be very careful not to lose it.”
Eva took the card and examined it. “This must be a valuable commodity. How did you obtain it?”
“It’s the art that appears not to be art,” the blond man answered. “Sprezzatura, the Italians call it.”
Marco grimaced. “Your pronunciation is abominable.” He repeated the Italian word, and even Jack had to admit it sounded like music when spoken by Marco.
“That card might get you in the door,” Simon counseled, “but once you’re inside, the rest is up to you.” He looked at Jack pointedly. “Genteel behavior is essential.”
For all Simon’s helping Jack with the fitting, it was plain that he still didn’t trust Jack. Suited him just fine. He didn’t trust Simon, either.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Here I was planning on having a belching contest in the middle of the dance floor.”
“Next time,” Eva said. She looked at the clock, and again Jack was struck by the slim curve of her throat. He hadn’t missed the swells of her breasts, either, the tops just visible at the dipping neckline of her gown. Nice handfuls they’d be, soft and full. He ached to touch them, to hold them, to tease her nipples into tight beads.
Damn it. At this rate, he’d be strutting around the ball with a cockstand all night. He needed to get control of himself and his thoughts.
“It’s just nine now,” she said. “The dancing’s already begun, which means it’s the perfect time for us to arrive.”
He was starting to know the ways of polite society, and stuck out his arm for Eva before she had to ask. What was it the gentry said? Ah, that’s right. “Shall we, my lady?”
“Oh, we shall.” She rested her hand on his arm, and smiled up at him. He felt dizzy. “Time to infiltrate the serpent’s nest.”
* * *
Eva took one step. Then another. Slowly, slowly, she and Jack ascended the stairs outside Lord Chalton’s ball. They were sandwiched between guests waiting to present their invitations to the butler. Music and light spilled out the door, combining with the chiming of flutes of champagne and equally bubbling conversation. Within minutes, she would show the butler her invitation and come up with identities for herself and Jack. She’d worked something out earlier in the day, and rehearsed it to herself in the carriage ride over, but she hoped her cover story held beneath the butler’s imperious stare. The upper servant could have her and Jack tossed out onto the curb if he so desired, invitation or no invitation.
Her pulse raced and her palms dampened her gloves as she and Jack went up another step. The woman standing in front of them continued throwing glances over her shoulder, the plumes in her hair bobbing with each movement. Compared to the splendor of the woman’s Ottoman silk and velvet gown, Eva’s ensemble was almost austere, and she stiffened beneath her regard. But it wasn’t Eva’s simple gown that kept drawing the woman’s gaze. It was Jack.
Had the plumed woman’s escort known the way she looked at Jack, he would have been mortified, if not livid. Eva herself wanted to throw her gloved fist into the woman’s face.
Yet she couldn’t blame the plumed lady’s interest. In his evening finery, Jack looked … dangerous. The severe black-and-white of his clothing, the excellent cut of his coat across his wide shoulders, and the fit of his trousers over his long, muscled legs—all of it emphasized how very wild he truly was. Evening clothes only highlighted the difference between him and all the other elegantly attired men waiting to attend the ball.
His dark hair had been tamed and slicked back, revealing the hard contours of his face—square jaw, crooked nose attesting to his life as a fighter, heavy brow. Though his lips were somewhat thin, their curves hinted at carnality.
A rough man in evening dress. She’d never seen anything more arousing.
Keep alert, she reminded herself sharply. They were here for the mission.
Difficult to remember that when Jack kept looking at her with blatant hunger. She didn’t feel quite so plain in her simple gown when he did that.
At last, they reached the top of the stairs. The butler held out his hand, and Eva gave him the invitation.
“Your name, madam?”
Monarchs would cower at the butler’s haughty tone.
Summoning her own hauteur, she sniffed. “Mrs. Eloise Worthington, of the Northumberland Worthingtons.”
The butler glanced at Jack, who glowered back.
“And this is Mr. John Dutton,” Eva said. “The cattle magnate from Australia.”
The butler studied him. Beneath her hand, Jack’s muscles tensed as if preparing to knock the butler flat. Gently, she squeezed his arm in silent communication. They’d agreed ahead of time that he would speak as little as possible. Since he seemed comfortable with silence, he’d agreed, but she hadn’t extracted a promise from him not to hit someone.
After an excruciating pause, the butler waved toward the staircase behind him. “Supper has already been served. Dancing is in the ballroom at the top of the stairs. Good evening.”
She and Jack moved on. They crossed the threshold and stood in the vaulted foyer, where footmen relieved Jack of his coat and hat and took Eva’s wrap.
She sent Jack a meaningful glance, which he returned. They’d done it. Gotten past the first obstacle. But they hadn’t crossed the Rubicon.
He offered her his arm again, and together they ascended the curving stairs that led to the ballroom.
“Why Australia?” he said in a low voice.
“Much of that country was settled by transported convicts.” She shrugged. “It would stand to reason that someone of your physique might be their descendant.”
“If I have to talk to someone,” he pointed out, “they’ll know I’m English.”
“Most of these people have as much experience with Australia as they do Bethnal Green.”
“None,” he said.
“Exactly.” They reached the landing, and followed the trail of guests and music toward a set of wide double doors that stood open. In wordless understanding, they both paused and took a breath. Then stepped into the ballroom.
“Bloody buggering hell,” Jack breathed.
“Agreed,” Eva murmured.
While not as large as the Beckwiths’ ballroom, the chamber was still impressive in its size. White and gilt columns rose up toward a coved, equally gilded ceiling, from which hung crystal chandeliers that hurt the eye with their brilliance. The parquetry floor shone like a mirror, reflecting back the forms of men and women in their evening best. Liveried footmen bearing trays of champagne stood against the walls, as much part of the furniture as the upholstered chairs placed for wallflowers and dowagers.
Everywhere was a sea of black wool, lustrous silks, and jewelry that twinkled like the unfeeling stars. Some men wore military uniforms, drawing young girls in white like a plate of cakes. Conversation draped over the chamber. Long patrician vowels mixed with the gliding strings provided by the orchestra. A screen of potted palms had been placed at the farthest end of the chamber, discreetly concealing the musicians.
“Smell that?” Eva drew a deep breath, and Jack did the same.
“Beeswax. Sparkling wine.” H
e breathed in again. “Soap and starch.”
“Privilege.”
When a footman passed by with his tray of champagne, Jack grabbed two glasses. Despite his genteel gloves, the flutes looked tiny and fragile in his hands.
She sipped at her champagne and was relieved to see that Jack did the same rather than gulp it down.
“I don’t see Gilling,” she said. She’d studied a picture of him earlier to familiarize herself with his appearance. “Let’s take a turn around the room.”
They moved through the guests milling at the edges of the chamber. She made certain to nod regally at those they passed, trying to convey with only her bearing that she belonged here as much as anyone. It was like wearing someone else’s face, someone else’s body. Yet she must have been reasonably successful, for no one sneered at her, and she even received some polite nods in return. Murmurs of speculation trailed after her and Jack. In the narrowly defined world of the elite, new faces were bound to incite interest.
She saw more than a few ladies gazing at Jack avidly. Her response was an icy stare. But why should the other women’s interest bother her? She’d no claim on him. Not in the slightest. Yet it sparked a cold fury when a particularly pretty brunette in rose-hued taffeta gave Jack a look of blatant invitation.
To his credit, his gaze never lingered anywhere. Not on any thing or person. He was at all times watchful, assessing. And when a gentleman or two spent a little longer gazing at her, Jack’s glower had the men hurriedly looking away.
“What’s going on between Lazarus and Harriet?” Jack asked abruptly. “The two of ’em snipe at each other regular as the bells of St. Paul’s.”
She chuckled softly. “It’s obvious to everyone that they fancy each other, but they’re both too bullheaded to admit it.”
“Where’s the harm in it?”
“It’s not a good idea for Nemesis operatives to become romantically involved. But I also believe they’re afraid.”