by Zoë Archer
“Most of the time,” he continued, “we’re stuck in rented, smelly carriages for surveillance, crouched in alleyways, and hunkered in dark, rat-infested hovels.”
“You need to work on your recruiting skills.”
He stopped and faced her. Standing on a step higher than her, he looked even taller, more imposing. His expression was grim. “This is a one-time mission for you, Alyce.”
“I know that,” she said quickly, fighting to keep her cheeks from turning red. Hard not to feel like a chastised child when he spoke to her like that, damn him.
He took several steps down, so that their eyes were level. “Nemesis keeps its numbers small for a reason. The work is dangerous, and only meant for people willing to devote their lives to it. You’re here for one purpose, and when that’s done, we all go back to where we came from. You go back to an improved life.”
“That’s all I want,” she fired back. She glared at him. “What are we quarreling about?”
He grinned suddenly. “Hell if I know. Lack of sleep, I’d wager.” He tipped his head toward the ascending stairs. “We’ve got people waiting for us.”
As Alyce followed him up the steps, her heart began to pound, as if she were about to meet his family for the first time.
In a way, I am.
They finally reached the third story, and Simon stopped in front of the door marked 302. Instead of knocking, however, he scratched his fingers against the door in a pattern. One long scratch, then two short, then another long.
Footsteps muted by carpet sounded on the other side of the door. And then more scratches, this time from inside. Three short, one long. Simon answered with another pattern.
The door unlocked and was pulled open. Standing on the other side was a man with olive skin, black hair, and a neatly trimmed goatee. Aside from Simon, Alyce had never seen anyone with such perceptive eyes, as if he could pick a lock simply by looking at it. He held himself light on his feet, and if it weren’t for his expensive-looking dark suit, she would’ve sworn he was an athlete. His shoulders were broad, his limbs long and powerful.
Standing just behind him was a woman of middle years, striking in her appearance. Her skin was darker than the other man’s, a light brown that suggested she had mixed blood, and the sleekness of her hairstyle didn’t quite hide the slight kink in her hair. Her eyes were pale, however, and in the lamplight, sharp as cut agate. She had an air of biting intelligence and capability.
Neither of them were people Alyce would ever want to cross.
Nemesis.
* * *
Though Alyce’s first instinct was to move back when the olive-skinned man stepped aside to let her and Simon into the room, she walked inside. Both members of Nemesis watched her like falcons as she moved farther into the room.
“Any trouble getting here?” the man asked Simon.
“None. A damned easier train ride than when we dealt with Dalton.”
Alyce glanced around the hotel room, as cautious of the luxury as if it could bite her. The chamber in which they now stood appeared to be some kind of sitting room or parlor, with a fine mahogany desk, upholstered chairs and a sofa, and its own fireplace. A door joined the parlor to a bedchamber, and from what she could see of it, it contained a large brass bed and painted wooden cabinet. If she’d been able to take the two rooms of her house in Trewyn and lay them side to side, they’d be dwarfed by this hotel suite.
But the hotel rooms interested her far less than the people in them. She was having her first look at other Nemesis operatives. What she’d heard wasn’t just words and stories. It was as solid and genuine as her own flesh. Besides Simon, there were these two others, at the least. He had mentioned many more names on the train.
Nemesis is real, and for now, I’m part of it. Part of them.
They shared Simon’s intense perceptiveness—the kind of people who had seen and done much. Never had she felt as unworldly as she did just looking at them across the hotel room. Their gazes were wary as they studied her, and she felt like one of the tunnels in the mine, as if she were being chipped apart to see what she was made of.
No hope for it but to brazen it out.
“Alyce Carr,” she said, stepping forward with her hand outstretched.
The olive-skinned man took her hand first and shook it. Unsurprisingly, he had a strong grip. “Marco,” he answered.
“Just Marco?”
“Last names can be cumbersome.” He released her hand.
She nodded, understanding. Simon had withheld his, as well. She was the outsider on this mission, the unknown element. They would likely give her just as much information as she needed to get by, and no more. For the sake of the mission—and probably her own safety.
The woman came forward next, and shook her hand. Another strong, confident grip. Alyce noticed there was no wedding band on her left hand. They were an unconventional group. But she didn’t expect otherwise. “I’m Harriet,” the woman said. She boldly looked Alyce up and down, staring at her body in a way that made heat fill Alyce’s cheeks—either from embarrassment or anger or both. Not even the freshest man in her village looked at her like that.
“They’ve got French postcards for that kind of thing,” Alyce snapped, pulling away.
“She’s getting an idea of your measurements,” Simon said. It was the first time he’d spoken since they’d entered the hotel room. “I’d given her as good an idea as I could, but she’s the one who’ll be making the adjustments.”
“You didn’t make too poor an assessment,” Harriet responded. “The alterations should be minimal.” She walked to a trunk Alyce now saw propped in the corner and opened it. Dresses of every color and fabric were neatly folded inside—all of them far finer than anything Alyce had ever worn. And the mission meant she’d have to wear some of them. The thought shouldn’t excite her as much as it did.
Wait.
She spun to face Simon. “You told her my measurements?” God, he would’ve had to study her body. Or, hell, when they’d kissed, he’d gotten a good feel.
The intimacy of it robbed her of breath. Partly, she felt acute mortification. Harriet and Marco could probably guess how Simon had gotten such knowledge of her. But she didn’t regret Simon touching her.
Simon shrugged, but she could see a flash of something, a memory, perhaps, of when they’d kissed, in his gaze. “I did the best I could without the benefit of a measuring tape.”
“I also brought some suits for you,” Harriet continued. “But those I took from your flat. No alterations necessary.” She even produced two hatboxes. Lifting the lids, she revealed a daytime hat of fine dark brown wool. The other box held an object that struck a bolt of fear into Alyce’s heart: a black silk top hat. That could mean only one thing—at some point soon, they’d be attending a formal gathering.
Bold front, she reminded herself. She’d be crushed beneath Nemesis’s elegant, ruthless boots if she showed any fear or hesitation.
“There’s not much time,” she said brusquely, slipping off her woolen cloak. “Time to get to work.” Her fingers went to the buttons at her throat. Marco made a choked sound, but Simon rushed forward, gathering up her cloak as if to cover her with it.
“We’ll take this into the bedroom,” Harriet said. She ushered her to the adjoining room.
Alyce’s cheeks heated again. “Right,” she muttered.
Harriet returned to the parlor for a moment, leaving Alyce alone in the bedroom. The Nemesis operatives talked quickly and softly among themselves—too quietly for Alyce to understand what they were saying. But it seemed a practiced kind of talk, the kind perfected over years of knowing and working with one another. The way in which she and the other workers at the mine spoke—people she’d known her whole life—in a sort of shorthand that would confuse outsiders.
She had never felt as much of an outsider as she did at that moment. Moving as silently as she could, she peered through the bedroom doorway to see the three members of Nemesis conferrin
g in a close circle. Clearly, they knew each other well. Trusted each other. Even though Simon’s expression was taut, he looked entirely confident there, among his comrades, no longer pretending to be a machinist. Oh, he’d been open and candid with her—at least, she thought so—but Harriet and Marco were his people. She’d only ever be a stranger.
Then Simon looked over at her. Their gazes locked. All sense of being on the outside burned away. She wasn’t one of Nemesis’s trained agents. Her knowledge of Simon went back weeks, not years. But the way he spoke to Marco and Harriet held a kind of distance. They were colleagues. Not entirely friends. They held back from one another.
She’d bet a month’s wages he’d told almost no one what he’d revealed to her on the train. That it was intimate knowledge for her and him alone. And it was still there—the heat between them. They could try and push it aside as much as they liked, tell themselves they wouldn’t act on it for the sake of the mission, but just because you didn’t mine a bountiful vein didn’t mean it stopped existing. The promise of its riches might be buried, yet it remained.
Harriet suddenly stopped talking. She glanced back and forth between Alyce and Simon, expression unreadable, but Alyce had a good idea what the other woman thought.
Let her think what she likes. I’ve got a purpose on this mission. I’m the only one here with a personal stake in it. Alyce’s stake couldn’t be more personal. Whatever altruistic goals Nemesis had in changing Wheal Prosperity, they couldn’t match her own motivations.
“Don’t we have work to do?” she asked, summoning her most lofty tone.
Harriet lifted a brow. “Chaps,” she said, excusing herself from Simon and Marco.
The other woman entered the bedroom and shut the door softly behind her. It was the first time Alyce had ever been alone with a Nemesis agent who wasn’t Simon. Harriet waved toward a small door. “There’s a sink and water closet if you need to refresh yourself, and I’ve got a pot of tea and some sandwiches.” She nodded at a little table that held a tray with a completely unchipped tea set, plus a plate of crustless sandwiches, the bread so white Alyce could’ve written on it.
An odd, contrary impulse demanded that she refuse all these offerings—pride, maybe. That she wasn’t just a simple country lass to be coddled her way through a mission. But Harriet spoke without a speck of pity or even warmth. As one might talk to a fellow worker. That comforted Alyce much more than soft words and sympathy.
She nodded and went into the bathroom. It held a large iron tub, a flushing commode, and a sink with running water. After making use of the facilities and washing up, she studied her face in the mirror mounted above the sink. For a woman far from home, awake in the middle of the night, surrounded by strangers, and about to embark on the most dangerous activity of her life, she had to say that she didn’t appear too poorly. Her eyes were clear, her skin not too ashen. Harriet might have a natural poise, and Marco the suave elegance of a panther—and Simon was always sharply, aristocratically handsome—but she had nothing to be ashamed of. The color in her cheeks came from honest work.
She glanced down at herself. Compared to Harriet’s smart traveling costume, Alyce’s dress looked faded and shabby. Yet she was a bal-maiden. She’d never smashed apart a lump of copper ore to discover a bolt of expensive sateen inside. And the only fashion journals that reached Trewyn were years old, tattered to the point of being unreadable—and the clothes within them as obtainable as fashions from Mars. What use would she have of a … what did they call them … a promenade costume?
“Miss Carr?” Harriet asked from outside. “We’ve got several gowns to alter, and not a lot of time, so we need to get started.”
At that word—“gowns”—Alyce’s stomach leaped. In a day, maybe even in a few hours, she’d be meeting the owners of Wheal Prosperity. She would know them, but they’d have no idea who she was—or what they were up against. This would be her one chance to not be a bal-maiden, and despite her fear and the looming danger, she was determined to enjoy every damned minute of it.
CHAPTER 10.
“You’re sure we can trust her?” Marco asked for the fourth time.
“She’s green,” Simon answered, “but I trust her as much I trust you.” Hands in his pockets, he stopped his pacing and stared at the bedroom door, straining to hear the sounds of the women inside moving about.
Bent over the sheets of paper, his pen moving slowly but methodically, Marco shook his head. “Always thought you were a damned idealist.”
“It’s my fatal curse and eternal blessing. How’re the documents coming?”
“They’d be progressing faster if you’d shut your gob and let me work.”
“You’re the one who keeps asking about Alyce.”
“And you’re the one who keeps staring at that door as if you could burn it down with your eyes.”
Simon clenched his jaw. Herein lay the problem with observant colleagues. “Keep forging. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Fabricate things?”
As Marco got back to work, Simon paced over to the window and looked out through the curtains. The room faced the street, so he could distract himself with the comings and goings of people on the avenue. Trouble was, it was early as hell, and the distractions were minimal. The Hotel Imperial was located in a relatively genteel part of town. No late-night mischief on the street to keep his mind from wandering into the bedroom—where Alyce and Harriet were sequestered, fitting Alyce with an appropriate wardrobe.
He wouldn’t think about Alyce stripping out of her petticoats, down to her combination. The lamplight on her bare limbs. The exposed curve of her neck and slopes of her shoulders.
No, he wouldn’t think about any of that. He’d enough to stew over—such as whether or not this gambit was going succeed, or whether he and Alyce would be caught in the middle of it, and everything would go up in flames. There was always a risk to himself, but it was she and the miners that worried him. Far easier for him to walk—or slip—away from a disaster. But Alyce, her family, Edgar, all the men and women he’d come to know over the past few weeks—they’d be the ones to suffer if it all went south.
“Jesus, I can hear you thinking,” Marco muttered. “It’s like a rusty gearbox.”
“As opposed to the smooth, glassy waters of your brain,” Simon fired back over his shoulder. “Not even a ripple to disturb the surface.”
After setting his pen down carefully, Marco linked his fingers behind his head and studied Simon. “Four years we’ve been doing this together, and I’ve never seen you like this.”
Simon turned around and folded his arms across his chest. “Like what?”
“Like you’re about to kick the walls of the hotel down. This mission’s a tough one, no denying that, but you’re strung taut. The wrong word, the smallest look and”—he snapped his fingers—“you’ll explode like mercury fulminate.”
“Of course I’m tense, you ass. Hundreds of people’s jobs are at risk. Their lives, too, if things go disastrously.”
“And it’s got nothing at all to do with…” Marco flicked his gaze toward the bedroom door.
Simon stalked the perimeter of the room. Right cozy, it was, and the closest he’d come in weeks to the normal way he lived in London. But he didn’t feel at ease or have any sense of respite. Just more tension, all contained within the floral walls of the hotel room’s parlor.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” he growled. “I’ll keep my focus. I’ll get the job done. She won’t affect my judgment.”
Marco snorted softly.
“The hell?” Simon demanded.
“Didn’t you give Eva a similar warning about Dalton? And she said the same thing in response.”
“That mission was a success. Rockley wasn’t just ruined, he was killed.”
Marco smirked. “There was also that very interesting side effect that Eva and Dalton got married.”
Simon forced out a laugh. “Christ, Marco, there’s no need to worry on that score. I’m as l
ikely to marry as you are.”
A dark look crossed Marco’s face. “Spies don’t make for good husbands.”
“Neither do scapegrace younger sons with secret tendencies toward vigilantism.” Even if he hadn’t been a part of Nemesis, Simon would have relegated himself to permanent bachelorhood. A wife meant a life of predictability—employment, meals, conversation covering well-trod ground. Wives wanted children, and children needed stability—even the wild ones like him. Stability, predictability. Those things were poison in his blood.
Ironic, then, that the one aspect of marriage he knew he could honor was fidelity. Once given, he never went back on a promise. It might be expected that men of his class kept mistresses, but the thought of making a vow and then deliberately breaking it made his stomach roil. What was he, if he didn’t honor his word? As feckless and useless as any other younger son. In that, he’d prove his father wrong.
It didn’t matter. Simon wasn’t marrying, so vows of fidelity never had to be sworn.
But he wondered about men like him and Marco. Deliberately alone. Not short on female company, but neither of them possessed what Jack had with Eva. A partner. In every sense of the word.
That was the singularity, not the norm. He was an adult man who’d seen a good deal of the world. It was a cold place, filled with cruelty, loneliness, yearning. No reason why his life would be any different. The best he could expect was completing missions for Nemesis, and dying either quickly from a sharpshooter’s bullet in his brain, or of old age in a clean, warm bed—alone.
Despite all the battles he’d waged—in India, Rorke’s Drift, jobs for Nemesis—he’d never truly taken up his own cause, fought for himself. As though he didn’t deserve it. His only real purpose was to help others. But he, himself, held little value.
Yet a voice whispered seductively within him. The story might have a different ending. You’ve never met a woman like Alyce before. When she looks at you … you’re not a hero or a scapegrace. But a man. A man worth fighting for.
