Dangerous Seduction: A Nemesis Unlimited Novel

by Zoë Archer

  “Brave lass.” Simon gave her hand on his arm a squeeze, and the smallest of smiles. The fear that threatened to grind her up ebbed with his encouragement. He reached for the heavy brass knocker on the door, but his gloved hand hovered over it.

  She drew a deep breath. “Go on.”

  He knocked. The door opened immediately, a stone-faced man in a starched uniform standing on the other side, looking more self-important than Saint Peter.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Simon Shale.” Simon handed the butler a little card.

  There was no change in the butler’s expression as he pocketed the card. He stepped aside, permitting Simon and Alyce to enter. “The company’s assembled upstairs in the drawing room, sir.”

  Simon handed his coat and hat to a young man in another uniform—a footman, Simon had told her earlier—and the same footman took Alyce’s wrap before retreating. She tried her best not to gape at her surroundings, though this was truly the most expensive home she’d ever really seen. All she’d witnessed of the managers’ house had been the kitchen and larder in the depths of night. Now she was above stairs, with the lamps blazing.

  She had a brief impression of a checked tile floor, and a marble-topped table holding painted china vases heaped with menacing flowers. But then Simon offered her his arm again, and they began to go up a curving, carpeted staircase. Voices floated out of a room on the next floor—men’s strident tones, the occasional woman’s fluttering comment. Alyce’s heart thudded painfully with each step closer.

  “These ancestral portraits on the walls,” Simon murmured. “They probably bought them by the dozen.”

  She smothered a laugh. The thundering of her heart eased.

  They stopped in the doorway of what had to be the drawing room. It looked like the inside of a rotting animal carcass—all red and black. Fabric swaddled every surface, from the tables to the windows to the chairs to the mantel. Everywhere her gaze fell, she found objects of wood and china and brass. Plants and wreaths and pictures. An abundance of things. The room itself wasn’t small, but she felt herself choking as she took a step inside. What was the point of all this junk? Worse still, was that terrible ceramic elephant paid for with money that could’ve been used to buy fresh beef at the company store?

  Still, she schooled her face to appear calm and serene as she looked around at the people within the room. One tall, skinny man stood by the mantel, and the others hefted themselves out of their chairs when she and Simon entered. Here they were—the owners of Wheal Prosperity. The men who crushed the life out of her family and friends.

  It was a disappointment to see how ordinary they were. No pointed horns sprouting from their foreheads. No giant boils on their noses. Nobody greedily rubbed their hands together. Except for their evening clothes, they looked like regular middle-aged men. She felt strangely deflated. For all the wrong these men did, couldn’t their appearance match their foul hearts?

  A man with spare hair on his head but a thick beard stepped forward. He gave them both a reserved bow. “Shale, welcome. Mrs. Shale, an honor. I’m Oliver Harrold.”

  Simon bowed in return and Alyce curtsied. “You are gracious in your hospitality.” There was nothing but sincerity in Simon’s voice.

  She couldn’t quite tell, what with Harrold’s beard, but he seemed to give them a wry smile. “Too kind—especially when we’re here to assess each other’s, ah, hospitality.”

  “Your home is delightful,” Alyce said. “Comfortable and attractive without being overly modern.”

  “All the efforts of Mrs. Harrold.” He gestured to a woman sitting on a burgundy sofa. Mrs. Harrold regarded Alyce through narrowed eyes, and gave her a little nod of recognition, the red stones around her throat glittering.

  “Perhaps, after dinner, you might give me some suggestions as to the outfitting of our home,” Alyce said. “We’re newly married, and I would be so grateful for any advice you might have to offer. I want to make certain of Mr. Shale’s every comfort.”

  The frosty expression on Mrs. Harrold’s face warmed slightly. “It’s a woman’s primary duty to ensure her husband’s contentment. Everything else, including her own comfort, is ancillary.”

  Simon’s hand covered Alyce’s, where her fingers dug into his arm. Any other man might wince in pain from the pressure, but he kept the same bland smile on his face. She slowly released her death’s grip on his arm. They couldn’t make a single misstep, not here, in the den of the beasts.

  “Shale,” Harrold continued, “you’ll have the privilege of escorting Mrs. Harrold into dinner. And it will be my singular pleasure to escort Mrs. Shale down to the dining room.”

  As discussed earlier, both she and Simon made sounds of gratification.

  “This rather breaks from tradition,” Harrold continued, “but considering the circumstances, I’ll introduce you to the rest of the party. Shale, you’ve already met Victor Tufton, but your wife has not. The charming woman in yellow is Mrs. Tufton.”

  A heavy man, his face already red, nodded. Where he was large, his wife seemed birdlike, her skin pulled tight over brittle bones. Simon and Alyce again repeated their bows and curtsies.

  “And you haven’t met our other partner. This is John Stokeham.” He waved toward the tall, thin man at the mantel.

  Alice had seen the names before on a metal plaque outside the managers’ office, and now she looked into their faces, saw them as men and not just names or anonymous enemies.

  “His delightful sister,” Harrold went on, “is Miss Vera Stokeham.”

  Miss Stokeham looked about the same age as Alyce, but she had a white, glossy plumpness and the sullen expression reserved for babies who always get what they want. Age was the only thing she and Alyce seemed to have in common.

  Once more she and Simon curtsied and bowed.

  Damn, but this was odd. All these formal words and these practiced gestures. None of them meant anything. They were empty, like a miner’s drained canteen. And none of them spoke of what this evening was really about: deceit.

  The butler appeared in the doorway to the drawing room. “Dinner is served.”

  * * *

  “I detect some Cornish in your accent, Mrs. Shale,” Harrold said. He sat at the head of the table, and she’d been placed to his right. Far at the other end of the table, Simon sat beside Mrs. Harrold, and something he said to her made the older woman laugh, her hand fluttering around her chest.

  Alyce felt herself in exile, even though she knew this was how dinners were always arranged. None of the guests sat with their spouses or, in the case of Miss Stokeham, beside her brother. Simon had told her it was supposed to encourage conversation, but it seemed the best way to make someone feel uncomfortable. How could she chitchat with people she didn’t know—and worse, hated?

  “We aren’t so far from Cornwall,” she pointed out. A servant appeared beside her, bearing a silver platter heaped with meat in some kind of brownish-red sauce. Carefully, she placed a few slices of beef on her gilt-edged plate, but only just caught herself from thanking the servant before he moved on to the next guest. Already, there had been two kinds of soup, fish, roast partridge, ham, lamb, and oysters. And there was still more to come.

  The amount of food paraded past her made her ill. She poked at the meat with her fork, moving it around her plate so it looked as though she ate.

  Too bad that her reticule was so small, or else she’d scrape everything off her dish into it and take it home to Sarah. She could make a few slices of beef last for days.

  “Yet your husband is from London,” Tufton noted as he sat on her right. He took a much larger portion of meat, going back and forth from the platter three times.

  Was this part of the test? These men didn’t talk the way Simon did, with elite London’s smooth, glossy notes, but they didn’t sound like miners, either.

  “My father is from Perranporth,” she said. “He also used to manage a mine near Dolcoath. Doubtless his accent and speech patterns made an effect on me.”r />
  Tufton and Harrold nodded wisely. From the corner of her eye, she saw Simon relax slightly—the barest easing of his shoulder that only she seemed to notice.

  “Fortunate, then, that this latest endeavor of your husband’s involves a mine,” Harrold said.

  “Oh, yes! When we discussed the matter, we thought—”

  “We?” Tufton’s brows lowered. “Mr. Shale actually talked to you about business?”

  Everyone, from the men seated nearest her, to the other women at the table, stared at her, aghast. Only Simon’s face was perfectly neutral.

  “Of course he didn’t!” Alyce giggled. “The very idea! I’ve no sense for these matters, and he never speaks to me of them.”

  “As well he should,” Stokeham pronounced.

  The ladies all nodded in agreement.

  “As he said to me,” she continued, “‘Alyce, it would make me very happy if you’d just sign this document.’ Naturally, I didn’t ask what the document was, I just signed it. Only later he accidentally revealed that the document had to do with a Cornish mine, and I thought it was so funny, you know, because of Papa and his mine.”

  To her own ears, she sounded as if she had dandelion puffs for brains, but from the way the rest of the company at the table looked at her, she’d clearly said the right thing.

  Then Tufton’s frown returned. “‘Accidentally revealed.’ Doesn’t sound very discreet or wise.”

  Simon only laughed. “I’m a newly wedded man, Mr. Tufton. Surely you can excuse an occasional verbal blunder in the presence of one’s bride. She does make me lose my head, sometimes.” The look he sent her down the length of the table could have scorched the flower arrangements. She didn’t have to manufacture her blush.

  “Besides,” Simon continued, “I needn’t worry that Alyce will go gossiping to anyone. She’s a model of all that’s modest and discerning. After we married, we had to pay calls—”

  Harrold groaned. “Don’t remind me. It’s been twenty-three years since Laura and I married, and I still wake up in a terror that we haven’t finished all our wedding visits.”

  “And poor Mrs. Shale,” Simon went on, “she was so afraid of indiscretion that she barely could manage a yes or no.” He chuckled. “I’m sure it was a disappointment to the people we visited, but a credit to her.”

  “To you, as well,” added Tufton. “Like children and the lesser ranks, women need to be guided by men of sense. They can’t be trusted to see to their own well-being. Men such as us have to save them from themselves.”

  Alyce suspected it would be a breach of politeness to jump up and hit Tufton over the head with one of the heavy silver platters making their way around the room. Instead, she smiled blankly and moved peas around her plate.

  At least she knew Simon didn’t believe the blather he was spouting. But he played his part so well—so smug, so bloody superior—she had to fight the urge to throw something at him, too. She maintained a blank smile plastered to her face.

  “I couldn’t agree more, Tufton,” he said. “Not to be too indelicate with ladies present, but with my own business ventures, I oversee as much of the workers’ lives as I can. They may fuss and whine about issues of fair wages or living conditions, yet as I see it, they ought to be grateful for honest employment.”

  “It’s really the best they can expect,” Stokeham added.

  “Giving ideas about living above their station is harmful.” Harrold drank deeply from his glass of wine, and a servant stepped forward to refill it. Alyce resisted the impulse to catch the servant’s eye. Do you hear the complete rubbish these bastards are saying?

  “It’s a kindness we’re doing,” Tufton said. “The lower ranks need us to make decisions for them, or else they’d degenerate into drunken chaos. Have you seen the way they live? Once, I toured the village of Trewyn and saw nothing but squalid little hovels. Families of seven or eight crammed into two rooms. Not a speck of privacy or modesty.”

  Miss Stokeham shuddered. “Mr. Tufton, pray let’s not speak of it, for I’m sure to be put off my pudding, and I was so looking forward to it.”

  “My apologies, Miss Stokeham.” Simon sent her one of his most charming smiles, and the girl practically melted in her chair. “The fault is mine for introducing such an indecorous topic.”

  “I believe you mentioned you’re recently married,” Mrs. Tufton said, turning to Alyce. “Where did you go on your wedding journey?”

  Alyce’s mind spun. She and Simon hadn’t discussed this when they’d been plotting out their strategies for tonight. The best someone from her village could hope for was a few days in Newquay, or Torquay if they were being extravagant—which nobody ever was. But these people expected more than some Cornish seaside town. She pictured the map from the dame school she’d attended so long ago, and all the differently colored blobs that represented different countries. Brazil? No, that was all the way across the ocean and full of dangerous jungle. Egypt? Old sandy tombs seemed a strange thing to visit when celebrating a wedding.

  “Greece,” she blurted. It had lots of little islands that probably made for good places for young couples to learn about the physical side of marriage.

  From the quick flash of approval in Simon’s gaze, she’d made the right choice.

  “How charming!” Mrs. Harrold cried. “Did you see the Acropolis? I just adored the marketplace at Monastiriaki—except for all the impertinent Greek vendors, of course.”

  “We were only in Athens for a short while,” Simon explained. “We’d intended to go to Delphi, but the roads weren’t safe. So we took a steamer to Santorini and then on to Crete.”

  “Ah, so much wonderful ancient culture!” Mrs. Tufton agreed.

  “It was very educational,” Alyce added. “I mean, charming.”

  “Do you remember, my dear,” Simon said, “how you absolutely fell in love with a baby donkey on Crete and wanted to take it home with us?”

  She answered, “You know I cannot resist an adorable ass.”

  “What happened to the creature?” asked Miss Stokeham.

  Simon sighed. “Alas, we had to leave it behind.”

  “But there are plenty of asses right here in England,” Alyce said.

  More dishes were taken away, and she almost shouted in relief when she saw the footed platters heaped with fruit and nuts. This torturous part of the evening was almost over. She ached with the force of keeping herself still and silent. Inside, she shook with rage and called these men all the worst names she could think of. Bastard. Son of a bitch. Eater of shite. Mentally, she ripped the white cloth and its bright blue runner off the table, scattering dishes, and pulled the plate and china down from the heavy sideboard to smash on the floor with a noise like vengeance. She could still hear Davy Roberts screaming as they brought him up from the pit, his legs crushed by a crumbling support beam that they’d begged to replace. Her ears continued to ring with the tears of Catherine Linsey’s husband and children as she’d been buried, taken too soon because the owners didn’t have a doctor regularly come to the village.

  How would Harrold sound if his legs were smashed? Would Tufton sob the way John Linsey had as his wife was lowered into the ground, his children clutching at the hem of his coat, begging for their mother?

  The table in front of Alyce now was spread with crystal wine glasses that glittered like ice. The jewels dangling from the women’s necks and ears gleamed coldly. But the room was overly hot, stifling. At this time of year, she, Henry, and Sarah would already be able to see their breath in their cottage. There was never enough coal.

  More conversation followed, as thin and pale as the soup they’d been served. Clearly, they were saving further talk of business for after the ladies’ departure. She kept silent as they talked of the lack of “really decent” society in Plymouth, sniffing at the social climbers as if they weren’t sewn from the same pattern.

  Finally, Mrs. Harrold stood. “I think it’s time we left the gentlemen to their masculine interests.�
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  All of the men got to their feet as Alyce and the other women rose. Stokeham was nearest the door, so he held it open. As she left the dining room, she sent one quick glance toward Simon. God in heaven, but he was a lovely sight in his evening clothes, yet he anchored her when she felt herself tipping over the edge. His own calm, his informal, confident air assured her. This mission meant as much to him as it did to her. Yet somehow he found the means to appear casual, assured. She could do the same for herself.

  Her heart lifted, though, when he gave her the tiniest nod. A mere hint of encouragement. He couldn’t say or do more in a room full of their prey. But it was all she needed.

  Following the other women, she glided out of the dining room, feeling like a hawk soaring high above a vole. Flying so high that the brainless little animal below had no idea that it was being hunted.

  * * *

  The gas chandelier didn’t actually dim when Alyce left the dining room, but the chamber seemed gloomier, darker without her. Simon manufactured a smile as brandy and cigars were circulated.

  Matters weren’t helped by the fact that the walls of the dining room were covered in sickly dark green wallpaper, and the cumbersome mahogany furniture crowded in like mourners after a funeral, eager to grab the deceased’s belongings. Everything in Harrold’s house seemed purchased for its expense. There wasn’t a single piece of bric-a-brac or a painting that possessed an ounce of real feeling.

  This family is sober and moral, the silver epergne seemed to declare.

  What utter fucking hypocrisy, he thought.

  “There’s a relief, eh, gents?” Harrold said with a chuckle. He settled back in his chair, one hand wrapped around a brandy glass, the other holding a cigar. “Ladies can be charming but tedious.”

  “They can’t help themselves,” Stokeham declared, then drew on his cigar. Exhaling smoke up toward the ceiling, he added, “Their lives can never be as full or important as ours. An excellent cigar, incidentally.”