by Bec McMaster
Lynch stopped and looked at her. She’d overheard him in the entry. Cool brown eyes met his. A challenge. If she thought he would be embarrassed, then she didn’t know him very well.
Opening her reticule, she tugged out a sheaf of papers. “I have references from my last two places of employ. I worked for Lord Hamilton in the War Office, and then for Lady Shipton as her personal secretary. I assure you”—her voice became a drawl—“after that, nothing could shock me or turn my stomach.”
Lynch crossed his arms over his chest. He’d dealt with the Shipton case. A jealous blue blood husband and an adulterous consort whose predilections had surprised even him. He’d thought he’d seen it all by now. “You are aware that both your previous employees are dead?”
“Not by my hand, I assure you.”
A bold piece. He straightened in interest. “I meant that I would be unable to check your references.”
“Let me be bold…I assume that is your preference anyway?”
Lynch gave a brisk nod. She was observant at least.
“My previous employers are dead, as you noted, which means I have nothing but two pieces of paper to prove my aptitude for employment. This leaves me in somewhat of a quandary. I need to earn a respectable living, Sir Jasper. I have a brother…” And here she faltered, showing perhaps the first lack of composure. “He’s young. And assorting with certain types of people I don’t approve of. I should like to let an apartment in the city, away from these influences, but at the moment I am unable.”
She needed a steady job and a good wage. Lynch’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not unmoved,” he told her, leaning his hip against the desk. “But I’ve had five secretaries in the last three months. My work involves certain grisly details and long hours, and nobody seems able to keep up with me. I’ve spent more time in the past three months training new secretaries than working, and I haven’t the inclination to waste any more of it.”
Mrs. Marberry squared her shoulders. “I’m aware of that. Garrett informed me of the nature of the job. He said you would work me into the ground, forgetting human needs such as sustenance and sleep, squire me all around the city to take your notes and examine dead bodies. You told your last secretary to hold someone’s head, so you could examine the angle of the cut that decapitated the body and that was why they resigned.”
For a moment Lynch was taken aback. “And you’re still here?”
“It’s all correct then?”
“There are some matters I believe he forgot to mention, but mostly yes. The men call me ‘that uncompromising bastard,’ though they’re not aware that I know that. It’s not the worst thing I’ve been called. Still want the job?”
“Sir Jasper.” Mrs. Marberry leaned toward him, completely unaware of the fact that her bodice gaped. He, however, noticed everything. Smooth skin, the veins tracing their way beneath her flesh, blue and pulsing with blood. Shifting slightly, Lynch glanced away. She would be trouble. He shouldn’t hire her. With her pretty little mouth and stubborn chin, the men would be all over her.
“You can’t frighten me nor can you drive me away,” she said. “You need someone who’s not afraid of you.”
Lynch’s gaze locked on hers. Her eyes were truly fascinating—dark pools that seemed to hint at infinite depths. He wondered briefly if they echoed her personality; were there hidden depths there too? Then he shook the thought off as foolish. One had only to observe to understand the true measure of a man—or a woman. He’d not met one yet whom he’d been unable to decipher down to the last iota of their soul. People were predictable. “And that person is you?”
She didn’t look away. Instead, she looked right through him, as though she could see inside him. Not once had he been on the receiving end of a stare like that. “That person is me.”
By gods, she would be trouble. And yet he was strangely tempted. The girl had gumption, glaring at him as if daring him to employ her. Not even a hint of the vapors, though she was clever enough to be wary. He was what he was, after all.
Perhaps she could manage to deal with him? Perhaps she might last longer than a week, unlike the previous Mrs. Eltham, she of the decapitated-head incident.
Mrs. Marberry glanced away, her fathomless eyes hidden beneath thick, dark lashes. Lynch’s breath caught. Devil a bit.
“You’re too pretty,” he growled.
“I beg your pardon?”
Lynch gestured at her, striding away from the desk. “This…” He made a curving motion in the air to indicate her. “This won’t work. I hire ugly women. Ones with moustaches. Ones my men wouldn’t look twice at.”
“I hardly think I’m the sort of woman to inspire riots in your guild quarters.”
“That’s because you’re a woman,” he said. “We’re speaking of four hundred and fifty men I work into the ground. They barely have time to speak to women and now you want me to place a pretty one in the middle of them all?”
Her gaze hardened. “Should I be concerned?”
“Concerned?” Then he realized she was speaking of assault. “Good God, no. They wouldn’t dare. I’d have them eviscerated. And they know it.”
“Then your objection stems from the fact you think I’d be a distraction?”
A distraction? A damned catastrophe. Lynch scowled, turning toward the window with ground-eating strides. He’d never been a man to stand still for long. It helped him to think. “I know you’d be a distraction.”
“But shouldn’t I be at your side at all times?” she asked, following him in a swish of skirts and perfume. “I daresay your men wouldn’t dare risk such foolery in front of you.”
“They wouldn’t.”
Lynch spun on his heel and found her in his path. Acres and acres of navy skirts with that tight cinched in waist and…the breasts. The dress was modest, but at his great height, he couldn’t help that the angle gave him a certain view.
Perhaps I wasn’t speaking of the men?
Heat tightened in his abdomen and he clasped his hands behind his back. Damn her, this would be a mistake. He had a thousand things to think of and a revolutionary leader to find. He couldn’t afford to have a buxom, determined redhead under his nose. Especially one who smelled like lemons and soft, freshly laundered sheets.
The thought conjured to mind the image of her upon his own sheets, that pale, flawless skin laid bare for his inspection. Her pretty little mouth parted in a gasp as he ground his hips down upon hers.
Lynch’s cock stirred, reminding him of what it felt like to be a man. Damn it. She was already affecting him. This should be evidence that this would be a bad idea.
But he needed a secretary. One who wasn’t scared of him.
A faint hint of color rose in Mrs. Marberry’s cheeks but she refused to look away. He was staring, he realized.
“Are you going to employ me or not?” she asked.
Instinct told him to say no. But as he opened his mouth, the words changed. “Yes,” he found himself saying. “On a trial basis. I’m desperate.”
“And a charmer,” she noted with an arched brow. A little smile toyed over her lips. Relief. “I shall have to watch myself with you, I see.”
I shall have to watch myself.
After the disastrous encounter with Mercury and now this, it was becoming clear that he needed a woman to take the edge off. Mercury had done this to him, left him on edge, and now his body hungered for release.
“What’s your given name?” he asked bluntly.
“That’s highly informal, sir.”
“You’ll find I rarely bother with formalities. I’m not going to bark ‘Mrs. Marberry’ whenever I want you. It’s a mouthful.”
A slight hesitation. “Rosa,” she said, her full lips forming the word softly. “My name is Rosa. And you?”
He’d already turned toward the desk, determined to get away from that lingering scent. “Me?”
“What should I call you?”
“Sir Jasper will be perfectly fine.”
* *
*
Lynch gave her his back and Rosalind finally had a chance to take as deep a breath as she could in the unfamiliar corset. The other night hadn’t done him justice, with the darkness and the red glow of the enclaves. She’d realized then his great height and cold, penetrating stare. They said fully grown men broke into confessions when he looked at them and women quivered at the knees.
What she hadn’t expected to find was a coldly handsome man, his dark hair cropped neatly and raked back out of his face with an impatient gesture. His jaw was darkened with stubble and a pinched line swept his dark brows together in what seemed a permanent frown.
Rosalind examined him, little goose bumps prickling over her skin. The other night had left its mark on her body. She’d long since thought herself impervious to men, especially dangerous ones, but she’d dismissed Lynch as merely another blue blood and that had been foolish.
Her gaze slid over his broad shoulders as he clasped his hands behind his back. Shoulders she’d dug her nails into, her lips caressing the smooth skin of his throat. A little flutter of excitement started low in her belly, tempting her. She sucked in a breath, her fingernails digging into her palms. This was what she hadn’t dared admit to her brother or Ingrid. Lynch might be attracted to Mercury against his will, but the truth was a delicious irony, for she too had been caught in the trap.
Rosalind stole a calculating glance at the room as she took a step forward. Tonight, she’d be able to recall almost every little detail. Her gaze slid to the wall with that damning map. She wasn’t stupid. She knew what all those little pins meant, because they were the location of dozens of humanists hidden in the general populace. Some had been discovered and arrested, but a great deal of those pins were humanists who were blissfully unaware that their identity had been compromised.
The map told her a great deal about the Nighthawk. He was patient, for one thing. He was also clever enough not to flush them out of their holes. The red string became a spider web, and Rosalind had the feeling that he was the one who’d woven it.
Just waiting for a little fly, a certain revolutionary, to get caught in its sticky web.
Thank goodness she’d decided to risk infiltrating the guild. Now she knew the trap was there and could warn people, or perhaps use it for her own gains.
“Sir Jasper,” she forced herself to say. “That is rather a mouthful too.”
The Nighthawk shot her a hard look over his shoulder as if surprised she’d spoken up. Those icy gray eyes stole her breath, leaving her feeling as if the room had faded away and there was nothing beyond the two of them.
A horrible, uncomfortable feeling for it gave her the impression that he could see every little secret she was hiding. And she was damned good at hiding her secrets.
Light played over the straight, hawkish slant of his nose. “Lynch, then.”
“When would you like me to start?” Rosalind toyed with her gloves, a habit she’d never broken herself of.
“Would you like to discuss your wages first?” His gaze dropped to the fiddling of her fingers and Rosalind forced them to stillness.
“I already asked your man, Garrett.”
“Then as soon—” His head lifted, stark, gray gaze tracking something beyond the door. A hint of dark shadows flashed through his eyes, signs of the hunger within, the voracious predator that lurked beneath the sophisticated skin of every blue blood. The craving.
Rosalind stilled. There was a gun strapped to her thigh fitted with firebolt bullets that exploded on impact, and a sheath of needles at her wrist that were dipped in hemlock. But the creeping fear still prickled at her skin.
Lynch might look and act like a gentleman, albeit a brusque one, but she would never forget what he truly was.
The door slammed open and an older man with a bald head and leather jerkin stormed in. He saw her and stopped, ruddy color infusing his cheeks. “Beg pardon, miss.” A faint Irish accent. His blue eyes shot to Lynch. “Didn’t know you ’ad anyone ’ere.”
“Doyle, this is my new secretary,” Lynch replied, stillness emanating from him. “Mrs. Marberry.”
“Another one?” Doyle arched a brow. A brisk nod in her direction, then he returned his attention to his master. “This just came in. More bad news.” He tugged a letter from within his jerkin and tossed it at Lynch.
Lynch snatched the missive out of the air. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Park Lane,” Doyle replied. “It’s a bloodbath. Lord Falcone slaughtered ’is entire family. Women, children, thralls…all of the servants. Lord Barrons wants you there now.”
As the Duke of Caine’s heir, Barrons would be reporting directly to the ruling Council of Dukes, despite their friendship. Lynch frowned. “This is the second incident in a week. Byrnes has barely begun to go over the facts of the Haversham case.”
“Seems it weren’t an isolated incident after all.” Doyle shrugged.
“Curse it.” Lynch spun on his heel, pacing the rug. “I don’t have time for this.”
“I don’t think that excuse will suit ’is Royal Pastiness,” Doyle replied bluntly. “Not with nob’s gettin’ their hands all bloodied. Might be different if it were just us rogues.”
Interesting. Rosalind’s gaze flickered between the men, wondering if Lynch would chastise his man for the insubordination, but his expression remained coolly neutral.
Division in the blue blood world? She went very still, her mind racing. All along she’d thought the enemy was one, but if she could use this information to somehow turn the Nighthawks against the Echelon then she would have a powerful weapon on her hands.
The men seemed to have forgotten her for the moment. “Excuse me,” Rosalind asked. “But what is going on?”
Lynch shot her a piercing look that went straight through her. “A murder scene, Rosa. Now we’ll see whether you are suited for the job. Fetch that writing case and follow me. I’ll need to see the bodies while they’re fresh.”
Three
Rosalind ground her teeth together as the carriage shot around another corner. The strap dug into her hand and she clutched the writing case to her chest so as not to lose it.
Lynch rolled with the sway, his long legs eating up the interior. He sat opposite her, rifling through a sheaf of papers and frowning occasionally. Though he largely ignored her, the occasional quick glance scoured her like fire. She didn’t like being in here, trapped so closely together. He was too large, the force of his presence dominating the space.
It didn’t help that, in the dark confines of the carriage, all she could remember was what that hard body felt like pressed against her own. The taste of his mouth and the depth of his longing as he had kissed her startled something into life deep within her. Hunger. Newly awakened and barely sated. A desire for flesh, for sin, for wet kisses and the hard stroke of his body over hers.
She’d told herself to forget the memory, but it lingered on her skin like some textural apparition. She’d been a fool to kiss him. A fool—even now—to want more.
“Who were the Havershams?” she asked.
Lynch barely glanced up. “Lord Haversham, his consort Lady Amelia, and their three children. A minor branch of the House of Goethe. They were found on Monday morning by the eldest son, who’d returned from a gaming club. The entire household was torn apart, humans included, and Haversham had shot himself in the head.”
“He tore them apart?”
“We suspect so. There were two quarts of blood in his stomach and his consort had pieces of his skin under her fingernails from where she’d tried to fight. The man’s bloodletting knife was on his person and the blade matches the marks found on the servants and…the children.”
Rosalind absorbed that. The tone of his voice had sounded as though he repeated the facts by rote, but at the end… He didn’t like the part about the children, she thought.
“Why would he do such a thing?” Despite her personal feelings about blue bloods, it was an odd thing. Haversham was a minor lor
d. No doubt he kept enough thralls to satisfy the bloodlust, unless he was close to the Fade, when a blue blood lost all trace of color and began to evolve into a mindless, blood-driven predator. “It wasn’t the Fade, was it?” The thought unnerved her. She knew what happened when a vampire stalked the city.
Lynch shook his head. “His craving virus levels were holding at sixty percent.”
Not the Fade then. The craving virus made a blue blood what they were, but most of the Echelon kept a careful monitor on their CV levels. It was law. A spate of vampires a century ago had forced the ruling Council of Dukes to make it compulsory. Any blue blood whose levels began to hit seventy-five or even eighty were closely monitored.
Any higher and an ax was sent for.
“Doyle said there’d be children here.” As a child she’d seen enough gruesome sights to consider her nerves steel—indeed, she’d been the cause of some of them. But children…children were always bad.
“Yes,” Lynch said in a deadly soft voice. “Falcone had two. A boy and a girl.” He considered her for a long moment. “If you wish, you can wait outside.”
“That’s not necessary.” She needed to make herself useful to him.
“I won’t think less of you.” The stark gray of his eyes became shadowed with something else, something haunted. “Nobody should have to see children like that.”
“What about your last secretary?”
“That was different. The victim was a grown man, a blood addict. He’d beaten his thrall one too many times and so she cut his throat when he was asleep.”
“Cut his throat? I thought he was decapitated.” A blue blood could heal from almost anything but that.
“She used a large knife,” he replied, “with great force and a considerable amount of times.”
Rosalind considered his words, slowly drawing her own conclusions. She needed to know more about this man—her adversary. Yet she couldn’t deny the slight tingle of genuine curiosity. “Children unnerve you then?”
“You might be surprised to find that I do occasionally display and feel emotion. I’m not a machine.”
