by Eva Devon
Then his hand found her and his cool fingers slipped within her and slid in her dampness to find the center of her pleasure.
Yes. Yes I want that. I want him. I want his hand right there, right now.
There was no voice of logic. There was no canny plan. If she was captured, then her life as she'd known it was over. If she did manage to escape, she would never see him again.
Either way, this was her last chance to know him, to feel him, to slide her hands over his wide shoulders, to dig her fingers into his thick hair, to feel his mouth on her nipples and his hand bringing her pleasure beneath her skirts. It might be all she ever had to keep her warm through her future lonely Christmases.
I'm stealing this moment. That is, after all, what I do.
Then all thought was burnt away like paper before the flames he stoked within her. He made her writhe and tremble and cry out and then the starry sky above her disappeared behind the brilliant lightning of her shuddering pleasure.
Chapter 11
Elliott held her as she came quivering down from the peak of ecstasy. She panted and moaned. He kissed her brow and smoothed her hair. Gently he returned her bodice to its proper place and smoothed her skirt down.
The look of wonder in her eyes when she opened them surprised him deeply. She hadn't known of such pleasure. Virgin? Oh hell. And yet, he was glad as well. He wanted to be her first lover.
You want a great deal more than that, you nutter.
It was true. However, he could be patient. He could wait until she was through her training. Surely there would be occasion to meet. He could offer to be her sparring partner.
He held her in his arms and murmuring reassurances as she clung to him and blinked the surprise away.
Oh, he liked this girl. Admired her, desired her, found her endlessly fascinating. He wanted to know everything there was to know about her. He wanted to laugh at her jokes and learn how she took her tea and dance with her at their wedding.
Something cold stroked his cheek and he looked up, blinking. “It's snowing.”
She looked around them and gave a soft, wondering laugh. “It's been snowing. Your hair is nearly as white as mine.”
She smiled up at him then. The open, sweet smile took his breath away. Mask or no mask, she was the most astonishing creature he'd ever known.
“I should take you back inside. You'll surely be feeling the cold in a moment.”
She cast a glance out over the grounds. He tipped up her chin with one finger and grinned down into her eyes. “You'll not be hopping the wall in that gown. Come on, dance with me again.”
She bit her lip and then she tugged ruefully at her bustle. “I truly did underestimate this costume. I fear it is winning the battle.”
He gazed at her in admiration. Snowflakes glittered on her cheekbones and across that tempting bosom. “It's a dreadfully clumsy gown, but you look very nice indeed.”
She sniffed at his gallantry but the corners of her mouth quirked. Oh, this woman…
Amie wasn't afraid anymore. She felt too powerful. That mad rush of pleasure to new and wondrous heights had left her with a dizzy feeling of invincibility.
She accompanied him back to the ballroom. She would allow herself to be foolish and silly for one moment more. One last, splendid moment. She had escaped him before. She could do it again.
The crowd had thinned slightly. Everyone had wanted to join the first waltz but now many had bowed out of the sprightly country dance currently being performed.
Surprisingly, he didn't pull her into it. Instead he pulled her close in a fast and dizzying waltz, increasing the speed of the steps to keep up with the new music. She laughed aloud. It was a mad, outrageous. She felt everyone staring at them. And she didn't care one little bit to be at being the center of attention.
More dancers joined them in their waltzing rebellion. They all moved in a circle together, orbiting around the central country forms, faster and faster. More and more people decided to defy convention. The entire floor began the same hectic waltz.
Amie's glee subsided somewhat as more dancers pressed close. She realized she and her Liar were walled in by the other dancers.
Something rang her inner alarms. The gentlemen were so tall, their partners so shimmering and grand. All the masks worn by the men seemed to have teeth. A lion, a bear, a wolf—all dancing and turning and seeming to snarl down at her.
Predators. Fear sparked through her. She flinched and tried to pull away but it was too late. She was hemmed in, surrounded, like prey by a pack, like a fox run to ground.
She was hidden behind them as she was danced off the floor and into a dark antechamber beyond.
Someone lighted the sconces on the walls. The room brightened and Elliot released his waltz partner and backed away, leaving her enclosed in the circle. Miss Jackham looked terrified once more, but more than that, she looked furious.
She stood in the middle of her masked captors and gazed from one to the next. Then she fixed on Simon, who wore a bear mask that revealed only his jaw and his vivid blue eyes. “I know you,” she said with a small snarl. “I’ve seen you before.”
Simon, who had stayed back a step from the others, moved forward. Agatha, gowned in russet silk and wearing an owl mask, refused to release his hand and moved forward with him.
“I am sure I don't know you,” Simon told her. “I would certainly remember meeting the Jackal's daughter.”
Elliott saw her stiffen at the epithet. “That name doesn't mean anything to me,” she stated flatly. “And Lady Etheridge is not the only one who can draw. My father was almost as skilled as Mr. Underkind.”
Dalton growled at the realization that Miss Jackham was aware of Clara's political cartoonist identity—a fact that should not be known outside the Liar's Club.
Elliott cleared his throat and stepped forward. He spoke to Dalton, for he wasn't sure he was supposed to acknowledge or recognize the others in the room. “Did you find anything in the safe?”
Dalton, his hunting gaze fixed on Miss Jackham, now turned it on Elliott. “As empty as a cold heart,” he informed him.
Elliott reached into two of his pockets simultaneously and withdrew an overflowing handful of jewels and a small leather sack that weighed heavily of coins. “Here is everything she had on her.”
He heard Miss Jackham—I wonder what her name is?—gasp behind him and turned in time to see her hands flutter to her bodice before she jerked them down again to fist at her sides.
He carefully stepped out of range of those fists. The snapping rage and betrayal in her gaze would make any man wary. He felt sick to his stomach, but he was sure she would understand in the end. I am not evil, he wanted to tell her. I am not cruel. I am merely very good at what I do.
One of the ladies stepped forward, Lady Julia Ramsay, or to those in the know, the Fox. She was tall and elegant with her gleaming blonde hair pulled up high behind her mask of hammered gold. She was gowned in a Roman toga manner, one perfect shoulder revealed. The man next to her, Marcus—whom Elliott knew quite well, though one could hardly call them friends—leaned toward his lady. “The documents must be somewhere else.”
The lady fixed Miss Jackham with a cold gaze. The Fox versus the Vixen. “Now does not seem like a good time to be uncooperative.” Her tone was pleasant yet somehow also uncompromising.
Miss Jackham visibly fumed, then lifted her chin. “Turn your backs.”
Julia tilted her head. “I shan't, if you don't mind.” Her tone was distant and unconcerned.
When the gentlemen turned back around they saw Miss Jackham's hands held a slim folio of documents. Where ever had she kept them?
Elliott thought he saw an expression of growing respect on Julia's face.
Dalton thrust the considerable fortune of jewels and gold back into Elliott's hands as if disposing of a couple of used wineglasses. Elliot returned them to his pockets. He felt a strange need to keep his hands free—almost like a fight reflex.
Da
lton stepped closer to Miss Jackham and reached for the documents. Miss Jackham made a small noise as Dalton loomed over her.
Elliott frowned. He didn't understand her terror. “No harm will come to you, Miss Jackham.” He turned to his superiors. “Isn't that right?”
Dalton glanced at him briefly, his chilling silver gaze a dismissive flicker before he turned his full attention to the papers in his hands. Elliot looked at Simon, who gazed back at him without expression. Lady Julia, even though Elliot had been her first friend in the Liar's Club, gave him only a grave look.
Elliott's conviction of a positive outcome began to falter in the face of the thick, grim silence that was the only answer to his question.
Oh, bloody hell.
Amie held very still, a deer in the circle of deadly hunters. Her worst nightmare had come to life—except for one thing. No one had yet asked her about her sisters.
“What's my name?” She looked at him, the one they'd called Elliot, trying not to flinch from him, from the knowledge he now had of her. Oh, how she wanted to cringe at the sight of her jewels and gold in his hands and the way he'd gotten them.
“I— I don't know.” Elliot stared at her. “We know that you are Jackham's daughter.”
“Is that it? I'm Jackham's daughter, so you see fit to kidnap me?”
The Duke of Etheridge, for yes, she knew him as well, gazed at her narrowly. His silver gaze gleamed behind the mask of a snow-white hawk. “We know you are a thief.”
She laughed in his face. “And do you roll out the Royal Four for every thief in London?”
She saw Elliott twitch from the corner of her vision, but she did not remove her gaze from that of the duke. Etheridge was the spymaster. The others were there out of support for him, or perhaps due to curiosity about her. She knew how it worked. Jackham had been the responsibility of the Liar's Club. They had taken his betrayal personally and it would be they who meted out their twisted form of justice upon his offspring.
Etheridge stepped closer to her. “Your father should've protected you from such knowledge. He should've realized—”
“What he realized was that anyone connected to him would be tried, convicted, and sentenced without ever seeing a magistrate. What he realized was that the only way to protect me was to tell me everything so that even if he could not save himself, he could save me.”
Dalton slid a glance sideways to meet the gazes of his companions. “I think you can see why we must seal the breach any cost.”
“Cost?” She scoffed. “My father already paid the highest cost! How much more blood can he possibly spill for you?”
“Jackham should've thought of that before he took their gold.” It was Simon Raines who step forward then. “I have sympathy for you, I do. I knew your father well—”
“You know nothing. He was the very best at what he did. You took away his profession and then you gave him what? Service work?”
Simon flinched from her. She saw it, and so did everyone in the dining room. “What's wrong, Sir Simon? Did I remind you of something unpleasant? Did I remind you that my father fell three stories because you made a mistake?”
“He forgave me for that.” Simon said quietly.
“Yes,” she spat out sarcastically. “Because there's so much forgiveness flowing at the Liar's Club!”
She turned back to Etheridge. Seal the breach, he'd said. Good. They would dispose of her and never, ever learn about Emma and Ruby. In fact, the more furious she made them, the sooner they would go about it. All the better.
It was not an act, she realized. The rage boiled up in her like hot lava welling in a dormant volcano. It had been there for so long that she'd almost forgotten it was there.
“You don't know what he did—” Dalton began.
Amie was shaking with her rising fury. “On the contrary, I know precisely what he did. He gave me a full accounting after he was found out. It was the last time I ever saw my father before—”
“Before his body was found, you mean.” That was Simon.
She shook her head quickly, shaking away the jolt of loss that always came when she thought of that night. “He didn't want anyone to get hurt. He only did it—”
“For his daughter.” It was the woman in the golden mask.
“His secret family,” Simon said sadly.
Amie lifted her chin. “His only family. You lot were just his employers, not his brothers. You never let him in, not really. Good enough to train you, but not good enough to be one of you.”
“We cared about Jackham,” the curvaceous brunette with Simon protested. “He was my friend.”
Amie nodded miserably. “Yes, Lady Raines, he told me that, too. And that he'd been wrong to do what he did, that he'd take it back if he could, but by then he was in so deep—” She looked down. “Because of…because of me.”
The golden lady tilted her head. “The Chimera found out about you, didn't he? Held your safety over your father's head?”
Amie gazed back at the woman in astonishment. “How did you know?” She had not even told her sisters that secret.
This time the woman almost smiled, although it was a grim sort of expression. “I am most familiar with the Chimera's methods.”
“They didn't give him money,” Amie insisted. “They weren't the giving sort. They were blackmailers, not benefactors.”
Another man stepped forward. He wore a tiger mask, as did his red-haired lady. James Cunnington and his wife, Phillipa.
“He told me they gave him gold,” James said. “He confessed it to the both of us when we were kept at gunpoint on a rooftop by Lady Lavinia Winchell. That was just before Jackham tossed her off four stories like a bag of sand.”
Amie nodded. “I know that. He told me all about it. That was so you would look no further for his true motives. He also told me that he saved you both. He was ordered to kill your wife but he didn't. Instead, he killed off the alleged source of his supposed pile of gold. Does that sound like someone was in it for the payment?”
Phillipa spoke up. “No, it sounds like a man who would do anything to save his child.”
Poor Papa. Amie straightened with pride. “There was no gold. He would never have sold you for so little. 'Honor among thieves,' he said. You might be criminals but you were his criminals. Somehow they learned about—” Be careful here. “About me. With that, they had all the leverage they would ever need, for my papa loved me.”
She glared at them all, turning slowly in place, her chin lifted and her gaze defiant. “Do you all understand? My father loved me, and you murdered him for it!”
Her voice cracked and a hopeless shiver went through her. “Just as you are about to murder me.”
Chapter 12
Elliot felt an icy flood of fear for her. Then Dalton shifted his weight, as if to move forward, as if to reach for her. It was more than Elliot could bear.
No.
Somehow he found himself in front of her, staring down his spymaster, the Royal Four and all their company. God, how intimidating. How had she stood there so defiantly against all those accusing eyes and toothy masks?
Because she is the bravest woman you have ever met. Button was right. Elliot would never forgive himself if he let her get away—unless it would save her life.
“Stand down, Elliot.” Dalton's voice was a rasp.
“No, I don't think I will.” An eerie calm seeped into Elliot, a warmth like sitting by a fire on a cold day, like facing the future with the woman he loved pressed to his back. He wasn't intimidated by Dalton, or Julia, or anyone else.
Elliot no longer needed another's moral compass to lead the way. He knew what he was doing was right. “You won't touch her, Dalton. None of you will. Because what you do to her now will set the precedent for the treatment of all the children of all the Liars forevermore.”
“Jackham wasn't a Liar.” That was Simon. “We never trusted him enough.”
“Clearly the feeling was mutual, or he would have come to you and asked y
ou for protection for his daughter.” Elliot watched as Simon looked away and the understanding made him ache. “You made a bad call, Simon. Jackham did as well. I've been told that you left your post as spymaster because it was the only way you could keep your lady safe. You of all people must understand why he did what he did.”
He spread his hands, reaching out to them all. “I’m telling you, this cannot be who we are. This is not how we should treat her.” Elliot looked around at them all, Liars and the Four together. “It's a dangerous life. We all know that. The thing that makes it all right, the thing that keeps us living the life and running the risks is the very thing that makes us a family. My family.”
He reached his hand behind him and felt her smaller one grip his. So cold and stiff, as if she believed herself already lifeless. “If there is one thing that I believe about this family, it is that we take care of each other's children. We keep them safe, together.”
Dalton, who was father to one of the unruly creatures currently mobbing the halls of the club, looked taken aback. James, clearly thinking of his son, Robbie, nodded thoughtfully.
“It is Christmas,” Phillipa said quietly.
Julia nodded crisply. “A good time to let go of the past, I should think.” She stepped forward to stand before Elliot. “If you please?”
Elliot stepped back. He didn't leave Miss Jackham, or release her hand, but only moved to her side, to stand with her.
Amie gazed at the woman in the golden mask. She wasn't sure who she was.
“I also had to live down a notorious father,” the woman told her. “A terrible man. Far worse crimes than selling secrets, I assure you.”
Amie had no notion of what the woman spoke of. She'd thought the Royal Four were all men, but the other three—Wyndham, Reardon and Greenleigh were present. By process of elimination then. “The Fox, I presume?”
The golden woman tilted her head. “You are very free with your knowledge, Miss Jackham. I wonder, have you told anyone else of the Royal Four?”
