“Excellent.” Hughes’s fingers tapped on his knee. “There is a meeting tonight. If you are earnest about joining—”
“I am.”
A corner of Hughes’s mouth turned up. Something about his expression reminded Slade of his sister’s husband. The way he could charm a crowd with a few well-delivered sentences. Make whomever he was speaking to believe they were the only one in the world who mattered.
Slap a woman till she saw stars and convince her it was her fault.
“I appreciate your eagerness. But let me make something clear.” Without so much as a shift in his countenance, Hughes’s welcome throbbed with threat. “I will induct no more rabble interested only in the allure of a secret society. The time for society has ended. And when—if—I swear you in, it will be with the understanding that we both mean each and every word of the oath.”
For a moment, Slade held his gaze. No urge to flinch, no second-guessing. How could he, at this point? He had already lost everything but his life, and that phrase his father had taught him echoed constantly these days.
To live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Not that he was ready to give himself to eternity quite yet. “I would love to reassure you, Hughes, but given that I don’t know what the oath is…”
Amusement joined hands with the threat. “Let’s just say you’ll be swearing to act solely in the interest of the order—or to never act again.”
Death. The word crept its way into the carriage, despite the half smile and vague words. Slade had known when he signed on for this mission that the stakes could be no higher. Maybe it was the former gambler in him that had made him exchange that silent, irrevocable nod with Pinkerton. To be willing to risk it all for a chance to bring down the beast.
Or maybe it was because that gambler was gone. He had changed. And now he saw the world needed changing too.
Into the face of that silent echo, he pursed his lips and nodded. Sure, if this man knew the truth about him, he would draw that pistol from under his fashionable coat in a heartbeat. Nothing new. Slade had spent the last three months surrounded by thousands of men who would have done the same.
“The war has taken its toll.” Hughes trained his gaze out the window, so Slade followed suit. Weary buildings, brick covered in soot and wood desperate for whitewashing. “Crime abounds, so step carefully and be ready at all times to defend yourself. My neighborhood is one of the safest, but even so…”
“Mobtown. I know.” Baltimore’s reputation for murder and assault put even New York City to shame. “Ever think of leaving?”
“I did a decade ago. I should not have. When I returned, my brother had been handed everything.” He looked to Slade again. No reminiscence clouded his eyes, no regret. Just that same cold charm. “Have you any brothers, Mr. Osborne?”
And his father had said his hours at the poker table would avail nothing but trouble. If only he knew how schooling his features could now save his life. He kept watching the muted cityscape roll by. “I had one.”
A pause. Hughes cleared his throat. “The war?”
“The war.” Indirectly.
“I’m sorry. Losing a brother is never easy. Mine fell to muggers some fifteen months ago.”
Slade already knew that, and a sketch of information about the Hughes family besides. But because he wouldn’t have, had Pinkerton not provided him with a file, he looked back at his host as if surprised. Made sure his eyes softened, as if it created some kind of bond. As if his own loss weren’t so much fresher. And so much crueler. “My condolences.”
“Thank you.”
Silence held for a minute, and then Hughes turned to the latest news from the front. Slade seldom added a word. It was enough to grow accustomed to the cadence of the man’s voice. To learn the way his eyes shifted. To note each street they passed.
At last they turned into Monument Square, without question one of the wealthiest sectors of the city. Here the effects of the war were less obvious. The grounds looked tended. A black woman—slave or employed?—pushed a pram down the walk. A gaggle of ladies sashayed along as if they hadn’t a care in the world.
Scarlet curls peeking from one of the bonnets caught his gaze, and the face they framed held him captive. An appreciative noise slipped out. He may have reformed his ways, but a man still had to give credit to the Lord’s craftsmanship.
Hughes chuckled. “I see you have spotted our neighbors. Though several of those ladies are married, so do be careful who earns those hums of approval, Osborne.”
She was middling in height. Her fashionable coat probably provided little warmth, but neither did it hide her figure. And an admirable figure it was. “The redhead?” Not that he could afford divided attention, but a man had to know these things.
He felt Hughes stiffen before he glanced over and saw his smile freeze. Ice snapped in his eyes. “My brother’s widow. She is still in mourning, you understand.”
“Ah.” Yes, he understood. He understood she was wearing lavender, though she ought to be still in second mourning. He understood the possessive gleam in Devereaux Hughes’s eyes.
He understood his one little sound of admiration had just labeled him as someone to be watched. Blast it to pieces. His mother had been right. Nothing good ever came of letting one’s eyes wander.
Glancing out the window again, he chose another young lady at random. “What about the blonde there?”
Perhaps Hughes relaxed a degree. Or perhaps it was wishful thinking. “Miss Lynn. She had a sweetheart at the start of the war, but…”
“Miss Lynn.” He put a grin in his voice as he tested the name.
Mrs. Hughes glanced their way as they rumbled past and smiled. No innocent greeting of her brother-in-law, that smile. No, there was something far more in her cat-green eyes. Something that contained both recognition and question. Both passion and…anger?
Dangerous woman.
The carriage turned into a drive, and Slade’s host barely waited for the door to open before jumping down. “Come. I’ll show you to a room. We have half an hour before we must repair across the street. My mother is a stickler for promptness, even though she has been bound to her rooms this past month.” His face finally softened, a light in his smile.
Slade slid on the old, carefree grin he hadn’t worn in so long. “Mine is the same way.”
But when he stood in the silence of a guest bedroom a few minutes later, he didn’t rush for the basin of water. He didn’t loosen the cravat he wanted to take off altogether or poke around the room’s elegant appointments. He strode to the window and leaned against the frame. He closed his eyes and, for the first time since he boarded the train in Washington earlier, dared to draw in a long breath. To be the man he was rather than the man he had once been.
Father God. Another deep breath, to clear his mind and cleanse his heart. Father God, here I am. Where You sent me. Keep my heart focused on You.
Any further prayer was cut off by the entrance of the manservant who had driven the carriage, Slade’s trunk bowing his back. Though he nearly stepped forward to help, he stopped himself. He even let a second man fuss over wrinkles and cuff links. And then he went down, twenty minutes later, to find his host waiting by the door.
Hughes nodded at his appearance and led him outside, across the street to an edifice even larger than his. “The family home,” the man said, motioning at it. “I was fortunate to find a house so near when I moved back to Baltimore four years ago.”
Had Lucien willed it to the missus despite her giving him no heir, or did Devereaux let her continue living there with his mother out of the goodness of his heart? Or out of something, anyway.
A black man in livery opened the door for them before Hughes could even knock. “Evenin’, Mr. Dev. Sir. Come right on in outta that cold, now.”
His host made some reply, but Slade couldn’t have said what. He’d no sooner taken off his hat and handed it over with his overcoat than he spotted her. First the deep flame of her hair
, and then the swish of her pale purple skirt. She came their way from somewhere down the hall, gliding forward with that grace Southern mamas seemed to instill in their daughters from birth.
“Good evening, Dev.” Her voice was what he’d imagined it would be. A warm alto, thick with honey.
He recognized the tug in his gut for what it was. She was beautiful. Too beautiful, the kind that knew well the power it gave her over the male half of the species. And if he read that calm control in her eyes aright, the kind that used it like an overseer would a whip. Still, recognizing it didn’t stop the tug from repeating when she turned those pale green eyes his way.
“And this must be Mr. Osborne.” Her smile was all rehearsed charm as she held out a hand, wrist limp. “So good of you to join us.”
He took the hand because propriety said he must and bowed over it, but he stopped shy of pressing his lips to her knuckles. She would call it bad manners—he called it survival instincts. “Good of you to have me.”
Hughes stepped to her side and cupped her elbow. The curl of his fingers looked like a shackle. “Allow me to make proper introductions. This is Slade Osborne of New York, a security agent trained by Allan Pinkerton. I’m considering hiring him, what with all the sabotage to the rails. Mr. Osborne, my sister-in-law, Marietta Arnaud Hughes.”
“Arnaud.” It took him a second, but likely only because of how distracting it was when she arched those fiery brows. “Any relation to Commodore Arnaud of the USS Marguerite?”
Her smile went warm. “My father.”
Her father was one of the Union’s most vital naval commanders? He didn’t dare look at Hughes, but he had to wonder. Did that fact gall him, he with his Confederate sympathies? Or was it, in fact, a mark in her favor?
He supposed he would find out if he did his job well.
Another man may have commented on Commodore Arnaud’s legendary bravery. But because she obviously knew the stories better than he, Slade simply nodded again. And, when she motioned to his right, turned.
“Do make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen. I just need to check in with Tandy in the kitchen.”
His gaze snagged on Hughes’s, and his host jerked his head toward that room to the right—a library—while he pulled Mrs. Hughes to the left. “You get settled, Osborne. I need a word with our hostess.”
Seeing no reason to argue, Slade strode into the library, taking in the fine furniture with a slow turn and sweeping glance…which made its way back to the hallway just as Hughes pulled the lady close, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her like there was no tomorrow.
Subtle. With a snort, Slade turned away. About as subtle as Ross’s sledgehammer.
Three
How Marietta wished the boning in her corset would allow her spine to sag. She perched upon the edge of the settee and willed the evening to be over. Her head pounded, her neck ached. All she wanted was to shut herself in her room, curl up on her bed, and try to convince the questions to stop whirling. The doubts to stop nagging. Her heart to stop twisting.
It was all too much for one day. Far, far too much. Each new fact hovered before her gaze, images forever scored into her mind. What would it be like to forget? Perhaps if she could get lost in a book…or fall into the oblivion of sleep…
But Dev and Mr. Osborne had come in right behind her after dinner, eliminating all chances of escape. Though rather than sit, Dev just flashed that charming smile. Her stomach knotted, but not quite like it had this morning, before Granddad had dumped the wretched questions upon her. He was wrong. Mistaken. Dev could have no part of any dark secrets.
Yet Thaddeus Lane had never been mistaken about anything so important, not in her recollection. And he never would have come to her about it unless he had been entirely certain.
Which facts, then, to believe?
Dev’s eyes looked as soft as ever when he gazed at her. The love and desire still gleamed. Just as Lucien’s always had. How could they both pretend to be one sort of man in her company, and then crawl underground like a serpent and plot destruction?
Well. She squared her shoulders and made herself smile. She would discover the truth somehow. And if he had lied to her for four years, then she would return the favor. Convince him she was the same woman she’d always been, even if she hadn’t a clue who she might be when she shut her eyes tonight. Was she Dev’s love, or a…a Culper?
“I had better go sit with Mother for a while.” Dev smiled at her and then glanced at Mr. Osborne. “I trust you can entertain our guest for a few minutes, darling?”
“Of course.” She kept her smile neutral, though her chest tightened as he left the room. They all knew their guest had witnessed that kiss an hour and a half earlier, but she could hardly pull away and slap Dev the way she had wanted to do. Not when she had welcomed his kiss too often this past year. If Granddad was right, she had best obey his insistence that Dev remain oblivious to her knowledge of his loyalties. And if she could prove him wrong, then why take it out on Dev?
Though she had hissed at him about making such a move in plain view of the man across the hall.
Over dinner, she had paid their guest no more attention than she would any other guest. Hadn’t looked at him overlong, hadn’t let herself wonder.
Now, though, with Dev gone, she turned her gaze his way and watched him. He still stood, looking perfectly at ease and showing no inclination to sit. Which suited him, somehow. He wasn’t all that tall—at least three inches shorter than both of the Hughes brothers—but his limbs seemed to have a fluidity to them, like a wild animal perfectly content to stand and watch…until it pounced.
A panther, maybe. Or a wolf, rangy and alone. One with eyes so deep a brown they were nearly black, much like his hair. He wore a goatee, neatly trimmed, and a fine suit of clothes in charcoal. The look in his eyes said he thought he understood everything perfectly.
Unlikely.
He motioned toward the bookshelves lining the westward wall. “May I?”
“Certainly.” She toyed with one of the curls Cora had arranged over her shoulder as he slid toward the books. “I confess you didn’t strike me as the studious type, Mr. Osborne.”
“Guess it depends on with whom I’m being compared.” He turned to peruse the shelves.
An odd man to send to infiltrate the KGC. One who harbored a secret that could get him killed, yet whose cover was, in fact, that he was one of Pinkerton’s agents. Foolish or brilliant. She would reserve judgment as to which.
He pulled a book from the shelf and paged through it. Rather than replace it again, he stood there and read.
Marietta frowned. “Well, I am surprised. Sermons?”
He turned toward her, the book still in his hand and a question lining his forehead. “My father is a minister. And you must have fine eyesight to have seen the title from there.”
“Must I?” A smile bade for leave to touch her lips, and she allowed it. She couldn’t make out so much as a word of the title, but he had pulled down the twelfth book, the one with the blue spine. The sermons of John Wesley.
He ran a finger down the edge of the book, more thoughtfully than he would from simple reminiscence—more like a man who valued the words inside. Then he snapped it shut and lifted his chin. Studied her.
A wolf, without doubt.
“I was sorry to hear about your husband.” Yet no apology softened the gaze that dropped from her face to the lavender silk. “Though I know my condolences are belated. How long has it been?”
Four hundred fifty-eight days and—she glanced at the mantel clock—twenty-two hours and sixteen minutes.
But that was surely not the answer he was looking for. No, he sought no answer at all. No question burned in his gaze. But censure gleamed where it ought to have been. She let the hair wind around her finger. None of her friends at the Ladies’ Aid meeting had been anything but supportive—to her face, anyway. But this stranger would stand in her house and judge her? She pulled the curl tight before dropping her hand
and letting it bounce free. He couldn’t know how fully she deserved the condemnation.
Still, she kept her smile in place. “Not long enough to be out of second mourning. Mother Hughes requested the change, though, and her health has been so fragile. If something so simple can help buoy her, who am I to refuse?”
Perfectly honest, yet he studied her as if trying to unravel truth from lie. “Kind of you. To care so for her when most would leave her to her other son.”
Marietta reached for the basket of bandages waiting to be rolled. Something useful ought to come of this conversation. “I could hardly ask her to leave the only home she has known since her marriage.”
“Of course not,” he said. Yet when she glanced up, his eyes said that was the answer he had sought.
She found the end of one strip and began to roll. Why had he wanted to know who in the family owned the house? It could be of no…
She granted herself only a moment’s pause as the realization struck. The castle. It was on her land. Lucien’s father had willed it to him, and he had willed it to her. If she sold the house…if she chose to marry someone other than Dev…
The ache expanded until it took over her heart too. Yet another question to pile on the day.
For now, she fastened on her most charming smile. It might be a bit rusty after these months at home in mourning, but it would suffice to parry Mr. Osborne’s unfelt compliment about caring for her mother-in-law. “Well, sir, I am only striving for Christian perfection.”
She was guessing, of course, as to which sermon he had landed on when he flipped the book open. But if his father had educated him in Wesley’s works, then he would be familiar with it.
He glanced down at the tome and then looked at her again, those wolf eyes smirking. “Now I am the one surprised. You have read Wesley?”
Had his shock not been well deserved, it might have offended her. As it was, she chuckled. “My parents hoped to fill my mind with all things high and good.”
Amusement twitched his lips. “Did it work?”
She straightened the length of cloth before winding it more and then sent him a laughing gaze. “What do you think?”
Circle of Spies Page 3
