Wicked Temptation (Nemesis Unlimited)

by Zoë Archer

  “Fairness never entered my mind,” she answered.

  “Why should it,” Harriet said, “when you haven’t been treated fairly?”

  “But all this grandeur”—Marco waved at the modest chamber—“is financed out of Nemesis agents’ own pockets.”

  She stared at him, shocked. These people couldn’t possibly be real, bankrolling justice for its own sake. “There can’t be very many of you, then.”

  He chuckled, a sound like the pouring of a rich, dark wine into fine crystal, then cut his laughter short. “Never enough.”

  “Some are on assignment right now,” Harriet said. “Desmond and Riza just came back from a mission that took them to the United States—you’ll meet them later.”

  Her mind whirled. This world was so new, so hidden. How could she have ever known of it? And yet, like a receding tide, it became revealed.

  “Your work is pro bono,” she said, “yet I can’t imagine what kind of outside employment you’d have to keep the Nemesis coffers full. Perhaps you’re bank robbers.”

  Lazarus chortled. “We stay on the side of the law. Usually.”

  “Usually?”

  “It’s true that we all have jobs beyond Nemesis,” Harriet said, ignoring Bronwyn’s alarmed demand. “Jobs where no one knows anything about this.”

  “None of you sit behind a desk,” Bronwyn said. “It seems so mundane.”

  “Few of us do,” Marco replied.

  What did he do outside of Nemesis? Of the three agents she’d met, he seemed the least likely to lead a quotidian existence. Would he go to some offices, remove his hat and coat and put them on hooks, then go through number-filled ledgers, go out to a chophouse for luncheon, then return back to work and yawn through the afternoon? The idea felt so ludicrous, she dismissed it at once.

  However Marco lined his pockets when not helping penniless widows, it certainly couldn’t entail anything so commonplace. What might suit him? What did he do?

  An urge pressed upon her, demanding to know. Who he was—really. She’d never met anyone so opaque, so intriguing, so full of hidden depths. So terrifying.

  “The issue of Nemesis’s bank accounts doesn’t matter,” he continued. “When going to war, first the troops settle into their encampment.” Opening his arms, he said, “Welcome to your new home.”

  “She’s staying here?” Lazarus demanded when Bronwyn fell into stunned silence.

  “We need the good widow close at hand,” Marco explained. “She’d rile up too much scandal if any of us went trooping through a hotel room or boardinghouse. Scandal can be the enemy of subtlety.”

  The flat wasn’t that far in quality from the boardinghouse, but she still needed a moment to adjust herself to the idea of sleeping here. At least temporarily.

  “If it’s scandal you’re avoiding,” Lazarus interjected, “then she can’t stay here. On account of the fact that it’s where I live. An old soldier like me won’t be in Debrett’s, but even I know that an unmarried woman can’t share a roof with an unmarried man. And pretty unmarried women aren’t an exception.”

  “You won’t be staying here, you ass,” snapped Harriet. “I will.”

  Was that jealousy Bronwyn heard in the other woman’s voice?

  “And where the bloody hell am I supposed to go?” Lazarus demanded.

  “You’ll be at my place,” Marco said wearily. “But you’re keeping your boots on the whole time. I don’t want my rooms smelling of your feet.”

  “Like roses, they are,” the soldier answered with a grin. “Roses with bunions.”

  Harriet made a face, and Marco shook his head, yet all Bronwyn could do was watch the interplay between these strangers. A wave of loneliness washed through her. She’d been so isolated and for so long, even before Hugh had died. But these Nemesis people were friends of a sort, united by a common purpose. She was the outsider suddenly thrust into their midst.

  “Can you show me to my room?” she asked Harriet as she picked up her luggage. She needed to get away from the reminders of what she’d lost.

  To her surprise, Marco plucked the valise and violin case from her hand, and headed for the staircase. That certainly couldn’t be proper. But the world had gone so topsy-turvy, she couldn’t hold anything to the standards of what she’d known. So she followed him as he silently climbed the stairs.

  “How do you do that?” she asked his back. She wasn’t a big woman by any stretch, but the steps creaked beneath her feet.

  He seemed to know to what she was referring, because he answered without looking back, “A combination of talent and training.”

  She wondered what sort of work required a man to train in the art of moving noiselessly. Was he a thief? It made sense, given the shadows in his eyes and the sleekness of his movement. But the Nemesis operatives claimed to be lawful. Or somewhat lawful.

  At the top of the stairs stood a hallway, covered by a battered carpet. A handful of doors lined the corridor. Marco pushed one open and gestured her in. It was a narrow chamber with an equally narrow bed. The window looked out onto a drab yard where someone had attempted to grow a garden and failed.

  Aside from a washstand, the other piece of furniture was a small writing desk. Idly, she opened the drawer, and pulled out a copy of Hardy’s Return of the Native. She opened the cover.

  THIS BOOK IS BOLLOCKS—JD, someone had scrawled.

  Whoever JD was, they shared the same opinion of the book.

  “I prefer Haggard, myself,” Marco offered, setting down her valise and violin case.

  She returned the volume to its drawer. “Gaskell for me, even though she’s not au courant.” She traced her fingers over the worn surface of the desk, its top gouged from countless pens. “I had to sell all of my books when Devere took everything.” Even North and South, despite her fervent wish that her own Mr. Thornton might appear to beat the men taking her books.

  Turning back, she saw that Marco’s face had gone expressionless. “There’s water in the ewer. Freshen yourself up—we’re going out.”

  “Where?”

  “To Devere’s offices.”

  She gaped at him. All she wanted was to hide from the uncertainty her life had become. “Us? Now? There?”

  “You and me,” he answered. “If I go alone, Devere might not allow me in to see him. We don’t have much time, so, yes, now. Nowhere better to start than with the man who knows the most about Hugh’s debts.”

  * * *

  Bronwyn herself had never been to Devere’s place of business. Hugh had always gone. Without her, of course. But she knew that his offices were located on Cannon Street in the City, and so, in short order, she found herself in a cab with Marco.

  She looked out the window as they wound deeper into the financial heart of the capital. She felt raw, exposed. “For eight months, I’ve been trapped inside my home. It’s all changed—in just a day. It’s like…” She struggled to name the sensation. “I’m a baby bird that’s fallen out of its nest.”

  “Whether you fly or perish is up to you,” he answered.

  “That’s not especially encouraging,” she said tartly.

  He shrugged. “As little as you know me, I know only slightly more about you. No way to foretell how you’ll manage the tasks ahead.”

  “Surely Lucy told you everything about me. I’m certain one of those dossiers on the table is mine.”

  “‘Words, words, words,’ to quote Will Shakespeare. It’s in the doing that someone shows who they really are.”

  “If you have so little faith in me,” she said, her temper rising, “why bring me to Devere’s? Surely a man as clever as yourself could find out what he needs to know without me.”

  “In less than a minute,” he agreed easily. “But there’s more I need to learn than how Hugh came into such debt. There’s learning you, too.”

  “Then we’re both strangers to each other,” she fired back.

  “So we are.” Should she be insulted by his plain speaking? Pleased? All the
politesse that had shrouded her had left her here, without a cent, reliant on the benevolence of a group of vigilantes. Precarious didn’t begin to describe her circumstances.

  At the least, she wished Harriet had accompanied them to Devere’s. Being alone with Marco felt like having a cold blade pressed to her spine. With Harriet around, the blade felt swathed in batting—acting as buffer between herself and this unpredictable, cunning man.

  “Ever met Devere?” Marco asked.

  “He came to a dinner I gave once. A very agreeable man—or at least he was to me.”

  “Age? Height? Hair and eye color?”

  “You sound like one of those Scotland Yard men in the penny dreadfuls. Is he a suspect in any crime?”

  “That’s to be determined,” he answered enigmatically. “But I need to know his manner and appearance.”

  She sifted through the debris littering her memory. So many people came and went at her dinner parties, people she’d meet once and then never again. Of course, she had her regular guests—friends of Hugh’s from Oxford, the usual people in their set, bishops and journalists. But her husband’s financial agent had appeared at her table once and once only.

  A face materialized in her mind. “Middle forties, if I were to guess. Light brown hair. Full mustache and sideburns. Blue-brown eyes, like water full of silt. Rather small nose for a man. He’d laugh into his fist, as if he were coughing.”

  Marco nodded. “Perhaps you missed your calling as a Scotland Yard detective.”

  She laughed at the outrageousness of his suggestion. As if women could ever be police investigators. As if she could ever be a investigator. That was even more ludicrous than her wish to be a professional violinist.

  The hired carriage at last pulled up in front of a sober brick building. Men in dark, serious clothing teemed on the streets, hurrying to keep the great machine of England’s businesses running, or else get ground up between its massive cogs. No women were on the curb. Dread curled in her stomach. She shouldn’t be here, in this province of men.

  Marco got out of the carriage and offered her a hand to help her down. Even though she was dressed as darkly as the businessmen, her veil and weeds would stand out like an electric light among candles.

  She remembered what Marco said in the carriage. He didn’t seem to trust her, or her capability.

  She took his hand and stepped onto the curb. As she expected, men stared at her, some of them even stumbling as they passed, as she openly violated the rules of decent society.

  “Don’t retreat,” Marco murmured as she started to pull back. “If you do, this all ends. Take a step back and it’s over. Choose.”

  She swallowed hard. Straightened her spine. And pressed forward.

  “Bella,” he said in a low voice. The Italian sounded lovely but out of place in this world of square buildings and sober men.

  Together, they ascended the steps leading inside the building. Just before they entered, Marco’s shoulders rounded and he seemed to actually shrink by several inches. Reaching into an inside coat pocket, he produced a pair of spectacles and a cloth, which he used to clean the glasses with short, nervous gestures. Slipping the spectacles on, his chin weakened.

  It was an amazing metamorphosis.

  Her own confidence wavered. What had happened to him? She had to rely on this man, yet he seemed to fade before her eyes.

  Inside the building, they stood at the periphery of a large, open room filled with desks. Clerks rushed back and forth with sheaves of papers in their hands, and while some wrote with pen and ink, the clack of newfangled typing machines punctuated the air like scores of tiny firing squads. Many of the clerks looked up as Bronwyn and Marco drifted farther into the chamber, and the clerks exchanged puzzled glances with each other. Women must seldom come to this sanctum of finance, and widows in full mourning were likely as common—and welcome—as ash in blancmange.

  Without Marco’s strength, her own faltered.

  One of the clerks managed to shake himself enough from his shock to approach her and Marco.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  But instead of speaking, Marco waved toward Bronwyn, as though she were the person the clerk was to do business with. This was a surprise to both the young man and herself.

  She cleared her throat. “Ah. Mr. Devere, please.”

  “Pardon me, madam,” the clerk stammered. “You are?”

  “Mrs. Parrish. My late husband was one of Mr. Devere’s clients.”

  “Oh … I see…” The ink-stained young man threw an anxious glance over his shoulder at his colleagues, all of whom were watching with appalled interest. His gaze then shot to one of the glass-fronted doors lining the back wall. The blinds within the chamber were drawn.

  “How long has Devere been missing?” Marco asked suddenly in a thin voice.

  The clerk went white. “I … that is … I’m not at liberty…”

  Marco turned to Bronwyn and muttered, “He doesn’t know anything.”

  Still recovering from the shock of Devere’s absence, she murmured, “Perhaps someone else would be better informed.”

  “Doubtful.” Marco flashed the clerk an apologetic smile.

  In their short acquaintance, Bronwyn would never describe anything Marco did as apologetic.

  “A shame that is,” he said in that unusual, reedy voice, “a deuced shame. We’ve come all the way from the home office to speak with Mr. Devere, and he’s not about.”

  “Home office?” echoed the clerk.

  “Taxation bureau. We’ve been in touch with Mrs. Parrish with regard to her late husband’s estate, or what’s become of it, but naturally she couldn’t tell us anything.” He gave a nasal, reedy laugh.

  The clerk laughed, as well, looking at Bronwyn indulgently. She’d seen that look on her father’s face, and Hugh’s, too, whenever she asked them a question about a topic they felt was beyond her woman’s intellect—things about the current political climate, or education reform. Though she’d always borne their patronizing glances with a smile. But this was a different world from the one she’d known. She didn’t have to bear the condescending looks anymore.

  Something strange stirred to life within her. She didn’t recognize it at first. It felt hot and seething.

  Anger.

  Suddenly, she wanted to kick both the clerk and Marco in very precious places.

  “Thing is,” Marco continued in a confiding tone, “my superiors have been twisting my cravat about Mr. Devere and his clientele, including Mrs. Parrish, here. They’ll be sure to sack me if I don’t come back with something. But can I help it if the chap’s up and vanished?” A feeble whine crept into Marco’s voice. “Isn’t that always the way, with our bosses blaming us for things we don’t have control over?”

  The clerk nodded vigorously. “Mr. Galbraith is forever barking at me, threatening me with getting the ax, and all because he’s the one who misfiles the paperwork. He needs to relearn the alphabet, is what he needs.”

  Marco laughed as if this were the cleverest thing uttered by anyone in the course of human history, and the clerk joined him. But then a stout man in an expensive waistcoat walked by, glaring at the clerk, and the laughter abruptly stopped.

  “Mr. Galbraith, I presume,” Bronwyn murmured dryly.

  The young man gave a less vigorous nod. “I ought to get back to work.”

  Marco heaved a sigh. “Ah, well.” He cast a longing glance toward what presumably was Devere’s office. “If only I could have had a poke through Mr. Devere’s files. Didn’t need to talk to the man himself, just check a few numbers.” He glanced at the clerk. “If I manage this assignment, I could get an advancement. There’d be a vacancy—and some enterprising young clerk might get that position, especially if I put in a good word with the brass.”

  The clerk looked thoughtful for a moment, then stepped closer. He cast a shifty glance around the room. “Five minutes. That’s all I can give you in Devere’s office. Then you’ll have to disappear
like he did.”

  “Five minutes is more than enough,” Marco answered quickly. “My thanks. And how long did you say he’d been gone?”

  “Three months,” the clerk replied, without realizing that he hadn’t said anything of the sort earlier. “Working chaps like you and me have to stick together.” He walked hastily to a desk, pulled a key out of a drawer, then returned and pressed the key into Marco’s hand, along with a scrap of paper that had his name and address. “If that vacancy opens up,” he explained.

  Marco gave the clerk a small salute. Bronwyn followed him as he crossed the room and unlocked the door to Devere’s office. They both stepped inside, and he shut the door. He didn’t bother turning on the gas lamp. Shadows clung thickly to the paper-strewn room. A heavy, musty smell hung in the air.

  “An actor,” Bronwyn whispered as Marco sifted through the mounds of papers. “That must be your other profession when you aren’t working for Nemesis.”

  He’d dropped his invisible disguise the moment they’d entered Devere’s office, and now moved confidently through the room, his gaze sharp and precise behind his spectacles. Rifling through a folder of more documents, he said, “There are more important mysteries than how I earn my bread. For example, where is Devere and what the hell does this mean?”

  She peered through the gloom at the papers he held up. Symbols and numbers covered the documents, as arcane as a dead language.

  Contemplating the papers again, he muttered, “Codes are a child’s game, but it’ll take more than five minutes for me to crack this one. Devere’s better than I thought.”

  “The man vanished with the answers about Hugh’s debt,” she said brusquely. “There’s nothing better about that.”

  “We’ve got different value scales, you and I,” Marco answered.

  Not wanting to just stand around uselessly, she began combing through the folders and folios scattered across every surface. “Either he left in a hurry, or someone’s been through here,” she speculated.

  “Or a little of both.”

  Her limbs tingled with the oddness of this experience. “What am I looking for?”