by Zoë Archer
“Now what?” Marco asked.
Harriet pointed an accusing finger at Lazarus. “Please tell Colonel Numskull that if you can’t get to the groin, the best way to incapacitate a man is to slam the side of your hand into your opponent’s throat.”
“A good, solid punch to the solar plexus,” Lazarus retorted. “That’s the way to take a bloke down. He can’t prepare for it, and you can shock the hell out of him. Or knock the wind out of ’im. Maybe even stop his heart.”
“A hit to the throat is always going to hurt,” Harriet argued. “And it cuts off any way of breathing. No better means of disabling your enemy.”
“Madonna, is there nothing you two won’t fight about?” Marco said with a sigh.
“No,” they said in unison.
“Well, that’s an agreement about something,” Mrs. Parrish offered.
They both looked appalled at the idea.
“What did you learn?” Harriet asked, as if trying to distract herself from the notion that she and Lazarus might be in accord about anything.
Striding to the rickety sideboard, Marco poured himself a few fingers of whisky. He threw the drink back, letting its heat singe away thoughts of the spirited Widow Parrish. But alcohol wasn’t entirely successful, and he felt himself all too aware of her dark, still presence in the room.
He quickly briefed Lazarus and Harriet on everything the evening had revealed, including Devere’s citywide debts and sudden disappearance.
“Maybe someone caught up with him,” Lazarus offered. “Didn’t like the bloke’s habit of holding on to his money instead of paying up. Then gave him what for.” Lazarus mimed sticking a knife into someone’s gut.
“Charlie would’ve heard about it,” Marco countered.
“Perhaps she knew and didn’t tell us,” Mrs. Parrish said. “She did say that information was powerful. She didn’t want to give us that power.”
The widow was thinking more and more like a devious Nemesis agent. Did that mean she was being strengthened, or corrupted? “She’s got nothing to gain by withholding the possibility of Devere’s death from us,” Marco said. “It’d serve her better to tell us everything she knew so we could find him and she’d get her thirty pounds.”
“What’s it to be, then?” Lazarus asked. “Got everything you could from his offices.”
“His lodgings next, I’d wager,” Harriet suggested.
“He wouldn’t leave anything important there,” the old soldier countered. “Not if he owes half the city blunt. It’d be the first place the chaps wanting him would look.”
Harriet opened her mouth in a retort, but Marco cut her off. “Unless they’re looking for the wrong things.”
Despite the fact that Harriet had just made the suggestion, now Lazarus nodded sagely at Marco’s wisdom. Harriet crossed her arms over her chest and kicked the leg of the table.
The widow covered her mouth with her hand, but as though she were holding back a smile. She’d only been working with Nemesis for a day, and already she was falling into the rhythms of the place and people.
As if that searching self he’d felt in her had been searching for … this.
But that wasn’t possible. Not her. Not this.
“Tomorrow,” Marco went on, “I’ll break into Devere’s lodgings and conduct my own search.”
Lacing his fingers together, Lazarus gave his knuckles a solid crack, making both Harriet and Mrs. Parrish wince. “Right, then. Haven’t done a proper bit of second-story work in a while.”
“Mi dispiace, amico.” Marco placed his hand on Lazarus’s shoulder. “You’ll have to wait a little longer.”
“You’ll take Desmond with you?” Harriet asked. “I’d join you myself, but I’ve got to be at my regular employment tomorrow.”
“Not you, nor Desmond.” He turned and gave a slow smile to the widow. “My partner for this particular job will be Mrs. Parrish.”
She took a step backward. “Me? I don’t know anything about breaking into anyplace.”
“Leave the technicalities to me,” he answered. “But with Harriet unavailable, I need a nice, respectable woman with me to make me look nice and respectable.”
“While burglarizing a man’s home,” Mrs. Parrish added. She gripped her hands tightly. Would she refuse? He’d wager this would be the first time she’d actually broken the law. He could find a way into Devere’s lodgings without her, but having her along would certainly help. Yet he wanted her near him.
Just to keep her safe.
After a moment, Mrs. Parrish sighed. “Just don’t ask me to hit anyone. Don’t burglars hit people?”
“Not the good ones.” He’d broken into countless places—from heavily guarded palaces to shacks in slums—yet he found himself oddly looking forward to this experience, much as the impulse troubled him.
FOUR
Exhausted as she’d been last night, Bronwyn had found sleep elusive. Perhaps it was because of the unfamiliar bed—much more narrow than the one she’d been used to, and the mattress was stuffed with what felt like straw and rusty tacks. Her mind had played and replayed all the strange scenes she’d witnessed over the course of the day. Questions about her missing fortune and the evasive Devere kept tumbling through her thoughts like thrown dice, with no way to know if the pieces would land in her favor or cause her ruination.
She’d seen blood before—basins of it—but never spilled so violently as she’d witnessed last night. The whole boxing arena had stunk of sweat and the copper tang of blood, and the smell still lingered in her nostrils. It kept her awake enough to hear the sounds of a strange house creaking all around her like bones.
And there had been the fights themselves—including Marco’s fast, brutal brawl with the awful man. Seeing him in action had been … shocking. Terrible. Slightly … arousing. The images had followed her to bed. Whenever she did manage to doze off, her dreams were rich with a voice like wine, and the gleam in a pair of wickedly clever dark eyes.
She woke feeling unrested, and disloyal to Hugh’s memory.
Now she sat at the table in the Nemesis headquarters parlor, nursing a cup of tea and nibbling on dry toast, only half listening to Harriet as the other woman talked generally of her work at an accountancy firm.
“And that’s why our most prestigious client is an emperor penguin who pays in sardines,” Harriet said.
“Mm, very interesting,” Bronwyn murmured. When Harriet laughed, Bronwyn realized just what the other woman had been saying, and her cheeks heated . “I am so sorry!”
But Harriet waved off her apology. “You’re forgiven if you don’t attend to every fascinating pearl of information from my lips.” Her gaze turned sympathetic. “How strange all this must be for you.”
“Strange is too mild a term. Outlandish, perhaps. Or fantastical.”
The other woman’s look grew sober. “Sadly, there’s nothing of fantasy about the work Nemesis does. The things I’ve seen since I’ve joined, the knowledge I’ve gained…” She rubbed her arms. “I’d say I wish I could unsee and unlearn it all, but I’d rather have full understanding and make a difference, rather than bury my head in the sand and do nothing.”
Bronwyn studied the woman across the table. With her skin color, Harriet likely experienced a difficult existence, yet she chose to make her life even harder. Humbling, that kind of courage.
“How does a woman get into the business of vengeance?” she asked.
Harriet spread her hands. “How can she not? This is a world run by men. Everything belongs to them—including women. We’re always the ones to suffer, to be treated like children or animals.” Anger heated her gaze. “The gifts my father regularly bestowed upon my mother were bruises and blackened eyes. She tried to leave him. Many times, but he threatened to take me and my brother away from her if she stayed away. The damn courts gave him that right. It didn’t help that she was black and he was white. So she stayed. And went to an early death, courtesy of his fists and our glorious nation’s law.�
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“I’m…” Offering an apology seemed so paltry. “I can understand why you’d want to help others.”
“If only Nemesis had existed back then,” Harriet said, her voice hard. “But it does now, and now I do my part to make certain no woman is hurt by any man’s cruelty.”
“Did your father … he didn’t…”
Harriet smiled mirthlessly. “Oh, he tried to hit me once after my mother died.” She pointed to a series of crescent-shaped scars on her knuckles. “His teeth made these when I broke his jaw. Left me alone after that.”
Memories from last night flashed through Bronwyn’s mind—the thud of fist meeting flesh, the tang of blood, men’s shouts. And Harriet’s mother, the victim of another man’s brutality …
A whole realm of viciousness Bronwyn had never known.
“It doesn’t amount for much,” she said slowly, “but … for whatever it’s worth … I’m sorry.”
The other woman made a small nod. “I learned how to protect myself. I just wish more women were given the same tools, so they’d never have to suffer as my mother did.”
“Can you show me?” Bronwyn asked after a moment. “How to use my fists as weapons?” This was a cruel world. She was beginning to understand that fully. And she couldn’t pretend anymore that she wasn’t part of it.
Which was why, when Marco entered the flat fifteen minutes later, Bronwyn was hitting a pillow that Harriet held, with the older woman shouting, “That’s right! Give it to him good!”
“Are you tenderizing your pillow?” Marco asked, closing the door behind him, and setting his hat down on a chair. “We could get you a softer one, if you prefer.”
Bronwyn whirled to face him. She panted with exertion. Her hands already throbbed, and the effort of using just her fists dragged on the rest of her body. “Harriet’s teaching me how to use my fists.”
“I don’t envy whoever is at the other end of those punches, be they pillow or man.”
She turned away protectively. “Show me more, please?”
Harriet glanced at the mantel and set down the pillow. “Much as I’d relish the privilege, I have to make my omnibus, or I’ll be late for work. But there’s a women’s gymnasium in Brompton, and they offer lessons in fisticuffs, target shooting, and judo. I used to go there with Eva. I’ll take you there sometime. In the meanwhile,” she added, buttoning her coat and pinning on her hat, “Marco can give you some more guidance. He won trophies at Cambridge.”
Bronwyn’s brows lifted. Here was a small piece of the puzzle that was Marco. A Cambridge man, and champion pugilist, as well. Both facts were expected surprises.
At the door, Harriet said, “Enjoy your foray into burglary.” She waved, and then left, her footsteps light on the creaking stairs leading to the chemist’s shop.
With Harriet gone, leaving Bronwyn alone with Marco, the parlor became immediately smaller. He was a lean man, not very tall, yet his dark, edged presence filled the room. She put her breakfast dishes away, conscious of his gaze on her. Could he sense with that uncanny awareness of his that she’d dreamed of him?
“Devere keeps his lodgings in Highbury,” Marco said as she made unnecessary trips back and forth from the kitchen.
“It seems it would make more sense to go at night.” She finally returned to the parlor. “Safer.”
But he shook his head. “The front door to the building is unlocked during the day, and usually only the landlord is around. All the other lodgers are working bachelors.”
“Leaving the place essentially empty,” she deduced. “And we’ll look less suspicious, too. A gentleman and widow calling on a friend.”
He eyed her gown. “Those weeds are like a sign lit by electric bulbs. WOMAN IN FIRST MOURNING OUT ON THE STREET. You stand out wherever you go—and it’s not just because you’re pretty.”
Her heart thumped at his admission. It shouldn’t matter if he considered her homely or the most beautiful woman in the world—they were working together, and she was, as he’d pointed out, mourning her husband. It shouldn’t matter. Yet it did.
Was he being honest? He didn’t seem like the sort of man who doled out compliments readily, but one who would use them like weapons.
“These clothes are all I have,” she answered, “and I am in first mourning. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
He cursed quietly in Italian. Either she was entranced by the language or the man speaking it, because even his swearing sounded musical.
“You still have Harriet’s cloak from last night?” At her nod, he pressed, “Then put that on, and wear the hood up again. Leave that frightful bonnet behind.”
She should object to not wearing her veil, but she hated the blasted thing, clinging to her face and fogging her vision. So she hurried up the stairs and donned the cloak. At least it was chilly out, as evidenced by the leaden sky, or else she’d suffocate beneath the heavy wool.
“This has to do,” she said, coming back down to the parlor.
She resisted the impulse to step backward when Marco reached for her. His fingers brushed her cheek as he pulled up the cloak’s hood, and though his hand was gloved, his brief touch shot warmth through her, recalling her dream. Stunned, she could only stand there, staring up at him.
His pupils dilated within the darkness of his eyes, and he gave one quick, rough inhale.
“It’ll do very well,” he said in a low voice.
* * *
From the exterior, Devere’s lodgings on Aberdeen Road appeared perfectly respectable. Potted plants flanked the doorway of the terraced house, and the brick façade looked regularly scrubbed of the city’s ubiquitous coal smoke. Though bachelors lived within, curtains hung in most of the clean windows, revealing that the men might be single, but they still took pride in their home. Or the lodgers paid a charwoman to come in and tidy everything up on a regular basis.
The building was respectable, but Bronwyn and Marco’s purpose wasn’t. She kept glancing over her shoulder as they climbed the front steps, certain that the passing pedestrians could see their criminal intent hanging over them like a dark miasma.
“The more suspicious you look, the more people have a reason to suspect you,” Marco muttered as he escorted her up the stairs.
“I can’t help it,” she hissed under her breath. “I’ve never”—she shot a quick glance behind her—“let myself into someone’s home uninvited.”
As Marco had predicted, the front door to the lodging house was unlocked, and he opened it confidently. They stepped into a carpeted foyer, with a hallway just beyond it, and doors presumably leading to flats off the hallway. The carpet showed wear from the tread of numerous men over the years, the banisters on the staircase rubbed to a shine from countless hands, but like the front of the building, everything seemed neat and cared for.
“Devere invited us when he took your money,” Marco said. He gazed up the stairs. “Third floor.”
She allowed him to lead her up the steps, even as her heart beat in her throat. She wasn’t certain what she’d say if anyone caught them there. The landlord could throw them out, or, worse, summon the constabulary.
“Is that how you justify it?” she asked.
“I don’t need justification to do my job.”
They didn’t pass anyone in the stairwell, the whole building resonant with the silence of men away at their offices. Finally, they reached the third floor, and Marco walked directly to one of the two doors off the landing.
He tried the doorknob. Locked.
“And now?” she whispered.
“Now we go inside.” From within his coat, he slipped a slim leather case and flipped it open.
She started when she saw the line of thin metal picks neatly arranged within the case. “Those are—”
“Carpenters work with hammers,” he answered, bending down and sliding one of the picks into the lock. “Masons have their trowels.”
“And you have a thief’s lock picks.”
“I never
steal anything,” he replied without looking at her. He carefully inserted another tiny metal tool into the lock. “I liberate important information.”
He manipulated words to absolve himself of wrongdoing, sending a tremor of unease up her spine. Just what did he do when he wasn’t working for Nemesis? Likely he had to pick more than a few locks for the organization’s missions. Still, something about the ease and artistry of him at the lock … he had a skill that went beyond Nemesis’s needs.
She’d read the sensationalized tales in periodicals about blackguards, scoundrels, even highwaymen from long ago, and found those stories … interesting. Faintly titillating.
The sight of Marco now gently easing picks in and out of the lock made her heart beat harder—and not with fear.
Heaven help me, I’ve turned into a reprobate, aroused by the sight of a man breaking into another man’s home.
Her reverie broke when she heard the front door downstairs open. “Oh, hurry,” she whispered urgently.
Yet before the last syllable left her mouth, Marco had turned the knob to Devere’s flat, revealing the rooms within. They stepped inside quickly, with Marco shutting the door noiselessly behind them. For a moment, they paused, waiting. But there were no hasty footsteps on the stair. No calls for them to quit the premises immediately.
She exhaled. They were safe. And she’d just participated in her very first criminal act.
“There’s a chair by the table,” he offered, “if you need to sit down.”
“My feet can hold me, thank you.” She exhaled.
He seemed to fight a smile. “We’ll make a burglar out of you yet.”
“I thought you said you didn’t steal.”
He shrugged. “Definitions are slippery things.”
“But not as slippery as you.”
