Wicked Temptation (Nemesis Unlimited)

by Zoë Archer

  A brief image flashed through her mind: Marco, not Devere, lay sprawled upon the ground in the school’s courtyard, and it was his blood turning the stone black, and those were his eyes staring emptily at the stars. Fear and sorrow stabbed through her.

  “As I said, I thought about sending you back to England,” he murmured. “Finishing up the case on my own, now that Devere’s dead.”

  A shiver danced between her shoulder blades. “Yet here I am. Bound for Marseille.”

  “Because they spotted you,” he answered, “and I don’t trust your security to anyone but me.”

  The coldness that had gathered in her bones slowly dissolved. Strange how he could touch her with these offhand comments.

  The train’s whistle shrilled. A well-dressed couple with a small child entered the carriage and took their seats, with a nanny busy supplying the child with entertaining distraction by producing a steady parade of toys. Meanwhile, a barefoot little girl sold posies outside on the train platform as passengers buffeted her like a dandelion seed on the wind.

  “That’s why there’s Nemesis,” Marco said in English as he followed her gaze.

  “I don’t think your work will ever be finished,” she replied.

  The train gave another whistle, then chugged away, leaving behind not just the men from Les Grillons, but the tiny flower seller, as well, who disappeared into the vast crowds.

  “It won’t,” Marco answered.

  * * *

  When traveling from Paris to Amélie-les-Bains, Bronwyn had been more concerned with saving Hugh’s life than her own. English doctors had proven all but useless, except for a few recommendations to get Hugh to one of the spas on the Continent. So they’d gone, with the bright hope that he could cleanse his body of the disease. But gradually, between vile treatments of arsenic, iodine, and creosote, and enforced bed rest, that hope had dimmed.

  Bronwyn now sat with a book in her lap—Le Comte de Monte-Cristo—journeying to Marseille, but she didn’t see the words arranged in orderly lines, and she paid little attention to the forests and valleys of France. Instead, she saw the fading look in Hugh’s eyes as he’d realized that he would never again return to England—he’d weakened far too much to make the return trip—and that his hold on life loosened with each cough, each fleck of blood Bronwyn caught in a linen handkerchief.

  And through it all, she had to keep smiling gently, assuring him that he was healing, and soon they’d be home again, even though they both knew she fed him kind lies. The last weeks had been the worst, as the disease ravaged him, and the blood could no longer be contained in just a little handkerchief. He’d died with his eyes wide open, staring with fear at death.

  After he’d died, she’d taken the train back to Paris, the packet back to Dover, and another train to London. Seeing nothing but her own blank interiority, and the realization that she’d never again hear Hugh’s voice, feel the brush of his mustache as he kissed her good night, or anticipate his return home from an afternoon at his club. There was … nothing.

  Nothing but the anticipation of two years of emptiness. As though she would go into her own form of death—alive, but not truly. Invisible to the world. Forcibly shut away to show her sorrow over the loss of a man who’d never actually loved her.

  Now she watched the elegantly dressed family that shared the sitting compartment. While the nanny amused the child, the husband and wife read—he a newspaper, she a novel. They didn’t speak much to each other, but their hands would brush against each other from time to time, as if assuring themselves that the other was still there, that they needed the assurance of touch. And every now and again, they would look at each other and smile. Small smiles, private and intimate. The looks born from true and comfortable desire.

  What would it be like to feel that? What would it be like to feel any heat at all, other than mild pleasure?

  Her gaze strayed to Marco, studying a sheaf of documents. A frown formed a small crease between his dark brows. He was honed and severe, handsome and intense as the depths of night. A man who carried tiny knives in his clothing, who had overcome childhood illness to become the frighteningly competent man he was today.

  But for all that, he’d never treated her with contempt. He’d trusted her to distract the porter. Relied on her to keep her head as they’d fled Les Grillons at the train station. He’d given her that book. Listened to her dreams without sneering in contempt. Even encouraged her. Over and over he’d seen to her safety.

  And then there had been that kiss …

  If she’d ever thought him cold, the kiss had proved otherwise. There was a heat within him. As pressurized as a volcano, and when it finally erupted, it devastated everything in its path. Including her.

  Her face heated at the memory, as did other parts of her body. There was the passion she’d never experienced in her marriage. In the most unlikely place and person.

  Insane to have these thoughts now, when an actual crime syndicate hunted them, and this journey to Italy was not taken for pleasure—at great risk to her and Marco’s lives. Yet she couldn’t stop the steam engine of her mind, a machine with no brakes, only the force to keep barreling forward.

  Hugh wasn’t alive, but she was. And each step forward on this mad journey with Marco and Nemesis only proved this. Proved that she wanted more for herself than the nullity of widowhood, or life as a paid companion. She needed more than that.

  Evening fell in a violet cloak, spreading over the French countryside. The lamps inside the train were turned on, and the family left the sitting compartment to seek out their supper in the dining car.

  “I’ve seen you eat,” she said in the sudden quiet, “so I know you have to do it. Unless you just need coal, like an engine.”

  He set aside his papers. “I’m not a sodding train.”

  “You hardly blinked when Devere was murdered.”

  “We’ve both seen death,” he pointed out.

  “Never like that, for me. Not violent and brutal.”

  A shadow passed briefly across his gaze. “I hope that’s the last you’ll see of it. I might not be pulling at my hair, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel it every time I watch a man die.”

  She swallowed hard. “Have you witnessed many deaths?” Or caused them?

  “I don’t keep a tally,” he replied, which wasn’t an answer, and yet it told her everything she needed to know. No wonder his default expression was removed and coolly cynical. It kept him secure, like an ironclad battleship.

  “And I also happen to be hungry,” he added. Standing, he held out his arm. “Shall we?”

  They ventured to the dining car, where waiters bearing silver-domed dishes moved as effortlessly as weathered sailors between the cloth-covered tables. She and Marco were escorted to an empty table. Almost as soon as they were seated, a server set down a plate of oysters nestled in ice.

  Marco pried the glistening oyster from its shell and smoothly swallowed it down. His eyes briefly closed, and the tiniest smile formed at the edge of his mouth. She’d heard the legends, the ribald jokes about oysters, and what it meant when a man liked eating them. Clearly, Marco enjoyed the sea creatures.

  His eyes opened, and his gaze fixed on hers. Daring her.

  She picked up an oyster and used her tiny fork to pull the meat from the shell. Then, holding his gaze, she tilted her head back and let the briny oyster slide down her throat.

  Her smile matched his as she set down the shell.

  They consumed the rest of the platter in silence, but with each swallow, her whole body felt alight with readiness. Perhaps the legends about oysters were true.

  Or maybe you want him. He had a way of eating that showed a profound sensuality. Watching him swallow fleshy, quivering oysters only proved what she already knew. He might shield himself with toughened cynicism, but possessed a unique sensitivity. He’d be an excellent lover. Hands in all the right places. Lips, too. And his body, hard with muscle, profoundly capable …

  She
wanted that. Wanted to experience it for herself.

  But she could hardly drag him off to a sleeping compartment and tear his clothing off—appealing as that idea was. She needed more from him than just his body. She craved knowledge of the man beneath the armor.

  The waiter came with more dome-covered plates. He uncovered two beautifully cooked steaks, pepper-crusted and sizzling, and jewel-like miniature vegetables glossed in butter. Two hungers lived side by side within her. At least she could eat the steak.

  As she cut into her meat with an ebony-handled knife, she asked, “If you couldn’t work for Nemesis, or follow … your other line of employment … what would you do?”

  His movements with his own knife were deft and precise. He took a bite and chewed. “This for your dossier about me?”

  “The most dangerous crime syndicate is hot on our heels. If I’m on the run with someone, I like knowing about them. You weren’t so circumspect when you kissed me.” She was proud of herself for not blushing.

  But his own cheeks darkened. “I did. And stopped. This thing between us can’t go any further. Not while we’re on the mission.”

  An interesting distinction. One she wanted to explore further. But later. Right now, she was beginning to have other plans. Things shifted inside her. Fear continued in edged angles, but there was something else, a sense of her own capability—she’d helped get them out of Paris. She could use her skills for something that she wanted.

  Horrific as Devere’s death had been, it showed her how quickly a life could be snuffed out, and how she had to seize experience wherever she could.

  He wasn’t the only one with guile.

  She ate a gilded coin of carrot. “You’ve been evading my question. What would you do with yourself if not this?” She gestured with her wine glass at the dining car, encompassing the whole of everything that had happened to them.

  “Impressive persistence.”

  “Thank you, but you’re still evading.”

  Instead of trying to dismiss her, or come up with another distraction, he actually seemed to think over her question, his gaze turned to the mirror of the train window that, in the darkness, reflected back the dining car more than revealed the passing countryside.

  “I used to think about being an engineer,” he said at last, turning his gaze back to her. “Or an architect.”

  She mulled this. “Makes sense. You obviously enjoy crafting intricate plans. Taking diverse pieces and fitting them together into a unified whole. Start with a small element—a cornerstone, a support beam—and build from there. Until it all comes together.”

  He lifted his brows. “You’ll be after my job, next.”

  “I don’t want your job,” she replied. “I want to know you.”

  Frowning, he asked, “Why?”

  “Because I’ve never met a man who carried a knife in his lapel. Because you murmur beautiful curses in Italian. Because you fascinate me.” Her own candor came as a surprise.

  “I’m just a means to an end.”

  She stared at him. “Not to me, you aren’t.” The words sprang from her, and she only realized after she’d spoken them how true they were.

  “Is that how you see yourself?” she pressed.

  He gave the tiniest of rueful smiles. “Dio, you could teach the boys at headquarters a few things about interrogation. None of them have big eyes and long lashes that turn a man to melted wax.”

  “I’m not even batting my eyelashes. But if it makes you feel better, here—” She fluttered her lashes in her best imitation of a coquette.

  Shockingly, his cheeks darkened even more. It actually worked.

  “You’re right,” he said gruffly. “It’s appealing—the idea of putting something together. A bridge, a building. Takes just a single brick or a rivet to start. Then, months later, the river can be crossed. Sick people have a new hospital to help cure them.”

  She took a fortifying drink of wine. “I was correct. You could’ve been an actor. The way you pretend that you’ve got ice in your veins. ‘I’m just a means to an end.’ You know your way around a disguise; that much I know.”

  He scowled. “Don’t pretend I’m something I’m not.”

  “Don’t pretend you’re less than you are,” she fired back. “If there’s anything this whole misadventure has taught me, it’s that very few things are what they appear.” She felt the angles and contours of a different identity forming within her. “Including me.”

  “Bronwyn?” a woman’s voice asked. “Bronwyn Parrish?”

  She glanced up in alarm as a man and a woman approached their table. The man wore a brown tweed suit, and the woman had on a blue wool traveling costume—both indisputably English in their tailoring.

  “Merde,” Bronwyn muttered under her breath.

  “You know them?” Marco asked lowly.

  “Friends of Hugh’s,” she said quietly, then, more loudly as the two newcomers came to stand beside the table. “Charles, Lydia. What a surprise.”

  “I should say,” Lydia answered, glancing at Bronwyn’s decided lack of weeds. She shot an even more censorious look at Marco. “And this is…?”

  “Paolo,” he answered, his voice now heavily accented with Italian. He rose up from his seat and shook an astonished Charles’s hand, then took Lydia’s in his own and pressed a kiss to her knuckles with an unctuous solicitousness. “I am … come si chiamo? I am friend of Signora Parrish.” The emphasis he gave to the word friend left no doubt in anyone’s mind what kind of friendship he offered.

  For half a moment, Bronwyn thought to deny Marco’s scandalous assertion. But a voice inside her whispered, You’re already in it. Nothing to do but go along. She’d cast off her widow’s weeds, traveled across the Channel, been to a brothel and the bohemian cafés of Montmartre, where women lived almost as freely as men. She’d seen a man murdered.

  What difference did scandal make? Charles and Lydia might carry stories of her misbehavior back to England, but Bronwyn wasn’t entirely certain that, if she should retrieve her lost fortune, she wanted to stay in London. Even if she did, she’d learned things about the world. There were far worse things than the censure of London society.

  The world around her spun like a globe whirling on its axis, but she could find her footing.

  This time is yours, that voice whispered. Revel in it.

  NINE

  “Paolo,” she drawled, pulling out several centimes from her reticule, “do be a dear and get us more wine.”

  “Si, mi amore.” With a sleek bow, Marco took the coins and ambled over to the bar situated at the end of the dining car, then gave her the most outrageous wink. Bronwyn was surprised the train didn’t derail.

  “Won’t you join us?” she asked Charles and Lydia.

  Perhaps it was the English sense of politeness, but Charles stammered, “If … if you like.”

  “Please.” She waved at two empty chairs nearby.

  Charles pulled the chairs close to their table, and he and Lydia perched awkwardly in them as they waited for Marco to return.

  When he did, he poured them all glasses of wine. “My dolce amore, she is generous, no? With more than just her denaro.” He took her gloveless hand between his and pressed kisses across her fingers. His lips were firm, warm, the whiskers of his goatee both soft and bristly against her skin. Then he turned her hand over and kissed her palm. His tongue darted out briefly to touch the delicate webbing between her fingers.

  She fought the urge to close her eyes. Heat washed through her like a flood in a summer storm. Heaven help her, if this was how he kissed her hand, imagine what it must be like if he did the same to her lips, her mouth. And other parts, just like in those postcards.

  “Paolo, please,” she said breathlessly. “You’ll shock our English friends.” Yet she didn’t tug her hand away.

  “We’re not shocked,” said Lydia weakly.

  “It’s just so … unexpected,” Charles said, tugging on his collar, “running into you here.�
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  “I must admit,” Bronwyn answered, “coming to France wasn’t part of my plans. But Paolo was so persuasive.”

  “I tell her,” Marco said, “‘Cara mia, you must go to France. This English air cannot breathe. We go to France and breathe.’” He traced patterns on her wrist with his blunt-tipped fingers, patterns of heat echoing through her in elaborate arabesques.

  “I always breathe well when Paolo is around,” she said with a slow smile.

  “Because of the exertions.” He turned to the English couple. “So good, she is, at the exertions. I think, she is so good, she cannot be just made widow. A bit of a putana, aren’t you, cara?” Then he gave Charles one of those magnificently vulgar winks. “Good to have a principessa in the street but a putana in the bed, no?”

  Lydia gasped. “Don’t dare answer him, Charles!”

  “Ah,” Marco said sadly. “Your woman, she is no putana.”

  Lydia pushed back from the table, and both her husband and Marco got to their feet. “I won’t sit here and listen to this … this filth.” She marched away from the table, with Charles rushing to keep up.

  Once they had gone, Bronwyn forced out a laugh. Yet Marco still didn’t let go of her hand, and she didn’t try to snatch it back.

  “If your other careers don’t prove fulfilling enough,” she said on a strained chuckle, “you can always try being a genuine gigolo.”

  Slowly, as though with great reluctance, he released her hand. His olive complexion had darkened, and he took a long swallow of wine.

  “Money and making love are poor colleagues,” he said. Then, “I, ah, apologize. It seemed the wisest strategy.”

  “We both participated in the ruse,” she answered.

  “And excelled in it, too.”

  No judgment edged his words. More than admiration gleamed in his eyes. She wasn’t a girl. She knew desire when she saw it. Doubtless it shone in her gaze, as well.