by The Spy
Kneeling, she bent to catch the delicate chain around one fingertip. She tugged gently and they slid slowly from their place to dangle from her hand, catching the light as they swung in the air.
“Flip?”
The morning huskiness of James’s voice broke the silence of hours. Phillipa’s gaze flew to his face to see him blinking at her in puzzlement. She opened her mouth, but what could she say?
“What are you doing here?”
That sent a faint breathless thought across her blank mind. “I’m—I’m looking for you. What are you doing here?”
James looked down at his nudity and made a rueful noise. “I seem to have spent the night in the backstage storage room.”
Phillipa nodded soberly. “I see that.” She took a chance and spun the chain between her fingers. “Do you really think this is quite your style?”
Seeing the bells, James sat up and reached for them. Reluctantly, Phillipa let them go. Bloody harem-dancing hell. She’d never get them back now.
Sitting quite unselfconsciously with his elbows on his spread knees, James toyed with the golden chain with an unreadable expression on his face.
“What are you thinking?” she asked. Dear lord, I hope it’s something good.
James dangled the chain, making the bells chime. “I’m wondering . . .” He caught the bells up into his fist and made a long arm for his clothing, which Phillipa had tossed next to the bed when she’d been gathering up her own things. Quickly and efficiently, James checked every pocket.
With a sinking heart, Phillipa realized what he was hoping to find. Or rather, not find.
He thought Amilah was a traitor. He was searching for the book that such a creature would have undoubtedly stolen.
He found his small notebook and held it in his hand. “Odd,” he murmured. “I simply don’t understand.”
Phillipa cleared her throat. “What do you not understand?” She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know.
James raised his gaze to hers. “There was a woman here last night. A dancer. She drew me in here and—well, let us simply say that she provided services.”
Services. Phillipa felt ill.
“But she asked for no payment, and she took nothing from me.” James stuffed his notebook back into his clothing and shook out his trousers. A small glimmering something flew out to ring onto the dusty floor near Phillipa’s feet.
Her belly jewel. She knelt to retrieve it, but James was too quick for her. He snatched it up and stuffed it quickly into a pocket. “Sorry,” he said a bit sheepishly, “That’s personal.”
“All right,” Phillipa said faintly. First he labeled Amilah a schemer, then he saved away her jewel as if it were a real gemstone instead of colored glass.
“Perhaps she simply . . . liked you.”
“Or perhaps she was after something a bit more important than money,” James murmured, as if to himself. “Perhaps she was after information.”
“Information about what?”
James blinked. For a moment, he’d forgotten Phillip was there. “Ah, sorry. I know I don’t make sense.” He regarded the younger man solemnly. “Do you recall when I warned you about a woman’s wiles?”
Phillip seemed to go very still. “Yes, I recall.”
James passed a hand over his face and gazed ruefully at the wad of gold chain in his fist. “What I didn’t tell you was that I learned that lesson from personal experience. I can’t reveal everything that happened, but—and this is in strictest confidence, my young friend—I had a lover once who betrayed me. She was everything beautiful and sensual and she had me completely in her thrall. So much so that I told her things I should have died before revealing. The consequences were profound. And most permanent.”
He sighed and stole a glance at Phillip. The fellow was listening intently, apparently with every fiber of his young being. James waved the fistful of bells at him. “I swore unto God that I would never allow myself to be swayed by sex again!” He threw the chain across the tiny chamber to strike the closed door with an inharmonious jangle.
Phillip turned to watch the chain slide to the floor and lie there in a small glistening heap. He didn’t turn back, but kept his face turned away for a moment. “Not every woman will be out to betray you, James.”
James stood and began pulling on his clothes. Phillip remained discreetly turned away.
“You don’t understand, Flip. The point is that I am no judge of that. I trusted Lav—my old lover. In the heat of the moment, I seem to be incapable of the least amount of sense. When I am on the path of sexual satisfaction, I am a most pathetic, telltale—”
“No!” Phillip was gazing at him now, his green eyes intense. “Never say it. You are a good man—a principled, heroic—”
“I am without honor!” James heard his own hoarse shout echo through the tiny room.
Phillip stood to face him. ‘This old lover tricked you. Used you. It could happen to anyone. You cannot blame yourself—”
James reached to grip one thin shoulder in his hand. “They died, do you understand? My friends died because of my lack of self-control!”
He turned away, pulling his shirt over his head, taking advantage of the privacy provided by the linen to swipe at his watering eyes. “I vowed that I would make amends. That I would avenge them, that I would devote my life to the cause they died for, and that I would never touch a woman again!”
He settled the linen on his shoulders and turned back to Phillip, who stood pale and wide-eyed, watching him. “And so, my young friend, you see me forsworn,” he said quietly. “My honor, so recently, painfully rebuilt, in a rubble at the feet of yet another lying, faithless female. And do you know the worst of it?” James laughed bitterly. “The worst of it is that I have no one to blame but myself.”
“That man, the one you spoke of . . . was he one of your comrades that she killed?”
“One of several. There remains only one survivor, a fellow who was so badly beaten that he has never awakened once in the months since. He lies even now near death.” James tugged on his waistcoat and knotted his cravat loosely about his throat.
“James, I . . . I want you to know . . . I wish last night had not happened, with your feelings being what they are.”
James turned to look at Phillip. That was an odd way of putting it. Then, pulling on his frock coat, James gave a small bitter laugh. “Not nearly as much as I do, Flip. At least this time I doubt anything has died but my honor.”
The first sensation Ren was aware of was pain. Hollow, echoing pain, like the hammering of a blacksmith heard from a distance. The gray existence in which he floated held no interest, so he felt himself drawn to that distant pounding.
Moments passed, or perhaps hours. No matter. There was no time in the gray place. No light, no darkness. No vigor. The hammering of the distant pain began to be felt as well as heard. Each blow was like a pinprick at first. Such sensation was wildly diverting after so many hours/years in the formless limbo.
Ren willed himself closer to the pain. The tiny prickles became small stabbing pains. Fascinating. And there was an ache in the place that used to be his gut. Hunger? He’d almost forgotten the name of it.
Without thought, he floated closer to the open doors of awareness. The stabbing pains increased. The ache in his belly expanded. There came new and unwelcome sensations—a tearing pain behind his eyes, a shocking tingle up and down his limbs.
No.
I want to go back.
He’d come too far. It was too late. He was pulled into the maelstrom of pain like a twig into raging floodwaters. He was tossed in riotous agony and battered with jolts of anguish.
Everything hurt. The press of bedding on his skin. The glaring, lancing rays on his eyes from a burning candle. The booming of someone’s voice, whispering like a sharp-bladed saw upon his ears.
“—orter? Mr. Porter? Ren, can you hear me?”
Ren made a harsh sound that made his own head ache further. “L-light! No . . .
light!”
The agonizing glare receded. He heard steps across the floor boom as if they impacted the inside of his head. More scraping rasping sounds of whispering.
“Contact Mr. Cunnington! Ren Porter is back with us once more!”
Ren Porter. My name is Ren Porter and I am back.
Agony wracked every fiber of his body. Shocklike jolts of misdelivered nerve response traveled up and down his damaged arms and legs. He quivered from the torturous pain, and each tiny shiver caused more misery to rake his flesh.
Ren Porter was back.
I wish I were dead.
Phillipa sat on the lowest step of the stairs of the club and dropped her face into her hands. Her chest felt physically torn, as if James’s condemnation were rending her in two.
So this is what a broken heart feels like.
The worst of it was, she’d done it to herself. James hadn’t hurt her as much as she’d hurt him. She’d ruined it all. In her stupidity, she’d done the unforgivable. She’d used his sexuality to manipulate him, something he could not forgive. Never had she loved James more, and never had she made it more impossible for him to love her.
Forgetting Phillip for a moment, even forgetting where she was, she allowed the tears to well behind the darkness of her closed lids. She had truly lost him now.
Lost in her pain, she didn’t interpret the click she heard until almost too late. Then her head snapped up from her folded arms. The door.
Someone was coming in from the street. Someone who likely belonged here, who might find it decidedly odd to see Phillip Walters crying on the stairs. With more speed than she’d known she possessed, Phillipa slid about and scrambled up the stairs to the upper floor, making the security of the hall above just as the front door opened to admit Collis Tremayne, followed by the doorman Stubbs.
Phillipa pressed close to the wall and sank down to her knees. As soon as they entered the club proper, she would make for the front door. She’d had enough of this place.
Mr. Tremayne handed Stubbs his hat and gloves. “Is James about?”
“Right here, Collis.” James entered the foyer, tugging his cuffs into place. He looked wonderful to Phillipa . . . and very far away.
Collis Tremayne grinned. “I’ve got some news for you, concerning a certain Titian-haired lady.”
Titian-haired? Red-haired, he meant. Phillipa went cold. Was he talking about her? The real her? She maneuvered to see better down the stairs. Collis was tilting his head significantly in the direction of Mr. Stubbs.
“Ah, Stubbs, if you would excuse us?” James waved a hand to indicate the stairs. “Shall we take this discussion out of the main room, Collis?”
Stubbs shook his head with disgust. “You gents and your ladybirds. How you get anything done is beyond me.” The plump doorman returned to his post outside.
Only then did James react. Phillipa saw him grab Collis’s sleeve before they’d even made it off the foyer carpet. “What have you got? Did you find her?”
“Hold on, man. Nothing so grand.” Collis straightened his coat. “I thought about the hair, you see. Such distinctive locks on one so apparently determined to hide. I wondered if perhaps she’d try to dispose of such a distinctive feature. So I put word out in a few Cheapside pub rooms that I wanted to buy some red hair for a certain lady’s fall. Last night I heard from a wigmaker in the area that said a young lady sold him her hair one week ago.”
Oh, merde. Phillipa went cold inside.
“One week? That would make it the very day she left the boardinghouse.” James rubbed his jaw. “She knew she was being followed. She was trying to break her trail by changing her hair.”
“There’s another thing, James. She didn’t just bob her hair—she sold him all of it.”
James looked up sharply. “That’s not how it’s done?”
Phillipa cringed at the black glint in his eyes. She shouldn’t have sold her hair, she ought to have thrown it in the sewer. She’d thought herself so clever, so economical. Instead, she’d left a flaming trail for someone to follow her by.
For James to follow her by.
Collis had continued. “The wigmaker said not usually, which was why he remembered it so well. He didn’t even pay her for the extra. She wanted it chopped off. He said she looked terrible after, like a skinny boy. Could she be wearing a wig herself now, do you think?”
James paced for a moment on the foyer rug, then turned sharply. “One week ago? Exactly?”
“Yes. Why?”
Phillipa could almost see the quicksilver chain of James’s thoughts falling into place. When his jaw clenched and his face went white with rage, she knew he’d deduced correctly.
“Get upstairs and grab Fisher,” James bit out. “I’ll get a hired carriage.”
Collis blinked, but turned toward the stairs once more. “Where are we going?”
James was already at the front door.
“My house.”
Phillipa ran for her life. Only there was nowhere to run. The hall was not long, with only a handful of doors leading off on both sides. Doors that did not give way to her surreptitious twists of their latches.
She was at the closed end of the hall when the top of Collis Tremayne’s dark head appeared coming up the stairs. Desperate but quite hopeless, she wiped futilely at her wet eyes and pressed her back to the wall, waiting to be found out.
The wall behind her gave way and she tumbled backward into nothing.
Phillipa sprawled awkwardly on a dusty carpet, banging her tailbone and clicking her teeth shut on her tongue. She blinked rapidly, only to see a pair of small scuffed shoes appear before her eyes.
Robbie grabbed her by the jacket collar and yanked her backward. “Get your legs in!” he hissed.
Phillipa obeyed automatically. Robbie pulled shut a panel before them, cutting off her view of the bowed head of Collis ascending the stairs, mercifully not yet looking forward.
Climbing to her knees, she rubbed her stinging palms together as she looked about her. She was in another hallway, mirror to the first, but shabbier and decidedly dustier. “What are you doing back here, Rob? What is this place?”
“Looking for you and James.” Robbie had both hands on his hips, scowling at her. “And this is someplace you aren’t supposed to see,” he whispered, disgust in his tone. “Now you’ve done it.”
“Done what?”
“Shh! Never mind. If I can get you out before Himself sees you, likely they won’t kill you.”
“Who are they? The spies?”
Horror crossed Robbie’s features, and he grabbed her hand to begin towing her down the new hallway. “You didn’t say that. I sure as hell didn’t hear it.”
“Don’t curse in English,” Phillipa reminded him absently. Her mind was working furiously. “James is a British spy. Therefore, so is Lord Etheridge.” The people she had met over the last several days passed through her mind. “Collis Tremayne . . . Sir Raines . . . Denny!”
Robbie shook his head. “Not Denny.” Then he clapped a hand over his mouth, since he’d as good as confirmed the others by omission.
“Well, it’s good to know the future of England doesn’t hang in Denny’s hands,” Phillipa murmured, fighting the wild hilarity that rose within her at the thought. She was panicking, sure enough.
They turned the corner of the hallway, passing a tiny window set high in the wall. The mirror counterpart to the hall behind the stage where she’d lured James. Pain flared. She suppressed it. Time to worry about her heart when her life wasn’t in danger.
They ducked into a storeroom, much like the one she’d shared with James last night. This one had a window and Robbie ran to it, his hands deftly working at the latch. Phillipa felt a spark of hope, until she saw that it was covered on the outside by a heavy iron grille that was locked shut.
“I can’t get out that way, Robbie—”
The window swung inward. With a flick of his wrist, Robbie opened the grille, somehow bypassing the old rust
ing lock and chain entirely. He raised one knee to the sill, then turned to hold out his hand. “Come on!”
Phillipa took a step back. “Robbie, get down from there at once. You’ll fall!”
He rolled his eyes. “All the Liars come and go this way. It’s their back door.”
Phillipa stepped forward to peer down. Below was the grimy alley that ran behind the club. Far below. She glanced directly below to see only a narrow ledge beneath the window.
“Have you ever used this back door before, Robbie?”
“Well . . . no. But I done worse than this when I was climbin’ for the chimneysweeps. This ain’t dangerous! James even does it in the rain sometimes.”
Phillipa shook her head. “Then James, I’m sorry to say, is a blooming idiot.”
Sending her a look of trenchant disgust, Robbie climbed full onto the sill. “Don’t be such a girl, Flip.” Before she could stop him, he’d slid beyond her reach and out of sight.
“Robbie!” She lurched forward to peer down. The top of Robbie’s head was just a few feet beneath her. He stood with both feet on the ledge, but by the look of dismay on his face, she knew that he hadn’t realized how far down the ledge ran. She sagged with relief. “Robbie, hold very still. Slowly reach your hand up to me.”
He shook his head stubbornly, despite his pallor. “You can’t pull me up. I’m goin’ down this way.”
“Down how?” It was a straight drop to the ground as far as Phillipa could see.
“They jump over,” Robbie explained, pointing across the narrow alley to the building on the other side, where Phillipa could see a much wider ledge and a rough iron ladder to the ground. She blinked. “And what, pray tell, is wrong with using the front door?”
“Spies don’t like usin’ the same route all the time. Throws off pursuers,” Robbie defended stoutly. Then he swallowed hugely, as if he weren’t any too wild for the idea of jumping across.
The alley was narrow, but not that narrow. A long-legged man like James might find the jump simple, but Robbie’s legs suddenly seemed far too short to Phillipa.
“No, Robbie. Don’t do it. I can lift you,” she promised, although she was none too sure of it. She was leaning quite far down as it was. He was almost out of her reach. How would she leverage him higher? “Robbie, just hold still. I’ll fetch James.”
