Sweet Revenge nu-1

by Zoë Archer

  “It’s not Dalton’s size or strength that has me concerned,” said Simon.

  “A little credit, if you please.” Eva fixed him with a wry look. “I’m hardly the sort to be led astray by a suggestive remark or carnal glance.”

  “No, you aren’t.”

  At least there was no recrimination in Simon’s tone. Once, years ago, he’d intimated that he would like to take their relationship beyond the professional. She’d immediately quashed that idea. There had been some wounded feelings right after her refusal, but Simon’s speedy recovery had proven to her that, at most, he’d been mildly curious. Not enthralled. Not even enamored. She hadn’t been hurt by his quick rallying. If anything, it proved what she already knew—she was better off on her own, free of entanglements.

  “Just … be wary around Dalton,” Simon pressed. “He’s got a way of looking at you.”

  Her heart gave a strange, small leap. “The man’s been in prison for five years. He’d look at a toothless crone the same way.”

  This time it was Simon who was wry. “Believe it or not, but even in the depths of a man’s lust, he knows the difference between a beldam and a beauty.”

  “How encouraging.”

  Simon continued, “Dalton assuredly knows what he sees when he looks at you.”

  The woman who’s got his baubles in her hand. Or is it more than that?

  It didn’t matter. She was a dedicated operative. Dalton might be different from what she had anticipated, but she had a responsibility to Nemesis’s client and the greater good. He was simply another cog in the larger machine, a machine she was determined to run with the same capable skill she’d shown throughout her years with Nemesis.

  The cab rolled to a stop outside the door to her lodgings. It was a perfectly respectable building in a perfectly respectable neighborhood; so respectable, in fact, that no one was awake to note that she wasn’t married to the man riding with her in the hansom. After bidding Simon good night, Eva climbed the front steps, then let herself in.

  She walked up the two flights of stairs leading to her rooms. The ground floor was where her landlady, Mrs. Petworth, lived, along with Mrs. Petworth’s daughter. Miss Axford resided on the next story, a soft-spoken girl who worked at a stationer’s shop, as well as the Ratley cousins, both women employed as transcribing clerks at the same firm.

  Reaching the door of her rooms, Eva saw light filtering out from beneath the door of the woman who lived across from her. Miss Siles was a writer, and kept appalling hours as she struggled to become the next George Eliot. As Eva fitted her key into the lock of her door, she heard the creak of the floor in Miss Siles’s rooms. Pacing. Again. She paced far more than she actually wrote. Thankfully, she was also much too absorbed in her creative process to notice that the woman who lived across the hall was coming home at three-thirty in the morning. Hardly the hours a respectable tutor kept.

  Mrs. Petworth often reminded Eva that she rented only to decent women of good repute.

  A smile touched Eva’s lips as she wondered what Dalton might think of that policy. He’d likely have something to say about her reputation, and it wouldn’t be good.

  She stepped inside her rooms and shut the door behind her, then turned the lamp on low. Soft light filled the snug but comfortable space, illuminating the table at which she conducted her lessons, the armchair by the fireplace and the books gathered around the chair’s feet, and the painted folding screen which concealed her bed. Watercolors painted by her students hung upon the walls. What they lacked in skill they made up for in enthusiasm.

  She gave a quick but thorough scan of the chambers, checking for indications that anyone had been there. Everything was just as she’d left it earlier. Not even the single hair she’d left on her bed had been disturbed. Searches almost always began with the bed.

  She tried to picture Dalton in her rooms. He’d seem as out of place as an ironclad in a duck pond.

  Papers and lesson plans were scattered upon her table, and as she gathered them up, she considered then rejected the idea of making herself a cup of tea. Far too late for that. What she really needed was to take her own advice to Dalton and get some sleep. It had been a phenomenally long day. She’d been awake for over twenty-one hours. At the least, she didn’t have any students scheduled for tomorrow. Checking her calendar, she noted that her next appointment was for the day following next. The Hallow children. Both girls were making decent progress with their French, but they couldn’t retain historical dates for love or money.

  Mr. Hallow didn’t care if his daughters knew the date of the Treaty of Windsor. He only wanted them to speak French passably, to paint with a fair degree of skill, and to have enough general knowledge to successfully converse at the dinner table. In short, he wanted them to be like the daughters of the aristocracy, even though Mr. Hallow was a grocer who owned two shops. Like most everyone in London, he had aspirations. For himself. For his children.

  Eva stacked her papers up into neat piles. She needed to keep everything tidy. Her students all came to her rooms for their lessons. Her clients didn’t have enough money to have governesses, nor to send their daughters away to school. Eva was there to give the girls a bit of polish—and, unbeknownst to their parents, some actual useful skills, such as mathematics, geography, and history.

  None of her students nor their parents knew the truth about Eva. Even Eva’s own parents believed she was just a tutor, and nothing more.

  As a gentleman, Simon had no need of work, per se, but he managed his investments and estates with none of his aristocratic friends or colleagues aware of his other work. Marco continued to serve as a consultant to the government in matters of foreign policy. Lazarus had a military pension, but would take occasional construction jobs. And no one at the accountancy firm where Harriet clerked had the vaguest inkling that she did anything other than sort through financial records.

  Eva rather liked having dual selves. A secret belonging only to a select few. And while Simon, Marco, and the others knew she taught, none of them had ever been inside her rooms, nor seen her at work. The only person who knew everything about the two Evas was Eva herself.

  Satisfied everything was in order, she checked the locks on her door one last time, then began to undress. Undoing the hooks running along the front of her bodice was a relief. She did the same with her corset cover and corset. Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since she’d dressed in the predawn darkness, preparing for her journey out to Yorkshire. Now her clothes felt limp and stale.

  What must it be like to have a maid, dressing and undressing you? All of her garments fastened in the front. Wealth was never a possibility when tutoring the children of shopkeepers. She might have made more as a governess, or teaching at a day or boarding school—but that meant her time wouldn’t be her own, time she needed for Nemesis.

  It wasn’t about the money. It never was.

  Girls like the Hallow daughters were precisely the sort that Lord Rockley preyed upon. Without the benefit of wealth or status, Miss Jones had nowhere to turn. Neither would the Hallow girls. As Dalton had said, it was an old story. Rich man, vulnerable girl. But Eva was determined that no female would ever suffer again because of Rockley.

  Standing in her chemise and drawers, she shivered. The fire hadn’t been lit. A lingering chill seeped through the windows that faced the street, and weariness robbed her of heat.

  This wasn’t a kind world to women. It never would be. She couldn’t simply accept it, however.

  She stripped out of her chemise and drawers and put her clothing away into the somewhat battered oak wardrobe, then donned her nightgown. There were finer nightgowns, to be sure, confections of silk and lace, but no one ever saw Eva in her nightclothes. The little blue ribbons trimming the neckline and cuffs were for herself alone.

  She recalled the flash of heat in Dalton’s eyes, and Simon’s words about how Dalton looked at her. How might he look at her as she stood by her bed in her simple nightgown? Would his gaze
go shadowed with desire? And why should that image make her own heart beat faster?

  Broken hearts and dashed promises littered the Nemesis case files like so many carcasses in the morgue. Even Miss Jones had been led astray by promises that would never come to pass. What was love but another means of calamity? She’d not allow herself that kind of weakness.

  Besides, she needed to protect her work within Nemesis. Which severely limited her options. And she wouldn’t make the mistake of becoming romantically involved with any of her colleagues.

  Which meant nights alone. No one to truly confide in. A deliberately solitary existence.

  It’s worth it. She needed to believe that.

  She extinguished the light and climbed into bed. Nearly a whole day without sleep. Yet her thoughts wouldn’t quiet, circling her on their raven wings and cawing.

  They’d find some way to ruin Rockley. It hadn’t become clear yet, but everyone within Nemesis possessed the same tenacity. All that was left was to discover the how of it.

  Dalton was the key. From the beginning, when the initial plan had been hatched, she’d protested his involvement. A thug, a brute. More a liability than an asset. But she’d been wrong. He was far more than muscles controlled by a rudimentary brain. He had thoughts of his own, needs, emotions.

  What troubled her the most, what chased her down dream-lit corridors as she finally succumbed to sleep, was the interest and hunger that gleamed in his dark eyes when he looked at her. More troubling was the answering awareness she felt within herself.

  * * *

  Eva heard the shouting through the ceiling of the chemist’s shop. The few customers kept glancing up from their examination of tonics, worried frowns pinching their brows.

  “How long?” she asked Mr. Byrne.

  “Started up ’bout an hour ago,” the chemist answered. Like the customers, Mr. Byrne looked uneasy from the sounds. “As soon as Mr. Addison-Shawe and Mr. Spencer gone up. Don’t recognize who ’tis they’re yelling with, though.”

  “Someone new.” Bottles rattled as heavy footsteps thumped overhead. “He won’t be staying.”

  “Hope not.” The chemist looked balefully at the door as his would-be patrons hurried out, the bell jingling behind them in cheery counterpoint to the angry male voices from above.

  Mr. Byrne was quite aware of Nemesis’s activities. As someone who’d grown up in reduced circumstances and had seen firsthand the lack of parity between rich and poor, he approved of their work. Which was fortunate, because as their landlord, he kept their rent accommodatingly low.

  Eva unlatched the secret door and stepped into the stairwell leading up to the Nemesis rooms. Mr. Byrne shut the door behind her. As she walked up the stairs, the voices grew louder, crashing together like battleships. With her hand on the doorknob, she took a deep breath. The day had hardly begun, and it already promised to be an upward climb.

  Entering the parlor, she removed her hat, coat, and gloves and found Simon and Dalton standing nearly chest to chest, their faces dark with anger. No one noticed her. Marco struggled in vain to separate the two men, trying to shove them apart. Lazarus and Harriet stood off to the side, bemused. Amazement struck her all over again, seeing Dalton’s massiveness, how he seemed to fill the room with not merely his size but his presence. Simon—lean, strong Simon—looked like a sapling beside a giant oak.

  “How many times do I got to tell you?” Dalton snarled. “I don’t know a sodding thing about Rockley’s business, so stop bloody asking me.”

  “Are you deliberately being obtuse?” Simon fired back. “The more you fight us, the tougher it’s going to be and the longer it’s going to take.”

  “And I don’t give a damn. I just want Rockley.”

  “This is how we’re going to bring him down. If you’d just—”

  “Here I thought we specialized in covert missions,” Eva said dryly.

  Both men turned the force of their glares on her. Had she not been experienced in dealing with large, angry men, she might have been afraid. As it was, she simply folded her arms over her chest and stared back at them coolly.

  They spoke over each other.

  “This oaf was—”

  “Been trying to tell Lord Cuntshire here that I—”

  She ignored them, walking past the two shouting men and into the kitchen. There, she calmly made herself a cup of tea. From one of the cupboards, she produced a bottle of whisky, and added a generous dash of it to her brew. As she did this, the yelling in the parlor died away. She glanced up from attending to her drink and found both Simon and Dalton staring at her from the doorway to the kitchen.

  She took a sip of her tea, enjoying its heat and burn. “Quite done?”

  “You were right,” Simon clipped. “Using Dalton is a mistake. He can’t help us at all.”

  The glower on Dalton’s face deepened as he looked at her. “You thought bringing me on was a mistake?”

  “I thought so, yes,” she answered mildly, then took another sip. “Opinions can change, however.”

  Dalton stalked into the parlor, and, after sending Simon a warning glance, Eva followed. Marco, Lazarus, and Harriet all sat warily at the table.

  “Got it right the first time,” Dalton said, pacing around the room. “If you want someone beaten to a stain on the carpet, I’m your man. Otherwise, you’d have been better off leaving me to rot in Dunmoor.”

  “Let’s agree to disagree on that matter. Right now, we need to go over the points of what we do know about Rockley’s disreputable activities and formulate a strategy from there. Please sit.” She waved toward one of the upholstered chairs.

  He shook his head. “Feels like I’d explode like dynamite if I sat still too long.”

  She understood. He’d been confined for years, and now he had freedom—or a small measure of it—with the one man he wanted dead traipsing around London. No wonder restless energy poured from Dalton. It seeped into her own body, until she felt ablaze as a theater marquee. But she needed her poise and equanimity. She couldn’t let him rouse her, and she couldn’t cede power.

  So she stood near the fireplace and took measured sips of her tea, watching him pace. “This is what we know: among his other business ventures, Rockley has a government contract for the manufacture of cartridges. The contract has been making him a considerable amount of money, but not merely from the sale of the cartridges. That much is public knowledge.” She set her teacup down on the mantel, and made certain she had Dalton’s attention. When he halted in his pacing, she continued. “Yet what isn’t public knowledge is that he’s been embezzling.”

  Dalton frowned. “Skimming the profits?”

  “He’s billing the army for the full cost of the cartridges,” said Marco, “but Rockley’s using third-rate materials for their manufacture, which means he has to be pocketing the difference.”

  “Cheap alloys instead of copper for the jackets,” Eva explained. “Even worse for the primers.”

  Lurking moodily at the door leading to the kitchen, Simon growled. “This is how we found out about the embezzling in the first place. I still have contacts in the army, and they’ve told me that the cartridges being made by Rockley are inferior in quality, certainly not worth the money being paid for them. He’s got to be pocketing the difference. “He turned his gaze toward the window, a frown deep between his brows. “It’s possible that Rockley’s shoddy cartridges helped bring about the fall of Khartoum. Old army friends told me about what happened there. A damn massacre, and not just because Gladstone dragged his heels sending the relief force.”

  Dalton muttered a curse. Even cut off from the world as he’d been, he must have heard about the death of General Gordon and his troops at the hands of the Mahdists in the Sudan. The event had become a national rallying point, with the public crying for retribution.

  “Could be that bad cartridges had nothing to do with Khartoum,” Dalton said.

  “Had those men been given working, reliable bullets,” Simon answered
, fury edging his voice, “they could’ve held out longer, those two days until Beresford and his gunboats arrived.”

  Dalton said, “If you’ve got Rockley pinned with this government contract business, then it’s all settled. You can deliver him to the government on a tray, all nice like.”

  “There’s the rub,” Eva said. “Nemesis has been stonewalled. All our attempts to go further in our investigation reach dead ends. Rockley’s put up too many impediments.” She gazed at him, full of meaning.

  “You lot think I can tell you anything about it?” Dalton’s laugh wasn’t particularly agreeable. “Come put your hands around my arm, right here.” He pointed to his bicep.

  “Why?” Marco demanded.

  But Eva had already crossed the parlor and stood beside Dalton. She did so warily, still not trusting him not to lash out. Unlike Marco and Simon, Dalton was in his shirtsleeves, the cuffs rolled back to reveal thick forearms. Someone had obtained a slightly better-fitting set of clothing for him, for it looked as though he was not about to burst out of his garments with the next breath. Yet he still strained against the fabric of his shirt, shoulders pulling the woven cotton tight. It would take some exceptional tailoring to contain him.

  As though something as quotidian as a suit could contain Jack Dalton.

  He held out his arm, and, having already decided to oblige him, Eva cautiously attempted to encircle his bicep with her hands. An impossible task. She would have needed at least one more hand to fully surround his upper arm. Heat radiated up from his skin, and he felt hard and solid as forged steel.

  I’ll never underestimate him, she thought.

  Their gazes met.

  “That there is all Rockley ever wanted from me,” Dalton said, his voice a low rumble. “I didn’t keep a ledger of his money dealings. We didn’t gab over cigars and brandy about the stock market. The bastard barely ever talked to me. He kept me around for one reason, and you’ve got your hands around it.”

  Eva released her grip on him, though the feel of his hard flesh seemed branded into her palms and along her fingers. She stepped away quickly.