by Zoë Archer
“Right you are, guv,” the driver answered with surprising cheer. As Rockley’s carriage pulled away, the cab followed.
Dalton sat back in his seat and crossed his arms over his wide chest. It shouldn’t astonish her that he’d learned the name of their cabman, especially considering they’d been with the driver all day. The two seemed to share the camaraderie of the working man, and though Eva’s own circumstances were far from luxurious, she could never have that common ground. She couldn’t deny its utility, though. The inducement of a guinea for a day’s labor might buy the use of a man’s time, but it couldn’t buy his goodwill. She had secured one, Dalton the other.
They didn’t have far to go. Rockley’s carriage queued up behind a line of others outside a massive home in Mayfair. Lights and music poured from the tall windows, and a column of women in glittering gowns and men in evening clothes marched up the stairs like the world’s most elegant battering ram.
The cab stopped a discreet distance away.
“I’ve been here before,” Dalton said. “Not a lot, but I remember this place.”
“Only the upper echelons are invited to Lord Beckwith’s gatherings,” Eva said. To which Rockley clearly belonged. She sighed. “And his parties usually go on until three in the morning.”
Rockley alit from his carriage and joined the sparkling crowd heading inside. He exchanged nods and greetings with those near him. He was taller than most of the other guests, so following his progress into the mansion proved easy. At last, he went in. Ballard slipped down from the carriage and disappeared through the mews.
“He’ll be going in through the servants’ door in the back,” Dalton noted. “The rule was: stay nearby but out of sight. I got real talented at keeping myself hidden.”
She eyed his broad shoulders skeptically. “As though anyone could overlook you.”
His grin flashed in the darkness. “A man of many gifts, I am. I can show you a few.”
Most assuredly she would not respond to that. Opening the cab door, she said, “Let’s have ourselves a closer look.”
On the street, she made sure to keep close to the shadows, though one or two eyes turned in her direction. If anyone from the soiree were to glance out into the street, they’d hardly notice a woman in a plain day dress and short woolen cape. She might be mistaken for a governess, which suited her fine. Sending a quick glance behind her, she noted with approval that Dalton had a natural instinct for finding shadowed places. Amazing that man of such sizable proportions could hide himself at all, yet he did, and with an unanticipated agility.
They moved silently along the street, skirting around the edges of Lord Beckwith’s property. She slowed in her steps, allowing Dalton to catch up with her.
“Don’t suppose we’d be able to get in through the service entrance,” she whispered.
“This place was always kept tighter than a thief’s purse. Even the bloke at the back door had a list of who could and couldn’t go in, servants included.” He narrowed his eyes, gazing into the darkness. “There’s a house next door—it’s dark now.”
“Sir Harold Wallasey’s home. He and his wife are out of the country on a diplomatic mission—I read it in the paper. Probably left a skeleton staff.”
“See that window there?” He pointed one blunt-tipped finger toward a second-story window. “It’d have a right clear view of the ballroom.”
“Which would presuppose us being inside a private residence, uninvited, in order to utilize it.” At his grin, she demanded, “What?”
“Those fancy words you use.” His gaze heated. “I like ’em.”
Of all the responses to her vocabulary, this was the least expected, especially from him. The frank desire in his eyes stirred embers within her. And all she could say in return was the very articulate “Ah.”
He seemed to enjoy confusing her, for his smile widened. “You Nemesis lot said you’d do anything to see justice done.”
Straightening her spine, she said, “Of course.”
“That include breaking and entering?”
She rummaged through her handbag, which was, admittedly, a bit larger than the average lady’s purse. From its depths she pulled a slim silver case. She opened the case, revealing its velvet-lined interior, and held it up for his perusal. “This is Nemesis’s official policy for housebreaking.”
Dalton gave a low whistle.
Lock picks of every shape and variety were arranged neatly within.
* * *
“No one’s in the kitchen.” Eva peered through the windows. “Can’t even see a light down the hall. Perhaps even the butler and housekeeper are gone. The house seems empty.”
Beside her, Dalton said, “Seems downright rude not to take ’em up on the invitation.”
She stepped lightly to the door. Just to be certain, she tried the doorknob. It was locked. After a final glance around, she bent close to examine the lock.
“This won’t take long,” she murmured.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the view,” he said, leering openly at her backside, “but I’d like to give that lock a go.”
She eyed him dubiously. “The house might be empty, but we can’t linger or make too much noise. Kicking the door down would assuredly call attention.”
He gave her an affronted look. “Thought you trusted my brains.”
“I do—”
“To a point.” He held out one large hand. “Hand them picks over.”
“Do you know how to use them?”
After tugging on the knees of his trousers, he crouched down in front of the lock. “Spent years as a screwsman,” he said quietly. “’Course, none of the places I broke into were half as fine as this one, but locks are like ladies. Fancy or common, they all yield to a man who knows how to use his pick.”
“I think you left an r out of that last word.”
He chuckled. “I never leave anything out.” On no occasion would Dalton suffer a lack of confidence. She handed him the picks.
Eva clasped her elbows and watched as he sorted through the different picks, then began to slowly, carefully manipulate the lock. He frowned in concentration as he worked the picks. She fought the absurd impulse to push back a curl of dark hair that fell across his creased forehead.
The sounds of chatter and a string quartet from next door filled the small courtyard in which she and Dalton stood. Voices from the Beckwiths’ garden also glided over the wall separating the two properties—the melodic rise and fall of genteel conversation, most of it inconsequential. If there was the brokering of power to be done, it usually happened in card rooms and studies, where alliances and factions could be sealed with cigars and brandy.
Hearing a girl’s giggle followed by a man’s lower murmur, she recalled there were other ways of forming alliances.
“There’s a sweetheart,” Dalton said as he pushed open the door.
Together, they entered the darkened kitchen, Dalton quietly shutting the door behind them. A massive enclosed cooking range lurked against one wall, and shelves were lined with copper molds and pans. She gripped his sleeve to catch his attention. Silently, she pointed to the long table that ran the length of the kitchen. A kettle and two cups had been left out.
“Could be they’ve been sitting a while,” he whispered, standing close. His breath fanned warmly over her face.
“Or were used this afternoon.”
Cautiously, they left the kitchen and entered a darkened corridor. They passed closed doors that led presumably to the butler’s pantry and housekeeper’s office, and other storerooms. No lights shone out from beneath the doors, but Eva couldn’t allow herself to breathe easy. They climbed the stairs winding out of the service areas.
They emerged in a cavernous hallway, draped thick in the atmosphere of wealth. Everywhere she looked, she espied priceless artwork, the gleam of gilding and marble, and the labor of scores of servants. From the banisters to the baseboards, everything maintained scrupulous cleanliness. Branching off from the hallway were oth
er spacious rooms, plush with carpets and overstuffed furniture. But the room they sought was on the next floor up. She glanced toward the wide staircase, and he nodded in agreement.
The walls were far too thick to admit any sound of the gala next door, and all she could hear was the ticking of a clock in some distant study. Otherwise, the huge home was utterly still.
True to his word, Dalton moved easily through the silent house. He seemed an odd combination of contrasts, and every time she believed she understood him fully, he defied her definition.
On the next floor, she let Dalton take the lead. They passed rows of stern portraits, and tables whose sole purpose seemed to be holding fragile vases. When the family was in residence, no doubt the vases would burst with hothouse flowers, rigidly patrolled lest any of the flowers have the temerity to wither and die.
Dalton opened a door and she followed him inside. She shut the door behind them quietly. None of the lamps were lit, the curtains were drawn. The chamber was thick with darkness. She stood still for a moment, allowing her eyes to adjust. Stumbling blindly forward might find her colliding with furniture.
She blinked as light suddenly glazed the room. Dalton stood by the window, holding the curtain back with one arm. She hadn’t heard him moving through the chamber, not a single stumble or muttered curse as he knocked into a table, yet he’d appeared by the window as if conjured. More of his skills as a housebreaker.
With illumination from Beckwith’s house filtering in, she saw that the chamber in which she and Dalton stood was a sitting room. Or she surmised it was. Holland covers draped over the furniture, but a couch’s gilded legs peeped from beneath the white fabric like a debutante’s attempt at flirtation. A mahogany escritoire awaited a lady’s correspondence, and a folding screen stood in one corner, with an easel holding a partially completed painting behind it, as though the room’s usual occupant liked to create a separate space for their art.
“Prime spot for snob watching,” Dalton murmured when Eva joined him at the window.
So it was. From their position, they had an excellent view of Beckwith’s ballroom, its rows of huge windows acting like a proscenium arch for the theater of elite Society. She could faintly hear the strains of an orchestra. The ballroom blazed with the light of not merely gas lamps but chandeliers, throwing everyone within into high relief. Men formed a uniform mass of black wool evening clothes, their hair shining with liberal applications of macassar oil. The women wore frilled, pastel confections, jewels winking from their throats and hair. They fanned themselves continuously, vainly trying to cool themselves. It had to be an inferno in there.
“Where’s Rockley?” she asked, scanning the crowd.
“Just coming in.”
Their quarry appeared at the entrance to the ballroom. The moment he did, people swarmed around him—upper-class young men, their faces shining with drink and entitlement, gray-whiskered gentlemen of gravitas, matrons pressing their marriageable daughters forward like white-swathed sacrifices. Everyone, it seemed, wanted the notice of Lord Rockley.
“Dung attracts flies,” Eva said.
Dalton gave a soft snort. They both watched Rockley slowly progress into the ballroom, people trailing after him. Little wonder that he garnered so much attention. Even if one didn’t know his title and wealth, he radiated power. From the set of his shoulders to his upright spine, the way he held his head and gestured with his white-gloved hands, his every move spoke of confidence, of authority. Who wouldn’t want to bathe in the lambent glow of his privilege?
He was an attractive man, as well. Could give Simon a run for having such aristocratic features, but Rockley was dark where Simon was fair, and that held its own allure.
Eva couldn’t look upon Rockley and see anything but an unblemished rind disguising a rotten fruit. His good looks seemed an affront and a deliberate lure, enticing people—women, especially—to their doom.
“He’ll be making his rounds of the room for a while,” she said, observing his passage farther into the ballroom. “Some idle conversation. Unlikely that he’ll join the dancing right away.” She pointed toward a door leading off the ballroom. “All those men are heading to the card room. They want as little to do with dancing as possible.”
“Made a thorough study of these gentry folk, you have,” said Dalton. He shot her a chary glance. “You one of ’em?”
She scoffed. “There are many worlds between Mayfair and Bethnal Green.”
“If they ain’t your people, how d’you know so much? All their names, where they live, how their little parties play out.”
“Most of Nemesis’s targets come from the ranks of the elite. I have to know my enemy.” She waved a hand toward the ballroom. “Those are not my people, as you call them.”
“Then who is?”
She studied him. “Why do you want to know? If you’re looking for leverage to use against me, it won’t work. I’ve made certain there are no loose ends to make me trip.”
Though he kept his gaze on the ballroom, his brow lowered. “Blackmail and leverage are Nemesis’s methods, not mine. I want to know about you on account of me being curious. Been trapped together in a hackney all day. It makes a man’s thoughts wander.”
“And they wandered toward me?” Best to be overt, face the issue head-on so it couldn’t control her.
“Only other person in that cab was myself, and we both know my history. Seems only fair,” he added. “Got a file at headquarters about me. This thick.” He held his fingers apart, just as Simon had done when illustrating Dalton’s dossier.
She debated. Deliberately, she’d spoken little of her life and upbringing with the other Nemesis operatives. Their questions to her were always met with vagaries. It made her somewhat removed from them. Which was as she wanted it. It was safer that way, not just for the sake of Nemesis and its missions, but for herself. No chance of being hurt when someone truly didn’t know you.
Yet she felt a strange need to share something of herself with Dalton. She knew he desired her—he’d made no secret of it, and, if she wanted to be truthful with herself, she’d been thinking about what it would be like to run her hands all over his body and feel his mouth on hers.
She understood lust. Had felt it many times. One could share one’s body without revealing one’s heart. This compulsion urging her now, this need to reveal herself to Dalton, had another origin besides desire. In this darkened chamber, illuminated by the ambient light from the ballroom, with this man, she could allow something of her true self to emerge.
“My parents were missionaries,” she said finally. She kept her gaze on the swirling crowds within the ballroom. “They ran several charities here in London. For women. The poor. Ventures like that are always short of resources. They made frequent rounds of all the Society ladies, soliciting funds.”
“They took you with ’em,” he said.
“A good guess. And an accurate one.”
He shrugged. “Beggars do the same. Got a little raggedy tyke beside ’em, making big sad eyes at the passers-by. Get more coin that way.”
A humorless laugh escaped her. “In that, we were just like the poor souls they were trying to help. It worked, too. Though my mother always felt we could have done better if I smiled more at the rich ladies. Never felt much like smiling, though,” she murmured. “I saw how they lived, how they acted. The same way you learned about Rockley from watching him, I did the same with those wealthy women. They seemed so … jaded, so weighed down with apathy. Searching for something to do with themselves.”
She and Dalton watched them now, the ladies of the elite. Forming clumps at the edges of the ballroom, or whirling across the floor in the patterns of dance. Some of the women looked bored. Others had rapacious and judging eyes.
“Never had no truck with those women,” he rumbled. “Can’t say as I was sorry about it.”
“Some were decent, genuinely compassionate. Others, less so. Just like anyone. But it teaches you something about pride, c
ontinually having your hand out, asking for help.”
He grunted. “Aye. Tastes like quinine.”
“Or lye.” She nodded toward the ballroom. “He’s dancing now. Unless he’s in the market for a wife, he won’t dance with the same woman twice.”
Rockley made a fine figure on the dance floor. He easily guided the young woman in his arms through the waltz, and she beamed up at him, surely feeling that she was the envy of all the other girls at the ball. Eva half expected the young woman’s snowy gown to be stained by Rockley’s moral pollution.
“He didn’t want to be leg-shackled,” Dalton said. “Doubt that’s changed.”
“It’s so much easier to ruin girls without having a wife at home.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.
They were silent again, observing the strange rituals of another culture.
Yet Dalton, it seemed, wanted more details about Eva. “They still in London, your parents?”
“Africa. Nigeria, to be more specific, doing good works.” She’d had a letter from them a month ago describing the school they’d built—with considerable assistance from the local populace. Clasping her elbows, she spoke quietly. “I didn’t follow in their footsteps. I believe … I’m a disappointment to them.”
It stunned her that she’d said the words aloud, when she hadn’t fully articulated them to herself. And of all the people she should confess this to, she had not anticipated her confessor would be Jack Dalton.
She waited for his scorn, telling herself it didn’t matter if he jeered at her or said something cutting. It would teach her a lesson about revealing too much of herself to him, to anyone.
“If Nemesis does what it claims,” he said gruffly, “if it makes injustices right, and if you’re part of Nemesis, then you are doing good.”
“But I’m not bringing faith to the ignorant, or clothing those who’ve only known nakedness.”
He grunted. “Bollocks to that. You’re working for the needy here at home, where you’re wanted. Not trying to force belief down the throats of people who might not even ask for it.”
Stunned, she unclasped her elbows and let her arms hang down her sides. “I never thought of it in those terms.”
