Sweet Revenge

“We’ve done surveillance here,” Eva said. “Managed to get the plans to the house, as well, so we know the layout.”

“Plans don’t tell you that he keeps an armed man in the hallway outside his bedroom, and that he’d go through the mews when he’d come home late at night.”

“I don’t see extra guards outside his house now.”

“You wouldn’t. But his men would be on the inside. He didn’t want his posh neighbors to know he paid a bunch of East London toughs to watch his arse.”

She nodded, taking in this information.

“Look there.” He pointed to one of the second-story windows. “That shadow against the glass? That’s the hallway. His bedroom faces the back, where it’s quieter. But I’d stand in that hallway there outside his room as Rockley got dressed for the day. He’s got someone doing the same job.”

“So he’s still at home.” She checked her pocket watch. “Twelve-fifty. Just like you said.”

“And in about five minutes, the coach’ll come around and wait for him by the front door.”

“Unless he’s concerned about your escape and chooses to leave through the mews.”

Jack shook his head. “He’s got his patterns. May be hard to follow him if you don’t know ’em, but he always starts his day the same way. He’ll go about his business as he usually does, to send a message. He won’t let a piece of filth like me disrupt that.”

She looked at him sharply. “Why would you say that?”

“Because to Rockley,” he said, spreading his hands, “there’s nothing more important than appearance.”

“No, I mean, why would you call yourself a piece of filth? Do you really think of yourself that way?”

He blinked. “I don’t think of myself in any way. I just am.”

The idea seemed to flat-out puzzle her. “You’ve got to have some conceptualization of yourself. Some idea of who you believe yourself to be.”

He gave a quick bark of laughter. “Self-reflection—I think that’s the word for it—that’s a luxury for them that don’t have to worry about their next meal, or whether the rain will come through the holes in the roof. There’s only survival. And if you don’t fight to survive”—he shrugged—“you don’t.”

“Not once during those nights listening to the rain did you ever ponder who you were, or what you were meant to be doing? Something beyond survival.”

Shifting on the creaking squabs, he glanced away from the amber knives of her eyes. “I may’ve,” he allowed. There had been dreams, plans. Hopes for a life beyond the crowded, dirty alleys he’d known. His own boxing academy, for one. Like the kind Maclaren had, but instead of just training men, it’d be a place where boys could get off the streets, away from the gin palaces and dicing games. Someplace where they could feel safe and have dreams of their own.

He shook his head, clearing away the cobwebs of old hopes. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s all led me here.”

“But I—” Her words stopped abruptly. She sat up straight, her gaze fixed on something out the window.

Everything within Jack tensed. He knew what she saw. Slowly, he turned his head to look out the window.

A footman held open the front door, and a big, strapping bloke stepped outside. It wasn’t Fowler, Curtis, or even Voss. Probably they’d moved on to other jobs, or died. Men like them—men like Jack—never lived long, despite their size. A hazardous life, one might call it.

This new chap wore a checked suit and a bowler hat. Jack didn’t know him by name, but names signified nothing. Five years ago, Jack had been that man. Like him, he’d looked up and down the street, scanning for any signs of trouble, body primed to fight if danger arose. No mistaking the telltale shape of a gun in the hired man’s coat. Jack had favored an Enfield Mk II, if his fists couldn’t finish the job.

Jack ducked back as the hired man’s gaze swept past the hackney cab.

“That’s Fred Ballard,” Eva said. “His main bodyguard.” She glanced at the carriage. “Rockley’s moving on.”

Turning back to the window, Jack saw Ballard give a quick nod to someone standing in the doorway.

Rockley emerged.

Fire roared through Jack’s veins, and his vision hazed. A fist seemed to close around his throat. He wanted to launch himself from the cab. He could already feel the crunch of bone against his fist as he smashed it into Rockley’s handsome face. He could smell the blood as it coated the spotless front steps, hear the wet gurgle as Rockley struggled to breathe through the ruin of his aristocratic nose and mouth.

“Dalton.”

A woman’s gloved hand closed around his wrist as he grasped the handle to the cab door. He stared down at the female’s hand.

“Dalton,” the woman repeated, her voice an urgent whisper.

He looked up. A woman stared at him intently. She had sherry eyes and wheat-gold hair and he didn’t recognize her. Not at first.

“You can’t go out there,” she said, her words tight. “The moment you do, Rockley’s thug will shoot you down.”

Eva. That’s right. The woman was Eva.

“Might get to him before that.” He spoke through clenched teeth.

“It’s nearly a hundred feet between the cab and Rockley. More than enough time for his thug to fire off several rounds.” Her hand tightened around his wrist. “Don’t take that gamble, Dalton. Don’t throw this entire mission away.”

“Edith—”

“Would want her brother to stay alive,” she finished. “Remember what I said earlier? You have to think if you want Rockley to pay. Rushing him in the street has only one result: your death.”

“Goddamn it,” he snarled. Because what she said made sense. Rockley always made sure his bodyguards were good shots. Jack would be a corpse before he made it half the distance.

His hand made of rusted iron, he unwound it from the door handle. Slowly, Eva released him.

“Good,” she said after a pause. “Good.”

“Don’t feel good,” he growled. “Feel like tearing up lampposts.”

Glancing out the window again, Eva said, “He’s getting into his carriage.”

Jack followed her gaze. Rockley was, in fact, stepping into his waiting vehicle, with the footman waiting to close the door behind him. The bodyguard sat beside the coachman, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes constantly moving. Once Rockley had seated himself, the footman closed the door. The coachman snapped the ribbons, and the two matched bays responded, setting off at a trot.

Eva leaned forward and opened the small sliding door mounted at the front of the cab. “Driver, do not lose that carriage. And make sure they don’t see us. There’s a guinea in it for you.”

With that kind of carrot, the driver hurried to follow. The hackney sped after Rockley’s carriage.

Jack gripped the leather straps mounted on both sides of the hackney’s walls, stretched out like a man on the rack. His muscles felt as though they’d burst right out of his clothing, and his heart slammed inside his ribs. Goddamn it, Rockley looked the same, exactly the same as he had five years ago. Everything had changed for Jack. Nothing had changed for Rockley.

Tall and elegant in his perfectly made, stylish clothes, his hair shiny and combed beneath his top hat, sporting an elegant mustache, Rockley was the model of a flawless aristocratic gentleman. Handsome, too, the blighter. Dark hair, blue eyes. The kind of face that women push each other aside to get close to. Hundreds of years of breeding pretty people gave him a face that truly got away with murder.

“You did the right thing,” Eva said.

“Still want to rip his fucking guts out through his mouth,” he gritted.

“I’m sure you do. But we have to keep our sights on our objective. This is my eighth mission for Nemesis, and I’ve learned that success relies upon logical, precise thinking.”

“Logic and precision ain’t my usual way of doing things.”

“And you wound up in prison as a result.”

He cursed under his breath. “Got a point there. But it don’t make me skip with joy.”

“I’m…” She appeared to labor to speak. Her gaze slid away from his. “I’m sorry.”

He stared at her. Grudging as her words had been, they seemed genuine. Maybe this ice palace of a woman wasn’t as cool as she let on.

They rode on in silence, following Rockley through the city. Jack already knew where they were heading. Toward Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where Rockley’s man of business kept offices. The hackney journeyed from Mayfair’s wide, dignified streets into the bustling heart of London’s legal world. Men wearing sober coats and dour expressions paced up and down the avenues, sheaves of papers bound with red cloth tape tucked under their arms.

“Tell the driver to park on Portugal Street,” Jack said. “We can ditch the cab there and keep an eye on Rockley from a little shop on Portsmouth Street.”

“That way Rockley’s driver and guard won’t see our hackney again and get suspicious. Wise thinking.” She repeated Jack’s instructions to the driver, who did as he was told.

They got down from the hackney. Jack was about to hurry down the street when Eva hissed at him, “Offer me your arm, damn it.”

Right. Even without him wearing a hat, they’d attract less attention if it looked like they were a couple out on errands together.

Feeling strangely clumsy, he held out his arm. She looped her arm with his, her hand resting lightly on his sleeve. He could barely feel the pressure of her fingers upon him, but he sensed them anyway. Heat crept up his neck and spread across his face.

They walked briskly down the street. She matched his stride easily. Just as he’d known, Rockley’s carriage had parked outside the red-brick building that housed the offices of Mr. Mitchell, his lordship’s man of business. The coachman waited with the vehicle.

“Where’s Ballard?” Eva asked.

“Waiting outside Mitchell’s offices.” He held open the door to the crooked little shop perched on Portsmouth Street, and she stepped inside. Neither of them paid attention to the clutter of goods piled up on every available surface. Both he and Eva stared out the shop’s window. It offered them a good view of the front of Mitchell’s building.

“Doesn’t that attract attention?” She peered past the copper pots and china mugs lined up in the shop window. “Not many gentlemen walk around with hired guards.”

“I got a few queer looks, but no one said anything. Rockley’s the heir to some huge title and estate. If he wanted to walk around with a peacock on his shoulder, wasn’t nobody going to tell him he couldn’t.”

“He’s the Duke of Sunderleigh’s son,” she said. “That title goes back to the time of the War of the Roses.”

He frowned, pictured the flower sellers in Covent Garden firing mortars at each other. “An old title, then,” he guessed.

“One of the oldest. I suppose if he had a few odd habits,” she murmured, “they’d just be dismissed as the eccentricities of the elite.”

“Like killing girls.” He fought the bile that climbed his throat.

“Or ruining them, with no one to stop him.” She glanced up at Jack. “But we’ll stop him.”

“There’s no extra security out front,” he said, trying to get a hold of his rage. “If there’s something, some piece of evidence, that Rockley’s trying to protect, it’s not here.”

She nodded. “He’d station more guards wherever he keeps his documentation of his misdeeds.”

“He should just destroy any evidence, if it’s going to link him to a crime.” He picked up a tiny china box, the outside painted with flowers so fat and mean-looking he expected them to have teeth.

The shopkeeper came bustling forward. “Can I assist you, sir?”

“No,” Jack snapped. The man jumped.

“That is,” Eva said, her tone soothing, “my cousin and I are simply perusing right now. We will be certain to ask for your assistance should we need it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The shopkeeper hurried away, looking almost grateful to make his escape.

Eva glanced at Jack as he put the little box down.

“What?” he demanded.

“I’m not going to play Pygmalion with you,” she answered. “But you’re going to have to smooth down your manner.”

He didn’t know who that Pygmalion lady was, and wasn’t about to ask. “It never hurt me before.”

“You lived a different life before, where being unseen didn’t matter. But now”—she gave him a look that started at the top of his head and went all the way down to the toes of his boots—“a great big unmannerly brute of a man is the kind that shopkeepers tend to notice and remember. We don’t want anyone recalling you, should they ever be questioned. And if we want information from anyone, they’re more inclined to give it if we deal with them courteously.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Ought to think about being a teacher.”

To his surprise, she tensed, and seemed wary. “Why do you say that?”

“Lecturing comes natural to you.”

She gave a quick glance to make sure no one in the shop was looking their way, then, certain they weren’t being watched, she made a rude hand gesture at Jack.

Which startled a laugh out of him. And also attracted the attention of his groin. Something about seeing a prim and proper lady giving him the two-fingered salute made for an intriguing contrast. It made a bloke think about what other kinds of naughty things the lady knew.

“But no,” she continued, “Rockley wouldn’t destroy any evidence about the government contract. He couldn’t have gone into the deal alone, and he’d want to keep documentation as leverage in case anyone tries to cross him.”

“You’ve got your hands around my neck, but I’m gripping yours, too.”

“Exactly.”

They continued to watch the front of the building that housed Mitchell’s office. Foot traffic sped by, carriages and wagons in the street, and an occasional customer came into the shop.

“Never heard what Rockley and Mitchell talked about,” he said. “Like I said, if he’s in for fifteen minutes, it’s a normal day. Ten if Mitchell has good news.”

“He might be in there longer today. Rockley knows you’re out, so he may be making special provisions.”

“A will, if’s he’s smart.”

Several minutes later, Rockley came out of the building, with his hired man in the lead. As before, Rockley got into the carriage and Ballard climbed up beside the coachman.

“How long has it been?” Jack demanded. He didn’t have his pocket watch any longer to keep track of the time.

She consulted her own watch. “Fifteen minutes.”

“He’ll be going to the Carlton Club next, then.”

“We need to get back to the cab now,” Eva said.

They left the shop, and Jack was fairly certain the shopkeeper muttered a little prayer of thanks to have them gone. Fortunately, the hackney driver had decided they were a ripe pigeon to be plucked, and still waited for them on Portugal Street. Eva jumped into the cab with the same speed and strength she’d demonstrated since Jack first had met her. As he climbed in after her, he realized with a start that he’d only met her yesterday. Seemed like much longer than that. A half-dozen lifetimes, at least.

“Stay with that carriage,” she called up to the driver.

In an instant, they were off again. It didn’t seem as though Rockley, his hired muscle, or his coachman noticed the hackney in pursuit.

“I get the feeling our cabman’s done a spot of tailing before this,” he muttered to Eva.

“If it keeps Rockley from seeing us,” she answered, “let’s be thankful for the dubiousness of his character.”

Christ, there was something about the way she talked that made his blood go hot. He couldn’t understand it. There was nothing about her that was like his usual type of woman. He preferred them light and frivolous as soap bubbles—the rest of his life was tough and harsh. When it came to female company, he didn’t need challenges, just thoughtless pleasure. But Eva dared him at every turn, and damn him if he wasn’t starting to look forward to her next bit of cheek.

“We definitely appear to be heading toward Pall Mall,” she noted, looking out the window.

“It’s giving me a twitch.” Digging his knuckles into the padded seat, he felt the scratch of horsehair through the threadbare cushion. “All this shadowing Rockley but not making a move. If we ain’t going to hit him, I can just take you everywhere he goes. See if he’s added more men for security. Then we don’t have to wait for him. Could be done in half the time.”

“He may have altered his schedule in five years,” she said. “Or he might break from his usual patterns today, knowing you’re at large. If he does anything unusual, we have to be there to see it.”

Jack glowered at the passing streets. “Going to need another go on that punching bag the toff set up for me.”

“His name’s Simon.”

“He your man?”

She raised her brows. “Good God, no. Not that my personal life is any of your concern.”

“So, you don’t have a man.”

“How tiresome this subject is.” She studied the stitching on the seams of her gloves.

“That means, no, you don’t.” He didn’t like how glad that news made him. “But you run around with dangerous blokes at all hours of the day and night.”

She rolled her eyes. “I had no idea that they instilled such puritan values in prison.”

Jack snorted. “We had chapel once a week. They stuffed us into these little stalls that weren’t more than standing-up coffins, and made us listen to some dry old stick of a chaplain lecture us on meekness and humility and Christian duty. Didn’t feel so Christian when they’d flog you for talking too much. Or stick you in the dark cell just ’cause a warder didn’t like your look.” He fought a shudder.

The physical pain of being flogged was easier to bear than the long days and weeks spent in utter darkness, with nothing to drink but water, and nothing to eat but bread. He’d never slept well, always caught in a haze of exhaustion—men in the dark cell didn’t get mattresses or blankets, just a hard wooden board set into the wall. And the silence. God Almighty, the silence. The lack of contact with others. Just thinking of it now made his throat close. Prison was never a chatty, cheerful place, but the absolute void of sound and human contact within the dark cell made many lads snap.

“Spoken as one who’d suffered such punishments,” she said quietly.

“Aye.” Had the marks on his back as proof. And a hate of complete darkness. He tipped up his chin. “Didn’t break me, though. They tried, but never could.”

She tilted her head as she gazed at him. “That must’ve taken some extraordinary strength on your part.”

“Strength, or being pigheaded.” He shrugged. “Whatever you call it, it got me through five years without losing my mind.”

Her look was troubled, thoughtful. “I don’t know if I could have survived that.”

“You would’ve,” he answered at once. “If only to drive the matrons barmy.”

Her quick smile came as a surprise. “I do believe you’re right, Mr. Dalton.”

He could not lean back, couldn’t be easy, not so long as he trailed after Rockley like a wolf denied its prey. Yet there was something oddly gratifying about having Eva with him on this mad hunt, talking with her as he’d never talked to another human being. Those five years at Dunmoor must’ve changed him, far more than he’d realized.

* * *

From the cab, Jack and Eva watched Rockley go up the steps and into the imposing Carlton Club. The footman at the door bowed at Rockley’s entrance, then gestured toward his carriage to wait for his lordship around back. It wouldn’t do to have carriages lined up outside like a common opera house, even if the carriages were the gleaming vehicles of England’s elite, drawn by horses that cost far more than a working man could make in a year.

“Ballard is staying with the coach,” Eva noted as the vehicle rolled away toward the mews.

“Even a bloke as high in the instep as Rockley can’t argue with the club’s rules. Only members and the club’s servants are allowed inside.”

“Surprising that he’d feel comfortable there,” she murmured, her gaze fixed on the daunting stone arches that lined the building’s walls, “without his paid muscle to watch his back. Unless he could put his paranoia aside long enough to rub elbows with the conservative elite.”

“What’s paranoia?” Jack asked.

“An irrational or overinflated sense of persecution. Excessive suspiciousness.”

“That’s Rockley, all right.” He sneered. “He uses his paranoia to make the world safer for him. Only it ain’t safe. Not from me.”

“Or Nemesis.” She studied the outside of the club. “So he wouldn’t be able to post additional men here.”

“If he had evidence of something, he wouldn’t keep it at the club.”

Still, they had to wait for him. As they did, Eva stepped out and purchased them all several pies from a shop a few streets over, even bringing food to the cabman. They ate their luncheon without speaking, still sitting inside the cab. He still couldn’t quite get used to eating in front of another person, and had taken his breakfast in his room, but he’d spoken truly last night. It was easier to eat in front of a woman than a man.

“All this Nemesis work’s pretty dangerous,” he said between mouthfuls. “Surprised that they’d let women be part of it.”

She scowled. “Harriet, Riza, and I want to see justice served just as much as any man. More so, since so much harm is perpetrated against women, and little protection. My God, they only just repealed the Contagious Diseases Acts.”

He’d heard some of the prostitutes complaining bitterly about those acts, and how they could be forced to go through humiliating medical examinations, or worse, locked up against their will, if found to be carriers of disease.

“Don’t doubt there’s plenty wrong done to women,” he said, “but what if you or Harriet get hurt?”

“Just like any army, all the operatives of Nemesis are trained for many months before becoming officially part of the group. Simon has an estate outside of town we use for training. Firearms. Hand-to-hand combat. A few other skills I’m not at liberty to divulge.”

“And you went through this training, too?”

She gave him a cold smile. “Test me.”

He smiled right back. “Be delighted to.”

They resumed their meal in silence, but the dare hung between them like a lit fuse.

Some hours later, Rockley emerged. They followed at a distance, but after making several turns and doubling back twice, the cabman opened the sliding door that allowed him to talk to his fares.

“Sorry,” the driver said, voice tight with apology, “but that blighter slipped away from me.”

Eva cursed. “This kept happening to us before. He could be heading anywhere.”

“Not anywhere,” Jack said. “Did you see him, when he came out of the club? He ran his hands down the front of his waistcoat and patted his stomach. That means he’d had a big luncheon. But he don’t like feeling all stuffed and lazy. He’d want to go to his gymnasium next. It’s on Church Street, right by the river.”

Her eyes widened. “Don’t tell me. Tell our driver.”

Jack repeated his directions to the cabman, and they were off again.

They reached Church Street a few minutes later. Jack couldn’t stop the small bit of pride that swelled in his chest when he and Eva spotted Rockley’s carriage outside a two-story stone building. A brass plaque read CHELSEA GENTLEMEN’S GYMNASIUM.

“The ace up our sleeve,” Eva murmured. No mistake about it—respect shone in her eyes when she looked at Jack.

And he liked it.

“After this,” he said, “he always goes home to bathe. The driver might change the route up, but Rockley don’t care for being mussed.”

Which proved true. Though the hackney lost Rockley’s carriage on the return trip, when they reached his home on Grosvenor Street, they were just in time to see Rockley head inside.

Eva pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “This is Simon’s list of parties Rockley’s been invited to tonight. A dinner given by the industrialist Edward Cole. Another dinner, this one hosted by Lord and Lady Scargill. A ball at the home of Lord and Lady Beckwith.”

“He’ll bathe and change for his night out, then.”

They continued to wait. The sun had lowered itself behind the skyline, throwing long shadows, and the street lamps came on to push those shadows back.

“Can you stop shaking your leg?” Eva didn’t try to hide her annoyance.

He hadn’t been aware he’d been doing so, his leg restlessly jiggling. “I’m going round the twist, sitting here like this.”

“Distract yourself.”

“I can think of a way or two you could distract me.” He gave her a wicked grin.

“Goodness,” she said, yawning, “with that kind of poetry, what woman could resist you?”

“Not many did.” It wasn’t a boast, but the truth. He never lacked for female company.

She leaned forward, and lamplight filtered in through the glass, touching along the clean line of her cheek and the fullness of her bottom lip. He’d spoken automatically a moment ago. Making bawdy suggestions came naturally when you were from the shabby, low parts of town. Cheap and ready coquetry was thrown out like so much tinsel. It was a way everyone related to one another when life was tough and fast—the common currency of flirtation.

But he realized something just then. He wanted her. Not simply because he hadn’t had a woman in five years, and she happened to be handy. No, with her gold eyes, fancy words, and mind like a cutthroat’s blade, she set a fire to him, a fire that could only be quenched by discovering the feel and taste of her.

“Not many women resist you?” Her lips curled into a smile, causing heat to shoot to his cock. “Congratulations, Mr. Dalton. You’ve just found a woman who can.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Eva didn’t know whether her words were for Dalton or herself. A measure of both, she supposed.

She needed to remind herself that he served one purpose, and one purpose only: finding evidence of Rockley’s embezzlement, and with that, gaining restitution for Miss Jones along with the downfall of the nobleman. These alone were Nemesis’s objectives. She must think of Dalton as simply a means to achieve those objectives. He was no more than a lever or pulley in the construction of Rockley’s ruin, as other men had served Nemesis’s purposes before.

Yet, as he stared back at her within the dark confines of the hackney, the shadows and lamplight shaped him into a man both menacing and alluring. She didn’t know a man could be both. The flinty contours of his face could soften with a smile, the hard gleam of his eyes could glint with unexpected humor or feeling.

Impossible to deny the animal allure of his physicality, as well. He inhabited his body with full awareness. She already knew what he looked like without his clothing, and as she returned his gaze, she had an aching awareness of his big, strapping frame, of how flimsy everything seemed in comparison to him.

Perhaps she ought to have taken Simon’s advice and had him or Marco accompany Dalton today. No—just as she’d told Dalton, she was a trained operative who had been actively recruited by Nemesis. If she had an inconvenient attraction to him, she could master it. She could not let anything cloud her judgment.

“You go throwing out a challenge like that,” he rumbled, “I have to take it. Don’t forget, love, I broke out of prison. Getting into your bed won’t be as difficult.”

“Correct,” she said. “It will be more difficult. And it isn’t a challenge, but a statement of fact.”

“All facts can change.”

She nearly admired his audacity. Overcoming obstacles, finding the possible in the impossible—these were things that had drawn her to Nemesis in the first place. She never took the path of least resistance, and had to respect anyone who chose the same. But there were exceptions, especially when the resistance he faced was her own will.

“Something hasn’t changed, though,” he said, his gaze suddenly fixed out the window. “Rockley’s taking up one of the invitations he received.”

The man himself emerged from his house in evening finery, his shirtfront pristinely white, his black wool evening dress absorbing light.

She suppressed a groan. Her limbs were stiff and aching from a day spent in a poorly sprung four-wheeler, but it looked as though the night was far from over.

“Can’t aristocrats spend a quiet evening at home?” she muttered.

“This lot don’t have work or jobs,” Dalton said. “Not so far as I’ve seen. They got no reason to get up with the sun.”

“Which is it to be, then?” She peered at Rockley as he gave instructions to his coachman, but he was too far up the block for her to hear what he said. “Dinner with the industrialist? Will he dine with Lord Scargill, instead? Or is it the ball hosted by Lord Beckwith?”

Dalton grumbled. “This part I never knew. Always a different posh place each night.”

Her thoughts racing, Eva went over the list of names. She tried to place herself in Rockley’s mind, vile though that location was. He might take up the iron magnate’s offer, but she doubted Rockley wanted to associate with new money or men who made no secret of working for their wealth. Lord Scargill was a lesser nobleman of slim influence. As distinguished as the Carlton Club was, it permitted plutocrats who supported Tory causes as well as noblemen with ancient but trifling bloodlines. Rockley could have had enough interaction with those varieties of men whilst at the club. Yet Lord Beckwith was an earl, and while such titles were losing their importance, his hadn’t diminished.

“He’ll go to Lord Beckwith’s,” she said.

Dalton looked skeptical. “You sure?”

“No. But all we have at this point is instinct, and mine says Beckwith’s soiree. His mansion’s on Curzon Street.”

That seemed to mollify Dalton. He reached behind and slid open the door that allowed passengers to communicate with the cabman. “Oi, Palmer. We’re on the hunt for the toff again. Curzon Street.”

“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 other 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, continually 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.”

“About time you did.”

She could hardly believe it. He was defending her work. Defending her. When he had no reason to do so. She knew when someone lied, told her half-truths, or spoke with the intent to flatter and deceive.

Dalton had meant every word.

Without thinking, she brought her hand up to press in the center of her chest. As if she could hold back the pieces of self-protection that crumbled from around her heart. She didn’t want to like him, or feel grateful for his understanding. She didn’t want to feel anything for him.

It couldn’t be helped, though. He’d found a vulnerability.

And he didn’t even know it. He continued to stare into the ballroom. His lip curled as he watched several bejeweled matrons gather in a circle, fanning themselves. “Every now and then, do-gooders would come parading through Bethnal Green, clanging bells and clapping hands. Women like that lot. The way they treated us,” he scoffed, “like we were idiot children.”

Giving herself a mental shake, she brought herself back to the conversation.

She knew precisely what he meant. Some missionaries thought of their charges as little better than animalistic brutes, and it was their duty to elevate them. Not as high as the missionaries themselves, but out of the mud of their ignorance. Her parents, at least, were not so blinkered in their ideology.

Dalton said, “Then they’d get angry when they figured out that us poor folk weren’t as simple as they wanted. We couldn’t be shaped into what they wanted us to be. And more than a few of us didn’t care for their sort of charity.” His jaw tightened. “Most of ’em lost interest after a bit. They’d find another charity or just give it up altogether, like they were bored of poor people.”

“When my parents and I would return to some ladies,” she said, “asking for more donations, they’d look at us with this confusion. Wondering why we’d come back. As though giving a handful of pounds or a few dozen blankets should suddenly, magically cure poverty.”

“Or that we should be grateful to find jobs that barely paid nothing. Honest work, they called it. Anything to keep us low.” He tugged on the silk fabric of the curtain, a swath of fabric that, if sold at a secondhand shop, could feed a man for months. “We couldn’t dream of having this for ourselves. Couldn’t aim for anything beyond just a roof over our heads and a measly bowl of mutton for supper.”

“And you?”

He frowned. “What about me?”

“You must’ve aimed for more than a roof and mutton.” If she was coming to understand anything about Dalton, it was his ferocious determination. A man like him wouldn’t be satisfied with crumbs. He’d want the whole banquet.

“Always had bigger plans for myself,” he admitted. “I wanted out of Bethnal Green, and no dirty factory job was going to make that happen. So I became a housebreaker, then a fighter. Nothing aboveboard, only underground brawls they’d hold in deserted buildings. Earned me the name Diamond Jack, on account of being hard as one of them stones. After that, I came on as Rockley’s bodyguard.” His sneer of disgust seemed aimed not just at Rockley, but at himself. “The most money I’d ever had, all to watch some toff’s back. I took it, and gladly. Didn’t matter to me what the bastard did, so long as I kept him safe and got my wages.”

The bastard in question had ended his waltz and stood talking with two men she recognized as top parliamentary figures. One of the men laughed at something Rockley said, and gestured toward the card room.

“Maybe those nobs are in on the scheme with the cartridges,” Dalton said, nodding toward the men talking with Rockley.

“They aren’t afraid of him,” she said. “You can see it in the way they look at him, the ease of their laughter. He doesn’t have any hold over them.”

Dalton grunted softly, a sound partway between amusement and reluctant admiration. “Ought to consider becoming a card sharp, the way you read folks.”

“The late hours would interfere with my work for Nemesis. And I don’t care much for the smell of cigars.”

Rockley and the other two gentlemen strolled from the ballroom, seemingly eager to immerse themselves in the masculine world of importance.

“Damn,” Eva muttered. “There isn’t going to be another room in Sir Harold’s house that will have a view of the card room.”

“He’ll have to come back through the ballroom to leave,” Dalton noted.

They wouldn’t know who Rockley spoke with in the card room, but at least she knew he couldn’t slip away unnoticed.

Eva leaned forward, bracing her elbows on the windowsill. “Did you ever think about being anything other than hired muscle?”

A fleeting look of contemplation crossed his face, something almost wistful. But it was gone before she could be certain. “Nah. Folks always knew me as a bruiser, and that’s what I became. Either in the ring or on that nob’s payroll.” He held up his fists. “These have always been more valuable than this.” He tapped the side of his head.

“You overvalued the wrong commodity,” she said.

His expression was confused, as though she suggested paying for oxygen. “Muscle is all I’ll ever be.”

Unaccountable anger surged through her. “Stop calling yourself that.”

Again, he looked mystified. “Don’t know why you’re getting so cross. What difference does it make to you how I think of myself?” He folded his arms across his chest as he gazed at her.

Why, indeed? She couldn’t answer him. Only that it did upset her, far more than she would have believed. He seemed to accept the role he’d been given, a role that vastly underestimated his capabilities. No one, it appeared, ever told Jack Dalton that he could be anything more than a brute for hire.

But he had a brain. A very good one. And it had lain fallow for far too long.

She saw examples of wasted potential every day. One couldn’t live in London without seeing the mudlarks, crossing sweeps, match girls, or men sitting on curbs when their jobs had been made redundant. It always stirred her. But never as much as Dalton did.

“I just don’t like to see squandered possibility,” she muttered.

“A missionary at heart,” he said, wry.

If that’s what he believed, she wouldn’t disabuse him. Better that than him thinking she had more than a professional interest in his welfare.

A faint noise sounded in the corridor outside, the creak of floorboards beneath carpet as someone made their way down the hall. Both she and Dalton stiffened, exchanging glances with each other. From beneath the door, light gleamed. Something jingled. The housekeeper’s keys.

Dalton dropped the curtain immediately, throwing the chamber into darkness. Both he and Eva raced for the shelter of the folding screen. The screen itself wasn’t particularly large, but Dalton was, so they had to stand close together, her back pressed against his front. His arm wrapped around her, beneath her cape, and his hand spread across her stomach.

The moment they settled into place, the door opened. More jingling and footsteps as the housekeeper walked into the room. A small glow spilled upon the walls—she must be carrying a lamp.

Eva tensed and felt Dalton do the same. Had the housekeeper heard her and Dalton and come to investigate? If so, behind the screen would likely be the first place the housekeeper looked. Talking their way out of the situation wasn’t possible, and Eva didn’t want to subdue and tie up the poor woman—though if it came to that, she was prepared.

The footsteps stopped, and the housekeeper sighed. Yet she didn’t look behind the screen. More light filled the room.

Cautiously, Eva peered around the edge of the folding screen and saw the housekeeper standing exactly where she and Dalton had been moments earlier. The older woman gazed out at the ballroom across the way, a wistful look upon her face.

“My, isn’t that lovely?” She sighed again, then hummed along with the faint music, swaying slightly.

Eva edged back. She and Dalton hadn’t been seen. And so long as they stood behind the screen, they wouldn’t be. Yet she couldn’t feel calm, not until the housekeeper left. From the expression on the older woman’s face, rapt with attention, it appeared that might be a while.

She kept herself still, willing her breathing and heartbeat to slow. But as she did, she became aware of Dalton’s nearness. With so little room behind the screen, their bodies pressed against each other. Knowing that she was going to be in and out of a carriage all day, she’d worn a small bustle, and it now kept a minor distance between her and Dalton. Yet her back leaned fully against his chest. His heat spread through her, and the hard, broad muscles of his torso formed a living wall. She caught the scent of soap and wool and … him.

Her every part was aware of him—his size, his strength, the potency of both his body and his will. Her own flesh felt tight, sensitive, and when his breath curled warmly over the back of her neck, she fought a shiver of burgeoning arousal.

His palm was large and hot against her belly. She shifted, adjusting her footing, and his thumb brushed against the underside of her breast. Heat streaked through her. Such a simple, light touch, yet it spread through her in quivering waves. She was half afraid, half desirous that his hand would move higher, cupping her breast.

His hand stayed where it was. She felt and heard a slight catch in his breathing. He was as affected as she.

She could sense that his mouth was barely an inch from her nape, and had a powerful urge to lean back even more so his lips could touch her flesh. What would his lips feel like? Rough? Soft? Or both? Yet, despite her desire to find out, she held herself motionless.

It was all she could do to keep her eyes open. She felt both languorous and inflamed, conscious not only of Dalton but also the fact that they had to remain quiet and still. They couldn’t be discovered by the housekeeper. They couldn’t take this attraction any further.

After what felt like ten lifetimes, the housekeeper sighed again and let the curtain fall. She walked back to the entrance to the chamber, paused for a moment at the doorway, then closed the door behind her.

Both she and Dalton waited as the housekeeper’s footsteps faded down the corridor. Another minute passed, yet neither she nor Dalton moved. Eva told herself it was merely to ensure that the housekeeper didn’t suddenly return.

Finally, when a suitable period of time passed, she stepped—stumbled—from behind the screen. Her legs felt unstable, her head light.

She heard Dalton’s muttered curse behind her. It sounded as though he were making adjustments to his clothing—specifically, his trousers.

Immediately, she went to the window and pulled the curtain back to look into the ballroom.

“Rockley’s still there,” she said in a low voice. “We’re safe.”

“Wrong about that, love.” Dalton appeared beside her, his face hewn into hard angles. Dark stubble lined his jaw. He was the embodiment of uncompromising masculinity.

“You and me,” he continued in a rumble, eyeing her, “we’re dangerous as a loaded gun.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

The night yielded nothing. Nothing useful, anyway.

At two in the morning, Rockley had finally left the ball and gone home. No other side trips. No late-night secret meetings in riverside warehouses. No visits to one of his preferred brothels. Just home.

Far as Jack could tell, all he’d gained was an even greater hate—if it was even possible—for Rockley. The bastard continued on with his life just as he’d always done. Protected, privileged, Society’s untouchable ideal. Finding a way to ruin him would be one hell of a miracle.

The other thing Jack had gained tonight: a fierce hunger for Eva.

As he lay in his narrow bed at Nemesis headquarters, staring up at the patterns of light on the ceiling and listening to Lazarus snoring in the room down the hall, he still ached with wanting her. Having her pressed up against him, smelling so sweet, feeling her curves … it had been a temptation almost no man could’ve resisted. Somehow, he had, but it didn’t help that she’d shown him far more empathy than anyone ever had before.

Through the whole of that day, dragging back and forth across London, stuck in a small hackney, his awareness of her kept growing. Like a weed, poking through the stone wall of his anger.

She seemed cold as frost on the moors, but beneath that was a woman of determination, of passion. What would it be like, stripping away all her layers, thawing that frost? What kind of woman would be underneath?

A hot-blooded one. And damn him if he didn’t burn to uncover her.

Lying in his bed, he let his mind travel down the path he hadn’t taken behind that folding screen. He pictured it: his mouth on the back of her neck, kissing, biting her silky skin, his hands cupping her breasts, feeling their shape and softness. He pretended that her corset didn’t cover her breasts, so that when he played with her nipples, he’d feel them grow hard beneath his fingers. She’d lean into his touch.

Jack closed his eyes, allowing himself to fall deeper into his fantasy. He reached down and took his aching cock into his hand.

His hands would pull up her skirts as she continued to stand in front of him, and he’d touch her legs until he found where her stockings ended and her bare skin began. There’d be her drawers, too. Little frilly things, he decided. He’d find the opening in her underwear and then he’d find her sweet, hot pussy, glossing his fingers with her wetness.

He stroked himself now, imagining what it would be like to dip his fingers between her lips, feel her heat and response. She’d fall back against him as he touched her, her head turning to the side so he could take her mouth with his. He’d slide his fingers inside her. Hell, she’d be deliciously tight, and his fingers were thick. She’d squirm against him, her hips pushing into his hand, but they’d have to be quiet, so quiet. Not a word or sound to give themselves away.

He thrust harder into his hand, brutal, as he pictured her twisting and silently gasping with pleasure. She’d reach back and undo the buttons of his trousers, then grasp his cock and stroke him, just as he touched her. Faster, now. She’d be a little rough, just the way he liked it, the way he touched himself now, but her hand would be so much better, slim and soft. They’d stand like that, behind the screen, pleasuring each other, moaning noiselessly into each other’s mouths, until she tightened around his fingers and gasped as she climaxed.

Jack snarled as he and his imaginary self came. He bent up from the bed, body stiff, as his seed shot from him in a hot arc. But in his mind, his come didn’t splatter on his stomach and chest, but over Eva’s fingers. And then she licked them, one by one, her eyes on his.

He fell back onto the mattress, panting. Looked down at himself. He’d never come this hard before, not from his own hand.

“Christ,” he muttered. He used a corner of the sheets to clean himself off, before lying back in bed.

Usually, when he had himself a nightly wank, it took him only minutes to fall asleep afterward. It had been a long day, too, exhausting him with its frustrations and anger. But now he found himself wide awake, wondering if Eva was thinking about him, too. If she was in her own bed, remembering how he felt against her. If she also pictured what might have happened between them, and if she touched herself, too.

At the very thought of her hand drifting beneath the covers to nestle between her legs, Jack was hard again.

“Fuck.” He tried to ignore it, but it was like ignoring a telegraph pole sticking up from his groin. No other choice, then. He took hold of his cock once more and pumped it, knowing it was going to be a long, frustrating night.

* * *

“Did you learn anything?”

Sitting at the table in the parlor, Jack glanced up from hunching over his cup of coffee. Simon stood in the doorway, throwing his hat and coat onto a nearby chair as he glowered at Jack. After the rubbish night he’d had, Jack had the strongest need to hit the toff right in his pretty face.

Just as he was about to open his mouth and tell Simon to piss off, Eva came up the stairs. The day outside must be a raw one, for her cheeks were rosy and she carried the scent of wind and rain on her.

Or maybe her cheeks were pink for another reason. She looked at Jack and more color came into her face.

If he thought he’d wanked her out of his system, he was wrong. He couldn’t stop staring at her, not as she also took off her hat and coat, not as she bustled into the kitchen to pour herself some coffee. And when she came back into the parlor, his gaze refused to go anywhere else.

He caught Simon’s dark frown and curled his lip in response. Let the nob try to do something. Jack wouldn’t mind a good, healthy brawl right now.

Lazarus and Harriet also entered the parlor. The swarthy-looking bloke, Marco, hadn’t appeared all morning. Had another mission, Jack supposed, or he could be floating in the Serpentine. Jack didn’t much care.

Cradling her cup of coffee, Eva sat on the arm of a cushioned chair. Pale purple smudges ringed her eyes. Had she been thinking about him last night, and that’s what had kept her awake? Or was it the fact that their operation against Rockley had stalled before it’d truly begun?

The fact that they hadn’t made any progress soured Jack’s mood further. “Didn’t learn bollocks,” he rumbled.

“Not entirely true,” Eva said. Her voice shivered over him, and he tore his gaze away from her to glare into his coffee. Inconvenient, this attraction. Bloody inconvenient.

Continuing, she said, “We saw that he spoke with two high-ranking parliamentarians, and they clearly weren’t under his thumb. None of Rockley’s usual haunts have additional security, either. Which means that wherever he keeps the evidence of his embezzling is not part of his standard schedule.”

“Unless it doesn’t exist,” Harriet noted.

“It does,” Eva said, confident. “He’d be certain to keep documentation in case any of his collaborators try to turn on him.”

“And if Rockley knows that Dalton’s on the loose,” added Lazarus, “he’d be sure not to go where the evidence is stored, so he doesn’t lead Dalton right to it.”

Jack had to admit that the old soldier spoke wisely. Still, “That don’t help us one bit,” he growled. “We can’t track down all the places Rockley doesn’t go. It’d take a bleeding eternity.”

“Perhaps,” Eva said, thoughtful, “the answer isn’t with Rockley, but his collaborators. They might not be as cautious as Rockley in covering their tracks.”

“We’ve already been through the public records of those involved with the government contract.” Simon spoke from where he stood next to the mantel, arms crossed over his chest. “Only Rockley’s name was mentioned. If anyone else had been listed, we would’ve investigated them already.”

The highborn gent’s peevish tone rankled Jack, especially since it seemed directed at Eva.

“The other chaps in the deal could’ve been involved on the sly,” he fired back, “outside of public record. Rockley dealt with lots of blokes. They’d come to his place all the time. Any one of them could’ve been part of the contract.”

Though Simon scowled, the other members of Nemesis nodded thoughtfully, including Eva. A flicker of satisfaction glowed in the center of Jack’s chest.

“The contract with the army was consigned six years ago,” Eva said to him. “Exactly when you were still working for Rockley. Whoever was also involved with the contract must have been to see him during that time. So you would have seen the collaborator, as well. Maybe heard him, too, talking to Rockley about the contract.”

“Lots of gents met with that bastard. He’d be at home once a week in the afternoon for private business. Didn’t want to go to anyone’s office or have meetings at the club.” Despite his tiredness, he felt edgy and restless, and got up to pace. “But there were too many blokes who came and went. Ain’t possible for me to remember them all. And I sure as hell don’t know what they talked about. They’d go into Rockley’s study. I just stood outside and kept guard.”

“You never listened in?” Simon looked disdainful.

Jack wheeled around with a snarl. “They didn’t pay me to eavesdrop. I earned my coin by beating men until they soiled themselves.” He gave Simon a mean smile. “And I was good at my job.”

Before Simon could do something stupid, like take a swing at Jack, Eva spoke. “The key to Rockley skimming from the army contract is in those meetings.”

“Told you,” Jack said. “I don’t know what they talked about.”

“We don’t need to know what they said,” Eva answered, “only who met with him. Once we know who they are, we can start building from there.”

“It was six years ago, love. I didn’t write it down in my journal.” He hated admitting to anyone that he couldn’t do something, especially her, but there was no use in pretending he could dredge up the names of men he barely met and from so long ago.

“Another go at the punching bag?” Harriet suggested. “That might help you recall them.”

“I could punch this building down to splinters,” Jack said, “but it still wouldn’t help me remember.”

Eva frowned in consideration for a moment, then set her coffee down on the floor. She walked over to him and took hold of his wrist.

Memories from last night seared his brain. Easy to think of her gripping something else on his body with that same remarkable strength. Reasonable thought drained out of his head and went south.

When she said, “Come with me,” and pulled him toward the stairs leading to his bedroom, his brain stopped working altogether.

She wants to do this now?

So what if she bloody well does? You’re not going to stop her.

An ugly thought crept into his head—she had to know the effect she had on him. Was she using that to manipulate him? Make him more biddable? He needed to be cautious, particularly because his wits seemed to cloud whenever she was near him.

When they reached his room, she let go of his wrist and went quickly to the small table. Not the bed. Opening a drawer in the table, she pulled out some paper and a pencil.

He held up his hands and shook his head. “Not touching that stuff. I thought we already proved that I’m no good at writing and thinking.”

“Because we were going about it the wrong way.” She indicated the chair in front of the desk. “Just take a seat, Mr. Dalton—”

“Jack,” he said. “Since you had your arse up against my meat and veg, it’s only polite to call me by my name.”

She glared at him. Heat climbed up his neck, and he realized what he felt was shame.

“That was…” He searched for the word. “Crude of me. I had a rubbish night, and I took it out on you.”

“I’m not a delicate lily,” she said, “but I won’t tolerate anyone being disrespectful.”

“You shouldn’t,” he answered.

Slowly, the hot anger in her eyes cooled, and she nodded.

He found himself strangely anxious, oddly yearning for her to speak his Christian name. No one had said it in years, and he wanted to hear it from her lips, in her voice.

“Take a seat,” she said after a moment, then added, “Jack.”

It was a peculiar thing, this mix of gratitude and desire. For to listen to her say his name gave him back a part of himself, a personal, hidden part kept safe from the rest of the world. He wasn’t Diamond Dalton, the hired muscle. He wasn’t D.3.7., the convict. He was … himself.

And it was intimate, too. Watching her lips shape his name, hearing it with that refined accent of hers, in her low, husky voice. As though they were lovers.

Hard to remember his caution when thoughts like that filled his head.

With some difficulty, he sat at the table. She set the paper and pencil down in front of him.

“We’re going to try a different method to help you remember these men,” she said, standing behind him. He stared at the blank sheet of paper, her nearness making his own mind as empty as the page.

“Start with a face,” she continued, “or something else you remember about each of the men that used to meet with Rockley. Could be anything. The mole on his cheek. The kind of waistcoat he wore. If he had a deep voice or a high one. It doesn’t matter if it seems important or not. Whatever pops into your mind. Write it down.”

“And if I can’t remember anything?”

“You can.” She placed her hands on his shoulders, and there went his brain again, fizzling away. “You were able to think through and recall Rockley’s schedule yesterday. I know you can do this.”

“I—”

A clock somewhere in the house chimed ten.

“Damn,” she muttered. “I have to go. We’ll continue this when I return at five.”

He stood as she hurried toward the door. “The hell are you going?”

“My other life.” With that, she was out in the corridor and down the stairs. Jack stood on the landing, listening as she spoke briefly with Simon.

“Want me to flag a cab?” the man asked.

“God, no. I’ve already spent more than I should on hired carriages. There’s an omnibus that’ll take me right to Sydney Street.”

“What about Dalton?” Simon asked in a low voice. “Does he have the mental capability to do what we need?”

Though Jack wanted to leap down the stairs and plant his fist in Simon’s face, instead he strained to hear Eva’s equally quiet response.

“He’s far more intelligent than anyone gives him credit for. Including himself.”

The door opened, then shut.

“Did you get all that, Dalton?” Simon called up the stairs.

“Especially the bit where you’re a needle-pricked nob,” Jack called back.

There was a pause. Then, “Get to work, Dalton.”

“Go bugger yourself, Lord Cuntshire.” Jack stalked back to his room. Just because he could, he slammed his door. He hadn’t had a door to slam in years and it felt damned good, if petty.

With Eva gone, restlessness seethed through him. He paced the small bedroom, sometimes stealing glances at the sheets of paper on the table. They seemed to mock him, those pieces of paper, taunting him with the fact that he couldn’t remember any of the men who’d gone into Rockley’s study. It hadn’t been his job to pay attention to those toffs. But somewhere in their ranks was the one man who’d lead them to the incriminating evidence. Who?

There’d been that one bloke, the one with the bushy eyebrows. He’d met with Rockley on an unseasonably warm day in March, dabbing at his low, sweaty forehead with a handkerchief embroidered with the initials JSY. “A glass of lemonade, Young?” Rockley had asked, laughing.

Young!

Jack strode to the table and wrote the name down on the paper. As usual, his writing looked more like an animal’s claw marks than actual letters, but he could read it. He stared at the name in shock.

She’d been right. A piece of recollection at a time, and it led him to the name.

For the next hour, he ran himself through the process of picking through his memories, like a dustman sifting through heaps of debris, searching for anything valuable. He’d catch a glint here and there, the reflection off the sheen of a particular memory, and clean it off until at last he came up with a name.

Columns of names now filled two sheets of paper. He held them up as though he’d conjured them from magic, and, in a way, he had.

Striding to his door, he flung it open and hurried downstairs. Simon and Harriet sat at the parlor table, several newspapers spread out before them. They both looked up, equally guarded, when he appeared.

Jack shook the papers in his hand. “Got enough brains to write up a list of thirty-four names.”

“Excellent, Mr. Dalton,” Harriet said, plainly surprised.

Simon, however, looked skeptical. He held out his hand. “Give it here.”

“Eva sees it first,” Jack said.

“She won’t be back until five.” Simon glanced at the clock. “Hours from now. We don’t have time—”

“Eva and then the rest of you lot.” Jack didn’t know why he wanted Eva to be the first to see his handiwork, but it felt vitally important.

He didn’t let Simon answer. Turning, Jack thundered back up the stairs and into his room, giving the door another satisfying slam. Even with banging the door shut, Jack couldn’t get calm or settled. He paced around his small bedchamber, trying to distract himself until Eva returned from … wherever it was she went.

Brompton. He remembered that. And she had mentioned Sydney Street to Simon. The map in Jack’s head unfolded, and he envisioned that exact street. It had rows of genteel houses—where artists and writers often lived and rented rooms. That’s where she was now. At her job? He didn’t know what it might be. An artist’s model? Not quite respectable, that, and the daughter of missionaries would be sure to find respectable work. What, then?

God—could time move more slowly? It felt like an eternity had passed. It had only been fifteen minutes.

He couldn’t wait. He had to show the list to Eva now.

After tucking the folded papers into his pocket, he went to the window as quietly as he could. Pulled it open, slowly, to keep from making noise. The window looked out onto the small yard below. He leaned out and saw that a very narrow path led from the yard toward the front of the building, and onto the street.

Turning sideways so he could fit his shoulders through the window, Jack eased himself through. He gripped the window from the outside, using the strength of his upper body to hold himself upright as he pulled his legs through. It was an awkward business, him twisting and hanging on to the wooden frame, then the bricks, and a trickle of sweat worked its way down his neck. He found footing, wedging his boots into the gaps in the masonry, then climbed down.

Two stories stood between him and the ground. He had to edge across and then down to ensure he didn’t pass in front of any other windows and give himself away to the Nemesis people within. He hadn’t done this much climbing around since his old housebreaking days.

As he passed next to one of the windows, he heard Lazarus. “… least he’s quieted down…”

Jack smirked to himself. And when he had only half a dozen feet between him and the ground, he let go of the wall and jumped down, landing in a crouch.

He stood, and saw a pair of wide eyes staring at him from over the top of the fence bordering the yard. A little boy watched him, his look more curious than frightened.

Jack placed his finger to his lips. The boy nodded in agreement. Jack winked, and then ran.

* * *

“What’s the capital of Portugal?”

Two blank little faces stared back at Eva. The girls shifted on their chairs and plucked at the stitching on their pinafores. They weren’t particularly engaged in their lessons today, but then, Eva wasn’t particularly interested in tutoring, either. She couldn’t stop her thoughts from circling back to Dalton … Jack. Normally, she compartmentalized very well, going back and forth between her current mission with Nemesis and her daily work here, in her rooms.

Yet she found herself rushing the Hallow daughters through their lessons, growing impatient when their attentions wandered. The longer it took to get them through their tutorial, the longer it would be before she could return to headquarters, and Jack.

“Come now, Elspeth, Mary,” Eva said. “We’ve been over this before. It has a lovely castle with crenellations, and a basilica, and a pantheon called Santa Engrácia.” She held up a few pictures of the landmarks, hoping to jog their memory.

“Barcelona,” said Elspeth.

“No, stupid.” Mary rolled her eyes. She was nine and knew everything. “It’s Madrid.”

“Don’t call your sister stupid, Mary. And Madrid is the capital of Spain, not Portugal.”

“I know!” Elspeth, the younger of the two, kicked her heels against her chair’s legs. “Lisbon!”

“Very good.” When the younger girl beamed, Eva continued, “And what happened in 1755 that nearly destroyed the entire city?”

There was a pounding on the stairs outside, as though someone were leaping up them two at a time, but she ignored it. Likely a workman was running late to make repairs on Miss Siles’s rooms. The writer had left her window open the other night, allowing rain to get inside and damage the floorboards. Eva suppressed a sigh. Writers were the most forgetful lot. And now Eva would have to contend with the sounds of a workman’s hammer throughout the day—as if she weren’t already distracted.

“An earthquake,” Mary answered.

At that same moment, a loud knock sounded on Eva’s door. She never locked it during the day, in case any of her pupils came early, and she didn’t want them waiting out in the hall. Before she could ask who it was knocking now, however, the door swung open.

Jack Dalton stood in her doorway.

For a moment, all she could do was gape. His chest rose and fell quickly, and his hair was disheveled. It looked, in fact, as though he’d been running.

Running. Through the city. Looking for her.

And now here he stood. In her rooms.

A quick, stunning burst of pleasure at seeing him, followed immediately by tension and wariness. She stiffened in her chair. Oh Lord, he’d come all the way from the Nemesis headquarters. Did Simon or the others know he was here? What did he want? How had he found her? Were the police chasing him, given that he was an escaped convict? Worst of all—would he give her identity away to Mary and Elspeth Hallow?

Frowning in puzzlement, he crossed the threshold and shut the door behind him. His gaze traveled from her to the wide-eyed girls to the lesson papers arrayed over the table.

Eva slowly rose from her seat.

“We’re learning about Lisbon,” Elspeth said brightly. “It’s the capital of Portugal.”

“Is it, now?” asked Jack. He took a few cautious steps closer, staring at the girls as if they’d dropped out of the sky.

Could she hurry him out the door, before the girls asked questions, before he said anything to reveal her other life?

“Who are you?” asked Mary.

Eva started to answer, a cover story already constructed, but Jack spoke first. “I’m here for schooling, like you.”

The girls giggled. “You’re too old for lessons!” Mary insisted.

Jack’s gaze moved from the girls to Eva, and held. “You can learn new things at any age.” He broke the contact, turning back to the girls. “Never been to Portugal. Have you?”

“We’ve been on holiday in Ramsgate,” said Elspeth. “I had some barley candy and Mary put sand in my hair.”

“Sisters can be the very devil sometimes,” Jack said. “Mine used to follow me everywhere. Couldn’t turn a corner without running right into her. Like a puppy, she was.” Though Jack spoke cheerfully, his eyes were melancholy.

A hard knot lodged itself in Eva’s throat.

“What about you, miss?” Jack directed the question to her. “Do you have any devilish sisters?”

She narrowed her eyes. With the Hallow daughters gazing at her eagerly, he had her in a perfect place for interrogation.

“No sisters. Nor brothers.” None that had lived past infancy, anyway. “I’m all alone.”

“Ah,” Jack countered, “but you’ve got me and Miss Mary and Miss…”

“Elspeth,” the girl filled in.

“That’s three friends. So you’re not alone.”

Jack was most assuredly not her friend. Yet, with him talking so genially with the children—hardly the picture of a tough street-bred ruffian—and being so circumspect in preserving her secret, she had to wonder. Seeing him like this, she felt he became even more real. More … human. Careful demarcations blurred, like a hand-drawn map left out in the rain.

“All right, girls.” She gathered up the lesson papers. “I think that’s enough for today. This nice gentleman’s come for his lessons, and I don’t want to be rude and keep him waiting.”

Mary and Elspeth jumped up from their chairs. “Hooray!”

The utter joy on their faces made her heart sink. It would always be an uphill battle to teach them. But then, most children didn’t care for school or learning. She couldn’t take their reluctance to be there personally. Dentists had it worse. Barely.

Eva helped the girls into their coats and bonnets and walked them to the door. “Don’t forget to study your French verb conjugations.”

“We won’t, Miss Warrick,” Mary said with all the sincerity of a politician. And then she and her sister were off, running down the stairs. A maid of all work always waited for them at the tea shop down the street, ready to escort them home after their lessons. Eva had met the maid a handful of times. She was barely older than the girls, which was usually the case with families of small means. Teenage maids were far cheaper than their older counterparts.

“No running,” Eva called after the girls. Their footsteps slowed for a second, then sped right back up again.

She closed the door and turned to face Jack. He stood near the table, examining her tutoring materials. The books looked fragile and strange in his hands, yet he flipped through them, frowning in concentration.

“A teacher, then.” He looked up at her.

“A tutor.”

His smile, rueful as it was, still sent a curl of heat through her. “Got the right amount of high-handedness for the job.”

“I’m purposeful, not high-handed.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “How did you find me?”

He paced through her rooms, making everything strange and small by his presence. She’d never thought of herself as a particularly delicate or overly feminine person, yet having him here made her conscious of the differences between them and how transitory, almost feeble, the objects she’d gathered around herself were. As though he were far too elemental, too primal for such things as her chintz-covered sitting chair or the painted china roses given to her by a grateful student’s parents.

It wasn’t a particularly comfortable sensation. Especially the way he looked around her rooms, at her belongings, as if drawing out hidden truths about her. Today, he’d learned one, no, two: where she lived and what she did to make a living.

Yet she’d read his dossier. She knew far more about him than he about her. Or did. Perhaps now they were even.

“Jack,” she said, drawing his attention. “I never gave you my address.”

“You said you lived in Brompton.” He plucked up a bottle of toilet water from her nightstand and gave it a sniff before setting it down. “And I heard you talking to Simon. You mentioned Sydney Street.”

“And how did you figure out in which building I lived?”

“I asked a costermonger. A short chap with a red beard. Said I was in from the country and was here to surprise my cousin, but I couldn’t remember her address. He was cagey at first, since we don’t look related, but I told ’im about your parents being away doing good works and them asking me to look after you.”

He looked over at her bed, the bed where she slept each night. Or didn’t. Last night, she’d lain awake, weary but keenly aware. She’d closed her eyes, only to see Jack, dangerous as the darkness, as he’d lurked in the shadows of the drawing room. She had actually looked on her abdomen to see if his hand had left an imprint, for she’d felt his touch continually afterward, like a burn.

“You sneaked past Simon and the others. Escaped headquarters.”

His grin widened. “One little flat compared to a whole prison is nothing.” He prowled over to her dresser and opened it, revealing her clothing.

She stalked over and closed the door before he could reach into the dresser and fondle her petticoats. “Tell me what you’re doing here. Obviously you thought it couldn’t wait until I came back to headquarters later.”

From his pocket, he produced two squares of folded paper. He held them out to her. No denying the look of pride on his face as she took the paper.

She scanned it. Lines of pencil scratches covered the paper, lines that could’ve been writing in English or possibly Chinese mathematics. “I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

He scowled as he snatched the paper back. Jabbing his finger at the markings, he said, “John Young, Victor Skidby, Matthew Branton, John Gilling. I can read ’em off to you, if you can’t figure my writing.”

She glanced between him and the documents he held. “This is the list of men who visited Rockley.”

“Thirty-four names. Don’t know if it’s all of ’em, but that’s a fair number.” He added, almost bashful, “That method for remembering, the one you told me, it worked.”

Carefully, she took the papers back. It took a bit of squinting, but she began to decipher the scrawl that passed for Jack’s writing. Aside from the nigh illegible quality of his penmanship, the list itself was organized and thorough, grouping names together by the time of year in which they met with Rockley and the quantity of meetings they had with the nobleman.

She couldn’t deny it. “I’m … impressed.”

God protect her, but when a look of pride softened his rough features, her heart tightened. He’d never been praised for thinking his way through a situation.

Self-preservation made her say, far more lightly than she felt, “Perhaps I should start tutoring adults, as well.”

“Like to think that I’m a special case.” His voice deepened, his gaze holding hers, and she recalled with pristine clarity what he’d felt like last night, pressed close behind her as they’d hidden themselves behind the folding screen. The heat and size of him. The response of her own body at his nearness, and its burgeoning hunger to learn more of his touch.

Having him here, in her private space, the only man who’d truly seen both halves of herself—it soothed and troubled her at the same time. To draw someone near, for the first time, brought forth a longing she hadn’t known she possessed. But she feared that desire, too. She needed to keep herself whole, complete.

For all the unexpected connection they shared, Jack was still an unknown. Not fully trustworthy, not truly.

He came here, a voice in her mind insisted, instead of trying to get to Rockley on his own.

Because he realizes it’s too dangerous right now.

She didn’t know what to think, only that she needed him out of her rooms, out of this facet of her life.

“We ought to get back to headquarters,” she said brusquely. “If the others have found you missing, they might call the constabulary. You’re a wanted man, and if you’re taken into custody, or killed in the pursuit, then the mission is over.”

His look shuttered. “Don’t want any coppers searching for me.”

“No, we do not.” She put on her coat and gloves, then pinned her hat into place. She strode to the door, with him following, but hesitated before opening it. Turning back to face him, she said quietly, “Thank you.”

His brow wrinkled. “For what?”

“For not giving me away.” Her gaze slid toward the lesson plans. “You could’ve made things very difficult for me, but you didn’t. I’m…”—she struggled with the word—“grateful. I’m in your debt.”

Opening the door, he said, “Ah, now that’s a mistake, love.” His smile over his shoulder was captivating in its wickedness. “You never know when I’ll want you to make good on that debt. Or what I’ll ask for.”

CHAPTER NINE

Silence met them at Nemesis headquarters. Eva paced through the rooms, calling names, but no one was there.

“Maybe they’ve all taken themselves off to the pub for a pint,” Jack suggested.

A pleasant scenario, but unlikely. Though she doubted they had gone to the authorities. Jack didn’t know it, but alerting the constabulary about him was one of the last things anyone wanted to do. It would turn all of their lives into a thorn-covered bramble, rife with evasions, explanations, and half-truths. As well as the possibility of exposure.

Just as she was about to head outside to see if any of the operatives were near, the door opened. Simon, Marco, and Harriet entered. The moment they saw Jack, everyone began shouting at once.

“Where the hell have you been?” Simon bellowed.

“We’ve been combing the city, looking for your miserable hide.” Marco’s olive skin darkened with anger.

Harriet glanced back and forth between Eva and Jack. “Did you know about this?” Her voice was accusatory.

“Can’t keep me chained up like a dog in a yard,” Jack fired back.

“I’d no idea,” said Eva. “Not until he showed up at my door.”

This drove Simon apoplectic. He could barely form words. “At your … how did…” He rounded on Jack. “Goddamn you—you nearly put everything at risk.”

To Eva’s surprise, rather than punching Simon, Jack calmly folded his arms across his chest. Disdain replaced his rage. “It was you who let me escape. And it was you who underestimated my brains.” He studied his nails, the picture of bored derision. “Seems like you ought to be angry with yourselves, not me.”

While Simon blustered and Marco and Harriet gaped, Eva had to bite her lip to hide her smile. Only yesterday, Jack had been convinced he hadn’t any value beyond his bodily strength, and now here he was, finally taking credit for his intelligence.

“There’s no time for wasting on accusations and interrogations,” she said. “Jack’s written up a list of the men who met with Rockley, and we need to cross-reference it with what we know of his business dealings.”

A brief silence fell, fraught with speculative glances. Eva realized that she’d called Jack by his Christian name—a clear indicator that he’d become more than a pawn in their game. After seeing him in her rooms, watching him with the Hallow daughters, she felt he was no longer merely the embodiment of vengeance. More than a fierce masculine force possessing a dark, mysterious allure. He was … a man. Jack.

Troubled by her own complex feelings, she pulled the list from her handbag and set it on the table. “I’ll need you to read it to me,” she said to Jack, “so I may transcribe it and make it a little more legible.”

As the other Nemesis agents calmed themselves, she and Jack worked at copying his list. There were disgruntled rumblings from Simon and Marco, and a few inquisitive glances from Harriet, but Eva and Jack were able to complete their task quickly. Once they had done so, and Lazarus had returned from his own search of the city, the next few hours were occupied with reviewing the names.

Harriet brought out the sizable dossiers that had been compiled on Rockley, including as much of his financial and business connections as possible. The file itself was the product of countless hours of information gathering, not all of it aboveboard. Eva herself had posed as a clerk and sneaked into the record vaults of several corporations in order to obtain vital intelligence about Rockley’s numerous business ventures.

Going back and forth between Jack’s list and combing through the thick dossiers was tedious, slow work. Yet Jack surprised her—and everyone—with his dedication to the process, scanning through piles of documents and making notes. His notes could only be read by himself, but when he spoke them aloud, they made perfect sense.

By the time the sun had begun to set and the lamps inside had been lit, they’d gone through all the names Jack had provided. Every one of them had legitimate and known business connections to Rockley. Except one.

“John Gilling,” Eva said. “What do we know of him?”

“A barrister and a minor figure in the social world,” Simon answered, ticking off points on his fingers. “Shares chambers near the Inner Temple. The third son of an old landowning family.”

“Shares chambers?” Marco rubbed at his neatly trimmed goatee. “Then his practice isn’t exactly flourishing.”

“For a man his age,” Simon confirmed, “he ought to be farther along in his career. He’s a regular during the Season, but always looks a bit shabbier, a bit more threadbare, than most.”

“Sounds like the type of bloke who’d want a little something extra in his pockets,” Jack said.

Eva studied the papers in front of her. “We’ve checked all the other names, and Gilling seems the most likely candidate. Gilling’s in need of funds, and that would work to Rockley’s advantage. But Gilling’s position would give him access to other contractors’ bids—that’s why Rockley would approach him in the first place. Gilling’s got to be the key. He’s surely Rockley’s partner in the government contract. But we need to be certain.”

“How?” asked Lazarus, gnawing on the stem of his battered briar pipe. Harriet shot him an annoyed look, which only made him gnaw with more gusto.

“Bluff,” Jack said. “Then see how much he reveals.”

“The best way to do that is to catch him off guard.” Eva tapped her chin as she ran through the sundry scenarios that would best work to Nemesis’s advantage. Abruptly, she looked at Simon. “You were able to find out which social events Rockley was invited to. Can you do the same for Gilling? I’ll need to know if he’ll be attending any balls within the next few days, and be certain that Rockley won’t be attending the same events.”

“Of course,” he answered immediately. “What are you planning?”

Eva stood and stretched. She didn’t miss the way Jack’s gaze lingered on her, or the answering heat within her body.

“Last night, Jack and I watched an elegant soiree from the outside. But now it’s time for us to get a closer look. You and I,” she continued, directing her words to Jack with a grin, “are going to a ball.”

* * *

Jack stared at himself in the mirror, not certain if he liked what he saw. The fabric was covered with chalk marks and looked like something a chap might wear when performing at the music hall. Didn’t look much like a fancy suit of clothes at all. He shifted, and bit back an oath as pins dug into him.

“Careful, sir.” The tailor kneeling at his feet spoke without looking up from adjusting the hem of Jack’s trousers. “It’s best if you stay still until we’re done fitting you.”

“Don’t like staying still,” Jack muttered. To distract himself, he took stock of the small tailor’s shop in which he now stood, his gaze moving restlessly over bolts of fabric, dress mannequins, and half-completed suits. The shop smelled of wool and tea, and pale sunlight crept past the crowded front window to pool on the floor. The whirr of a sewing machine droned through the shop as another tailor made what would be some gent’s coat.

“You’ve got no choice.” Simon, bored, leaned against a counter. “The ball Gilling’s attending is tonight, and if we want your evening clothes done in time, you’d better cooperate.”

Likely, the toff had grown up having suits especially made for him, and had perfected the art of standing motionless while some tailor stuck a measuring tape right against his tackle.

Not Jack. He’d gone with Rockley to his tailor on Old Burlington Street. That place was a palace compared to this cramped little shop, all carved wood, thick carpet, and armies of tailors bowing and smiling. Once a month, Rockley would go to be fitted for new clothes, with Jack standing guard, as usual. Tailors had swarmed over Rockley, measuring, cutting, murmuring toadying nonsense, and he’d just stood there like a god accepting worship as if it were his due.

Now it was Jack’s turn to be turned this way and that, and grunted at as if he were cattle being considered for purchase and slaughter.

“Are you certain you can get his suit ready in time, Mr. Olney?” Simon asked the tailor. “We need it by no later than eight tonight.”

“It won’t be easy,” Olney answered, frowning at Jack’s trousers. “But I’ll get it done. Nemesis helped me out when those men were demanding protection money, and I owe you all a debt of thanks. Mind,” he added, giving Jack an up-and-down look, “this chap’s terrifically big. Getting evening clothes to fit him properly will be a challenge.”

Jack was about to tell Olney that the British prison system had made him this terrifically big, but decided that the fewer people who knew about his time at Dunmoor, the better. At least the tailor didn’t ask too many questions.

“There’s no better tailor in North London,” Simon replied. At least the smile he gave Olney looked genuine.

The tailor reddened from the praise. “Too kind, Mr. Addison-Shawe.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll just … get back to it, shall I?”

Simon waved his hand, the kind of gesture rich folk seemed born knowing how to do. Olney immediately returned to his work.

Or tried to. “Sir,” he said to Jack with a strained smile, “I can’t measure your legs properly if you hold that stance.”

Jack bristled. “This is how I always stand.” His legs were braced wide, and he balanced on the balls of his feet.

“You’re standing like a boxer.” Simon pushed away from the counter and paced around the shop. “Bring your legs closer together. Closer,” he snapped when Jack shifted slightly.

“I feel like a sodding fool,” Jack growled. Once again, he was out of his element, an ignorant outsider—and the one person he felt slightly comfortable with was all the way on the other side of town. “This whole scheme’s ridiculous.”

The haughty look on Simon’s face slowly changed, becoming almost kind. “I remember the first time I was fitted. Couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. Everyone was very cross, shouting at me not to move, telling me how to stand. My father was … displeased.” Simon’s mouth twisted. “He expected better from an Addison-Shawe.”

Jack stared at Simon for a moment. He hadn’t been expecting that. Especially not from Simon.

Frustration dimmed. “So, I stand like this?” Jack asked, changing his stance.

Simon considered his posture, then nodded. “That will suffice.” He returned to the counter and carelessly flipped through a magazine.

For a while, the only sounds in the shop came from the scattered traffic outside and the hum of the sewing machine inside. Olney continued to pin and mark what would eventually become Jack’s evening clothes.

He’d never owned a special suit for going out at night before.

“If this party we’re going to tonight is so flash,” Jack said, “does that mean Eva’s got to wear some fancy gown?”

“I suppose,” Simon answered from behind his magazine.

Jack recalled the women at the ball from the other night, in their frothy gowns, delicate as frosted cakes, and tried to picture Eva in something similar. But she seemed too hard-boiled for things like lace fans and silk flowers. He smiled to himself, imagining her striding into a ballroom, bold as brass, with a pistol tucked into her velvet sash. Maybe she’d make it a pearl-gripped pistol, for formal occasions.

“She got a man?” he asked.

Frowning, Simon lowered the magazine. “Eva’s private life is her own.”

“So,” Jack said, raising one eyebrow, “you don’t know.”

“Of course I know. As much as she tells me,” Simon added on a mutter.

“Keeps herself close.” Jack watched as the tailor continued to make adjustments on his clothing, little nips and tucks whose purpose only Olney seemed to understand.

“Trying to get her to open?” Now it was Simon’s chance to lift a brow. “I’ve news for you, Dalton: it won’t work. Eva’s the toughest woman I know. Hell, she’s the toughest person I know, male or female.”

“Someone hurt her,” Jack guessed. “Someone in her past.” The thought made his fists clench with the need to beat the bastard, whoever he was.

“Nothing so melodramatic. She simply…” He shrugged. “She doesn’t trust many people. That’s how she’s always been. The most unsentimental woman I’ve ever met. Won’t form intimate attachments.”

It sounded very much to Jack as though it meant Eva didn’t have a man. Which made him glad, indeed.

“You tried, though,” he said. God knew that if Jack worked side-by-side with her, day after day, he’d try to form an intimate attachment. Hell, he’d only known her for less than a week, and he couldn’t stop wondering about the taste of her lips, the texture of her skin. His nights had become damned restless because of her.

Just because she kept everyone at arm’s length didn’t mean she lacked desire or passion. He’d seen it, felt it. But she couldn’t keep it buried forever.

Simon straightened, tugging on his coat. “I might have. But she rightly pointed out that people who work together oughtn’t mix the personal and professional.”

Jack snorted. “Maybe it’s on account of her type not being polished toffs. Maybe she needs someone a bit more rough around the edges.” He studied himself in the mirror, in his strange piecemeal evening clothes.

“Dalton, if you were any more rough, you’d be serrated.” Simon’s reflection appeared in the mirror behind Jack. They couldn’t be more different, him and the fair-haired nob. Even the easy way Simon wore his perfectly tailored, fashionable clothes showed how unalike they were.

Jack never let himself feel ashamed or small because of his low background. He couldn’t change the particulars of his birth. Nobody picked who their mother was going to be, whether she was a genteel lady or a whore. Far as he could tell, there wasn’t much difference between either. Both were just women. Neither good nor bad.

Fathers were even more unpredictable. He didn’t know who his was, and neither had his ma. Could’ve been a navvy who dug trenches to build roads, could’ve been a lord looking for cheap pleasure far away from Mayfair’s knowing eyes. Whoever he was, he never knew that his one night with Mary Dalton eventually brought Jack into the world.

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was who Jack was now.

He’d spent the past five years wanting only one thing—to destroy Rockley. That hadn’t gone away. But a new fire burned within him, just as bright.

He desired Eva. Wanted her to want him.

Uncharted territory, this. She might not fancy him. Could give him the cold shoulder. That’d be a bad business.

He’d just have to make sure she wanted him in her bed.

Looking into his own eyes, he vowed that he would succeed in all his goals.

* * *

Jack had faced off in the ring against Iron Arm McInnis, a bruiser with a 35–0 record. He’d taken on three blokes armed with knives and broken bottles in an alley brawl. Hell, he’d confronted the possibility of death or imprisonment as he’d walked, manacled, into the courtroom.

His heart beat harder now than it ever had. He thought it would burst through his chest, right through the starched shirtfront he wore.

Pacing around the parlor in the Nemesis headquarters, he kept checking the clock on the mantel. She’d be here any moment.

He started to rake his hands through his hair.

“Don’t!” Marco yelped. “You’ll get pomade all over your gloves.”

Jack’s hands paused in midair, then he slowly lowered them. “Never going to get used to this,” he muttered. Pomade slicking his hair back, white gloves, starched collars and shirtfronts. Slick-soled shoes that gleamed like ebony mirrors. The kind of clothes worn by the upper crusters he’d see through doorways, windows. Not his own sort.

“You don’t have to get used to it,” Lazarus said, sitting beside the fire. “It’s only for tonight.”

Right. It was a disguise, meant only to get him into the ball at some gentleman’s house, where he’d find Gilling. And then, they’d proceed with the next step of their plan.

Many things could go wrong tonight. He could be barred from getting into the ball. Gilling might not be there. Or Gilling would be there and shout the house down the moment Jack made his move. The investigation against Rockley could collapse, leaving them with nothing and no means of bringing him down.

But what truly made Jack’s skin feel tight with nerves, what made his heart pound, was thinking about what Eva might do when she saw him in his new evening clothes. Would she laugh at him, say something snide about stuffing a bear into silk and wool? It oughtn’t matter what she thought. Yet it did.

Footfalls sounded on the stairs. A man’s and a woman’s. She was here. Simon had gone to fetch her, and now he was back. With her. Their muted voices came through the door.

Jack stopped his pacing and stood in the middle of the parlor. He felt big and ham-fisted, uncertain. But his chin rose and he pulled his shoulders back when the door opened and Eva appeared.

She stopped abruptly, causing Simon to nearly collide with her. When she didn’t move any further, Simon sidled around her and into the flat. But what the blond toff did after that, Jack had no idea. All he saw was Eva.

He felt as though someone had punched him in the chest. Hard. He couldn’t speak or breathe. Could only stare.

She wore a dress of shiny golden fabric, with dark blue velvet ribbons along the low neckline and trimming the ruffles of her skirts. Golden beads glittered on the front of her gown. She’d put fresh flowers in her elaborately pinned hair, roses with pale yellow petals. The dress left the slopes of her shoulders exposed, and even in the harsh gaslight, her skin gleamed like a pearl. Long white gloves came to just above her elbows, and the skin of her upper arms was just as gleaming as her neck and shoulders. Her neck was bare, but she wore a glittering pair of earrings that caught the light with each turn of her head.

It wasn’t the fanciest dress he’d ever seen—the ladies from the other night had had more ruffles and bows and beads—but, by God, he’d never seen any woman look more beautiful.

“I see”—she cleared her throat when her words came out in a rasp—“Olney managed to get your suit ready in time. He did an … excellent job.”

There wasn’t a full-length mirror in the flat, and Olney had delivered the evening clothes. Jack had caught glimpses of himself in some of the smaller glasses but he had no idea what he looked like once he’d put everything on.

Judging by the way Eva looked at him now, he looked like a juicy steak, and she was starving.

Her gaze moved over him, and he felt it as surely as if she’d taken off her gloves and run her hands up and down his body. Her appreciative look lingered on his shoulders, then traveled lower, down his chest, and lower still. She wet her lips. In response, his cock thickened, snug against the wool. He clenched his teeth to keep from groaning aloud.

If he’d felt awkward before, now manly confidence surged through him. He liked the way she stared at him. An improper look if ever there was one. And the ideas spinning through his head weren’t proper, either. They were downright indecent.

Did she have silken drawers on underneath that gown? Were they white, pale blue? Trimmed with ribbons or plain? He wanted to grab up big handfuls of her golden skirts and find out.

“What a pretty gown,” Harriet said, coming out of the kitchen. She approached Eva and tugged playfully on the narrow band of her sleeve. “What on earth are you doing with it?”

Pink crept into Eva’s cheeks. “It was an indulgence. I’ve no real need for it.”

“You do tonight.” Harriet glanced back at Jack, who still couldn’t move or get his mind to function, and winked. “If a gown could be a weapon, yours is a Gatling gun.”

Jack felt more like he’d been knocked clean off his feet by a sledgehammer.

“When are we going to see you in something like that, Harridan?” Lazarus chuckled.

“Be grateful that you won’t,” she fired back. “Because if you did, you’d expire of ecstasy on the spot.”

Simon held up a printed card. “Present this invitation to the butler, and you’ll be permitted entry. Be very careful not to lose it.”

Eva took the card and examined it. “This must be a valuable commodity. How did you obtain it?”

“It’s the art that appears not to be art,” the blond man answered. “Sprezzatura, the Italians call it.”

Marco grimaced. “Your pronunciation is abominable.” He repeated the Italian word, and even Jack had to admit it sounded like music when spoken by Marco.

“That card might get you in the door,” Simon counseled, “but once you’re inside, the rest is up to you.” He looked at Jack pointedly. “Genteel behavior is essential.”

For all Simon’s helping Jack with the fitting, it was plain that he still didn’t trust Jack. Suited him just fine. He didn’t trust Simon, either.

Jack rolled his eyes. “Here I was planning on having a belching contest in the middle of the dance floor.”

“Next time,” Eva said. She looked at the clock, and again Jack was struck by the slim curve of her throat. He hadn’t missed the swells of her breasts, either, the tops just visible at the dipping neckline of her gown. Nice handfuls they’d be, soft and full. He ached to touch them, to hold them, to tease her nipples into tight beads.

Damn it. At this rate, he’d be strutting around the ball with a cockstand all night. He needed to get control of himself and his thoughts.

“It’s just nine now,” she said. “The dancing’s already begun, which means it’s the perfect time for us to arrive.”

He was starting to know the ways of polite society, and stuck out his arm for Eva before she had to ask. What was it the gentry said? Ah, that’s right. “Shall we, my lady?”

“Oh, we shall.” She rested her hand on his arm, and smiled up at him. He felt dizzy. “Time to infiltrate the serpent’s nest.”

* * *

Eva took one step. Then another. Slowly, slowly, she and Jack ascended the stairs outside Lord Chalton’s ball. They were sandwiched between guests waiting to present their invitations to the butler. Music and light spilled out the door, combining with the chiming of flutes of champagne and equally bubbling conversation. Within minutes, she would show the butler her invitation and come up with identities for herself and Jack. She’d worked something out earlier in the day, and rehearsed it to herself in the carriage ride over, but she hoped her cover story held beneath the butler’s imperious stare. The upper servant could have her and Jack tossed out onto the curb if he so desired, invitation or no invitation.

Her pulse raced and her palms dampened her gloves as she and Jack went up another step. The woman standing in front of them continued throwing glances over her shoulder, the plumes in her hair bobbing with each movement. Compared to the splendor of the woman’s Ottoman silk and velvet gown, Eva’s ensemble was almost austere, and she stiffened beneath her regard. But it wasn’t Eva’s simple gown that kept drawing the woman’s gaze. It was Jack.

Had the plumed woman’s escort known the way she looked at Jack, he would have been mortified, if not livid. Eva herself wanted to throw her gloved fist into the woman’s face.

Yet she couldn’t blame the plumed lady’s interest. In his evening finery, Jack looked … dangerous. The severe black-and-white of his clothing, the excellent cut of his coat across his wide shoulders, and the fit of his trousers over his long, muscled legs—all of it emphasized how very wild he truly was. Evening clothes only highlighted the difference between him and all the other elegantly attired men waiting to attend the ball.

His dark hair had been tamed and slicked back, revealing the hard contours of his face—square jaw, crooked nose attesting to his life as a fighter, heavy brow. Though his lips were somewhat thin, their curves hinted at carnality.

A rough man in evening dress. She’d never seen anything more arousing.

Keep alert, she reminded herself sharply. They were here for the mission.

Difficult to remember that when Jack kept looking at her with blatant hunger. She didn’t feel quite so plain in her simple gown when he did that.

At last, they reached the top of the stairs. The butler held out his hand, and Eva gave him the invitation.

“Your name, madam?”

Monarchs would cower at the butler’s haughty tone.

Summoning her own hauteur, she sniffed. “Mrs. Eloise Worthington, of the Northumberland Worthingtons.”

The butler glanced at Jack, who glowered back.

“And this is Mr. John Dutton,” Eva said. “The cattle magnate from Australia.”

The butler studied him. Beneath her hand, Jack’s muscles tensed as if preparing to knock the butler flat. Gently, she squeezed his arm in silent communication. They’d agreed ahead of time that he would speak as little as possible. Since he seemed comfortable with silence, he’d agreed, but she hadn’t extracted a promise from him not to hit someone.

After an excruciating pause, the butler waved toward the staircase behind him. “Supper has already been served. Dancing is in the ballroom at the top of the stairs. Good evening.”

She and Jack moved on. They crossed the threshold and stood in the vaulted foyer, where footmen relieved Jack of his coat and hat and took Eva’s wrap.

She sent Jack a meaningful glance, which he returned. They’d done it. Gotten past the first obstacle. But they hadn’t crossed the Rubicon.

He offered her his arm again, and together they ascended the curving stairs that led to the ballroom.

“Why Australia?” he said in a low voice.

“Much of that country was settled by transported convicts.” She shrugged. “It would stand to reason that someone of your physique might be their descendant.”

“If I have to talk to someone,” he pointed out, “they’ll know I’m English.”

“Most of these people have as much experience with Australia as they do Bethnal Green.”

“None,” he said.

“Exactly.” They reached the landing, and followed the trail of guests and music toward a set of wide double doors that stood open. In wordless understanding, they both paused and took a breath. Then stepped into the ballroom.

“Bloody buggering hell,” Jack breathed.

“Agreed,” Eva murmured.

While not as large as the Beckwiths’ ballroom, the chamber was still impressive in its size. White and gilt columns rose up toward a coved, equally gilded ceiling, from which hung crystal chandeliers that hurt the eye with their brilliance. The parquetry floor shone like a mirror, reflecting back the forms of men and women in their evening best. Liveried footmen bearing trays of champagne stood against the walls, as much part of the furniture as the upholstered chairs placed for wallflowers and dowagers.

Everywhere was a sea of black wool, lustrous silks, and jewelry that twinkled like the unfeeling stars. Some men wore military uniforms, drawing young girls in white like a plate of cakes. Conversation draped over the chamber. Long patrician vowels mixed with the gliding strings provided by the orchestra. A screen of potted palms had been placed at the farthest end of the chamber, discreetly concealing the musicians.

“Smell that?” Eva drew a deep breath, and Jack did the same.

“Beeswax. Sparkling wine.” He breathed in again. “Soap and starch.”

“Privilege.”

When a footman passed by with his tray of champagne, Jack grabbed two glasses. Despite his genteel gloves, the flutes looked tiny and fragile in his hands.

She sipped at her champagne and was relieved to see that Jack did the same rather than gulp it down.

“I don’t see Gilling,” she said. She’d studied a picture of him earlier to familiarize herself with his appearance. “Let’s take a turn around the room.”

They moved through the guests milling at the edges of the chamber. She made certain to nod regally at those they passed, trying to convey with only her bearing that she belonged here as much as anyone. It was like wearing someone else’s face, someone else’s body. Yet she must have been reasonably successful, for no one sneered at her, and she even received some polite nods in return. Murmurs of speculation trailed after her and Jack. In the narrowly defined world of the elite, new faces were bound to incite interest.

She saw more than a few ladies gazing at Jack avidly. Her response was an icy stare. But why should the other women’s interest bother her? She’d no claim on him. Not in the slightest. Yet it sparked a cold fury when a particularly pretty brunette in rose-hued taffeta gave Jack a look of blatant invitation.

To his credit, his gaze never lingered anywhere. Not on any thing or person. He was at all times watchful, assessing. And when a gentleman or two spent a little longer gazing at her, Jack’s glower had the men hurriedly looking away.

“What’s going on between Lazarus and Harriet?” Jack asked abruptly. “The two of ’em snipe at each other regular as the bells of St. Paul’s.”

She chuckled softly. “It’s obvious to everyone that they fancy each other, but they’re both too bullheaded to admit it.”

“Where’s the harm in it?”

“It’s not a good idea for Nemesis operatives to become romantically involved. But I also believe they’re afraid.”

“On account of that combat training you receive.”

She pursed her lips. “If either Harriet or Lazarus took the initiative and declared themselves, and was rejected … I don’t think either wants to risk that pain. So they just taunt each other and amuse the dickens out of the rest of us.”

Jack was silent for a while, but then said, “If they want each other, then to hell with the rules and to hell with getting hurt.”

She felt her brows rise. “Do you really believe that?”

He shrugged. “Life’s got a habit of slipping through your fingers, slippery as an eel, and leaving you with nothing. Maybe if we’re offered a chance at something good, we should grab it while we can.”

Unsure how to respond, she sipped at her champagne. Was he referring just to Harriet and Lazarus, or something more?

Damn it, I can’t think about that now.

“Still no sign of Gilling,” she said quietly.

“If he scuttles around the edge of the upper crust,” Jack answered, “he’ll be here. We can wait him out.”

They continued to stroll leisurely at the perimeter of the ball, watching the highest echelons of British society in the rituals of their arcane culture.

“That woman,” she murmured, “over by the punchbowl. The one in the diamonds and green satin. She’s paid off a blackmailer three times so no one finds out about the son she had before she was married.”

“Bloke standing next to the third window,” Jack said. “With the belly and bushy sideburns, looking snobbish.”

“Sir Denholm Braunton.” A baronet, she recalled, known for his particular hatred of policy intending to help the poor.

“He pays a whore twenty pounds to whip him. Or he did five years ago,” Jack added. “Maybe now the price has gone up to thirty pounds.”

She smiled darkly over the rim of her glass. “Secrets. Everyone here has them. From the blushing debutante to the venerated patriarch.” There were sexual peccadilloes, financial misdeeds, addictions, thefts.

He snorted. “Wouldn’t know it just to look at ’em. They swan around as if gold comes out their noses when they sneeze.”

They both stopped and faced the dance floor, where couples decorously spun.

“When I used to solicit donations with my parents,” she said, watching the dancers, “I’d suspected that there was another face to Society. Then I joined Nemesis, and I learned that Society has many faces. None of them real.”

“But people like us,” Jack said, “we know the truth. Who they really are.”

“They aren’t all bad,” she noted. “Only fallible. Like any human.”

“Fallible?”

“Capable of making mistakes.”

His expression darkened. “Aye. God knows I’ve made plenty of those.”

The opening strains of a waltz drifted out across the ballroom. Couples took their places upon the floor. Once, waltzing had been considered scandalous, something only for fast women and men of questionable morals, but now spotless debutantes clasped the hands and shoulders of irreproachable young bachelors as approving parents looked on. The waltz began, and the couples started their turns across the floor.

The sight, Eva had to admit to herself, was a pretty one, a whirl of pale silk and dark evening clothes. Dancing was part of an aristocrat’s education, and everyone moved with precision through the ballroom like an intricate mechanical device. Ladies both young and not so young beamed up at the faces of their partners, while the men were afforded the opportunity not only to put their hands upon a woman’s back, but to converse with her with a small degree of privacy. The perfect medium for courtship or flirtation.

As the couples spun by, Jack said, “The dancing we did in Bethnal Green was a bit more rowdy.”

“I can teach you later.” The moment the words left her mouth, she realized that she’d actually enjoy showing Jack how to waltz. “You’re probably a natural.” And he would be, too. Though he was large, he moved with uncommon agility.

“If it means I get to look down the front of your dress,” he said, “then I’m for it.”

“Poetry, Jack.” She affected a sigh. “Pure poetry.”

His mouth formed a hard line. “Don’t know how to say pretty, fawning words,” he said gruffly. “All I know is that I like looking at you.”

Heat fanned across her cheeks. Such simple words, given in a surly tone, yet they moved her, far more than she would have expected.

As she struggled to think of some response, a middle-aged man with a sash adorned with medals and considerable white eyebrows approached them. He looked faintly puzzled at their appearance, as well he should. He was the host of the ball.

“Lord Chalton,” Eva said, sinking into a curtsy, then offering the baron her hand. “Such an honor to receive your invitation.”

He took it and bowed, though he still looked baffled. “The honor’s mine, er…”

Eva laughed as though he were making a joke, then her laugh trickled away as if realizing that he wasn’t joking. “Mrs. Worthington,” she supplied. “Eloise Worthington. From Alnwick. Lawrence Worthington’s widow. He used to speak so fondly of you and your days together at Cambridge, winning blades together in the college boat club. Surely you haven’t forgotten!”

For a moment, the baron said nothing, but Eva smiled at him pleasantly, utterly assured that her late husband and Chalton had spent many an hour rowing on the Cam.

“Mrs. Worthington, of course.” Chalton nodded. “Delighted you could attend.” He glanced nervously at Jack.

“I hope it wasn’t too presumptuous of me to bring along a friend,” she said, smiling. “Lord Chalton, this is Mr. John Dutton from Sydney. You’ve heard of Dutton Cattle Company, naturally.”

Jack, impassive, stuck out his hand.

“Naturally,” Chalton echoed. He shook Jack’s hand weakly, and it was like watching a terrier shake hands with a wolf. “Ah, I see that Lady Addington could use more champagne. If you’ll excuse me…”

“Your reputation for hospitality is not exaggerated,” Eva trilled. “But, if I may, before you go…”

Chalton, who had been sidling away, stopped, though he looked pained to do so. “Yes?”

“I understand that John Gilling is here tonight. My brother-in-law’s cousin is a great friend of Mr. Gilling, and I’d like to pass along Stamford’s good wishes.”

“You’ll find him in the card room,” Chalton answered, then, with a quick bow, hastened away.

It would look gauche to hurry across the ballroom immediately after their host had moved on, so Eva stood calmly fanning herself and smiling serenely at the room. From the corner of her eye, she caught Jack staring at her.

“What?”

“A damn neat trick you just played there, Mrs. Worthington.” Admiration was clear in his voice and eyes. “I knew you were sly, but I didn’t know how sly.”

Oddly, it was one of the best compliments she’d ever received. But she couldn’t revel in his praise, not while they still had a job to do.

Eva steadied her nerves. They had scaled partway up the mountain, but were far from the summit. Every step brought them closer to their goal. It also meant they had farther to fall.

“We passed the card room on the way to the ballroom,” she said.

Jack held out his arm, and she took it, enjoying the feel of iron-hard muscle beneath the expensive fabric. “Time to hunt down our prey.”

CHAPTER TEN

The card room at a Society ball seemed an incongruous place for a criminal. Overstuffed men sat in overstuffed chairs, crowded around tables as they played genteel games of whist. Some silver-haired dowagers were scattered here and there like antique pearls, content with their cards and sherry. Decades had passed since those women had taken their turns upon the dance floor, and yet nothing truly had changed save for the stiffening of their joints. Greater comfort and amusement could be found here, among women their own age and men who had no interest in flirtation.

For all its gentility, nearly everyone within the card room held a secret. Most were innocuous. Others … unlawful.

From the doorway, Eva and Jack scanned the chamber.

“Table by the bookshelf,” he said in a low voice. “The bloke with the gingery hair and scrawny hands. That’s Gilling.”

The man in question appeared as inoffensive as the room in which he played cards. The two other middle-aged men at his table were equally unexceptional.

“Seems a likely partner for a scheme to defraud the government,” she said. “He’d do whatever Rockley wanted.” A collaborator with strong ideas and opinions would prove more difficult to manage.

“We don’t know if he’s the link we want,” Jack noted. “One sure way to find out, though.” He took a step into the room, but Eva stayed him.

“Let me bring Gilling out,” she said. “We can’t have this play out before a roomful of witnesses, and if he recognizes you and bolts, the plan’s shot to hell.”

Though he looked unhappy with having to wait a few moments longer, Jack gave a nod. He pointed to a shadowed corridor leading off the main hallway. “Get him over there. I’ll take care of the rest.”

She didn’t like the ominous sound of that. “This scene has been scripted, Jack,” she warned. “Don’t decide to change the performance in the middle of the play.”

His expression darkened. “Still thinking of me as Nemesis’s puppet.”

“I only want this mission to succeed.”

“Then goddamn trust me.” He stalked off.

Eva took a moment to collect herself. Had she spoken out of turn? Did Jack merit her confidence? He’d already proven some degree of trustworthiness, and an exceptional intelligence. Yet she kept holding fast to her mistrust. It made their roles more easily defined. Simpler.

The question she needed to answer now was whether or not Gilling was the man they could use to ruin Rockley.

She glided into the card room, offering whoever looked her way a bland smile. A few men glanced up at her, their gazes lingering, but she politely ignored them as she pretended to idly watch the games in play. She meandered around the chamber, taking her time. Finally reaching the table where Gilling sat, she feigned observing the game.

“I hope I’m not disrupting, gentlemen,” she said. “But I’d grown weary of dancing and thought to amuse myself with other pursuits.”

Gilling looked up from his hand and gave her a quick perusal. Liking what he saw, he said hastily, “No disruption at all, madam. We could deal you in, if you like.”

Marco had taught Eva how to cheat at dozens of card games, including whist. If she so desired, she could strip these men of every coin they carried, perhaps even take their signet rings and pocket watches. All the while they’d have no idea she swindled them. A clever rogue, that Marco. But then, the British government had trained him to be.

“I’ve no head for cards,” Eva said. “But I have every respect for those of you who do have that talent. Clearly,” she added, smiling, “you have an abundance of talent.”

Gilling’s pale cheeks flushed and he mumbled his thanks.

“Oh, do continue your game,” Eva urged as the other men became restive.

After glancing at her again, Gilling resumed playing. Eva made appreciative murmurs whenever he won a trick and exclaimed in dismay when he didn’t. Gilling preened beneath her attentions.

When all the tricks were played, and Gilling emerged the winner, Eva clapped then fanned herself.

“I never would have believed whist could be so exhilarating,” she trilled. “I find myself dreadfully overheated. Some fresh air would benefit me.” She gave Gilling a meaningful glance.

“There is a balcony,” he said, standing. “Would you do me the honor of allowing me to escort you?”

“You are kindness itself.” She took his offered arm.

A few men muttered, “Lucky dog,” and shot Gilling envious, incredulous looks. Apparently, bold widows did not usually make appearances in card rooms.

Together, she and Gilling left the chamber, his steps hurried.

“There’s a shortcut,” she said, pointing her fan toward the darkened corridor.

Needing no further urging, he led her into the passage. The hallway must be used mainly by servants, for the doors were narrow and the walls sparsely adorned. The sounds of the ball faded, the shadows thickened. There was no sign of Jack.

Gilling stopped and looked around, frowning. “Perhaps we ought to find another way. This seems wrong.”

A door opened behind them. They turned to see Jack stepping out of a chamber, blocking their path back to the ballroom. His brutal smile was calculated to frighten, and, judging by the stunned look on Gilling’s face, it was a success. Even knowing Jack as she did, Eva herself felt a shiver of fear.

“It’s very right, Gilling,” Jack said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

* * *

Like a bloody coward, Gilling immediately broke away from Eva and stepped backward. The sod actually put her between him and Jack, as if taking shelter behind her.

“You know who I am,” Jack said.

“J … Jack Dalton. You’re supposed to be in prison.” Gilling’s voice turned high and thin.

“Decided I’d had enough of bread and rock breaking.” Jack flexed his hand. “Rather break Rockley instead.”

Gilling stared at Jack’s arms, his shoulders. “I warn you,” Gilling piped, “if you attempt any violence I’ll—”

“That ain’t what I’m here to do. And I never attempt violence.” Jack’s mean grin widened.

Gilling swallowed hard. He shot an accusing glance at Eva. “You led me here! To him!”

“This is far more interesting than a game of whist,” she answered, and Jack loved the cold deliberateness in her voice. She seemed to hold many different women within herself, and yet all of them were her. He could explore her for a lifetime and never fully know all of her.

“What do you want?” Gilling demanded again.

“Same thing everyone these days wants.” Jack rubbed his fingers together. “The means to make myself comfortable.”

“A bottle of gin should see to that,” snapped Gilling, then looked terrified by his brief display of cheek.

“But it isn’t very lasting, is it, Mr. Gilling?” Eva asked. “What we’re proposing is a good deal more permanent.”

“Your money for my silence,” Jack said. He took a step toward Gilling, and the man sidled backward.

“Blackmail?” Gilling’s eyebrows rose. “There’s nothing you can hold over me. Certainly not someone of your class,” he added.

“Folks of my class know all sorts of valuable things,” Jack said. “Like the fact that you and Rockley skimmed your contract with the government. Took home a fine profit for yourselves while soldiers fired shoddy cartridges.”

“Utter nonsense!” Gilling countered. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“Your left eye twitches when you lie,” Eva said pleasantly. “Just a little. I saw it whilst you were playing cards. Not much of a bluffer.”

“I’m not lying!”

Jack crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Gilling. The same look he’d give his opponents when they stood at opposite sides of the boxing ring. A match could be won before a single punch had been thrown.

Gilling turned even paler. “See here,” he gulped, “even if your allegations were true—which they aren’t—I haven’t any money to give. You’d be better served blackmailing someone else, someone with property and wealth.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” Jack said. “What you’re going to do is help me get money out of Rockley.”

If Jack had a pen, he could’ve written on Gilling’s now paper-white face. The man’s mouth opened and closed.

“Just go to him yourself,” Gilling stammered.

“Too dangerous,” Eva said.

“Rockley and me,” Jack explained affably, “we’ve got what you’d call a history. You know that. I couldn’t get anywhere near him. But you can. You’ll be my middleman.”

“But how am I to get you any money from him?”

Jack said, “That’s your worry.”

“And if you don’t do as instructed,” Eva continued, “your involvement with the government contract will be brought to the attention of very interested parties. I imagine it wouldn’t be difficult to have you arrested on charges of treason.”

Looking hunted, Gilling tugged at the collar of his shirt. “I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“We’ve got written proof, Gilling,” Jack said. “The records you kept. They’re ours now.”

“Oh, God,” Gilling croaked. “I … I must go. I have to think.”

He stumbled past Jack and Eva, heading back toward the main hallway. Jack didn’t try to stop him, easy as the task would’ve been. Yet as Gilling lurched down the corridor, staggering around other guests, Jack and Eva followed wordlessly at a distance through the house. Gilling hurried down the front steps and into the street.

If Gilling arrived in a carriage, he didn’t wait for it to be brought around. Instead, he waved down a hansom and flung himself into it. He shouted instructions at the driver. The cab drove on.

With Eva right behind him, Jack ran for their hired carriage parked in the nearby mews.

“Don’t lose that hansom,” he called up to the cabman.

As soon as he and Eva were in the growler, it took off in pursuit. The cab raced through the streets, rocking from side to side. Jack braced his legs against the seat in front of him, and Eva held tight to the strap beside her. Neither of them spoke. He liked that she kept her silence while they were on the chase. No useless gabbing for the sake of hearing her own voice or making dull comments about obvious things. She had the calm, focused look of a hunter. A hunter in gold-colored silk, with yellow flowers in her hair.

Looking out the window, he noted the neighborhood. “St. John’s Wood,” he said aloud.

“Wonder what’s here,” she murmured.

He had a pretty strong suspicion what that might be, but he’d wait until they’d reached their destination before saying anything. He didn’t want to look like a fool. Not in front of her.

The growler came to a sudden stop.

Both Jack and Eva peered out the window. Fine-looking brick houses lined the quiet street. A little ways down the block, Gilling had jumped out of the hansom. He hurried up the walk of one of the houses. Lights shone beneath the drawn curtains, but the house itself looked as decent and well behaved as any of its neighbors. Looks couldn’t be trusted, though.

“Do you know that place?” Eva asked.

“It’s Mrs. Arram’s.”

“Ah,” she said with understanding. Mrs. Arram’s brothel catering to wealthy gentlemen had been on the list of Rockley’s favorite haunts.

“Perhaps Gilling needs to blow off steam,” Eva suggested, “so to speak.”

The man knocked on the door to the brothel. The door opened, revealing two huge men. Gilling spoke to them, looking frantic, but it was too far away for Jack to hear what was being said.

“They’ve got more security than normal,” Jack noted. “Usually it’s just one chap at the front door and another at the back.”

“One of them might be Rockley’s man,” Eva mused.

“It’s Wednesday, and not even ten o’clock,” he said, shaking his head. “Rockley never went to Mrs. Arram’s on Wednesday. And he never went to any brothel before midnight. Gilling would know that.”

“Then why come here? Unless,” she said, thoughtful, “he’s here to check on the evidence.”

Jack took his gaze away from Gilling, still speaking with the guards, and frowned at Eva. “You think the proof of them skimming on the contract would be at a whorehouse?”

“It’s a sensible location to store something highly valuable,” she explained. “Secure, as you noted. Most genteel brothels are better guarded than any bank. The men who go there have only one real purpose in mind, and it isn’t searching for incriminating documents. Yet if Rockley ever needed access to those documents, he could have it without attracting any attention. Likely he pays Mrs. Arram a substantial fee to keep the documents at her establishment, but with a strong warning that she isn’t to know or ask about what those papers contain.”

Damn him, but it made sense. Jack said, “We’d been looking for places where Rockley might’ve added security, but we searched in the wrong places. We didn’t even know if the evidence existed, but it does, and it’s here.” He snorted. A brothel. A sodding brothel.

“Gilling has to know it,” Eva said. “When you told him you had the evidence, he came straight to Mrs. Arram’s to check on it.” She peered out the window. “It looks as though the guards aren’t going to let him in, however.”

Gilling, looking more and more upset, was shouting at the men standing watch, trying to shove past them. One of the guards pushed him back. Gilling stumbled backward. Before he could try forcing his way in again, the door slammed in his face. For a few minutes, he pounded on the door, but it stayed shut.

Finally, Gilling gave up. He sulked down the walkway and flagged another hansom. He got in and drove away.

“Same story here, my lad,” Jack called up to the hackney driver. “A nice bit of coin for you if we stay on him.”

“Right you are, sir.”

This time, as the cab sped through the streets of London, Jack and Eva weren’t silent. As soon as they set off in their pursuit, she said, “Rockley knows you’ve escaped prison. You’re out there. He also knows that you’ll never be able to touch him, not physically, anyway. But his one vulnerability would be the evidence of his embezzlement. So he bulks up security at Mrs. Arram’s to make certain you have no way of getting to that evidence.”

Jack snorted. “Hell of a rotten bastard.”

“One of the worst I’ve ever encountered,” she said. “And I’ve encountered quite a lot of rotten bastards.”

It didn’t surprise Jack when Gilling’s cab came to a stop outside Rockley’s home. However, after Gilling pounded on the front door, he was allowed to go inside.

“They let him in,” Jack murmured. “But Rockley won’t be there. He’s never home at this time. Doesn’t usually get back until three or four.” That was hours away.

“Perhaps the butler is allowing Gilling to wait for Rockley’s return,” Eva suggested.

“Rockley didn’t like having folks in his home when he wasn’t there. But if the butler’s letting him stay, there’s got to be a reason.”

“More proof that Gilling and Rockley were partners in the scheme to swindle the government,” she said darkly. Her lips tightened. “I don’t particularly fancy the idea of sitting in this hackney for five hours, doing nothing.”

“Where next?”

“Home.” After she gave the cabman the direction for Nemesis headquarters and the carriage moved on, she sat back against the squabs, her expression shuttered as it usually was when she was deep in thought. Jack liked watching her think, the tumblers of her mind turning.

“We did pretty well back there,” he said. “Working Gilling like that.”

Her smile flashed in the dimness of the cab. “It did go rather nicely.”

“Sound surprised,” he noted. “Thought you Nemesis lot all partnered together doing these jobs of yours.”

“We do. I have. Usually I partner with Simon, but I’ve gone into the field with almost everyone else.”

His mouth curled. “So it’s me you didn’t expect to work out.”

“All quantities are unknown until tested,” she answered.

“Guess that means I passed the test,” he said dryly.

She hesitated before saying, “It’s ongoing.”

He couldn’t blame her for being chary. Earning someone’s trust—especially someone as cautious as Eva—could take lifetimes. A handful of days wouldn’t change much. He wasn’t sure he could trust her, either. Having spent his life in the company of thieves and good-for-nothings, he’d learned that the only person he could fully have faith in was himself. Always somebody ready to sell him out for their own profit.

Nemesis had already proved they’d do anything to make sure they saw justice served. They’d throw him under the wagon wheels if they thought it’d help their purpose.

But he wanted Eva’s trust. He wanted her secrets. He wanted … everything.

In the darkness and light of the carriage, he saw her sitting opposite him in that golden gown of hers, her shoulders slim but not fragile, the soft shadows between her breasts. Something big and hungry curled in his stomach.

“How’d you get involved with Nemesis?” he asked. “Missionaries’ daughters don’t seem the sort to throw in with ruthless bastards who dish out vengeance.”

“When I was helping my parents in the East End, I’d heard rumors someone was grabbing Chinese boys off the streets. I told my father and mother, but they didn’t want to get involved.”

“But you did.”

“I made some investigations and crossed paths with Simon. Thought he was one of the kidnappers at first. But when I found out what he was doing, that he was trying to help the boys, too, we worked together. He didn’t think I could handle myself.” She smiled darkly. “I proved otherwise. Simon and I put an end to the trafficking. Then he offered me a place with Nemesis. I didn’t hesitate.”

Of course she didn’t.

“How often did you visit brothels with Rockley?” she asked suddenly.

It took him a moment to realize she’d asked him a question. “Like I said, he had four he usually went to. Kept it interesting, is what he told me. Depending on what fancy struck him, we’d go every other day. Didn’t watch him, though, if that’s what you’re asking. Only kept guard outside.” Jack had gotten far too used to hearing Rockley fucking, to the point where he’d barely noticed it, standing out there in the hallway and thinking of what to eat for supper or whether he’d have time to grab a pint on his way home.

“And when you were there, did you…” She waved her hand.

“Sample the merchandise?”

Her jaw tightened at his mocking tone. “Never mind. I was only curious about the running of a brothel, the logistics involved.” She made a show of picking off a piece of fluff from her skirts. “If Rockley was a regular patron, I thought perhaps it would be a good business strategy to keep the men in his employ happy, as well, but it truly does not—”

“I didn’t.”

She stopped fussing and gazed up at him. He wondered if she knew how hopeful she looked. “You can tell me the truth,” she said.

Anger flickered to life. “I’ve never lied to you. When I say that I didn’t fuck any of the whores, I mean it.”

She didn’t blink at his crude language. “You must’ve had opportunity.”

“Plenty. But I don’t pay for sex.” He tore his gaze away from hers, folding his arms over his chest. “When she couldn’t make enough coin from doing sewing and mending, my ma walked the streets. I swore I wouldn’t let the same thing happen to Edith. Tried to keep her from that … life.” He spat the word.

“Didn’t matter, though,” he continued, glaring out the carriage windows. He didn’t see the fine shopfronts and flats of the West End, but the narrow tumbledown hovels of Bethnal Green and the hollow-faced women who walked its filthy streets. “She became a whore, just like our ma. I told her, Be a shopgirl, go work at a factory. Gave her money. But she wouldn’t leave it. She said, The only way a girl like me’s going to get anywhere is on her back.”

His words like rusty nails in his throat, he said, “So, no. I didn’t sample the merchandise. Because the damned merchandise was someone’s sister. Someone’s ma.”

His sodding eyes burned. His goddamn chest ached. He’d spent five years on the rack of his own thoughts, his own condemnation, but it hadn’t been enough. It was never enough.

He started when Eva’s hand cupped his face. Caught up in his self-blame, he hadn’t noticed that she’d moved to sit beside him. But in an instant, it was all he was aware of.

The cool reserve surrounding her fell away. Her gaze searched his. It almost killed him, seeing the compassion and sadness in her eyes—he couldn’t stand anyone’s pity. He didn’t want it. Pity was for weakness.

And yet … she showed him a kindness that went beyond pity into something deeper. A shared understanding.

“I should’ve tried harder,” he rasped. “Nabbed her off the street and locked her up somewhere, a place far away in the country. But I chose to believe her lie when she said she was happy at the brothel where she worked. It was a fancy place, a place where gentlemen went. The girls there looked healthy and comfortable. So I let her stay. I fucking let her stay,” he growled. “And then she’d been killed. By my own sodding boss. He liked his bedsport rough. Must’ve gotten too rough that night. I didn’t warn her to stay away from him. I may as well have stuck the knife in her.”

“Rockley killed Edith,” she said quietly. “Save your anger for him, not yourself.”

“Oh, aye,” he said, bitter. “I’m a goddamn hero.”

“I never said that.” Her mouth curved into a soft, bittersweet smile. “But maybe you’ll become one.”

He took up most of the seat, so she squeezed tight next to him. Her hand still cupped his cheek, and though he wished she weren’t wearing gloves, he still soaked up the feeling of her touching him.

He became, suddenly, conscious of everything. The sensation of her leg pressed against his. How she was warm and cool at the same time, and smelled of flowers and her own satiny skin. The desire for her he’d been feeling as a continuous pulse now thundered through him.

Though shadows were heavy in the carriage, he was close enough to her to see the widening of her pupils, hear the low, edged catch of her breath.

The atmosphere between them changed. She’d been offering kindness a moment before. Now, kindness turned to hunger.

He raised his own hands. Slowly. Cupped the back of her head with one, and curved the other around her neck. She stared up at him, her breath coming fast.

Then he put his lips on hers.

He’d watched iron-hulled ships being built in dockyards, and how, when the welders had put torch to metal, sparks had showered everywhere. Liquid light.

Those same sparks, that same heat and light, poured through him now as he felt and tasted Eva’s mouth for the first time. She was silk and steel, and so delicious he wanted to gulp her down. He traced his tongue across her lips, catching the flavor of champagne. Her lips opened to him, and he sank farther in. Where she was wet and fever-hot.

He didn’t think she’d resist him—he’d seen the desire in her face—and she didn’t. More than that, she kissed him with the same hard hunger that burned in him. She gripped his shoulders, pulling him closer. He growled. Yes.

It was everything and not enough. Roughly, he pulled her onto his lap. She moved to wrap her arms around him, but he held her back. Holding her gaze with his, he used his teeth to take off his gloves and tossed them aside. He wrapped one hand around the back of her neck. The other pressed against her chest, just beneath her collarbone. She gasped, and he gave another growl. He urged her down for another kiss.

Gliding his hand down the span of her chest, feeling the pounding of her heart, he dipped his fingers beneath the neckline of her gown. At his first touch of her breast, his whole body ached with need. And when his fingertips found the hard point of her nipple, she moaned, pressing closer.

Goddamn him, but he’d never touched or kissed a woman as fine as her, or known this keen fire. She also pulled off her gloves, and they joined his on the floor of the carriage.

“Eva,” he rumbled, when her own hand slid beneath his evening coat to grip his shoulder through the thin cotton of his shirt, her nails digging into him. “Good bloody Christ.”

“Blasphemer,” she murmured, then nipped at his mouth.

He took his lips from hers, running them over the line of her jaw, then down her neck. Her smell made his head spin and his cock ache. He scraped his teeth across her skin, and she made a sound of pleasure as she writhed against him. The carriage swayed as it jolted down the street, the rhythm urging both Jack and Eva on. She rocked her arse into his groin. He pinched her nipple and caught her pleasured cry in his mouth.

He knew, he knew it would be like this between them. Hot and wild. Not pretty but honest and bare. And he also knew that if he wasn’t inside her, now, he’d lose his damn mind.

He released his hold on the back of her neck to reach for the hem of her skirts. The carriage shuddered to a stop.

“Here we are,” the cabman called down.

Gasping, Eva broke away. She stared at Jack through lowered lids, and color spread across her cheeks. With slow, rigid movements, she moved off his lap to sit on the opposite seat. Her hands shook as they struggled to smooth her hair and skirts.

Jack also panted as if he’d gone twelve rounds in the ring. He watched her try to tidy herself, and all he wanted was to pull her onto his lap again, have her straddle him. There were other options, too. She could brace her arms on the seat, and he’d lift her skirts, baring her from behind. She could sit, and he’d bury his face between her legs. They’d both get very, very untidy.

“Change of plans,” Jack called up to the driver. “Take us to Sydney Street.”

“Right, gov.” The cabman clicked his tongue at his horse, and the carriage began to move.

“Wait,” Eva exclaimed. “Don’t go anywhere yet, driver.”

“All right, madam.” The cabman sounded puzzled, but the hackney stopped rolling.

“I’m not taking you to bed in that place,” Jack growled. “Not where every sodding person can listen in.”

“You’re not taking me to bed in any place,” she said.

Disbelieving, he stared at her. “Right. Because some other lady was grinding against me, not you.” He provoked her on purpose, needing some kind of reaction, some response that showed she was as affected as he was.

She blew out a breath. “It can’t. This cannot go any further.”

“Because you’re a lady and I’m street trash.”

She looked at him scornfully. “Have you ever heard me say that? I don’t think of either of us in those terms.”

“I want you,” he said, his voice so rough and low he hardly knew himself. He took her hand in his, running his thumb back and forth across her wrist. Her pulse came quick and fast beneath his touch. He wanted to pull her across the narrow space of the carriage and start up where they’d left off, with his hands beginning their journey up her legs and her gasps in his ear. “You want me. Simple.”

“Not simple,” she countered. “Complicated. I work for Nemesis, and getting involved with you compromises that.”

“Nobody has to know.” Back and forth went his thumb, learning the softness of her skin.

“I would know. And it would throw off my judgment. Stop it.” She tugged to free her hand from his grasp. “I can’t think when you do that.”

“You need to think less.” He wouldn’t release her. “Stay too much in your head, and the rest of you dries up and blows away.”

A sudden hurt shone in her eyes. “My thoughts and my work are all I have. I can’t give them up.” She gave her hand another tug, and he let her go. A second passed, as if she waited for him to continue arguing or reach for her again.

He said nothing. There’d be naught to gain this night. He hadn’t known how damn close she kept herself, walled up even more than Dunmoor Prison.

“We’ll go up,” she said after a few moments. “Tell the others what we’ve learned tonight.”

Reaching over, he opened the door to the carriage, noting the way she held herself still when he moved nearer. But he didn’t touch her, only waved toward the open door, letting her go. Maybe gentlemen got out of carriages first and helped ladies down. But Jack couldn’t walk comfortably. Not yet. And his will had already been sorely tested. Touching her made him want more.

She cast him a wary glance before climbing down. As Jack took several calming breaths, willing his body to quiet, she paid the cabman and thanked him for his service.

That thought niggled him again. Was she using the attraction between them to keep him controllable? The closer they got to Rockley, the more Jack wanted his blood. But when Eva kissed him, touched him, thoughts of everything but her fled. He’d be willing to do anything, if only to taste her again.

She wouldn’t rook me like that.

“Coming, Jack?”

“Aye,” he grunted. He stepped down and nodded at the driver before the hackney rolled on.

As Eva unlocked the door to the chemist’s shop fronting the headquarters, Jack stood on the curb, watching her, hands in his pockets. Her back was straight, as if she expected an attack. No, not an attack. An escape.

The door to the shop opened, and they walked inside, passing the rows of silent bottles and the scale.

She really was like Dunmoor Prison, closed up tight, containing walls within walls. It was herself she kept locked away. Afraid of what might happen if she were to break free.

Tonight, he wore a gentleman’s evening clothes, but that hadn’t changed who he was: an escaped convict. He was glad of that. Glad he knew how to break out of prison. It meant that he could help her escape her own. But she was strong, an unknown to him in plenty of ways. She had to demolish her own walls.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Marco stalked into the parlor and threw a newspaper onto the table.

“It’s over,” he snapped, pacing.

Eva set aside her tea then picked up the paper and read aloud for the benefit of Simon, Jack, and Lazarus, also drinking their morning tea. “‘QUEEN TO MAKE RARE PUBLIC APPEARANCE.’”

“Page four,” said Marco curtly.

Turning to the appropriate page, Eva scanned the columns. What she saw made her curse softly.

“What’s happened?” Jack demanded, getting to his feet.

Eva continued reading. “‘John Gilling, a barrister of the Inner Temple, was discovered early this morning near his chambers, cruelly murdered. The poor gentleman had been stabbed to death.’” She gazed up from the paper, stunned.

Everyone made noises of shock and disbelief. Her heart pounded in her ears as she went on. “‘Mr. Gilling’s corpse was discovered in an alley by one Harry Peele, dustman, as Mr. Peele went about his morning circuit. Though Mr. Peele has been taken into custody for questioning, the chief suspect is the notorious criminal Jack Dalton, who has recently escaped from Dunmoor Prison.’”

“Does it say any more?” Simon asked.

She quickly looked over the rest of the article. “Only some editorializing about the sad state of our fair city, where respectable men could be murdered near their place of business by fugitives from the law, et cetera.” She flung the paper onto the floor.

Jack, who had joined Marco in pacing the floor, kicked the offending newspaper, though it didn’t travel far. “Rockley.”

“So it appears,” Eva said. She rubbed at her tired eyes.

Sleep had been scarce last night, her mind and body both too stimulated to allow her any rest. Thoughts of the evidence against Rockley had crashed against remembering Jack’s hands, his mouth, the honeyed ferocity of his kiss. She’d ached everywhere, craving his touch, wishing she’d taken him back to her rooms where they could have stripped out of their evening finery and finally given in to their mutual desire. But she’d made the right decision by refusing him. Or so she’d told herself as she drifted into fitful slumber.

He hadn’t shaved this morning, and he looked so dangerously alluring with stubble darkening his hard jaw, it had taken considerable self-control not to drag him up the stairs to his bed. To save her sanity, she’d kept her gaze away from him, their conversation to a minimum.

Yet she couldn’t stop watching him pace like a caged animal, seething with brutal fury.

“Rockley killed Gilling?” Lazarus wondered, frowning. “When?”

“Sometime last night,” Eva answered. “After Jack and I left Rockley’s place.” She knocked the side of her fist against the table, making the teacups rattle. “Damn it, we should’ve stayed.”

“And done what?” Simon asked. “You would’ve seen Rockley go into his home, but there wouldn’t have been any way to know he’d murder Gilling. Or any way to stop it. It’s easy enough to sneak a body out of a house under cover of night, and if you’ve got men of criminal reputation in your employ. Which Rockley has.”

“But why would he kill Gilling?” Lazarus pressed.

“On account that Gilling went to Rockley and told him about me,” Jack said, still stalking up and down the parlor. “Just as we wanted. We light a fire under them both, and get Gilling to put the squeeze on Rockley. Gilling’s more afraid of what the government will do to him than he is of Rockley.”

“But to Rockley, the weak link becomes Gilling,” Eva added. “He knows about the government contract, knows about the evidence, which makes him a liability to Rockley. Since he can’t get to Jack, he can silence Gilling. So he does.”

“He’s ruined women and killed a prostitute,” Marco said, “but we don’t have any evidence that he’s killed a man before.”

“Now he has,” Lazarus said, shaking his head. “Jesus.”

“Could have been done by one of his bodyguards,” Simon suggested.

“Thugs would beat a man to death, not use a blade,” Jack said. “If it came to it, a bodyguard would shoot a man. We don’t go for knives. But Rockley,” he added with a snarl, “he’s fond of ’em. Seems to be his preferred way of killing.”

The truth of this sank in, and everyone looked appalled.

“He pins it on you,” Eva said, “and gets the Metropolitan Police to do his dirty work.” She picked up her teacup, then set it back down. She’d no desire for tea. Or anything else.

Marco swore in extravagant Italian, his favorite tongue for foul language. “With Gilling’s death, we’ve lost our way to strike at Rockley. Worse, security around Rockley and the evidence is going to be impenetrable. He’ll throw everything he has at keeping his person and the documentation secure.”

“This whole operation is fucked,” muttered Lazarus.

Cursing viciously, Jack spun around and threw his fist into the wall. Reverberations shook the parlor.

At that moment, the door opened to reveal a young woman in a cloak and bonnet. She stared at Jack, her eyes wide, a gloved hand raised in shock.

“Mr. Byrne downstairs recognized me and said I should go up. Perhaps,” she said weakly, “I ought to come back another time.”

Eva jumped to her feet and hurried to the girl. “No, no, please come in, Miss Jones.”

Jack pulled his fist back, revealing the hole he’d punched in the plaster, and a new web of cracks marring the wall. Despite the plaster dust coating his hand, he appeared to be fine. The wall, however, was not. He hid his hand behind his back as Miss Jones took a few tentative steps into the room.

“We’re, ah, making excellent progress on your case,” Eva said, guiding the young woman to a chair. “Might I get you a cup of tea?”

Miss Jones shook her head. “No, thank you.” She made no move to take off her bonnet or cloak. No plans to stay long. She sent Jack a few cautious glances as she sat.

“This is Mr. Dutton,” Eva said quickly. “He’s assisting us with your case.”

“That’s precisely why I’ve come.” Miss Jones picked at a loose thread on the tablecloth, studiously avoiding everyone’s eyes. Which prevented her from seeing the looks of concern shared by the Nemesis operatives.

“Are you certain you wouldn’t like some tea?” Eva pressed, knowing that the delay in fixing the girl a cup would give her time to collect herself.

“All right.” It was a capitulation, not an agreement. Though Miss Jones had come to Nemesis a somewhat timid creature, she seemed even more so now, her shoulders slumped, her hands trembling as they rested on the table. Her skin was paler, too.

Eva went into the kitchen to prepare tea. No one in the parlor spoke, and in the strained silence, it felt as though she were banging on a timpani drum rather than stirring milk into a delicate china cup. When she finally emerged from the kitchen, she set the cup down in front of Miss Jones and took a seat beside her.

The girl picked up her tea, but her hand shook so much the liquid spilled over the rim and onto the tablecloth. “I’m sorry.” She blinked back tears as she set her cup back down with a clatter.

Oh, this wasn’t good. Eva laid her hand over Miss Jones’s. “It’s all right,” she murmured.

“It isn’t!” The young woman looked martyred as she stared at Eva. “It’s terrible! Worse than terrible. Disastrous.”

“We’ll soon make everything right with Lord Rockley.” Simon gave Miss Jones a reassuring, kind smile, which only made the girl appear even more miserable.

Miss Jones took a shuddering breath, as if steadying herself, then spoke in a rush. “Whatever it is you’re doing to get me justice, however you plan on extracting recompense from Lord Rockley—I want you to stop.”

Stunned silence followed. Eva could only blink her astonishment, seeing equally baffled expressions on everyone else’s faces.

“Why?” she finally asked.

“Lord Rockley … he…” Miss Jones covered her mouth with her hand.

Rage poured through Eva. “Did he hurt you again?”

Eva’s anger must have shown in her countenance, for the girl said quickly, “Not physically, no. But,” she added, “he’s been making threats. Warning me that if I try to take any further action against him he’ll make my life even more hellish than it already is. I won’t be accepted anywhere. My father’s business will be ruined.”

“Does Rockley know about Nemesis’s involvement?” Marco asked.

The young woman shook her head. “He knows only that I’ve made allegations against him. And that I haven’t left London. Yet that is exactly what I intend to do. Leave the city. Perhaps even leave England. I just want to disappear, to bury it all.”

“You’ve spoken of this to your father?” Eva said.

“Papa thinks I’m having tea with a friend today. He’s no idea I’m here, or what I’m asking you to do. But, please,” she said, turning imploring eyes to Eva, “stop pursuing Lord Rockley. No good can come of it.”

Fury the likes of which Eva had never known surged through her. Only the presence of Miss Jones kept her from unleashing a torrent of foul language. She had a strong urge to throw her fist into the wall, just as Jack had done. What she truly wanted to do was beat Rockley into a syrup. Bad enough that he’d ruined Miss Jones, but now he intimidated and threatened her into silence.

He had the blood of at least two people on his hands. Jack’s sister, and now Gilling.

“We cannot stop,” Eva said. “Rockley must be brought down. He’ll just keep hurting more girls, girls just like you.”

“If I demand it?” Miss Jones pressed, her voice quavering.

Frustration and sympathy warred within Eva. Words tried to form, words that would give Miss Jones the necessary strength to continue in their pursuit of Rockley. But the young woman was fragile, and anything Eva could think to say might sound bullying and cause the girl to crumble even more. Judging by the silence from the other members of Nemesis, they were struggling with what to say, as well. None of them wanted to abandon the case.

Jack suddenly grabbed a chair and pulled it near Miss Jones. He turned it around to straddle the chair, bracing his arms on its back. The girl looked startled, almost ready to flee, until he gentled his expression to something verging on kindness.

“Did you have plans for yourself before this business with Rockley?” he asked.

His question caught her off guard. After a moment, she answered, “My parents wanted me to marry. They were hoping to find me a respectable tradesman and see me settled as a wife and mother.”

“And what did you want for yourself?” He asked this softly.

She cast her gaze down to the floor. “I … wanted to be a teacher. It didn’t matter to me if I married or not. But I’d hoped to find some mill town school where I could teach the children of the workers. Give them a chance at life outside of a mill. It doesn’t matter anymore.” She dabbed the corners of her eyes with her sleeve. “No one will hire a ruined girl. And now Lord Rockley threatens not only me, but my family. I’ve lost my dream, but I can’t let my parents suffer for my mistake.”

Eva’s heart contracted, feeling the sharp loss of the girl’s dream and her desire to do good.

“It wasn’t your mistake,” Jack said. “Never say that. This Nemesis lot brought me on board because I’ve got information on Rockley that no one else has.” Fortunately, he made no mention of Nemesis blackmailing him into cooperating. “More than that, I’ve got my own reason for wanting to ruin that bas—that scoundrel. He harmed someone important to me. More than harmed her. He stole her life. Killed my sister with his own hands.”

Miss Jones gasped. “Did you go to the police?”

He smiled bitterly. “The police don’t bother when the victim’s a whore. And Rockley had ’em all in his pocket. They’d never touch a bloke with so much power.”

“What did you do?” the young woman asked.

“Tried to get my own justice. It didn’t work, not the first time, but that don’t mean I won’t stop trying. See, Miss Jones,” he continued, his dark eyes serious, “men like Rockley think they can do whatever they want. Hurt whoever they want. Girls like you and Edith. That’s why we can’t stop going after him.”

Miss Jones’s forehead pleated with concern. “I don’t know,” she said doubtfully.

“His threats now are a storm that’s got to be weathered,” Jack went on. “Ultimately, he won’t be able to do you any more harm. You and your family will be safe. Me, and the others here, we’re fighting for you. For Edith, for all the girls Rockley’s harmed. If we don’t bring him down, he’ll just go on, using and throwing away women. Taking their reputations, their lives.”

He shook his head, raw anguish etched into his features. “I couldn’t save Edith, but there are so many other girls I can help. That you can help. But that’ll only happen if you let us get on with our work.”

Eva, watching all this, felt the hot knife of sorrow in her own chest. She remembered what he’d said last night, about failing to protect his sister. He carried the pain with him always.

Outside in the street a wagon rolled by and two women stopped to converse in brisk, cheerful voices—the noises of everyday life. Within the Nemesis headquarters the fire in the grate popped. Miss Jones stared at Jack, her hands clenching in her lap.

Eva held her breath. So did everyone else in the room.

“All right,” Miss Jones said after a long, long silence. Her shoulders straightened, her back drew up taller, and she lifted her chin. “All right. We’ll go on. We’ll ruin that bastard.” She blushed at her own crudeness, but kept her gaze steady.

Eva didn’t sigh in relief, though she felt like it. Once Nemesis was on a mission, almost nothing kept them from pursuing it to the very end. A villain like Rockley had to pay for his crimes, whether Miss Jones wanted vengeance or no. They wouldn’t have stopped in their quest for justice. But it made their role less difficult when they had their client’s support.

“There’s a lass,” Jack said, patting Miss Jones’s hand.

The girl blushed again. And no wonder. The warm approval in Jack’s gaze was a potent thing.

“You’ve made the right decision, Miss Jones,” Eva said.

The young woman blinked, as if she’d forgotten that Eva, or anyone else besides Jack, was also in the room. His words had held her spellbound.

She rose, and Jack and the other men also stood. Though she still looked pale, a new resolve shone in her face and revealed itself in her upright posture. “I ought to go. Papa will be expecting me soon.”

Eva got to her feet and walked Miss Jones to the door. “We will keep you apprised of any new developments.”

The girl gave a small laugh. “I think it best if I don’t know the details of your methodology.”

Smiling, Eva said, “Probably safer that way.” She opened the door. “Thank you, Miss Jones.”

“It’s I who owe you my thanks.” She looked past Eva to Jack. “You’ve given me a new courage, Mr. Dutton.”

“It was always in you,” he answered. “Just got a little shaken, is all.”

Miss Jones ducked her head, his compliment making her shy. “I’m sorry about your sister.”

“Me, too,” he answered. “But we’ll make it right, you and me.”

The girl gave Jack a tentative smile, then turned and walked down the stairs.

Eva closed the door and leaned against it. She couldn’t take her eyes from Jack. He’d done what she and the other Nemesis operatives hadn’t been able to accomplish—convince Miss Jones to push past her fear. And he’d done so without raising his voice, without frightening or coercing. The strength of his words and conviction alone had done it.

Marco, Simon, and Lazarus looked at him as if he’d just calmed a herd of stampeding horses.

“Commendably done,” she said. “And you’ve a new admirer. She looked at you as if you rode in on a white charger, holding a lance and shield.”

Jack gave an unchivalrous snort. “A knight in rusty armor.”

She wondered if he’d ever see himself as anything more than that.

“That was well done,” Simon allowed. He picked up the discarded newspaper. “But whether or not Miss Jones agreed to continue with the case is irrelevant. We’re still at an impasse with Rockley now that Gilling’s dead; security is even tighter than before and the police are on the lookout for Dalton. So long as Rockley knows Dalton’s out there, we won’t be able to make any progress.”

Jack crossed his arms over his chest. “What was your plan for me when the job against Rockley was finished? Throw me back into Dunmoor?”

“God, no,” she answered, appalled. Although Nemesis hadn’t precisely been forthcoming about their intentions. The way they’d been treating him, he’d expect them to toss him aside like so much rubbish. “We were going to counterfeit your death and give you a new identity.”

Jack appeared to consider this idea. She’d tipped Nemesis’s hand, but there was no choice for it. He needed to know.

“We’re going to lose Rockley,” he said. “He’ll bury himself so deep, we’ll never be able to get anything out of him. Unless…”

“Unless?” Marco prompted.

“We fake my death now,” said Jack.

* * *

He didn’t think they’d cheer at the idea. Turned out, he was right. Grim silence met his announcement. Eva, in particular, looked troubled.

It oughtn’t annoy him. She was part of Nemesis, and he was just a pawn in their game. Made sense that she’d fret over the notion. He saw it in her eyes. Once Jack was “dead,” they’d have no more leverage over him. He’d have his liberty, and that was something they didn’t want. He wouldn’t be their leashed dog anymore. From the beginning, he’d made it clear that if he could find a way free of them, he’d take full advantage. Of course she wouldn’t like that.

Still, it riled him to see her uneasy about taking off his collar. For all the hunger he and Eva felt for one another, they didn’t share trust.

“Makes sense,” Simon mused. “If Rockley believes Dalton’s dead, he’ll think the threat against him is gone. The police will back off, and he’ll loosen security, giving us an opportunity to get our hands on the evidence.”

Though Marco and Lazarus nodded, Eva continued to frown. “There must be another way,” she said, “or some different strategy we can use.”

“If you’ve got a suggestion, love,” Jack said bitingly, “don’t keep it to yourself. We’d all like to hear how to keep me on a tether.”

“I…” She glanced away. “I don’t.”

“Settles that, don’t it?” He planted his hands on his hips. “It’s time to kill me.”

* * *

He never forgot the smell. Long after he’d left the narrow, grimy streets of the East End, when he’d kept a fine little flat in St. Luke’s, and even when he’d been in prison, where the air smelled of lye and porridge, he’d never quite gotten the scent of Bethnal Green from his memory.

As he and Eva stole through the twisting lanes, darkness hanging over the alleys like a sulk, he was drowning in smell, in memories. Coal smoke, mud, fried fish, human filth, and here and there, the sweet stench of opium.

He knew all of it. And bugger him if it didn’t force a small blade of sorrow between his ribs. It hadn’t changed here. Five years away, and the poor of London still lived like animals, hopelessness a dark slime that coated the uneven streets and ran down the crumbling walls.

This was the place that had been his home, the place that made him. The streets were more his parent than his ma and nameless father had ever been.

He didn’t feel a sense of homecoming, skulking through the lanes and alleys of his old neighborhood. He felt only a cold, distant sense of anger, that anyone should be forced to live ten in a room, with the only water coming from a filthy old pump, and babies crying all night because their bellies were empty.

In a drab wool cloak, Eva kept silent beside him. Weak light from a gin palace spilled across her face. He looked for signs of disgust or shock in her expression.

There were none. He remembered that she’d been raised by missionaries, and had probably spent too many hours in places like Bethnal Green and Whitechapel. She already knew how low people could sink.

Still, her gaze was wary. That showed she was smart.

Two men stumbled out of the gin palace. Jack put out an arm to shield her from the drunkards as the men threw wild punches at each other. Too busy beating each other to notice Jack and Eva, the drunks took their fight down into the gutter. But the brawlers blocked the way.

Jack shoved them aside with his boot heel. They rolled away, still throwing punches.

Someone inside the gin palace laughed, a high, shrill sound.

“Keep moving,” Jack said in a low voice.

Eva hurried on, with Jack right next to her.

“I’ve studied maps of the area,” she said. “I’ve even been here before. But I have no idea where we are.”

“Don’t worry. I do.” He turned down a snaking alley. “The maps you’ve seen, they’ll never show you the real lay of the land. Streets are alive down here. Always twisting, never where you think they’re going to be.”

She stepped over a puddle of some unknown liquid. “So if they keep changing, how do you know where to go?”

“Got the same animal blood in my veins,” he answered.

They continued walking, passing three women who sat upon a stoop. A gang of almost a dozen children of all ages stood and played in the street. The clock might’ve chimed after midnight, but that didn’t mean young babes were snug and safe in their cradles. Three kids wearing only ragged shirts dragged sticks through the muck caking the road. When an infant started to cry, a small, thin girl scooped him up into her arms, trying to soothe him.

They all stopped and stared as Jack and Eva passed. Half the children ran after them, their hands outstretched. He made sure to keep an eye on the pack he carried. Little hands made the best pickpockets.

“Penny, sir? Spare a penny, miss?”

Jack reached into his pockets. There were two coins in there, and he had to save them for later.

“Here.” Eva pressed coins into the children’s open palms. The money disappeared right away. “That’s all I have, so none of you follow and ask for more.”

Like startled pigeons, the kids ran off, their bare feet slapping through the mud.

Eva watched them disappear into the darkness. “Hard to believe that we have homes lit by electricity, surgeries can be performed without the patient aware of a single cut of the scalpel, and so many other modern wonders, yet these children live as if it were the twelfth century.”

“Time don’t mean anything here,” he said. “Not politics or science or anything else. Only keeping alive from one day to the next. That’s the only measure.”

“It’s a goddamn sodding abomination,” she said with sudden, quick heat. “It’s a wonder anyone here survives childhood.”

“A goodly number don’t.” He kept to the shadowed side of the lane. Though it’d been years since he’d last walked down the streets of Bethnal Green, he was still known in these parts. His tracks needed to stay covered. “Them that do find a way to keep living, somehow.”

“Like you,” she murmured. “Not merely bare subsistence, but rising above it.”

He used to think so. Think that he’d dragged himself up from the gutter into a swell life. Clean, healthy, properly fed. Women in his bed when he wanted them. A job that put money in his pocket. What else did he need?

Something more than that, he realized. Something that made a difference past his own needs.

Bloody hell, these Nemesis blighters are getting inside my brain.

Not just Nemesis, but Eva. His body ached with wanting her. Yet it went beyond basic lust. Her drive, her backbone and daring. He’d thought someone could only feel greed for things—wealth, a fine carriage of one’s own—but that wasn’t so. You could be greedy for a person, too.

Right now, he needed his thoughts sharp. Trouble was cheap and abundant in this part of the city, especially for a wanted man.

“Down here.” He nodded toward a set of stairs that led toward a basement at the foot of a building. The blackness was even thicker at the bottom of the steps, making the door there barely visible.

Eva stayed close behind him as he went down the stairs and rapped the side of his fist against the door.

It creaked open, revealing a skeleton of an old man. His face looked even more skull-like as he lifted a low-burning lamp.

“One bed or two?” the old man demanded as he stepped aside to let Jack and Eva enter. “We’re almost all full up for the night. An extra bed’ll cost you.”

Jack dipped his head to keep from banging it on the low beams inside the long room. Shapes lined up in rows on the floor. Coughing punctuated the silence, and the mutterings of drunkards sleeping off their latest trip to the bottom of a bottle. Someone hushed a fussing baby.

He glanced at Eva beside him. Her mouth pressed into a tight line as she took in the dim, stale room and the two dozen people using it as their home until daylight. In all her visits to the slums as a missionary, she probably hadn’t seen places like this one.

Beds was a nice way of saying a mound of moldy straw and a thin, tattered blanket crawling with lice.

“No bed,” Jack said. “I want to know where the fight is tonight.”

The old man eyed him suspiciously. “Don’t reckon what you’re talking about.”

Jack held up a shilling. “The fight,” he prompted.

“Abandoned slaughterhouse,” the old man answered quickly. “A half mile from here. Want me to point the way?”

“I know it.” Jack dropped the shilling into the man’s bony hand. He and Eva turned to leave.

“Sure you don’t want a bed for you and your lady?” the old man cackled. “Nice an’ comfy for the both of you.”

Jack didn’t answer, escorting Eva back up the stairs. He’d sooner carve a portrait of the queen into his chest with a dull knife than have Eva spend a night here.

Back on the street, he guided them through a maze of alleys toward the old slaughterhouse.

“Did you ever sleep at a place like that?” she asked quietly.

“After my ma died,” he said. “Me and Edith spent more than a few nights there, or wherever had a few beds open. Usually didn’t sleep well, on account of the rats biting on my fingers and toes.”

She visibly shuddered, but at least she didn’t give him any pitying looks or try to say something consoling.

An empty yard surrounded the old slaughterhouse, where the pens used to be. The wood that made up the pens had long since been scavenged. The slaughterhouse itself was a large brick building, parts of its roof caving in, with tall wide doors through which the condemned animals once had been driven. The business itself had shut down when Jack had been just a tyke, but some of the old-timers remembered the way the terrified cows used to bellow before they met the knife.

Now, the sounds of men’s rowdy voices echoed around the yard.

As Jack approached the building, he cast a wary look at Eva. He’d no doubt she could take care of herself, but he was leading her right into one of the roughest, meanest places he knew. At the first sign of trouble, he’d get her out of there.

“Stay close to me inside,” he warned. “And don’t say much. Your accent is a dead giveaway you ain’t from these parts.”

She nodded. Thank God she was sensible, and not one of those teacake-brained females who’d go charging into an unfamiliar, dangerous situation, convinced they had all the answers.

Jack pressed his last shilling into the hand of the dead-eyed bruiser guarding the door. The bloke squinted at Jack for a moment, trying to place him.