Nemesis Unlimited [1] Sweet Revenge (11 page)

Anger churned in Jack like bad gin. If he could, he’d sleep on this roof, no matter how blasted cold it was. But it was clear from the set of Lazarus’s jaw that he’d make good on his threat if Jack didn’t do as he was told.

Cursing foully, Jack ducked through the door and trundled down the staircase. Each step back toward his little room felt like more weights being added to his invisible shackles. He’d broken out of prison, yet he still wasn’t free.

A voice whispered in his mind,
Have I ever been?

CHAPTER FIVE

“You shouldn’t be alone with him,” said Simon.

Eva glanced over at him as the hansom cab rattled toward her lodgings. That they’d been able to find any cab at this hour—and a sober driver—had been something of a miracle. She’d been fully prepared to make the long trek on foot. But in that inimitable way of his, Simon had simply walked out onto the corner, and a hansom had rolled up, asking their direction.

Things came so easily to a man like Simon. Cabs included. He had everything—birth, wealth, position, aristocratic blond good looks that made women instinctively pat their hair and widen their eyes like fawns eagerly awaiting a wolf. Of all the Nemesis operatives, Simon seemed the least likely to involve himself in their work. Why should he? He’d never been on the wrong end of justice before. He served as Nemesis’s de facto leader, but he never made unilateral decisions. Everything was discussed among the operatives.

Simon’s time in the army had shown him hard lessons. And, like a few other men of his class, he had a strong belief in morals and ethics. Not so strong that he wouldn’t make use of a man like Jack Dalton, however.

“We’ve utilized men such as him before,” she pointed out.

“They were easily manipulated. Too afraid of the consequences of defying us to be a threat. But him…” Simon exhaled roughly. “He’s got nothing to lose.”

“Except vengeance.” She and the others of Nemesis had counted on Dalton’s need for revenge as a key element of their plan. What none of them had anticipated, she especially, was the depth of his feeling. It was far more than the animal desire for retaliation.

The pain in Dalton’s eyes when he spoke of his sister dying … beyond loss, there was self-recrimination. Somehow, Dalton held himself responsible for Edith’s death. Having read the file, Eva knew that Dalton had had nothing to do with Rockley’s going to the brothel where Edith had worked. Dalton hadn’t been anywhere near Rockley that night—his bodyguards received one day off a week, and that day had been Dalton’s. Somehow, Dalton had learned of Edith’s death that same night, and had unsuccessfully tried to avenge her in the early hours of the morning. Yet he still felt culpable. Eva had seen it in the glaze of rage and anguish in his dark eyes.

Killing Rockley wouldn’t bring Edith Dalton back from the dead, but to her brother, it had to mean some measure of absolution. A man would do almost anything to achieve forgiveness.

“He’s going to be trickier to handle than the others,” Simon insisted. “Remember Fetcham? He was a bruiser, too, but when it came right down to it, he fell in line. Dalton’s far more dangerous.”

“I can handle him,” said Eva. “Thumbs to the eyes, a knee to the groin. He might be big and strong as a bull, but every man has vulnerable places.”

Passing lamplight glanced off the pristine planes of Simon’s face as he frowned his displeasure. He verged on being too handsome, if such a thing were possible, almost uncomfortable to look upon. To her, however, he was merely Simon, her colleague, the architecture of his face admirable but not stirring.

Not like Dalton. He wasn’t handsome, not in the known sense of it, anyway. Yet she couldn’t banish his face from her mind, its rough contours and hard lines. If Simon was a mathematically perfect temple, its columns placed precisely, the proportions expertly rendered, Dalton was a granite mountain, all crags and peril, alluring because it was hazardous. Both drew the eye, but for very different reasons.

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

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

“No, you aren’t.”

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

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

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

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

“How encouraging.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*   *   *

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

“How long?” she asked Mr. Byrne.

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