Nemesis Unlimited [1] Sweet Revenge (12 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They spoke over each other.

“This oaf was—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dalton frowned. “Skimming the profits?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why?” Marco demanded.

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

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

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

I’ll never underestimate him,
she thought.

Their gazes met.

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

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

“There are men with more information about Rockley’s business transactions,” she said. “Every last one of them is either in his pocket or dead. You are the
only
man who’s been that close to him.”

“The only one who’s left his employ,” added Lazarus, “and still draws breath.”

“He tried, though,” Dalton noted. “Wanted me hanged instead of imprisoned.”

“Because he knew you could be a threat to him.”

Yet Dalton shook his head. “Bloodthirsty and proud, that’s all. It’d be an insult to him if the bloke who tried to murder him wasn’t killed somehow.”

“It was more than pride and a hunger for blood that motivated Rockley. He wanted to bury you and the information you possessed.” She stared up at him. “Just think. Think about what you know of Rockley. The answer’s in there somewhere.”

Dalton growled in frustration. “Even if I knew something, which I don’t, I’m no good at this
thinking
business. Never done it before.”

“That’s patently untrue.” She put her hands on her hips. “Nemesis planted the story that Rockley was near Dunmoor, but
you
thought your way out of that prison. None of us told you how to escape. That was all your doing. And you came up with a plan in less than a day. Sounds suspiciously like
thinking
to me.” More quietly, she said, “It’s in you, Dalton. Have more faith in yourself.”

For several moments, he was silent as he studied her face. Looking for the truth of her words. Uncertainty lurked just beneath his gaze—this close, she saw that there was a faint corona of gold around his pupils, a gleam of brightness within the shadows. It stunned her, that this primal force of a man could have any reason to doubt himself. That he viewed himself merely as a mindless thug. Yet that must have been what he’d been told his whole life. What could that be like? To be told you have only one value, and that value was definitely not your ability to think?

It had been that way for women in Britain. Only lately had these ideas begun to change.

But not for Dalton. Low, so low that his voice was more of a bass rumble than words, he said, “No one’s ever thought of me as anything more than hired muscle. No one, except you.” He narrowed his eyes. “Only because you want something from me.”

“My purpose is entirely mercenary.” She wouldn’t insult him with anything less than candor. “But that doesn’t negate what I said. It only strengthens it.”

Again, silence from him. Then he said in a low, gruff voice, “Thanks.”

She didn’t want to be moved. She didn’t want to feel anything at all for him. Intentions, however, have a way of dissolving just when they are needed the most, leaving us exposed. Her carefully cultivated resolve flaked away, the very smallest piece of it, uncovering a tiny, undefended bit of heart. A simultaneously cold and warm sensation.

Because of him. This
convict
.

She turned away. For want of something to do, to erase the feel of him beneath her hand and collect the loosened pleats of her composure, she picked up her tea. It had gone cold, but she drank down the remains of it anyway, swallowing past the whiskey burn.

A mirror hung over the mantel, and she stared at the reflected room, everything and everyone within it reversed. Simon and Harriet gazed at Eva with looks of concern, and Dalton kept his attention on some distant point outside the window. She realized that she hadn’t seen him in full daylight before. Without the night’s shadows, he looked only slightly less sinister, but just as forbidding.

“We need,” she began, then cleared her throat, “we need to detail Rockley’s habits, how he spends his days. It should help us find areas that can be investigated and exploited further.”

He frowned. “You haven’t already tailed him?”

“Tried to.”

A not particularly nice smile curled Dalton’s mouth. “Got away from you, did he? Thought you lot were supposed to be good at this kind of skullduggery.”

“We are,” Marco answered hotly. “But Rockley’s a slippery one. We can’t keep a bead on him when he goes out.”

“His coachmen get training,” Dalton said. “Never take the same route twice, never go straight to a destination. In case anyone—like you folk—tries to follow him.”

“This is precisely why you’ll come into play, Dalton.” Harriet stood and pulled out several pieces of paper, as well as ink and a pen, from a side table. She held them out to him. “Write down everything you know about Rockley’s daily schedule.”

He stared at the paper and writing implements.

“Ah,” said Harriet, lowering her hands. “You can’t.”

Dalton’s look was thunderous. “’Course I can read and write. We had ragged schools in Bethnal Green.”

“Then…” Harriet waved the paper and pen at Dalton.

Still, he didn’t take the writing materials. He might be literate, yet Eva suspected he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the process of writing. Likely his education stopped at an early age. Time spent in the schoolroom meant less time earning money. Even very small children could weave baskets or put matches in boxes.

As the awkward moment stretched on, she stepped forward and took the pen and paper. Making herself brusque and businesslike, she sat at the table. “It’s always faster if someone else serves as amanuensis. Besides, most men have appalling handwriting.”

Without looking at him, she arranged the paper, opened the bottle of ink and dipped the pen nib in. Finally, she glanced up, and caught his brief look of gratitude. It couldn’t be easy, admitting to a room of strangers that you didn’t possess a skill everyone else had.

“Right, then,” she continued, “we’ll need Rockley’s full schedule. Starting with the time he wakes up. Every hour needs to be accounted for.”

Using his heel, Lazarus pushed out a chair for Dalton. Dalton eyed the seat warily. Gingerly, he lowered himself into it, filling the small chair, and it creaked beneath his weight. He looked as comfortable as if it had been upholstered with broken glass.

“Um … yeah … let’s see.” He shifted and the chair gave another squeak of protest. “Rockley … uh … wakes up … wakes up at … uh…” He dragged his hands through his hair, tugged at his unbuttoned collar, and readjusted his position in the chair.