Touch of Steel: A Novel of the Clockwork Agents (2 page)

* * *

“You look like shite.”

Alastair Payne, Earl of Wolfred, wiped the dirt from his hands with the remains of an old shirt. Smears of oil and dirt stained the once-pristine linen. He’d been working on the Velocycle for a good three-quarters of an hour before his oldest friend, Lucas Grey, showed up, and now the machine was in top condition.

“I’ve been back in the country for a fortnight, and already you’re trying to woo me with your considerable charm.” A sardonic smile curved his lips. “Really, Luke. People will talk.”

Many men would bristle at the affront to their masculinity, but Luke merely chuckled. “What I lack in tact I have an abundance of in sincerity. Arden’s worried about you.”

It was a cheap shot, and they both knew it. Alastair no longer considered himself in love with Arden, but she was still a dear friend. In fact, she and Luke were possibly his only true friends. Because of that bond, he knew that Arden wasn’t the only one of the two of them who was worried.

“I’m fine.”

“No pain?”

As though on cue, his left leg twinged—a bone-deep ache, though there wasn’t any bone left to cause discomfort, just metal beneath the flesh. “None. Evie says I simply need to regain a stone or two and I’ll be right as rain.” He’d been putting his body through its paces in an attempt to regain the strength he’d lost after being left for dead in Spain. He would be strong again. Stronger.

And he would be more careful as to whom he offered his heart.

“Good.” Luke’s pale gaze was sharp as it met his. “And mentally? Are you recovered there as well?”

Had it been anyone else, Alastair would have told him to bugger off, but Luke was no stranger to the effects a life of intrigue and deceit could have on a man’s mind. “Better than I ought to be, I’m told.”

Luke frowned, dark brows pulling low over pale blue eyes. “According to whom?”

“Evie.” He tossed the soiled rag of a shirt onto a nearby workbench. “She seems to think I’mhis think afraid to admit how deeply the attack affected me.”

His friend regarded him for a moment, his sharp face as unreadable as a blank slate. “Are you?”

“No.” Alastair settled his hands on his hips. “This concern for my welfare is appreciated, believe me, but I’m getting a little tired of everyone thinking I’m headed for a cell in Bedlam. I’ve had people try to kill me before.”

Luke’s expression didn’t change. “This is the first time it was someone you fancied yourself in love with.”

“I didn’t love her,” he scoffed. No, but he had liked her awfully well.

“Fine. You cared for her, and you believed she cared about you, right up until the moment she led you into a trap that resulted in your being stabbed, crushed beneath a carriage and left for dead. I don’t understand how you can be all right with that, either. I wouldn’t be.”

“You seemed fine enough when your former mistress tried to kill you,” Alastair shot back. It had been little more than a year since Rani Ogitani revealed herself as a traitor and almost got Luke and his wife, Arden, killed. At the time, Alastair had been in love with Arden, and part of him wouldn’t have minded comforting his friend’s widow. After all, they’d believed Luke to be dead for seven years before that.

Well, Alastair had believed him dead. Arden had never given up hope. She had never stopped loving a man who really had no idea how lucky he was to have her. Luke knew now, though. The forced amnesia that had kept him from his wife hadn’t completely gone away, but Luke hadn’t needed his memories to fall in love with Arden again.

Luke scowled. He was devilishly good at scowling. “I never loved her, and she never pretended to love me.”

“I guess that makes you a better judge of character than I am,” he said, sounding like a peevish five-year-old, “because I thought Sascha’s affection for me was genuine.” Right up until she stuck a dagger in his side. Fortunately, she missed all the important bits. She hadn’t expressed even a hint of remorse when she limped away from the carriage, leaving him pinned beneath it, her betrayal cutting far deeper than any blade could.

The thing that cut deepest, however, was the realization that he’d allowed himself to be played like a fool, like a boy right out of the nursery.

Luke’s scowl deepened. “This isn’t about me. It’s about you, you great ginger arse.”

“I told you, I’m
fine
.” And he was, for the most part. “Are you too thickheaded to understand that?”

“You’re the one who’s mentally impaired if you think I believe that load of horse shite. You’re not fine, Alastair. No one in your situation would be fine.”

Alastair paused, on the verge of telling his oldest friend to go straight to hell with hopes of being buggered by the very devil. Luke was only concerned for his well-being, so why was he denying what the other man so clearly understood? What was he trying to prove by lying?

“You’re right,” he admitted. “I’m not fine, but I will be, and I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want tobec’t wa discuss her or what she did—not until I can do so without blaming myself for being such a naive fool. That said, will you please leave it alone?” Or would he not be satisfied until Alastair laid himself flayed open before him, whining about how he’d thought himself so smooth, seducing the German girl into gathering information for him, only to realize too late that she was a Company sympathizer set up to seduce him, and the lover of the same man he’d been sent to investigate?

Luke’s mouth tilted. “Not another word. Show me what you’ve done to this great hulking beast.” He gestured at Alastair’s custom-built Velocycle, which was equipped with concealed weapons such as aether pistols and a tracking mechanism that allowed him to “call” the machine to him by simply pressing a button.

Grateful for the change of topic, Alastair showed him the modifications he’d made, such as a small aether cannon over the back wheel for firing upon pursuers. “I put a new engine in her. She’ll top fifty now.”

“Miles?” At his nod, Luke whistled. “I’ll have to get you to take a look at my machine. You’ve always been the more mechanically inclined of the two of us.”

Yes, for all the good it had done him. “Bring it over some afternoon. I’ll take a look.” He pointed out the other improvements he’d made—mostly cosmetic. Tinkering on the Velocycle had kept his mind occupied, giving him something to think about other than having been made an arse of by a woman he’d entertained a future with. Though, when he first met Sascha, she’d simply been a substitute for the woman he couldn’t have—Arden. That only added insult to injury—that he’d been completely taken in by a woman he’d seen only as a diversion.

A bell rang as Luke studied the Velocycle. It was for the handset and mouthpiece that provided communication between the building that stored his engine-based vehicles and the main house. He grabbed the handset on the second bell. “Yes, what is it?”

His housekeeper’s voice filled his ear. “Begging your pardon, my lord, but there’s a young girl here who says she has a message for Lord Huntley’s ears alone.”

It had to be W.O.R. business. Only the Wardens of the Realm would send a verbal message. Notes were too easily found and read. Verbal messages could be turned into lies if the messenger was set upon. Verbal messages could be taken to a person’s grave.

“Send the girl out, Mrs. Grue.”

“Of course, sir. Right away.”

Alastair hung up and turned to Luke, who stood beside the Velocycle, watching him. “Something wrong?”

“There’s a messenger here for you.”

Luke frowned. “Warden?”

“I assume so. Are you on assignment?”

His friend shook his dark head. “I meant it when I gave my and Arden’s resignations. I haven’t done any work for the W.O.R. other than consulting on Company operative interrogations.”

“It must be important for them to track you down here.” They hadn’t bothered with Alastair much at all since his return, but he had no desire to seem petty, so he kept that to himself. Plus he. elf. Pl’d wager Ashford—the bird-beaked ponce—was enjoying his position as acting director too much to risk Alastair’s taking it from him.

“It had best be.” Luke wore a dark expression that would make even Alastair think twice about engaging him. The man’s skeleton was entirely augmented with gregorite—the hardest metal known to man—and he’d been trained to kill by both the Wardens and that organization’s enemy agency, the Company.

The rivalry, for lack of a better word, between the W.O.R. and the Company went back to the years leading up to the war with America. The Company had started in Boston, but quickly spread its tentacles around the world, gathering up those who wished to bring down the British Empire—and its friends. They’d started as rebels—idealists—but now had their own agenda for world domination, their goals long since bastardized and twisted.

At least that was how most Wardens viewed them. Alastair reckoned Company agents saw themselves as the heroes in their intrigues, just as any Warden might regard him/herself. Sometimes he thought right and wrong amounted to little more than point of view.

A few moments later there came a knock upon the door. Alastair opened it to find a young girl of perhaps twelve standing at the threshold. “Lord Wolfred?” she inquired. “I’m Betsey Meekins. I’ve a message for Lord Huntley.”

Her no-nonsense, very-adult tone made him smile. “Come in, Miss Meekins.” He stepped back so she might enter the building. She crossed the threshold as regally as a queen and walked directly up to Luke, who was easily a full foot taller than she.

Betsey offered her hand, which Luke took, a vaguely amused expression replacing his scowl. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Meekins. What is the message?”

She glanced over her shoulder at Alastair. “They didn’t say anything about having an audience, my lord.”

“I assure you Lord Wolfred is trustworthy, and he can be privy to anything you wish to tell me.”

She shrugged as she turned back to him. “So long as you’ll take responsibility for him. I’m to tell you that a Miss Claire Brooks from America is in the infirmary and will speak only to you.”

Color leached from Luke’s lean cheeks. “Claire Brooks. Are you certain?”

The girl nodded. “I’m never uncertain, sir.”

Alastair would have chuckled at her youthful arrogance were it not for the expression on his friend’s face. Luke looked as though he’d seen a ghost.

“Tell the acting director, Ashford, I’ll be there shortly.” Luke took a coin from his pocket and handed it to the girl. “Run along now. There’s a good girl.”

Betsey curtsied to them both and quickly took her leave. Alastair waited until the door had shut and she would have to be out of earshot before he asked, “Now it’s my turn to ask whether or not
you
are fine.”

Luke chuckled with little humor. “I don’t think so, my friend. Not at all. I’m off to the Wardens, and you are coming with me.”

“Good lord, man. What the Lon. Whatdevil for?” Luke had never asked for him to accompany him anywhere that he could remember.

“So you can plead my case to Arden when my past bites me on the arse.”

Understanding dawned. “So Claire Brooks . . . ?” Alastair raised his brow suggestively.

His friend rubbed a hand over hi
s brow. “Is a Company agent. And my former lover.”

Chapter 2

If she could lure the guard to her bedside, Claire might be able to overpower him long enough to use his own weapon against him. Unfortunately, she was wearing nothing but a flimsy chemise, and her injuries would make escape a slow and arduous task.

“You wouldn’t make it out of the ward, let alone the building.”

She looked up. Dr. Stone stood above her. She hadn’t even noticed the woman approach. Either she was still foggy from the opiates she’d been given or she was losing her focus. Neither was acceptable. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No, of course not.” It might have been her imagination, but Claire thought the other woman rolled her eyes. “I need to check your wounds.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll try to overpower you?”

Wooden legs scraped the floor as Dr. Stone pulled a chair to her bedside. “Are you afraid I’ll give you enough laudanum to ensure you never wake up?”

“No,” she scoffed. “That wouldn’t be in your best interest.” She was useful to the Wardens. She just had to make certain she remained so until she’d recovered enough to make an attempt at freedom.

“And trying to escape wouldn’t be in yours.” The doctor hitched her dark brown trousers and sat down. “I’m going to lift your gown. Let me know if anything hurts.”

She already hurt—all over. The carriage might have broken her fall, but she felt as though it had broken a few bones at the same time. Claire gritted her teeth in anticipation of the pain to come. “Go ahead.”

Dr. Stone lifted the gown and peeled back the bloodstained muslin over Claire’s side. Claire sucked in a breath as the fabric pulled at her skin, her dried blood acting as a kind of glue.

“Care to dump some salt on it while you’re at it?” she demanded. “Maybe poke it with a stick?”

“You’re very lucky,” the doctor said. “The shot missed anything vital; elsewise you’d really have something to whine about.”

Whining? The woman accused her of whining when she’d just been shot and fallen off a roof. Claire gave her a grim look. “So lucky I ended up in Warden custody and your charming care.”

The darker woman shot her a surprised glance. Then her lips twitched. “Better than dead.”

“That depends on your view of the world.”

Dr. Stone’s dark gaze went back to heze=r work as she applied salve to Claire’s side. “Dead is dead, Miss Brooks. Anything else means there’s still hope.”

“And what exactly do you think I should have hope for?”

Clean bandages were smoothed over her ravaged flesh by gentle hands. “That the Earl of Huntley is inclined to plead your case.”

Claire shrugged. The movement pulled at her stitches and made her wince. “Either he will or he won’t.” Inside, she wasn’t nearly so disinterested. If Luke couldn’t do anything for her, she would have to try to escape on her own. The longer she was held in Warden custody, the farther ahead of her Howard would get, and she wasn’t going to give him much of a chase in her current condition. “What do you care?”

The doctor stood. “I believe in the sanctity of life. Occupational hazard, I suppose. Get some rest. They’ll be moving you to a cell as soon as you’re ready. You’ll be more comfortable there.”

Her brows rose. “I doubt that.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll check on you later. Rest now.”

Claire closed her eyes, but sleep eluded her. Her mind insisted on worrying, working over every detail of her pursuit of Howard. How could she have been so stupid as to let him get away? It was the mistake of a green agent, which she was not. She’d been with the Company since she was fifteen. Thirteen years of experience should have at least kept her out of Warden hands. Instead, she’d allowed her emotions to rule her and got herself not only shot, but captured.

Robert would be rolling in his grave right now—if he had one. She had his pocket watch and that was it. Even his signet ring, the one that had belonged to their father and grandfather, had been lost to the explosion that claimed her brother’s life.

She was completely alone in the world, and it was all Stanton Howard’s fault.

Tears threatened to slip from beneath her lashes, but she refused to let them go. She would cry for Robert once she had avenged him, and not a moment before. It was senseless, she knew, but if she cried now, she feared she might lose her memories of him, along with the rage that drove her. Grief was all she had, and she would not give it up. Not yet.

So she forced herself to think of happy times, of years long ago when her mother and father were still alive, and the four of them had been a family. Occasionally they’d been a happy one when she was a child, before her father began to drink more and more often, lost his job and became a mean, self-loathing creature. She thought of Christmases spent together, of birthdays, town picnics and dances when she got to wear her finest dress and hope that John Taylor would
finally
notice that she was no longer a little girl.

Sleep must have come for her after all, for when she heard the male voices above her, she opened her eyes to find her vision blurry and her head foggy. Her hand immediately went for her aether pistol, only to find nothing. Right. She was a prisoner. John Taylor had married Althea Bowers, and Robert was dead.

“Claire.”

Her heart rate slowed. She knew that voice. She’d heard it in her ear many a night. Her gaze lifted and locked with one of purest bath of purlue ice. “Five.”

He winced at the name, and Claire cursed herself for using it. But that was how she knew him. She hadn’t known he was an earl when she shared her bed with him. She hadn’t known he was a married man with a wife waiting for him at home.

It would have made a difference, knowing that he was married. Sometimes being a spy meant seducing men one didn’t particularly like, or men who didn’t hold themselves to the same vows of constancy as their wives. Spend enough time with such men, and finding one you did fancy—who didn’t belong to another woman—was a rare find, and one to be taken advantage of.

She hadn’t known he was a damn Warden. Then again, neither had he.

He looked better. Fitter. Happier. His black hair was a little longer, the angles of his face a little less sharp. He had another man with him. This one wasn’t quite as tall as Fi . . . Lord Huntley, but he was more muscular. He was definitely English, with reddish hair and gray eyes.

And the way he stared down his nose at her. It was a strangely nice nose, for an Englishman. He had brackets etched on either side of his mouth that suggested he knew how to smile and did so often, though they might have just as easily been cracks from attempting to smile just once. He didn’t look like a man who laughed all that often—or ate, for that matter. He could stand to gain a few pounds.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

Broad shoulders straightened beneath an olive green coat, and a gingery brow rose mockingly. “Alastair Payne, Lord Wolfred.” Ah, the fine lines around his eyes and mouth weren’t made from humor, but from mockery. She wasn’t impressed, despite his pretty face. Christian names meant little in their line of work. “What do the Wardens call you?”

His expression didn’t change, though his eyes went as cold and flat as a rain-soaked street. “Wouldn’t be very deserving of such a surreptitious title if I told you, would I?”

No, of course not, but that didn’t change that she’d like to know who she was up against. “That’s hardly what you English call ‘sporting’ when you know who I am.”

To her surprise, the rugged man turned that stormy gaze of his to Huntley, who shot him the barest of glances. “The Company called her the Dove.”

Payne’s eyebrows pulled into a deep scowl. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, his gravelly voice a harsh rasp.

Claire might have smiled in pride if not for the hatred dripping from his words. Hard gray eyes locked with hers. For one disconcerting second they flashed like twin mirrors. “You’re lucky no one’s sneaked in here to kill you.”

She hadn’t thought of that. Her mind had been too clouded by the laudanum to think clearly. When word got out that she’d been captured, there were Wardens who would try to kill her. The Company would as well. They wouldn’t want to risk her spilling their secrets.

Hell’s bells.

Huntley cleared his throat. “I don’t know what you think I can do for you, Claire, but I’m not technically with the W.O.R. anymore.”

She looked into the eyes of the man who had saved her life on more than one occasion and saw that he was telling the truth. She nodded, resigned. She was on her own, then. “I want you to know that I had no idea what the Company did to you.” It was just another reason to hate the bastards. It was one thing to capture an enemy; it was another to meddle so deeply with his mind that he didn’t know who he was. They’d sent him home to kill his own wife as the ultimate revenge—not only against the wife, but against Huntley as well.

“I never thought you did,” he replied in that low, dark voice of his. He frowned as he sat down in the chair Dr. Stone had occupied earlier. “How did they even catch you?”

It was meant as a compliment, but it didn’t feel like one under the weight of Payne’s steely gaze. “I got myself shot and fell off a roof.” She managed a smile. “Rough night.”

“What can I do for you, pet?”

Claire’s heart warmed at the nickname. “You know me. I need you to vouch that the information I give the Wardens is true.”

“Why would we take anything you give us as fact?” Payne demanded. Color had risen to the jut of his cheekbones, and she noticed he had a smattering of freckles there.

Claire turned her focus back to Five. Damn it,
Huntley
. “Robert is dead.”

Sincere sympathy softened his austere features, eliciting a hot wash of tears behind her eyes. She blinked them back. She’d rather be shot in the face than cry in front of Payne.

“Claire, I’m so sorry.”

“Who’s Robert?”

Huntley glanced up at his scowling friend. “Her brother. He was a friend of mine.”

She expected Payne to twist the knife and rub a little salt in the raw meat of the wound. He did not. Instead, he inclined his head, the waves of his thick hair flashing copper under the lights. “My condolences.”

“I don’t need sympathy from you,” she snarled. It was rude of her, but anger was the only thing that could keep the tears at bay. “You would have killed him yourself had you been given the chance.”

His eyes brightened with emotion—a spark of lightning in the middle of a thunderstorm. “Yes, I very well might have, but if you’re as eager to hand over Company secrets as you seem to be, I wager it wasn’t the Wardens who ended him at all, was it?”

There was no cruelty in the words, just cold, hard assumption. Claire swallowed against the hatred clogging her throat. She didn’t know this man, but she’d love to rip that lovely face right off his damn English skull.

“No,” she replied from between clenched teeth, holding his gaze. “It wasn’t. My brother was killed because of the Company.” She turned to Huntley. She couldn’t give too much away. “He was betrayed by another agent and died in an explosion of that same agent’s design. There wasn’t even a body left for me to bury.”

“I’m sorry, Claire. Very much.”

He meant it, she knew. “They didnknewThey dit do a thing to avenge him. The agent responsible is still free.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know.” It was the first time, she realized, that she’d ever lied to him.

Huntley stared at her with those piercing eyes of his, weighing the truth of what she’d told him. “What can you offer the Wardens to justify leniency?”

That was simple. Her chin lifted. “I’ll tell you every Company secret I know—including how to find Stanton Howard and the man who tried to destroy your mind.”

* * *

“Surely you don’t mean to take that seasoned liar at her word?” Alastair shook his head. “Christ, Luke. I shouldn’t even have to ask.”

They were in the study at Luke’s house in Mayfair, not far from Alastair’s own. He paced because he was too agitated to stand still. Luke, however, seemed terribly calm as he poured a dram of whiskey for each of them.

“I’ve never known Claire to be a liar,” Luke replied, offering him a glass. Alastair took it and downed more than half its contents.

“That was when she thought you were on the same side.” Heat from the liquor blossomed in his chest. “For the love of God, she’s turned her back on her own agency.”

“Careful.” Luke gestured to his glass. Alastair glanced down. He was holding the crystal so tight, a fine crack ran down it. “I gave the W.O.R. everything I had on the Company as well.”

Alastair flexed his fingers, forcing the metal beneath his skin to ease its grip. “It’s hardly the same. You were a Warden for years. The Company abducted you, erased your memories and sent you back here to kill your own wife, all as a kind of vengeance against you, Arden and the W.O.R. Of course you turned over all you know about their operations.”

“The Company has allowed her brother’s death to go unpunished.”

“Maybe for good reason.” He downed the rest of his whiskey.

Luke’s face took on a dangerous tightness. “He was my friend.”

Alastair made a face. “And you were shagging her. Neither of those things says much for your clarity of judgment.”