Touch of Steel: A Novel of the Clockwork Agents (23 page)

“I’m pretty much done. Just a lecture planned for tomorrow and then back to England. You?”

“We’re to set sail before dawn.” Nell began to walk, so Evelyn fell into step beside her. “I’ll walk you back to your lodgings. Where are you staying?”

Evelyn told her. Her German was atrocious, but she attempted it regardless, “Der Lowe und Der Lamm.” The Lion and the Lamb. It wasn’t a W.O.R. hotel, or even one sanctioned by the Schatten Ritters. It was the hotel she and Mac once stayed in. The same room as well. She told herself she had requested it because of the view.

It truly was an astonishing view.

“Is that place still t p1em">

Evie didn’t respond. The hotel was a beautiful old stone thing and she loved it, but she wasn’t about to say so in case her companion decided to share that information with her captain. Just the fact that she was staying there revealed more than she’d ever want him to know.

Instead she asked, “How is everyone? Did Barker get those new teeth he wanted?” The memory brought a smile to her lips.

Nell snorted and nodded. “He did. Can’t get him to stop smiling now. McNamara’s become a grandfather, and Esther and Dirty Joe finally jumped the anvil.”

This was news indeed! “I thought he said he’d never marry her.”

“He did. Then she decided that maybe she wouldn’t marry him. That changed up his mind right quick.”

“Yes, I imagine it would,” Evie replied with a grin of her own.

“I suppose you wouldn’t have heard that we lost Good Jock.”

The grin slid from her face. Jock’s real name had been Jacques le Bon, hence the foolish but suitable nickname. During their brief acquaintance he had taught her many of his grandmother’s natural cures and remedies, some of which she often used. One had led to the discovery of the accelerated healing liquid she kept in the medical facility at Warden headquarters.

“No,” she murmured. “I hadn’t heard. How did it happen?”

“Garroted by one of those Bear Bastards.” “Bears” was what most agents in Europe called their Russian counterparts.

“I’m so sorry. I know how much Ma . . . you all loved him.”

Nell nodded, obviously ignoring her near slip. Mac would hear about that too, no doubt.

God, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him—even before Nell found her. Maybe it was this city, where they’d made such bittersweet memories, or maybe it was the fact that every time she slept with a different man she was all the more aware that he was not the man she wanted. Nell’s appearance was definitely a stick poking an infected wound.

Shouldn’t it have healed by now? It had been years. She should be over him rather than pining for him like her grandmother had supposedly pined for her English lover.

Nell continued to talk about other crew members, but not the one Evelyn really wanted to hear about. She listened raptly, laughing and tearing up in tandem as she heard about their triumphs and sorrows.

She looked up and saw her hotel in the near distance. Soon this meeting would be at an end. It would have to be. If Nell came into the building with her, there was a good chance the older woman would be recognized and more than likely taken into Warden custody. The Wardens didn’t much care for pirates, and after Evie left Mac, that was exactly what he and his crew had become, turning their backs on Crown and country.

“You’ll tell Mac how sorry I am about Jock, won’t you?” Evelyn asked, finally allowing herself to say his name.

Nell stopped walking, so she stopped as well. “You can tell him yourself.”

Surely she hadn’t heard that correctly. Her heart was beating so loud, it was hard to tell. “What did you say?”

The other woman’s expression turned sympathetic. “I’m sorry, Evie. I need you to know I was against this from the start.”

Cold settled in Evelyn’s chest. Claire would have had a weapon in hand by now; so would’ve Arden. She just stood there, stupid. “Against what, Nell?”

Out of the dark alley just behind Nell emerged two more familiar faces—Barker and Wells. Barker with his leathery face and kind brown eyes. Wells with her hair so red, it looked to be on fire and eyes bluer than the waters around Jamaica. They didn’t look happy.

Two more came up from behind her. She couldn’t tell if she knew them or not. So someone had been watching her. It just hadn’t been Franz.

Sloppy, Evie,
she told herself.

“If it’s ransom you want, you know the Wardens won’t pay it.”

“We don’t want money, my girl.”

Then what? Evelyn pulled her blade free once more. She couldn’t take them all, but she could wound a couple of them badly enough that they’d feel it for the rest of their sorry lives. She’d start with Nell, her betrayer.

Evelyn lunged with her dagger but barely made it two steps before she felt a sharp sting in her side, followed by a jolt that dropped her to her knees on the cobblestones. They’d shocked her. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t really think. Couldn’t do anything but twitch. At least she hadn’t soiled herself.

Nell’s face loomed over hers. “I’m really sorry, darlin’. I mean it.” She pressed a white cloth over Evelyn’s face.

Chloroform. Bloody brilliant. She’d have someone’s head for this. Maybe his heart, too. Or his spleen. She’d remove them while he was still conscious. She’d—

* * *

She woke up with a mouth that felt as though it was lined with cotton wool and muscles that pinged as though they’d been denied blood. At least she was on a bed and her limbs weren’t bound.

Evelyn moved her head on the soft pillow. It smelled delicious—vanilla and nutmeg. Some of her favorite memories involved a man with that exact scent. Often he’d join her in bed, his skin tanned yet smooth, hair damp from the bath, and she’d bury her face in the hollow between his neck and shoulder and take a deep, intoxicating breath.

She was in the middle of just such a breath when the reality of the situation struck her. She was on a bed that smelled of Mac. Beneath the pounding of her heart she could hear engines—a gentle
whump
,
whump
that never failed to lull her into slumber.

Bloody hell, she was on the
Queen V
!

Her attempt to launch herself off the bed ended with her strengthless carcass being dumped on the rug. d o

She grasped the edge of a window and peered out. The muscles in her thighs trembled, but held.

Clouds. Not fog but clouds. They were in the bloody sky. She knew it. She just knew it!

Closing her eyes, she swore silently until she ran out of foul words. It took three languages for her to pull herself together. She should have known that meeting Nell wasn’t just a coincidence. It never was.

Why did they put her in this room, though? Of all the rooms about this vessel, why did she have to wake up on the bed she’d slept in for months during one of the happiest times of her life? Everywhere she turned there was something of his—a discarded shirt, a pair of shiny brown leather boots, a straight razor with a pearl handle she’d held in her own hand more times than she could remember.

That was a lie. If put to the test, she could probably recall every damn one.

Her knees trembled, but she’d be tarred and feathered if she’d touch that bed again. Slowly, she made her way to the desk. The room was large for one on a ship, but still small enough that there was a place for everything and everything in its place. The ship hit a pocket of wind and bucked, tossing Evie into the captain’s chair with graceless ease. Thank God it was bolted to the floor.

No sooner had she righted herself than the door opened. No knock, no inquiry as to her state of decency. There was only one person it could be. She drew a deep breath.

Please let him be fat and pockmarked. And bald.
His hair had always been his vanity.

God was obviously not in a mind to favor her today. The door swung open to reveal shoulders almost the same width as the frame in a cream linen shirt and narrow hips in snug brown trousers. She was on eye level with his crotch—not that she minded, but it wasn’t very dignified.

She raised her gaze and wished she hadn’t. The last few years had been kind to Gavin MacRae. He was a tall man with long legs. His back was as straight and proud as ever. His stubbled jaw was just as firm, and his chin still had that shallow cleft. His mouth was wide and slim, bracketed by smile lines. They fanned out from the corners of his eyes, too, like faint scars in the tan of his face. Only, those eyes didn’t sparkle at the sight of her as they’d once done.

She dropped her gaze, chest pinching. It had to be because of the current still tormenting her body. His nose . . .

“Did you break that poor thing again?” she blurted.

He didn’t have to ask. His hand went immediately to the center of his face. Even his hands were as she remembered—long and strong.

“No,” he replied, quickly dropping his hand. “Someone else did it for me.”

His mouth was as smart as ever as well. And he still possessed that drawl of a voice that sounded almost completely without atelze="ccent except for a little Texas with a hint of Scotland—he’d grown up in both places and considered them equally as his home.

Or at least he had at one time.

Bloody hell but it was good to see him. Painful, too, like pressing on a bruise. He seemed healthy and hale—the lawless life obviously suited him. At least he was alive, which meant he’d survived a lot longer than she ever expected.

“You look good,” he said, nodding his head in her direction as he crossed his arms over the width of his chest. His shirt strained at the shoulders.

Evelyn looked down at herself. Her clothes were dirty and she’d been wearing them for almost a full twenty-four hours, she calculated, given the look of the sky outside. If he thought this was good, then his taste certainly hadn’t improved.

“So do you.” How calm she sounded—like they were having tea. Like she hadn’t broken his heart and her own in the process. “What Nell told me about Jock—was it true?”

His features tightened. “Yeah. It’s true. We lost him two years ago.”

Just a year after she’d walked out on him. “That must have been hard for you.”

“Been through worse.” The edge in his usually smooth voice said more than any words ever could. She hadn’t been forgiven. Odd then that he’d had her brought aboard his ship unconscious.

“What’s this all about, Mac?” she asked wearily. Despite a forced nap, she was tired. Exhausted even.

“Tired after your night of unbridled rutting?”

Under different circumstances she would have smiled at his jealousy. He rarely ever used coarse language in front of her. “Rutting” was as rude as he was going to get. She didn’t smile, however; she rubbed her forehead and hoped the look she gave him was more disinterested than remorseful.

“If you wanted to talk, you could have come to my hotel. There was no need to grab me off the street.” Wait. Was that her luggage in the corner by the armoire?

He flashed that smirk she remembered so well and leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, arms still folded over his chest. “Talk? I don’t want to talk. Darlin’, this is an abduction. Consider yourself my prisoner.”

* * *

Perhaps he could have made the statement a little less gothic novel–style and a little more desperate, but Mac wasn’t exactly in the frame of mind to give a damn how he sounded—especially not to Evelyn Stone.

She did look good, despite a little grime. More striking than he remembered. That was fate’s way of buggering him good and hard. Long black hair spilled down her back in glossy waves, pins sticking out of it. Large whiskey and chocolate eyes framed by long sooty lashes glared at him. And that mouth . . .

If he wanted to talk
. Christ on a rudder, did she think so much of her own appeal? “You’re here because of your skills as a surgeon, not because I care for your company,” he told her roughly. A little too ro lider, did sughly to sound sincere, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her shoulders pulled back as her spine snapped defiantly straight. She had strong shoulders for a woman. Her entire body was strong. He remembered times with her legs and arms around him, holding him to her like she’d never, ever let him go. He’d always admired the long, defined musculature beneath her soft café au lait skin. Always admired her.

And then she did let him go.

“Are you in need of some sort of . . . procedure?” she inquired, as though the thought of cutting into him gave her perverse pleasure. Obviously ripping out his heart three years ago hadn’t been enough.

“Sorry to disappoint, Doc, but I’m not your patient.”

“Pity. I warn you, I don’t support piracy and I have no intention of stitching a pirate back together.”

Yes, she despised pirates and all they stood for—it was part of the reason he’d taken on the profession. Every country in Europe that touched open water had heard of ballsy Captain Mac and his wily crew. “It’s not a pirate, either.” That was all he planned to tell her. “Get cleaned up and meet me on deck in fifteen minutes.”

She arched a gently angled brow. “And if I don’t?”

“It’s a long way to the ground.” It was an empty threat. He needed her too badly to let her go.