“I scrubbed the alley.” She made a check mark. “That is worth three pounds four pence a day for a total of thirteen-”
“You used
my
labor.”
What was he doing?
Shut up.
She looked up. “I paid them.”
Don’t say a word.
“With what?”
Goddammit!
“Food.”
“You can’t pay them with food.”
“Don’t be silly.”
He stared at her.
“You look struck by the notion, but of course I can, let me explain,” she continued. “You pay for a meal at an inn or dining hall, do you not?”
Silly?
She tilted her head. “Or do you not pay? Do they let you bribe them?” This was said somewhat cheerfully.
The words of the query were on his tongue, but he swallowed them. He already knew the answer. Her instability was obvious.
“I am sure you then forgive one of their debts,” she said in that perpetually warm voice.
He had seen desperate, starving men eat rat shit on the streets. They usually foamed at the mouth within a week, crazed and infected. That had to be why he was staring at her lips so hard. For evidence.
She leaned forward, conspiratorially, and winked. “I won’t tell.”
Rat-shit-eating insane.
He flicked a finger at the man by the door without looking away from her. “Leave.”
She raised a brow as she turned to watch the man flee, his large frame not hindering his flight, the door slamming behind him. “I say, you are most abusive with that word, Mr. Merrick. Poor Bertrand. Do most people hop to do your bidding?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that is not good. It builds character to be told no.”
“You must have a lot of character then.”
“That is kind of you.” Warm smile.
“I was being rude.”
“Well, then at least I can say you are an honest man.”
He stared at her. She smiled back.
He felt like a bow, strung taut in the hands of a warrior who had been holding it in position far too long. “What do you want, Miss Pace?”
What do you want from me?
It was the question that had been plaguing him day and night for a quarter cycle of the moon now.
“I aspire to fairness, Mr. Merrick. I appreciate your relief of our debts last week, but truly cannot in good conscience just accept such abject generosity. The Paces are good for their words and debts.”
There was a slight buzzing in his ears. “You are going to deliver chickens and clean alleys for the next decade?”
“Oh, no. Those are just small things. Things I thought would be nice to trade for. It hasn’t fully trickled through the business vines yet that most of our debts have been cleared, so I am still forced to negotiate for things without true wherewithal. That will change soon though, thanks to you.”
Roman would love her. They were both foolishly chipper people. Especially in the face of dire circumstance.
If only Roman were here, Andreas wouldn’t be dealing with this.
No one
dealt with Andreas when they could deal with Roman. Which was
exactly
the way he liked it.
“In the meantime, Mr. Merrick, I have begun to list all of the ways that I can help through means other than using currency. For instance, I am quite a good matchmaker. I have a few possibilities for you already in mind. You could certainly use a woman’s sensibilities around here. The boys downstairs are desperate for a mothering influence.”
He couldn’t even credit of what she was speaking. She thought he’d care about a mothering influence for the boys who worked for them? They were Roman’s responsibility. Everyone employed here was. Everyone knew that. And yet with those wide eyes staring at him, he almost felt an . . . an urge to nod.
Perhaps shooting
himself
was the answer.
“The prospects must be of hardy temperament, of course. You seem to terrify the daylights out of nearly everyone.”
“I’ve always found the
nearly
to be a pity.”
She clapped her hands together, leaning forward,
inviting him in.
“If you show that humor more often, it will make things infinitely easier.”
“I wasn’t being humorous,” he said stonily. This was just like the first night she had shown up. A pit of terror he hadn’t felt since he was ten years old was creeping up on him. Self-preservation telling him he had to get rid of her any way he could.
“There are a number of—”
He leaned forward, and she stopped talking, leaning farther toward him as well, watching him with interest. She had freckles on the bridge of her nose. He could picture her lifting her face to the sun. “Do you know what I would do to a woman who married me?” he said softly.
She quickly turned a few pages and poised her hand to make a notation. “Do tell me. The more details I have, the better I can help.”
“I’d likely kill her within the first week. With my bare hands, so I didn’t have to dirty anything else.”
She blinked, then carefully turned the pages back, sitting upright again. “We’ll revisit that subject in the future then, shall we? For now, there are a few personal tasks that I would like to undertake for—”
“
No.
”
“—you. They won’t cancel any other debt, but you saved me from—”
“
No.
”
“—certain death. It was beyond noble. And I would be recalcitrant to simply ignore your gesture.”
He
tapped
his quill, and felt the give and heard the soft thwump to know it was broken, the top half hanging by a thread. He glared at her as ferociously as he was able.
She smiled back.
“I imagined you would be lovely, but you increasingly show your generous spirit.”
He tapped his broken quill ten more times, just to pretend he still had control, and ignored the thwumps that should have been sharp raps.
She tilted her head at him. “You are quite handsome, Mr. Merrick. In a very striking and severe way, of course. But it is undeniable. Like a harsh thunderstorm, beautiful lightning cutting and flashing. Did you know?”
Not even the gloriously colored insect had been this repellent and astonishing. He felt an overwhelming urge pulling him to capture such a unique specimen in a jar, so he’d be able to study it forever. But the equally powerful urge to push it as far from him as possible pressed.
“Is that all, Miss Pace?”
“Oh, no, of course not. You have quite a powerful and mysterious way about you as well. It goes with the thunderstorm analogy really. You’re quite, well, magnetic. I’d say that—”
He dropped the broken quill and held up one hand. The other pressed against his forehead. He
never
gave in to such urges. He would have had to kill Bertrand if he’d still been in the room.
“Is that all you have to
report
?”
“Yes, for now,” she said cheerfully. “Though I will be around quite a bit more in the coming weeks.”
He couldn’t contain the horror that caused within him.
“Doing a bit of extra work, nothing to be concerned about.” She waved her hand as if those words could be any further from the truth.
“Concern doesn’t reflect my feeling on the matter.”
“And they say you don’t have feelings.” She winked at him.
Winked. Then pushed at a stiff side section of wig.
“Why are you wearing that ridiculous thing?” he demanded.
She didn’t seem to find the sudden conversational change strange. He wondered if she found anything strange.
“No one pays attention to the elderly on the street. And your men seem quite loyal to you. Do you think they will give me away if they discover my true name? I figured that you would know who I was, and that that would be enough for our debt situation.”
His men knew who she was without his having to say a word. He had a retinue following her at all times. And a girl from Mayfair wouldn’t be able to give hardened street rats the slip. The gossip would have spread quickly from the men who followed her to the men she interacted with at the hell.
Kitchen conversations had probably been vastly amusing concerning the strange, bewigged society girl.
The wig was truly awful.
“Don’t wear it when you are in here.” Coldness spread, and he willed the words back. What the hell was she doing to him? “
Don’t come here at all.
”
She smiled oddly at him, then carefully removed a few pins and shook her head, freeing her real hair from beneath the dowager helmet. Brown hair tumbled messily around her shoulders and down her back.
He could feel the already broken quill break into another piece under his clenched fist but couldn’t bring himself to care. “Your reputation will be stripped if you are found here, yet you reappear every day. Which is much to my displeasure, Miss Pace.”
She pulled fingers through the hair at her temple, looking at his desk as she did so, thank God. “My family’s reputation is the one I am currently trying to rebuild, Mr. Merrick, as I told you previously. It is that which I am concerned with at the moment. I need hardly worry about my own reputation if I cannot fix my family’s.”
Her eyes met his for a moment, piercing, then she smiled softly. The hair on his neck rose. “I am quite pleased with my progress, though. And as a particularly valued investor in our company and fund, I will keep you apprised of all transactions, of course. And—”
He held up his hand again and narrowed his eyes, watching everything about her. She waited patiently, expression bright. As if she were perfectly innocent and naïve. Sparkling like fresh morning dew. Only occasionally slipping to show the workings of a keen mind behind the daftness. Sitting there thrusting that
something
at him, drawing his interest.
He didn’t think she was acting. She was innocent and naïve,
and
sharp and clever. It was irritating. Repulsive. Captivating.
The sudden financial silence of the Pace affairs in London had seemed a godsend for the past week—the only bright spot. Since with her hassling them in the East End, when would she have time to do other things?
But if he forced himself to think on it—and her—the silence meant someone in James Pace’s company was extensively plotting.
And that person was very likely seated across from him.
He studied her. There was a twinkle in her eye. It was nauseating even to recognize such a gleam. She was up to something. She had taken great care, but though well covered, there were smudges under her eyes that bespoke of long nights and too much responsibility.
Plans swirled—strategies formed—vines of ideas and alternatives twirled around and gripped possibilities. Dissonance and dread.
“Very well, Miss Pace. You will give me a weekly report on the fund
and
your company. When you gather details, bring them directly to me before speaking to others.”
Once a week. He could do it. Better to see her once a week and be on top of any possible machinations.
He turned back to the papers on his desk and searched until he found an unbroken pen. And if she wasn’t going to worry about her reputation, he sure as hell wasn’t. She could damn well bring him information directly. She was going to come anyway, obviously. And better than dealing with a half-wit, gibbering accountant. “But I don’t want to see that wig once you enter.”
Shit, damn, cock, fucker.
The silence grew on the other side of his desk. He kept his gaze on the ink stuttering from his new pen as he moved it in what he hoped was the start of an actual number.
“You are
dismissed,
Miss Pace,” he said without looking up.
“Very well.” Her voice was full of verve.
Of course it was.
He could hear her reattaching that ridiculous thing to her hair and gathering her things. “I’ll see you by the week’s end. I wish you a wonderful afternoon, Mr. Merrick!”
He peered up as she walked to the door with soft, swaying movements. She turned at the door, catching him staring, and gave him a bright, soft smile, then shut the door behind her.
He stared at the door for a long, long time, ink pooling around the nib stuck to his page.
T
here was a small woven basket waiting on his desk the next day, still smelling like warmed-from-the-oven sin. A note was attached written with the words “Have a good day!” A drawing of a tiny dog chasing a butterfly completed the absurdity.
He stood in front of his desk, just staring at it and the basket for a full minute. Asps didn’t smell like baked items, but the latter were no less dangerous. He tented the edge of the cloth cover with his smallest finger. Three fruit tarts lay inside.
Poisoned most likely.
He never ate anything that was delivered. Sometimes he didn’t even eat the items brought from the kitchen downstairs. It depended on who cooked and who delivered. He had plenty of experience with an empty belly both before and after he had been dumped on the streets, so it mattered little most days if he survived on salt and water.
The basket sat untouched on the far corner of his desk until one of the boys swept it away at midday. He felt an absurd amount of relief when it was gone.
The next day the note said, “Wishing you good luck with your day’s agenda!” and the drawing showed a man playing chess. There was a dog in that one too. Cinnamon and honey wafted through the room.
The third day it said, “Hard work is beautiful, and you work hard!” with a picture of a grinning dog, tongue out. Andreas’s lips twisted in distaste, and he gingerly pushed the note away from him, so it was facing the other direction from his chair.
And still he could see the curves of the letters in his head. The hand-drawn figures made for him.
He was slowly going insane.
O
n the fourth day, he drummed his fingers looking at the top of the newest basket on his desk. At the linen covering the rich-smelling bread beneath.
Sticky, honey-fingered scent trails finding cracks in the barrier, drifting upward, straight to his brain.
Each day the baked goods smelled
better
than the day before. Like she was putting in extra effort each day. Trying to break down a wall that was unassailable.
He pushed it away.
Five minutes later, he pushed it farther away.
Ten minutes later he threw his pen across the room, grabbed the handle of the basket, and strode toward the door. He swung it back in order to chuck it down the hall. Even as it swung past him, the scent trail lifted, and his arm stopped the forward momentum.
He hadn’t screamed in a very, very long time. But his throat tightened, remembering how.
He took a deep breath, eyes closed, then triple-locked his door and strode downstairs.
He tossed the basket to a boy at the door, who barely caught it, stupid surprise painting his features. If the boy was smart, he would get rid of the basket and not open it to find the savory cobras inside. Andreas brushed past him roughly and walked down the alley. The
clean
alley. Hell, a prostitute would be hard-pressed to choose between the street and her sheets at the moment.
And he could still smell those fucking biscuits, like they had lodged themselves permanently into the space between his lips and nose. Into his consciousness.
Standing near a three-day-old hanged man would be preferable, if only to freshen the tainted air.
Three streets over the shadows behind him grew longer. Fine. Perfect. Whatever it took. He turned into the main thoroughfare. Citizens enveloped him on all sides, and he grimaced in distaste. It was always such when he first entered a crowd. But bodies automatically began shifting to the perimeter of the walk, and he strode through the middle with ease. People could feel the devil in their wake.
He avoided looking at the faces of the hoi polloi around him. People going about their business. Some bemoaning their lot in life, others celebrating their good fortune. Watching them stare or flinch was always irritating, so he avoided making direct eye contact.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of them, as a body, a unit, individuals making up a sweeping tide. When someone wasn’t a part of that crowd, they stuck out. Eyes told much about a person, but in a crowd it was too easy to become distracted by the extra thoughts inevitably caused by meeting a person’s eyes. The way a body shifted never lied.
And the man striding toward him, twitching just a few inches inside the vee of the crowd line that spread in front, might as well have been waving a red flag. The movements of the crowd slowed in Andreas’s view. Two steps away, the man’s arm moved out in a diminished line. One pace away, Andreas stepped into the man, caught his wrist and twisted it, embedding the man’s blade into the man’s own stomach using his forward momentum. Andreas let go, shifting his body forward again, and continued walking, the crowd closing behind.
The screams didn’t start for another six seconds.
It had been a short knife. The kind favored on the streets of York. One of Cornelius’s men most likely. And Cornelius, who ran the underworld of the northern countryside, wasn’t stupid. Which meant—
Andreas pulled his head back just in time and grabbed the arm thrust in front of his neck. Thrust from the alley to the right. The fist glittered. He gripped the exposed wrist and pulled at the same time he thrust a palm against the man’s shoulder. A loud crack sounded. Pushing the openmouthed man away—no one could hear him scream over the racket of the crowd gathered back around the first fallen man—Andreas whirled into the alley and caught the arm of one of the men who approached from behind—shadows snapping back into the darkness.
A quick move sent the man’s head into the wall. He fell to the ground without comment. Another man rushed in, trying to capitalize,
sword
thrusting forth.
Sword
? What the—
He dodged and twisted his body, flat steel sliding along the fabric over his midsection. He grabbed the man’s wrist and cracked a bone there. The man screamed, and the sword released. Andreas pulled his fingers up, smoothly removing it, and stepped back as the man fell to his knees.
“I know who you are,” the man said hoarsely, clutching his broken wrist.
Andreas didn’t show his tension, but he watched the man more carefully.
“People call you the mastermind, the
unnatural.
”
Relief mixed with irritation. Andreas slid forward a step, knowing what the partial afternoon shadows would do to his particular features. Sharp and dark and strangely regal.
Unnatural.
“Am I?”
The man hissed in a breath. “You have at least ten targets on your back. You won’t survive the day.”
“And yet I’ve survived all the days thus far.”
“You control the devil’s machine. And you will be destroyed along with it.”
Ah, a zealot. With a sword. A
sword.
It was like rolling a cannon into a tavern fight.
Though there were some of the Quality who still favored the weapon. For
honor.
Phoebe Pace’s world.
It was a moment’s hesitation on top of his arrogance, but it was enough.
The man lunged forward, and with his functioning hand, he thrust a knife into Andreas’s right leg. A final, desperate effort. Andreas looked down at the knife oddly sticking out, then looked at the man and smiled.
The complete terror that action inspired was . . . always welcome. And worth a few scratches.
He kicked the man in the teeth with his left boot, then reached down and slowly pulled the knife free. The man scrambled back against the wall, the back of one hand clutching his broken wrist over his bloodied mouth, complete terror in his gaze.
Andreas cast a look around the alley. Eyed shadows drew back, disappearing into rock-faced holes and doorways.
Satisfied, he moved forward, towering over the man, weaving the flat handle of the knife through the knuckles of his right hand, blade flashing as it turned. A cute trick he had practiced during the long months he had been bedridden so long ago. “Now then, let’s get to business, shall we?”
He had approximately five minutes before reinforcements or the Watch arrived.
He wistfully pushed aside the thought to crouch at the man’s level, all bare-toothed smile in place. But if he crouched on the ground right now, he’d never get back up.
“You, you . . .” The man was staring in abject horror at Andreas’s trousered leg. There was a thin stream of darkness there—he could feel the trickle of blood. But it was nowhere near the bloodletting the man would imagine from an embedded knife wound.
It was luck or a curse that everyone went for his right leg.
Andreas smiled coldly, eyes never leaving the man’s, and tested the sword in his left hand, getting a feel for it. It had been a while, but he had been raised to handle one, and he’d practiced fiercely years later, hoping that someday he’d use one to kill those who had insisted he be taught in the first place.
“You are wasting your time,” the man croaked. “It doesn’t matter what you do to me.”
“No? I would think it would matter quite a bit to you,” Andreas said. He lifted the man’s chin with the long steel, wryly grateful for it, as he didn’t have to bend to the man’s level. “You can make this as easy or as difficult as you want it to be.”
“Whatever you do to me, twelve men will replace me, just like the Hydra.”
“Twelve.” Andreas eyed the man’s limp and broken hand. He would give him credit for that last strike, but little more. “Each time I speak to one of you, I grow dimmer.”
“Gone will be the slavers of old, of all that is decent. I fight under the banner of revolution.”
Andreas ran the tip of the blade under the man’s jaw, stroking. These
interviews
always worked best when he and Roman worked in tandem, so different from each other in some ways, so similar in others that it was disconcerting. His brother made it a game to extract information easily with his glib smile, but Andreas could inspire terror without help just fine.
“You will fight under a gravestone,” he said, his normal bored tone edged with silk. “And doubtfully a decent one.”
There was a twitch to the man’s puffed eyes. Tiny, but perceptible. Good.
“Or with no marker at all to show you were even of this earth once.” He forced the man to tip his head to the side and saw the diamond mark beneath the starched collar on the back of his neck, the brand. Certainty burned coldly. “No. Straight through to hell. I’ll be waiting for you there too. And your revolution will be snuffed as easily as you extinguished the lives of six men.” He might not keep track of their names from day to day, but the Merricks took care of their own.
And Andreas was
very
good at revenge.
The twitch became a swollen lurch. “I, I don’t know about any dead men. But, but . . . sometimes losses occur. For the greater good. Any who die will die in glory. And their families will be provided for in the new world.”
“Is that what Cornelius told you?” Andreas smiled at the man’s jerk. He hated the bastard who ruled the north, but he had to be admired for the way he ruthlessly used people while at the same time making those people think plans were of their own design. “Did he also tell you that if by some remote chance I decide to turn you over, you will be sentenced to hang? That you are being held responsible by the Crown for last week’s events?” He put pressure on the blade. “Lucky I got to you first,” he whispered.
The man gave a choked sound, eyes wide.
“All debts will be wiped free.” Words spilled like the trickle of blood down his neck. “Everyone starting fresh.”
Andreas watched the way the man tried to hide the shaking of his limbs, the cold sweat dripping down his face from the pain of his wrist and his fear. “You want the Collateral Exchange burned, hmmm?”
“It is
evil
. It preys on vulnerable, desperate people.”
Personal feeling. Andreas examined the hilt of the man’s sword before the link slotted into place. “You are Barton’s fourth son, who lost forty thousand last year.”
The man’s eyes widened. Andreas gave a cold laugh. “Of course you would want the Exchange burned.”
He rarely played with the
ton
. That was Roman’s game. But he had met the senior Barton once when Roman had called him over in the middle of a hand. And Andreas knew everyone, down to their last groat, on paper.
“Forty thousand, seven hundred and forty-two, with seven darlings to spare, as of last week, wasn’t it?” Andreas said, almost lazily. “Gregory Daniels forgave you the two markers for fifteen pounds, twelve pence though. I wouldn’t have. That was a stupid bet to make on O’Leary’s daughter.”
“How—”
Andreas leaned forward, tip pressing and drawing more blood. “I want to know where Cornelius is,” he said harshly.
The man usually stayed holed up in the north, where he held power, but he had been expanding his territory, creeping south more and more over the past year. Trying to make deals and sway those in the middle to his side. Making a play for a piece of the capital. London was the jewel of England, and the Merricks had held that jewel tightly and completely without challenge for the last decade.