Revealed (24 page)

“You are being remarkably accommodating this morning,” he said. “It’s faintly disturbing.”

She shot him her sauciest grin. He removed his hand from her shoulder, the cool air falling between them, cracking their brief cocoon in two. Phillippa stood and picked up Bitsy, who had taken to curling himself at Marcus’s feet and vibrating there. The moment Phillippa stood, her driver and manservant snapped to attention and readied the carriage for her.

“I wish you a pleasant morning then, Mrs. Benning,” Marcus said, seeming to want to say more but hesitating. “Thank you for meeting me.”

“It was my pleasure. You should take care of your eye,” she said, again restraining herself from reaching up and touching it.

“And you should take care of vampires,” he replied with a smile, a small amount of his flippant humor come back to play, as he took her hand and leaned over it.

“Oh, you mean like that one?” she replied innocently.

“Which one?”

She indicated a man who stood behind him, about thirty yards away, pointedly not staring at the pair of them. He was pale, rail thin, as if he’d risen from his deathbed, and he leaned on a gold-headed cane. And yet despite that, he stood with compact fury. Icy eyes stared down the length of the Serpentine, and his hair was so black it shone blue in the morning sunlight.

“Maybe I should invite him to the Benning Ball; he’d certainly fit the dark and mysterious theme,” she mused aloud. “He’d make good atmosphere if nothing else—unless, of course, he’s the French spy.”

Marcus turned and took in the man, whose nonchalance made him conspicuous, and Marcus went so rigid, Phillippa could feel it through their joined hands. Then, when he turned back to Phillippa, his body was still a single tense cord, but his tone was jovial, light. Too light.

“He fits the description of a vampire, certainly, but it’s not Laurent. Remember, Phillippa, know, don’t guess.” And then he kissed her hand and let it go. And she went to her carriage.

But as Phillippa climbed into the phateon and gave directions for Lady Worth’s, she noticed that Marcus’s eyes did not follow her. He had again turned to look in the direction of where the man with the cane had stood, his brows drawn down, his fists at his side.

But the man with the cane had vanished. There was no one there.

M
ARCUS took the long way home from the park, the one that took the majority of the day and bisected the city, meandering and doubling back while he ran errands at his bootmaker, his bank, even stopping at a greengrocer and purchasing three oranges, earning suspicious looks for his gentlemanly garb from those in more common attire. It was the rare gentleman who bought his own oranges.

But that small purchase allowed him to pause and made anyone who might be following him pause, also. Marcus forced himself to keep at a reasonable pace. He forced himself to not take corners and alleyways that beckoned as a confusing route for his surreptitious tail, if there was one. He hadn’t yet seen anything out of the common way, not a glimpse, not a shadow, but since that morning, the short hairs on the back of his neck stood at rigid attention. His scalp prickled with awareness, and Marcus knew—he
knew—
he was being watched.

But whether or not he was under surveillance, whether or not his steps were being traced, Marcus eventually had to take those inevitable steps home.

The sun was low in the sky, lending a brass glow to everything it touched, reflecting off the windows of his bachelor’s lodgings as he climbed the steps. Marcus took rooms at a gentlemen’s boardinghouse off of Leicester Square and was happy enough to pay double to be the ground floor’s only occupant. Oh, he could have taken rooms at a hotel and made use of their superior amenities, including a kitchen, but he liked his lodgings. They allowed him a little privacy and afforded him a little protection.

His chambers were modest but all that a bachelor required; a sitting room, study, and bedchamber, comfortably furnished, attended to weekly by a lady who was engaged by the landlord to clean the entire house. And after she was properly vetted, he was happy enough to let her dust away—everything except his study, of course. That was kept locked with two different kinds of bolts.

Or at least, it was supposed to be.

The study door was closed, everything seemed as it should, except for the tumbler of the second set of locks. It was fractionally off its vertical alignment. Marcus approached it cautiously, quietly, every step across the wooden floor threatening to squeak under his weight. He had reached for the door handle, he turned his hand—

When suddenly, from behind him, he saw it.

A brief shadow, a flicker outside his apartment’s front door.

Silently, quick as a cat in the night, Marcus moved from the study door across the hall. The shadow twitched under the door again. Marcus felt under his coat for the pistol that was strapped to his side.

Silently, he counted to three, then wrenched the door open.

“Oh, thank goodness. Mr. Worth, could you help me with these boxes?”

The reedy voice of Leslie Farmapple rang out—or at least Marcus though it was Leslie. It was difficult to tell, hidden as he was underneath a pile of nearly unmanageable boxes in his arms, which wobbled as he shifted his balance.

“Leslie, is that you?”

“Yes, Mr. Worth,” was the muffled reply. “Please, assist me, if you would!”

“Oh, of course! But what are all these boxes?”

“These,” a flushed and harried Leslie said as Marcus took a box off the top of the pile, “are the contents of your desk. Mr. Crawley noticed it was still in disarray, so Sterling insisted it be cleaned out and delivered to you.”

“There was no need, Leslie. I would have gotten them myself,” Marcus said, his glance falling back across the hall to the study door. Strangely, nothing looked amiss from this light.

Leslie did not notice (or could not see) Marcus’s preoccupation, and as such, staggered past him into the flat’s hallway. “Yes, well, I think Sterling rather hoped to avoid that possibility,” Leslie said grumpily as he dropped the boxes on the hallway floor with a thud. “I knew you had a remarkable amount of mess,” he said disapprovingly, “but really, you could have tried some decipherable system of management.”

“Yes, Leslie.” Marcus sighed. “But it hardly matters now, doesn’t it?”

Leslie flushed, chagrined. “Just so you know . . .” He hesitated, looked about him, and started again. “Just so you know, I think Fieldstone gave you a bit of a bad brush. Seemed hastily done.”

Marcus just shook his head. “Perhaps it was too long overdue. But thank you, Leslie. And I’m sorry I never kept my desk neat enough for your liking.”

Leslie smiled ruefully. “Yes, well, I doubt a messy desk would have won or lost us a war. Good day, Mr. Worth.” He tipped his hat. “I don’t know if we should meet again. But I hope so.”

“Good day, Leslie.” Marcus extended his hand, somewhat shocking the secretary, who cautiously shook it. “I’m certain we shall.”

As Leslie Farmapple let himself of out the building and into the falling evening, Marcus shut his front door and turned back to his quiet apartments.

And was immediately slammed up against the wall.

“I,” growled a cold and raspy voice, “am going to kill you.”

He clutched a gold-headed, polished black cane as the fists that dug into Marcus’s coat and shirtfront pressed hard white knuckles into his shoulders, pinning his arms to his sides.

But not his legs.

Marcus kicked out, his boot connecting with the black-haired man’s shin just hard enough to loosen that man’s footing. Marcus took advantage, leveraging his strength to push back, firing himself off the wall, forcing the man backward, marching him across the hall and pining him against the study door.

“Not a terribly fond greeting,” Marcus hissed.

The man from the park sneered back at him. “You meddling fool,” he bit out before he landed a series of short quick blows to Marcus’s left side, the only place his arms could reach. Marcus responded by pressing his assailant harder into the wall, slamming him back.

“You don’t want to play fair? Fine.” Marcus grunted as he reached down and pressed hard against the man’s thigh, feeling the scar that he knew was there.

The dark-haired man turned even paler as he cried out in pain. Marcus let him free as he slumped to the floor.

“That . . . hurt . . .” he said from the floor, his breath coming back to him slowly.

“You hit me in my wounds, I’ll hit you in yours,” Marcus replied, standing back and folding his arms across his chest.

“Mine’s fresher. Graham would kill you if he saw you pull such a dirty trick.”

“Yes, well, Graham’s not here. And you’re supposed to be in the country.”

“What happened to your eye?” the man asked, peering up at Marcus.

“Nothing worthy of note,” Marcus replied truthfully. “I got boxed by a pimp in Whitechapel.”

“Tsk, tsk, Marcus, you used to have better taste.”

“I was doing research, Byrne.” He said sardonically, as he bent down and offered his hand. “Come on. You look like you could use some tea.”

“I’d like an explanation better—such as why I’m hearing reports of the Blue Raven running around town,” he growled, his cold voice condemning now, his black-winged eyebrows painted with fury.

Marcus sighed. “That might require more than tea.”

And as such, Marcus escorted Byrne Worth, Marcus’s second-eldest brother—and incidentally, the Blue Raven—into his small, messy study.

An explanation, indeed.

Marcus and Byrne had been a team, almost from the moment of Marcus’s birth. Graham, their eldest brother, was already seven when Byrne came along, and quite grown-up, he would not hesitate to tell people then. Graham observed such a superior air with his baby brother that Byrne could not consider him a companion. But Marcus, just two years younger, fit the bill nicely.

Byrne had been born with the dramatic good looks of jet black hair—hair so black it shone blue—and piercing ice blue eyes, along with a cynicism that played well with his thirst for adventure. Marcus had been the wrangly, scroungy one, in adolescence too tall to be used to his body, and nothing at all piercing about his open, good-humored demeanor.

One could suppose that such differences of looks and temperament would hold a pair of brothers apart, but in fact, they were generally glued together, able to read each other’s thoughts with a high degree of accuracy, and an unbreakable bond of trust.

When one was having trouble with mathematics, it was natural that he would seek assistance from the other.

When one decided to purchase a commission, it was natural that the other would, too.

And when Byrne became a spy, it was natural that Marcus became his field contact, the person who gathered and sorted all of his information, discovered where and for what he’d be needed next.

Of course, that wasn’t the original plan. Both Marcus and Byrne had been commissioned to the Seventeenth Regiment of His Majesty’s army, whose movements during the long war with France had ranged from the Loire Valley, to over the Pyrenees and into Spain. And it was in Spain that Marcus and Byrne intercepted their first enemy missive.

It hadn’t been difficult, really. The little Spaniard was barely more than a boy, running around the village. But when Byrne and Marcus saw him pick up a dirty piece of parchment from a table in a pub and glance suspiciously around to see if he was being watched, Byrne decided to follow. And as such, Marcus followed Byrne.

It was Byrne who stole into the derelict mansion that the boy snuck into and who came away with the piece of paper and information on who was there, for it was Byrne’s dark hair, then-tan complexion, and passable Spanish that allowed him to momentarily pass as a fellow countryman to anyone who he might encounter. But it was Marcus who was able to decipher the information and tell their battalion commander exactly what it meant, which resulted in saving the lives of nearly every man in the regiment.

And that’s how they succeeded. When the Home Office got wind of their exploits, they were reassigned their commissions, this time, to be working directly for the War Department. It didn’t change much in how they went about their days; they were still with the Seventeenth Regiment, using its movements as a mask for theirs.

Byrne, for one, was having the time of his life, poking his nose into things, embedding himself for weeks at a time in little villages (his Spanish improved, and his French had always been impeccable), gleaning scraps of information that he brought back to Marcus, who put the sometimes inscrutable puzzle together. They, especially after Marcus took a short knife in his side, began to define their roles more cleanly: Byrne the man of action, and Marcus the man of thought.

It was difficult to say who invented the Blue Raven persona: Marcus or Byrne. But the reason why was easier to answer: They’d been asked to.