Dangerous Seduction: A Nemesis Unlimited Novel (2 page)

All three of the managers’ brows rose at his quick response. But Simon wouldn’t obtain the position if he pretended to be a dullard. Machinists needed to be clever in order to stay on top of maintaining the equipment, or if there were ever an emergency.

Whatever the mission needed him to be, he’d play the right role. Marco, the wily, government-trained bastard, had the gift of complete transformation. No one could fault Simon for his own disguises. He’d convincingly acted as a stevedore, a wealthy French banker, an East End housebreaker, and half a dozen other personae.

His grades at Harrow had been abysmal—he saw more of the nearby village and the local girls than he did the inside of a classroom. Yet he’d shone when acting in school theatrical productions. Nobody played a better Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Seemed that he was already familiar with the idea of wanting to be someone other than an Addison-Shawe. A skill that served him, and Nemesis, well.

Simon turned the engine over and started it. The pump chugged to life with more strength than it had demonstrated before he’d worked on it. “So, am I in?”

There was a quick, muttered consultation before the managers turned back to him. “You’re in,” Gorley said.

Grinning, Simon stuck out his hand, and it was reluctantly shaken by the three men. “Thank you, sirs.”

“Payment packets are handed out every Friday,” Ware said. “You’re paid in scrip, which you can spend at the company store. It’s got everything you’ll need.”

Including nearly rancid butter.
“I’ve got an ill father in Sheffield, and usually send him some of my wages. Can’t do that with scrip.”

“That’s how Wheal Prosperity is run, Sharpe,” Murton answered, not an ounce of sympathy in his voice. “Either take the offer as it stands, or apply for work somewhere else.”

Scratching his head beneath his cap, Simon pretended to debate the idea. If he truly needed a job that paid, he’d have told the managers to take the express train straight up their arses, but it was more important for him to thoroughly fathom the corruption at Wheal Prosperity—and how to end it.

“Hasn’t been a lot of work available lately,” he muttered. “No one’s hiring.” He shrugged. “My sister does piecework in Buxton, and she sends our da money, too. Guess it’s better that I should have food in my belly than for both me and my father to have nothing.” The words tasted sour as he spoke them.

“That’s the spirit, man.” Ware slapped Simon on his shoulder.

He hadn’t been in the managers’ presence above half an hour, but already he fantasized about plowing his fist into each of their faces.

They took a few moments to sign some paperwork, Simon careful to disguise his Harrow-trained penmanship.

Once that was finished, Ware said, “Head dead east from the mine, two miles, and you’ll reach the village. Once you get there, someone will point you toward the single men’s housing. Here.” He fished a small brass coin from his pocket and handed it to Simon. “That’ll pay for your meals for the week, until the next payday.”

Simon studied the coin. It had a triangular piece cut out from the center, and stamped on it were the words “Wheal Prosperity Mining Company, Five Shillings, Payable in Merchandise, Non Transferable.”

“Thank you, sirs.” He nearly gagged on the words. These men didn’t know it, but they’d just opened their doors to the agent of their destruction—offering a job and roof to dynamite.

“Work starts at seven in the morning,” Murton said. “Every minute you’re late, you’re docked, so best to be on time.”

“Yes, sirs.” He grabbed his bag of tools, tipped his hat to the men one final time, and left the engine house. A satchel containing his few belongings waited for him outside the door, and he grabbed this, too. His father would have turned purple with mortification if he’d seen his son travel with anything less than three steamer trunks full of Savile Row’s finest, but Simon had grown well used to his father’s many shades of mortification on his behalf.

He pushed thoughts of Horace Addison-Shawe from his mind, as he’d done so often, and concentrated on what needed to happen next.

First part of the job’s taken care of. Now the real work starts.

His years in the army and with Nemesis had shown him the value of gathering intelligence. He needed to know who had written that letter, for one thing. Then there was untangling the complicated web of corruption ensnaring Wheal Prosperity. And if there was any person who knew the lay of the land at this copper mine, that person was Alyce Carr.

He told himself that was the only reason he hurried to catch up with her.

*   *   *

Alyce strode back to the village on a path she knew as well as her own heartbeat. Generations of miners in their heavy boots had worn a track into the green hillsides. They left their legacy both beneath the earth and upon it. Just as she did. But her steps were fast, and she kicked up dust with each angry footfall. If all of the miners had walked with the same amount of fury that she felt, the path would be a trench, six feet deep.

As she walked, the conversation—or rather,
lack
of conversation—with the managers dug into her mind, like shards of metal.

It’s simply not economical for the company store to replace almost a hundred pounds of butter just on your say-so, Miss Carr.

“Economical, my arse,” she muttered to herself. They always had some excuse, some barely thought-out rationale. Would it make any difference to them if she was a man instead of a woman? Would they listen to her, take her grievances more seriously?

Doesn’t matter, does it? Since I’m the only one trying to make a change.

“Miss Carr! Miss Carr!”

Caught up as she was in her own roiling thoughts, she barely heard a man call her name, or the sound of boots hurrying to catch up with her.

Only when he said her name again directly behind her did she stop walking. Had to be a surface captain, ready to chastise her for leaving work early—even though she had the managers’ permission. She was just about to say so, when she turned to face the man pursuing her.

It was
him.
That stranger who’d been in the engine house.

“Seeing as how it’s my new home,” he said, “I was hoping you could show me the way to the village.” He didn’t sound at all winded, even though it looked like he’d been running to catch up with her. With his thumb, he pushed back the brim of his cap, revealing a thatch of wheat-blond hair.

In the engine house, she’d only had a brief glimpse of him beneath the gaslights—seeing mostly the winter blue of his eyes—but now that they were out in the sun, she could observe him more clearly.

“Got the job, then?” she asked.

“Good thing, too,” he answered. “I need the work and that pump engine needs a nursemaid.”

He wore a laboring man’s clothes, filling them with a leanly muscular body that had seen its share of work. Growing up and living among men who spent hours a day tearing ore from the ground made her no stranger to the sight of a young man in prime condition. But something about
this
man—the confidence with which he carried himself, the stretch of rough wool across his broad shoulders and down his long legs—made her aware of his physicality.

“Men aren’t nursemaids,” she pointed out.

He gave an affable shrug. “A friend of mine told me that the definition of a man is that he does whatever’s necessary. And if that pump engine needs me to change its nappy and rock it to sleep, then I’m the man for the job.”

She tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but her thoughts briefly scattered like startled thrushes when she got a good look at his face. Blessed saints, she didn’t know men could look like this. All clean lines, high cheekbones, and elegantly carved jawbone. His lips were thin, but the bottom lip was unexpectedly full. Someone long ago in his bloodline must have birthed an aristocrat’s bastard, for there was no denying the natural nobility in his features.

It seemed a strange contrast to the clothing he wore and his accent—which she placed somewhere around Sheffield, and not the nice parts of that city, either.

A face was just a face—nobody had power over how they looked. It didn’t matter how handsome this man was, he was only that: a man, like any other.

She pointed to the path, worn into the ground. “If you’re looking for the village, follow this for another mile and a half. It’ll take you right there.”

“Since we’re headed in the same direction,” he said with a smile, “may as well keep each other company.”

For all her bold talk, she was a woman, and not entirely immune to a handsome man’s smile.

Still, she said indifferently, “As you like.”

Setting down one of his bags, he extended a broad hand to her. She hesitated for a moment, not really wanting to touch him, but he glanced down at his hand and saw that machine grease smudged a few of his fingers. With an apologetic grimace, he wiped his hand on his trousers—drawing her attention to his thigh—and then offered her his hand again.

“Simon Sharpe,” he said. “Just got hired as a new machinist.”

It would be downright rude not to shake his hand, so she did so. The contact of palm to palm sent a fast shiver of awareness through her. “Alyce Carr,” she said, trying for a level voice. “And you’d be wise to take up your bags and find work elsewhere, Simon.” Only the managers and bosses referred to the miners and workers by their last names.

She let go of his hand and walked toward the village. He quickly fell in pace beside her.

“Wheal Prosperity’s the only mine that’s hiring right now,” he said. “Don’t have much choice in the matter.”

“There’s always emigration. Or you could try something different—like the music halls.”

“I get seasick something terrible, so crossing the ocean’s out. And as for the music halls”—his low, husky laugh trailed along the nape of her neck—“they’d only pay me
not
to sing and dance.” His gaze was sharp and curious as he looked at her. “
You
work at Wheal Prosperity, but if it’s as you’re implying, why don’t
you
leave?”

The managers rode by on their trap, trailing thick clouds of dust as they returned to the village, and paying her and Simon no attention. Coughing, Alyce tried to wave the dust away. Finally, it settled, the trap already a speck in the distance.

For a moment, she debated whether or not to be honest with him. There was always the possibility that he could be yet another of the owners’ snoops, hunting out agitators. But she’d never made a secret of her complaints, and she hadn’t yet been fired.

Because they know I can’t do a damned thing against them, and I’m one of their best bal-maidens. To them, I’m just a gnat. A very productive gnat.

“Can’t,” she answered bluntly. “I assume they gave you a chit to pay for your food and lodging for the week.”

“Five shillings’ worth.”

She whistled. “A princely sum. And did you read the words on the bloody thing?” She recited them from memory. The words themselves were stamped upon her very brain. “‘Payable in Merchandise, Non Transferable.’ That’s how we’re all paid now. With that damned chit.”

“And there go anyone’s hopes of saving actual money. Couldn’t even buy a train ticket to carry you to someplace new.”

“Just so.”

A narrow stream dotted with rocks crossed the path they walked. Every so often, some enterprising person from the village thought to lay a wooden plank or two across the stream to make it easier to cross, but the planks never lasted. People rather liked skipping across the rocks—a little reminder of childhood play.

Simon nimbly jumped from rock to rock and landed on the other side of the stream with just a few strides. He set his bags down and reached out a hand for her. To help her across.

The gentlemanly gesture flummoxed her. It was so natural for everyone who lived in the village to cross the stream that no one ever thought to give anyone assistance. And she still didn’t like the idea of touching him. No, that wasn’t quite true. She didn’t like the sensations in her body caused by touching him. This man who was an utter stranger.

Ignoring his outstretched hand, she picked up her skirts and leaped from one rock to the next until she reached the other bank. There wasn’t any harm in him seeing her ankles. Her boots were nearly as stout as his. Nothing provocative about heavy, sturdy leather.

Even so, when she dropped the hem of her skirts, something like disappointment flashed in his eyes.

She continued walking, with him right beside her. “Besides, all I know is working at the mine, and everyone I’ve ever known is here. My father worked here, as did his father, and his father’s father. My brother, too. And all my foremothers were bal-maidens or took care of the babes at home. This is my life.” It surprised her, the defiance in her voice—or was it self-defense?

No, she was proud of the work she did, and the people around her. She had no pride, however, regarding the men who ran the mine. Outsiders, the lot of them.

Like this man—Simon. A complete stranger. Granted, an extraordinarily handsome stranger, but a man unknown to her. Well, she could learn a few things, too.

“Where are your people?” she asked. “Parents, siblings … wife?”

Her cheeks heated that she should ask so bold a question.

He didn’t seem to take offense. “Sister’s in Buxton, and my father’s in Sheffield. No wife.”

No reason at all for her to feel a twist of pleasure at that—none at all.

“You could’ve stayed in Sheffield,” she noted. “Plenty of work there.”

“Everyone I knew worked in the knife factories.” He shook his head. “The world’s a narrow place behind a grinding wheel. Joined the army for a spell—engineering corps. That’s how I learned the way of different machines.”

“And did you?”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Did I what?”

“Make the world less narrow?” She’d only been as far as Newquay, and then for only a half-holiday. The rest of the globe seemed a terribly fascinating, terribly big place. How lost she’d feel, out in the middle of everything with nothing but her own name to anchor herself.