Dangerous Seduction: A Nemesis Unlimited Novel (26 page)

A woman stood to one side of the room, fair-haired and neatly dressed in a jacket, shirtwaist, and skirt. She carried with her an air of complete control and an intelligence so sharp it could cut steel. The woman stepped forward briskly, and spoke with the same no-nonsense tone. “You must be Alyce. I’m Eva.”

Which Alyce could have guessed.

“This is my husband, Jack.” Eva gestured toward the other side of the room, and Alyce fought a yelp. She’d known large, powerfully built men before—miners earned their strength honestly—but not once in her life had she ever seen a man like Jack.

He was …
huge.
Thick with muscle and radiating so much raw strength, it was a wonder the entire building didn’t simply collapse from the force of it. Though he wore a respectable suit, a wildness clung to him, something almost feral.

The name registered in her memory. A realization struck her. This was the man who had escaped from prison.

His dark gaze saw the moment she seemed to understand who he was. A small smile curled in the corner of his mouth, and it wasn’t at all comforting.

Simon explained, “Jack and Eva are going to help us in the next stage of our scheme.”

Good God, these two dangerous people were their
allies
? And if this powerful man and this sharp woman were their partners, how treacherous was the risk they faced?

She summoned all of her nerve, all of her calm, and straightened her back. “Let’s get started.”

CHAPTER 11.

Alyce knew she shouldn’t judge anyone by their appearance, or even their history. She should be the last person to do so.

Still, when Jack spoke, she expected him mostly to grunt or point or speak in a dialect so low, she’d need a translator to understand him.

That’s not what happened at all.

The four of them—herself, Simon, Eva, and Jack—sat at the table in the private room. An aproned server came in with plates of eggs and sausages, and a tray bearing steaming cups of tea. Nerves plucked at her, but she discovered that the sandwiches and tea in Exeter had barely fueled her furnace, and so she, Simon, and the couple fell to their breakfasts with the seriousness of churchgoers. The tea went a long way to revive her after a night with barely any sleep, so she was fully awake when Jack explained his latest activities.

“Been going down to the owners’ offices every day, posing as a government man.” He did talk with a hard accent—she guessed it came from the kind of place where people fought daily to stay alive—but she understood every word, as well as the equally hard intelligence of the man speaking. “I’ve been putting the lean on ’em, saying that they owe hundreds of pounds in taxes, and I won’t stop breathing down their necks till I get the money.”

“You’ve got them shuddering in their sock garters, I’d wager.” Simon smiled over the rim of his tea cup.

“And they believe you’re really from the government?” Alyce asked. Though Jack wore a decent suit amazingly tailored for his giant frame, some fine wool couldn’t hide the fact that he wasn’t a bureaucrat—not that she had much experience with bureaucrats. “You don’t strike me as the sort of lad who normally sits behind a desk.”

Instead of taking offense, he winked. “More comfortable behind a punching bag than a desk.” She believed it. In his massive hands, the knife and fork looked better suited to a doll.

“But Jack’s remarkably adept at intimidation,” Eva said, glancing at her husband fondly. “And with one of Marco’s forged documents proving Jack’s from a taxation bureau, it’s astonishing what can be accomplished.”

Alyce had definitely found herself on the other side of the mirror. Only in the world of Nemesis would a wife take pride in her husband’s skill at extortion. She glanced over at Simon, seeking an anchor. He leaned back in his chair, sunlight from the lone window bright along the clean planes of his face and picking out intriguing shadows, like the one below his bottom lip that revealed its slight fullness. Where Jack was a heavy hammer, Simon was an elegant blade.

She wondered if he found this conversation as strange as she did, but he looked perfectly comfortable, cradling his cup of tea in one long-fingered hand as though it were an ordinary morning and they were talking about if the weather would hold.

This mirror world was his, too.
She
was the stranger here.

In that book, the other Alice tried to follow rules that seemed to be made up as they went along, being told by everyone and everything that she was the outsider. The only one who’d been kind to her, who accepted that other Alice, was the White Knight. He wanted her to be a queen, and made sure that happened. The sole figure in that opposite world who’d made Alice feel welcome and believed in her.

Simon wasn’t half as foolish or full of ideas for useless inventions as that White Knight, but he’d been Alyce’s supporter all along. He’d had his concerns about her at the beginning—she couldn’t blame him for that—but once she’d proven herself, he’d stood firm in his belief. He trusted her, and seemed to like her for precisely who she was.

None of the men back home had felt the same. They’d tried to court her, and she’d fielded a handful of proposals. But it was a kindness to everyone that she’d always said no. She couldn’t be a sweet girl, like Sarah. She couldn’t be biddable.

Simon didn’t want her sweet. Or biddable. He cared for
her
. She could see it in the way he looked at her, feel it in his touch.

Oh, the sly bastard.
How could she go back to her ordinary life once he left?

Jack wiped his mouth with a napkin, then stood. “Those bastards aren’t going to just hand the mine over on their own. Better be getting down there.”

“How much time do you need?” Simon asked, still stretched out in his chair.

“Fifteen minutes should do it. Been working them all week.”

Alyce couldn’t believe that anyone could hold out against Jack for so long, but she wouldn’t underestimate the mine owners’ greed—even when faced with someone as terrifying as the escaped convict.

“Ready to do battle against me?” Simon grinned.

“Put us in the ring together, I’d snap you like a tinder.”

“Won’t be as easy as that.”

“No, you were always a tough little bugger.” Only in comparison to someone as big as Jack could Simon be considered little. Alyce also had to wonder about when they’d locked horns before. And if Simon survived that … dear God, what
could
break him?

“Always put up a good fight against you,” Simon said.

“That you did.” Jack clapped on his hat, and his wife got to her feet. She walked him to the door of the private room, her hand on his sleeve.

“Break some spines, love,” she murmured.

“I’ll bring ’em to you like a bouquet.” He lowered his head and she rose up on her toes for a kiss.

Alyce ought to look away, but she couldn’t. So much heat and tenderness in a single, brief kiss, it felt like a fist closing around her heart. They couldn’t be more different, this couple, and yet only a sightless man could miss how much they cared for each other. And they’d met because of a Nemesis mission.

She glanced again at Simon. He studied his tea cup intently, as if forcibly not watching Jack and Eva.

Finally, the couple broke apart, and with a final tip of his hat, Jack left. Eva leaned against the door as she closed it. Her expression was tight. “Months now, he’s been one of us,” she said to no one in particular. “But my stomach knots every time he goes out on an assignment.”

“Don’t you trust him?” asked Alyce.

“With my life,” Eva answered without hesitation. “But … I love him. I’ll never not worry.”

So easily Eva said those words, when Alyce hadn’t uttered them once in her life. Would she ever? And if she did, would they be freeing, or would they feel like a mining shaft caving in, robbing her of air, crushing her?

Useless, these questions, when she knew with certainty that those words would never pass her lips. It was safer, more secure, to keep complete in herself. No chance of having her spirit trampled. No deferral to any man. And if she became an old spinster, then she’d feed the village’s stray dogs and knit blankets for other women’s babies. Not too bad a life.

She’d once thought that a fine way to lead the rest of her days. Simon had gone and ruined all that.

Eva took her seat again, though she only poked at her breakfast now. She and Simon talked of things Alyce didn’t understand, things happening in London and involving people she didn’t know, and as their genteel voices blended together, comfortable but not intimate, Alyce’s gaze kept drifting and staying on Simon as he rolled himself a cigarette between his long, nimble fingers.

She couldn’t have him. It was as plain a fact as if it had been printed on the front page of a newspaper and circulated at train stations all over England. And the thought was acid in her chest, as much as knowing that there’d come a time when he’d be off on another mission, and she’d become part of his past. But he’d never be part of her past. He’d always be with her, in his absence, like the twisting empty tunnels at the mine. Once they’d been completely tapped, they’d just be abandoned. They never went away.

Yet that meant getting through the next few days. Beating odds that seemed impossibly high.

She had to distract herself from the doubt and future sorrow that wanted to pull her down. “How long have you been in Plymouth?”

“I’ve only come down this morning. Someone had to run the school while Jack’s been here all week. If everything goes well, I’ll be on the evening train back to Manchester.”

Alyce frowned. “You’re not going to the owners’ offices or to dinner tonight?”

“It’d ruin the illusion of Jack as a government tough if his lovely wife accompanied him everywhere,” Simon noted. He lit his cigarette with a Lucifer, then blew streams of smoke toward the ceiling.

She remembered him smoking in front of her at the mine. But he held the cigarette differently now—gracefully at the top of his index and middle finger. Even that had been part of his role. But that didn’t make watching him smoke now any less beguiling. Now he had a gentleman’s languor, despite the fact that he had to be running through the work he was about to do.

Her mind snagged on the words “lovely wife.” True, Eva was a handsome woman, and married to the most intimidating man Alyce had ever seen, but did Simon fancy her?

“If you aren’t needed to be with Jack,” Alyce pressed, “then you don’t need to be in Plymouth at all.”

“Simon’s going to be down at the owners’ offices for a while,” Eva answered, “and Jack will be there, too.”

“Leaving me on my own and in need of a minder,” Alyce said wryly.

“You’re not a child.” Simon immediately lost his gentleman’s sleepy calm, leaning forward in his seat, his voice firm. “Yet Plymouth’s a big place, and you haven’t spent much time at all away from the village. I won’t be able to concentrate on the objective if I’m worried about you.”

A hand fisted around her heart. He
worried
about her? “I’ve got enough brains to keep myself alive in Plymouth for a day or two.”

“I don’t just want you alive. I want you safe.” He crushed out his cigarette into a ceramic ashtray advertising beer, his fingers sharp and twisting in their motion.

She felt as if someone had taken a riveter and bolted her into her chair, right through her chest. It was a forcibly given confession, as if he hadn’t wanted to admit any of it. And that made it all the more shocking.

We’re trying to halt something that can’t stop.
Like a cart whose brakes had shattered. The best they could do was hold on and hope they didn’t crash or were flung to their deaths.

“Think of me as your personal tour guide to Plymouth,” Eva said, breaking the silence. “We can visit Smeaton’s Tower, or the Royal Citadel, or,” she added, when Alyce showed no interest in these sites, “I can give you loads of gossip about Simon.”

Alyce sat up straighter in her chair, as Simon sent Eva a glower. “You’ve got my attention.”

The other woman smiled wickedly. “Nothing better than some entertaining tattle while the menfolk do the heavy lifting.”

“Eva…” Simon said warningly.

The blond woman glanced toward a clock on the mantel. “Look at the time! Oughtn’t you be going, Simon?”

He shoved away from the table, scowling. “It’s useless for me to tell you to be discreet, isn’t it?”

Eva grinned. “Don’t worry, dear. I’ll confine all of my gossip to your personal life. No missions will be jeopardized by my revelations.”

“What an eased burden.” Simon donned his hat and coat, and, taking the leather portfolio with him, headed for the door.

Alyce found herself on her feet and beside him before she was aware she’d moved. She gripped Simon’s arms, feeling the solid, lean muscle beneath all that expensive wool, and stared up at him. His expression was tense, but his gaze searched hers, as if trying to figure out a riddle.

She’d answer the riddle for him. Just as Eva had done with her husband, Alyce rose up on her toes and kissed Simon. It didn’t matter that the other woman was in the room. It didn’t matter what kind of conclusion Eva would draw from the kiss. All that mattered was that Simon was about to step into the lion’s den, and she couldn’t let him leave without feeling her mouth against his.

It didn’t last long, the kiss, but she felt a shudder pass through both her and Simon—one swift sensation of longing. He tasted of tobacco and tea. A man’s taste.

She pulled back just enough to feel his breath across her face and see his pupils wide in his brilliant eyes. “Lie to those bastards,” she breathed. “Make them pay.”

His smile was as dark as mid-winter. “It’ll be my greatest pleasure. For … the workers.”

“For the workers,” she repeated, and then she let him go.

He gave her a final glance before stepping out into the hallway. She listened to his footsteps receding, and then shut the door once again. Turning around, she saw Eva staring at her as if considering a strange plant that had popped up in her garden, and couldn’t decide whether or not to pull her up by the roots, or tend her.