“Come on, then. Ye’ll see. Yer the first gel we ever ’ad. What’s yer name?”
The girl almost said Amelie but stopped herself on theahh. “Hortense,” she said instead, her middle-given name, so not a complete falsehood. Not that she minded lying to suit a delicate circumstance, but she needed a name she would answer to.
Instinct told her she couldn’t enter this new life as Amelie, the name Papa and Maman had called her with such affection. An Amelie was soft and sweet. An Amelie could be hurt.
This instant, and going forward, she was Hortense, a hard, nervy sort of girl.
The sort of girl who could slip as one with the shadows.
The sort of girl the world couldn’t touch.
It wouldn’t dare.
Chapter One
Westminster, London
April 1827
Hortense rounded thecorner from Bowling onto Little Peter Street, and out of habit, she scanned both directions to gauge the state of the thoroughfare. It stood empty of all but one other night skulker on the opposite side, back to her and keeping to himself. She stuck tight to the midnight shadows, her tread light. Always better to stay unnoticed.
Her boardinghouse lodgings at Number11 lay just one more street ahead. Already, she was anticipating the comfort of her bed after yet another night of tracking the movements of a philandering husband. The third such case this week.
Ever since the informal spy network she’d been part of disbanded two years ago, her former handler and mentor, Lord Nicholas Asquith, had introduced her to aristocrats in need of tact and her expertise. From there, her discreet investigation outfit servicing London’s elite had naturally formed by word of mouth. Nothing was too mundane or, conversely, too sordid. Mostly, it was infidelity that filled her coffers. Lost and stolen items, every so often. It wasn’t the glorious, seductive spy craft that saved nations on the sly, but it did pay the bills, and then a little to put by.
Her boot heels should be the onlyclick-clackechoing off uneven buildings to either side of her. But an unaccounted forclick-clackjoined hers, its tread heavier and quicker. Someone was gaining on her.
Her heartbeat kicked up a notch, and the blood whizzed through her veins. She overshot Number11 and, half a street up, rounded a corner into a dark, fetid alley.
Back flat against the damp stone wall, heart pounding in her throat, breath hitched in her chest, she waited.Nothing may come of it, entered the clear voice of reason. The man might stride past the alley, blithely unaware of his role in this little drama of her own creation. It was a possibility.
Yet it was a different potential outcome that had her crouching low and her hand wrapped around the dagger strapped above her boot. Silently, she counted backward from ten. She reached zero, and no one had passed, not even a rat. Doubt niggled through her. Mayhap the paranoia that was never far out of reach was clouding her judgment, and the man—or woman, but likely man—had turned onto a different street with nary a thought for her.
Again, she counted slowly from ten to zero.
Again, nothing.
She drew a shallow breath and squeezed the hilt of the dagger, her hand shaky with anticipation, before poking her head around the corner. Not ten feet away, a still figure shrouded in shadow stared out at her. In an instant, her body was flooded with the twin thrusts of fear and readiness.
Recognition hit her, replacing fear with a relief so acute she could sag to the ground with it. “Asquith?”
Lord Nicholas Asquith stepped forward into a dim ray of the waning moon. “You know to call me Nick these days.”
“Old habit.” Annoyance flared. “You could have announced yourself.”
A sardonic smile twisted about his mouth. “How else could I have tested your sharpness?”
“And?” She couldn’t resist asking, the urge to win her mentor’s approval rooted deep after all these years.
“As ever.”
She snorted. “You’re lucky I didn’t knife you.”
“I’d have deserved it.” He jutted his chin toward the empty street. “Let us walk.”
She pushed off the wall and joined him. They didn’t walk side by side with arms locked, like a couple. Theirs wasn’t, and never had been, that sort of relationship. “I’m guessing you’ll state your reason for seeking me out tonight?” she asked at last.
“I would like to hire you for a job.”
