Ever.
For this arrangement, Mrs. Hayhurst charged double the rent. The landlady might not ask any questions when Hortense placed prompt payment in her hand every Thursday, but her pinched mouth and knowing eyes did her talking for her. The woman could think what she liked.
Inside her rooms, she gave more thought to the conversation with Nick, specifically the part about his brother. Actually, she’d seen him once. It was last year at an exclusive gaming hell. He’d been deep in play and his cups. She didn’t remember much about him, beyond his dark hair, rangy form, and general sardonic mien, as he hadn’t been her mark that night. He’d been someone else’s mark as it turned out, which triggered a series of events that ended with Lord Bertrand Montfort shot and Lord Percival Bretagne wed. She doubted very much the lofty Marquess of Clare—then the Earl of Pembroke—was aware of any of it.
Yet she wondered what the man was like. He and Nick would differ in temperament, of that she was certain. Nick was disciplined, patient, and loyal. So, what did that imply about the brother?
A marquess and a drinker had been said.Wastrelhad been left unspoken.Right.Plenty of that variety of lord charging about London.
Temptation pulled her toward the bed, but she resisted. Instead, she lit the single candle on her bedside table and disrobed down to her chemise, which a quick sniff revealed might need a wash after a long day of striding to and fro about crowded, noisome streets. Due to her early start this morning, she hadn’t a chance to do her exercises. There wasn’t a day she skipped them, not even when she was tired down to the marrow of her bones. Especially then, for that was the moment her guard could slip.
And that wasn’t an option.
She crouched deeply and sprang up, her arms thrusting upward and her toes lifting off the floor for the space of a second. She repeated the sequence one hundred times, like every other exercise in her rotation. She came to the floor and on her stomach, rising to her hands and toes, with arms extended straight. They released and bent at the elbows, lowering her body to the floor, before she pushed up again. Once she reached one hundred repetitions, she flipped to her bottom and lowered her torso until her back nearly touched the floor, then she curled forward. Next, she picked up the lead shot wrapped in burlap and began moving in a variety of extending, curling, and crouching motions. Half an hour from the time she started, she completed the full sequence.
Now, she could sleep.
Years ago, early on when she started working for Nick, she’d learned a valuable lesson about readiness the hard way, the specific memory of which she kept tucked in the deepest corner of her mind. The lesson was this: she would never be bigger or stronger than her adversaries and quarry, but she could be quicker and smarter.
No one would ensure her safety for her. She must do it for herself.
She blew out the candle and slipped her weary body between the covers of her welcoming bed. Sleep, however, eluded her.
She’d missed the odd midnight surprise rendezvous with Nick. These last few years, she’d felt…
Untethered.
Sure, every Monday, she visited Nick for dinner, which included Mariana and their twins, Geoffrey and Lavinia. But that was in the bosom of his family. It was the relationship they’d had to forge when Nick decided to step out of the spy game, taking her with him. She still hadn’t grown entirely accustomed to it. She didn’t quite think of herself as lonely, but she had been living a solitary life.
Not that she thought she could build the same sort of family life as Nick. What man would have a woman like her? She had no interest in homemaking, or any of the activities that made a woman a woman in the eyes of a man.
She had two goals, really. The first was to continue to build her investigating business. With every month, she added a few more clients. The thought of her second goal, however, made her heart double in beats, for this goal was absolutely vital to the success of her first goal. Simply put, it was to put herself out of reach of Flick Doyle, permanently.
During her years of spying for Nick, she’d thought she had. Then, about a year after her return to London, Doyle had demonstrated how very wrong she’d been when one sunny afternoon he’d sent one of his lucky eels around to summon her. He’d then explained to her the “taxes” he would be collecting from her forthwith. After all, he wasallowin’—his word—her to conduct her business in London, his turf.
“This ain’t the Continent, as those nobs like to put it. All yer fancy new clients wouldn’t be so quick to pay a jumped-up guttersnipe to be prowlin’ ’round their palaces, nosin’ into their affairs, if they knew yer past. One of them gossip rags would gobble that story right up.”
Of which past he spoke was clear. Her past before Nick. Her past withhim.
And his threat was doubly obvious: if she didn’t pay her taxes, he would destroy her business.
Like that, he’d pulled her back into his web.
But now, a year on, she had to disentangle herself. Before Nick caught wind of it. Before Doyle’s “taxes” ruined the good name she was trying to build, for he didn’t require payment in coin, but in baubles. A bauble didn’t have to be fine or expensive, but rather personal to the aristocrat she nabbed it from. She would eventually get found out. It was only a matter of time.
And, tonight, Nick had given her a job. Doyle didn’t need to know about it, for she wouldn’t be stealing from Nick. She had a line, and there it was.
With that assurance to herself, which might not hold in the stark light of day, her head sank into her pillow, and her eyes drifted shut as she succumbed to the pull of an exhausted, and hopefully dreamless, slumber.
The same hope as every other night.
Chapter Two
Onward, night tickedsteadily into the small hours of morning. Jamie attempted to settle into the wing chair. The width of his shoulders, however, wasn’t exactly compatible with the narrowness of its confines. He took the letter from the Bow Street Runner he’d received yesterday and marked the book on Parliamentary procedure he’d been attempting—and failing—to give his attention. Neither the subject of the book nor that of the letter held the urgency of the matter at hand.
Tonight, he had a thief to catch.
Outrage strummed through him at the very idea. The damned bloody cheek.
