Of course he hadn’t. James Vanreid was well-known to the League, his entanglement with Fenians in New York undeniable. Though his father had been Dutch, his mother had been an Irish immigrant, and Vanreid had not forsaken his roots. He was sinfully wealthy, having amassed a fortune as a shipping magnate, and presided over no fewer than a dozen thriving factories. One of those happened to be an armament factory. And an inordinate number of illegal Vanreid firearms had recently been circulating in London. Vanreid had strong ties to the most aggressive of the Fenians in America, he had ships, he had an endless well of funds from which to draw, all beneath the guise of his various business holdings, and he was, simply put, a grave danger to England.
Sebastian had known all of those facts the first time his eyes had lit on Daisy Vanreid amidst a ballroom crush. But like the many men who hovered about her, drawn by the blinding combination of her sultry beauty and her fortune, he hadn’t cared. For the first time in his years with the League, his assignment had been to gather intelligence on a woman as harmless as a reticule. He’d been drawn to her first, irritated second, and confounded by his inconvenient attraction to her last.
All that aside, he had been watching Daisy Vanreid closely. And he was a damn good spy. He wasn’t about to allow Carlisle to run roughshod over him. His instincts were rarely wrong. Coupled with the fact that his observation of her had produced the same results as he would’ve anticipated had he been monitoring any other debutante, Carlisle’s insistence that Daisy Vanreid was some sort of secret menace was ludicrous.
“I know bloody well who her father is,” he gritted. “I also know that she eats eggs, poached with hollandaise for breakfast, she can’t abide by strawberries, she prefers chocolate over tea, she receives callers from one o’clock to three o’clock in the afternoon, she reads as if it’s her occupation, and that she enjoys courting scandal. Her aunt is meant to chaperone her, but the old biddy gets soused instead, and Miss Vanreid leads her suitors on a merry dance while good old Aunt Caro is snoring into her bosom or having a go at a randy rake in a dark alcove.”
He paused, attempting to rein in the anger that had begun to burn within him as he spoke before silencing his superior with a raised hand and continuing in his diatribe. “Jesus, do you hear how ridiculous this sounds, Carlisle? Do any of those insignificant details seem important, by God? Our nation’s security is at risk, and I’m chasing a vixen about ballrooms and running intelligence through her bloody chambermaids so I know whichballto attend. I feel like a lad in leading strings playing at being a spy with his younger brother.”
Carlisle raised an imperious brow. “Have you finished with your little tantrum, Trent?”
Tantrum.Bloody hell, Sebastian longed to smash his fist into the perfection of Carlisle’s long, aquiline nose. “I’m not having a goddamn tantrum. I am informing you that this nonsensical assignment must come to an end. Daisy Vanreid is as dangerous as an elderly governess, and I’m tired of trailing her about like a bloody spaniel.”
“She’s incredibly valuable to our cause.” Carlisle slammed his fist down. Coffee splashed over the rim of his cup, the delicate china clinking in protest. “She’s the daughter of the man responsible for financing the Fenians in New York, a daughter who is undoubtedly privy to all manner of information that could prove useful for us to possess. Keeping close to her keeps us close to Vanreid. The more we know about Vanreid, the better we’re prepared to dismantle his web and prevent him from harming anyone on our watch. We need to do everything—bloody well anything—we can to uncover the identities of the dynamitards hiding in our midst. If we do nothing, more will come, and we’ll be bloody well inundated. They’ll stop at nothing until they see England brought low.”
“I understand the importance of the task at hand,” Sebastian snapped. “I merely question the wisdom of wasting so much time and resources upon one bloody female.”
“The Home Office believes she has strong ties to the Fenians herself.”
“Ties to the Fenians?” He couldn’t contain his cynicism. Daisy Vanreid, a luscious heiress whose greatest concern was which ball gown to wear and what gentleman she ought to kiss? Who flitted about society like an exotic butterfly that made every man in London want to catch her and make her his? It hardly seemed likely. Indeed, it seemed laughable. Unbelievable.
The information the Home Office had received from their American contacts was ballocks.
Carlisle gave a short nod, warming to his cause. “Miss Vanreid was betrothed to a Mr. Padraig McGuire in New York. The engagement didn’t last long for reasons that remain unclear. However, what is clear is that Padraig McGuire is a vocal Fenian and a known member of the Emerald Club. He’s also Vanreid’s right hand. McGuire is believed to be the lead man for the Fenian skirmishing fund, which supports their bloody endeavors along with Vanreid’s purse.”
Sebastian had heard whispers about McGuire from his sources in America as well. Knowing she’d been engaged to the bastard certainly did make her a bit more intriguing, but hardly enough to justify his continued trailing of her. “You believe he’s raising money to facilitate the manufacturing of dynamite?”
“I know it. Over the last few weeks, he’s been engaged in a public speaking tour to win financial support for his cause. Given the reports of cheering throngs greeting him, it seems only a matter of time before things escalate. The intelligence coming to us from America is quite dire. The Fenians and their sympathizers grow stronger, larger, and more determined by the day. You know as well as I that the consequences promise to be deadly, Trent. An innocent boy has died at the hands of these monsters.”
All the heat that had been building within his body since his encounter with Daisy Vanreid the previous evening suddenly fled. He was left with the aching, cold chill of winter. The kind of cold a man felt in his bones.
Irish-American groups had been calling for Irish home rule by any means for years. But recently, their call had grown ever more vicious. Increasingly, they sought to achieve their goal by the use of violence, waging a campaign of fear, destruction, and death, with dynamite as its chief weapon.
Three months earlier, Salford had seen the first demonstration of the Fenians’ deadly capabilities when a bomb exploded at the armory there. A lad who’d had the misfortune to be walking by at the time of detonation had been killed.
If Miss Vanreid had been betrothed to a man bearing leadership positions in a known Fenian organization, it was nearly impossible for her to be ignorant of the plans being put into motion. England’s network of spies in America had made it clear that a bomb detonation within London was imminent.
Sebastian and his fellow operatives on the ground on their native soil were doing everything within their power to see that such an atrocity never became a reality. London was a great deal more populated and vulnerable to blows than Salford. The casualties would be far greater than one boy, though that lone boy had been one casualty too many.
He took a breath to digest the information his superior had just revealed. Of course, it was Carlisle’s way to only give him a grain of fact in an ever-changing sea of truths. He’d been told Miss Vanreid had suspected knowledge of the dynamite campaign originating from the Fenians in America. And so he had watched her flirt and kiss her way through every ball, musical, and supper thrown for the last month, trailing after her like a man wearing a blindfold.
Could it be that she was even wilier than he’d imagined? And had everything between them last night been an act? An attempt to distract him from his course? An attempt to glean information from him?
What was it she had said to him in her bold, stubborn way? Ah, yes.Foxes don’t frighten me. They never have.He was beginning to get a different picture of Miss Daisy Vanreid, and he didn’t like it. Not one bloody bit. For it seemed that perhaps she was the fox after all, or at the least the mistress of one.
With grim determination, he clenched his jaw and faced Carlisle. “What would you have me do?”
Carlisle paused in the act of raising his cup for another fortifying sip of coffee. “I’m afraid the answer to that question isn’t one you’re prepared to hear.”
The misgiving spreading through him turned into grim foreboding. In the name of Crown and country, he’d been stabbed, shot, and almost burned to death. What could possibly be worse?
“What is it, Carlisle?” he demanded. “It could hardly be more difficult than anything I’ve endured while under your command.”
The duke settled his cup back into its saucer without taking a sip, and for the first time in Sebastian’s acquaintance with him, revealed a tell. He grimaced.
“You must marry the girl,” Carlisle announced.
And Sebastian realized that he’d been wrong to think nothing could be worse than the dangers he’d faced and the risks he’d taken thus far. For marrying Miss Daisy Vanreid was surely the worst fate he could imagine.
