“We’ll canvas the perimeter, make certain no one’s within,” he told Griffin lowly. You take the east, I’ll move from the west, and we’ll meet in the rear.”
“Done,” Griffin agreed, his hand going to the pistol he kept beneath his jacket.
“God go with you, brother,” they said in unison.
And then, they parted ways and sank into the night. Some twenty minutes later, they reconnoitered by a locked back door.
“No one’s inside,” Griffin grunted Sebastian’s thoughts aloud. “We need to gain access, see what’s within.”
Sebastian lit a match to illuminate the lock on the door. “Have you your bloody keys?”
“Does a stag shit in the woods?” Griffin asked triumphantly, extracting the ring of skeleton keys he always kept at the ready from his pocket.
He would have laughed had the situation been any less dire. Griffin’s gift was picking locks. He had seven keys, and if none of them fit a lock, Griffin could muscle the closest match into working. He’d never seen a door the Duke of Strathmore couldn’t break through with his innate feel.
Griffin turned his attention to the door. Sebastian’s match sputtered out, but it little mattered. In less than two minutes, Griffin had the door open. They stepped inside, shutting the portal behind them, and lit the gas lamps on low, walking with as much care as possible lest anyone let the rooms above the shop. The storefront seemed innocent enough.
Sebastian followed Griffin into the back room, and that was the precise location where innocent morphed into something decidedly evil.
“Carboys of nitric acid,” Griffin reported quietly. “Seventeen, in all.”
“Ten of sulfuric,” Sebastian added grimly.
The evidence grew more damning as they continued. On the boiler, a vat of nitroglycerin simmered.
“Bloody hell,” Griffin rasped.
It was in that precise moment that Sebastian’s gaze found a scrap of paper bearing a nearly illegible scrawl. He snatched it up, reading it thrice, sure he was wrong. Sure that no one, especially not the sort of enemy who had been brewing dynamite beneath the nose of England’s most elite spies for the past two months, could be so foolish.
“Fuck.” He scanned the contents again for good measure.Midnight. Dale Street.“There’s to be an explosion tonight at the police station.”
“Jesus. We’ve got to get there to warn them,” Griffin said needlessly.
Taking great care to leave the premises just as they’d found it, they backtracked together, turning down all the lamps, leaving and locking the door. Dale Street wasn’t far by foot, so they took off at a run. They’d almost reached the station when the explosion struck. The earth rumbled, the sound of the detonation reverberating in otherworldly fashion, blasting through his chest. Glass shattered. A woman screamed.
And at last, the war they’d been warned of had arrived at Liverpool. But Sebastian and Griffin had been too goddamn late to stop it. They halted in their tracks, watching the smoke rise in the wake of the blast, and the resultant commotion unleash.
“Fucking hell,” Sebastian breathed, smoke and the bitter ascent of sulfur burning his lungs.
“Hell on earth,” Griffin agreed bitterly. “Damn their hides. We’ll get them, Bast. We’ll get every last one of the rotten bastards.”
Sebastian watched the glow of flame, the smoke billowing into the air. He thought of Daisy, her innocence, the way he’d last left her, and his heart ached. Then he thought of her father, the duplicitous son-of-a-bitch who financed these godforsaken plots. And a part of him resented her, for being so innocent and good and naïve. For being the woman he loved and yet also the daughter of the enemy he needed to destroy. It wasn’t fair, damn it. Life was not fair.
Because nothing was as it seemed, and everything was about to change.
23rdMay, 1881
Your Grace,
You will perhaps be happy to learn that I’ve made a great number of friends in your absence. There are ever so many gentlemen eager to make my acquaintance now that the Duchess of Leeds has taken me under her wing.
In particular, the Earl of Bolton is a noble and generous man, and not at all as you described him. It is such a pity that your “private” and “urgent” matter keeps you from London, as I think you would get on with him as well as I do.
Sincerely,
Duchess of Trent
Daisy stared at the man who had once been her betrothed and fought back the familiar burst of nausea that had been striking her on and off for the last month. Tall and lanky, with black hair and flashing blue eyes, he was just as handsome as he’d been the day she’d first met him in New York at one of her father’s dinner parties. Padraig McGuire, with his lilting accent from Ireland’s shores, his easy smiles, and wicked charm.
