Zoë Archer - Sweet Revenge

“I want Rockley dead, and you lot say I can’t kill him,” Jack said. “Soon as I get my chance, I’m going to end his goddamn life. End of discussion.” He stepped close to her, deliberately trying to intimidate her. Yet drawing near her, he found himself oddly intrigued by the soft strands of golden hair that had come loose from their pins and teased over the back of her neck. What would those little wisps feel like against his fingers? And why did he have the need to know?

She crossed her arms over her chest, but the movement was more combative than self-protecting. He almost admired her refusal to back down. Except she wasn’t backing down from him; that, he didn’t like one bit.

“The conversation’s far from over,” she said. “And I’m not going to say another damn word about it until I get some sleep.”

But her words had a strange kind of power to them, for as soon as she said that word sleep, he felt as though his bones were made of lead. The snooze he’d caught on the train had fueled him for a small while. He’d burned through that fuel, however, and his whole body ached with weariness. Pain crept behind his eyes. His jaw throbbed with the force it took to keep from yawning wide as a crocodile.

Even if he headed outside, he wouldn’t make it far before keeling over. Damn prison life getting him used to regular sleep. When he’d been on the streets, he could go days with nothing more than a quick doze leaning up against a wall.

“Going to put me up at Claridge’s?”

Marco grunted. “Delusional. Come on, then.” He walked through the kitchen and up the stairs.

Seeing that he was supposed to follow, and given that he’d tip over from exhaustion at any moment, Jack decided to go along. He climbed the stairs, hearing Eva’s lighter step behind him. At the top of the stairs was a cramped hallway, a threadbare hooked carpet partially covering the scuffed floorboards. Two doors faced each other. Marco opened the door on the right.

Glancing inside, Jack found a narrow bed covered with a faded calico quilt. A dresser, desk, and washstand with a basin made up the rest of the furnishings. The braided rag rug looked as though it had been present for the queen’s coronation. Yellowed lace covered the single window. No gaslights, just an oil lamp set up on the dresser and a squat coal stove crouched in the corner.

“Until we’re done with you,” Eva said, walking into the room, “this is your home.”

“Claridge’s has nothing on this palace.” In truth, the plain little room did look like a palace to him after his bare cell. No bars on the window, no slot in the door through which he could be seen by patrolling warders. Jack took a step inside, examining every detail, from the web of cracks in the plastered ceiling to the book lying on the desk. The Return of the Native . Sounded like an adventure story.

“I’m in ecstasy from your approval,” drawled Marco. “The privy’s in the backyard. Only the kitchen’s got running water. If you’ll want a wash, you’ll have to fetch and heat the water yourself.” With that, he stalked back down the hallway and down the stairs.

Leaving Jack with Eva. They hadn’t been alone together since the train, when she’d given the other gents the boot so he could eat comfortably. He became aware suddenly of the smallness of the room, and her presence within it. Though he ached with tiredness, a fine electric tension threaded itself over his skin. Hard to say in the lamplight, but her cheeks looked a little pinker than they had when Marco had been around.

They stared at each other warily, and he noticed how she kept herself out of striking distance.

Baffling, that’s what she was. Tough and hard as a bruiser, but she showed small moments where she seemed almost … kind. Like when she let him take his first long, deep breath of London air.

And there was something else between them. Something that wasn’t kindness at all. She looked at him not as a pawn in Nemesis’s game, and not as a subject of pity. But with the kind of sexual awareness a woman had for a man. She didn’t want to, he could tell. Yet it was there, anyway.

Maybe he could make use of that, somehow. Work his way free of Nemesis by exploiting her interest in him.

He almost laughed at that. Him? Play the seduction angle? That was for pretty lads and confidence men. He was a sledgehammer, not an artist’s chisel. As he watched her move through the little room, making tiny adjustments to the quilt and the furniture, he knew he couldn’t trap her using seduction, not without getting trapped himself.

Better to think of her as just another Nemesis obstacle than a woman.

Better … but not possible. He still smelled of her, that pretty citrus and flower smell.

“This has to be better than Dunmoor,” she said.

He didn’t want her to think that he was in any way grateful, so he just shrugged. “It’ll do. Isn’t permanent, is it?”

“Once we bring Rockley down and get some restitution for the wronged girl, you’ll be free to lie in any gutter you please.”

He scowled at the mention of the bastard. “Haven’t slept in a gutter since I was a tyke. And I didn’t for long. You can get gnawed on by rats for only a short while before you think of other places you’d rather be.”

A troubled frown crossed her face, brief as mercy. “Thousands of others in London have the same story.”

“But not you.” He gave her a thorough stare, from the top of her slightly mussed blond curls to the hem of her skirts. A stripe of mud edged the fabric, a souvenir from her sprint across the moors, but the quality of her clothes was good. No secondhand dresses and petticoats for her. And her underwear was probably snowy white.

A picture of her in nothing but her chemise, drawers, and corset popped into his mind, as vivid as if he’d taken a photograph. It was a damned pleasant image.

“Not me,” she said, a nice bit of huskiness in her voice. She cleared her throat. “It’s late, and I’m starting to see double. We’ll work out our strategy in the morning.” A clock somewhere in the flat chimed three. “ Later in the morning.”

He might not be able to work the seduction angle, but it wouldn’t hurt to keep her as off balance as he was. “Which room is yours? I might get a night terror and need soothing.”

“Somehow I feel that nightmares would be more afraid of you . And you’d look rather ridiculous wandering the streets of Brompton in your nightshirt.”

“Before I went into the clink,” Jack said, folding his arms over his chest, “I slept naked, so I’d be running around Brompton with my tackle knocking against my knees.”

She gave a low, worldly chuckle. “I’ve seen your tackle, Mr. Dalton, so you can’t paint yourself in such a flattering light.”

“Against my thigh, then.” But neither he nor his cock had forgotten she’d had a look back in that carriage on the moors. And they were both interested. “But we’re in Clerkenwell, not Brompton.”

“Your knowledge of London geography hasn’t vanished during your incarceration.”

“So you don’t live here.”

Her brows rose. “God, no. Is that what you imagined? That all the Nemesis operatives dwelt under one roof?”

He didn’t much care for her tone, as if he were some snot-nosed kid who didn’t know the first thing about life. “Gangs of thieves do it all the time.”

“Thieves don’t have other identities to protect.”

“But you do. An identity that lives in Brompton.” He wondered who that other Eva was, how she might be different from the one who helped convicts escape and then blackmailed them into collaboration.

“All of us have lives and homes elsewhere. And jobs, too. That’s how we keep Nemesis funded.” A neat dodge on her part, telling him nothing about herself.