Zoë Archer - Sweet Revenge

“Some were decent, genuinely compassionate. Others, less so. Just like anyone. But it teaches you something about pride, continually having your hand out, asking for help.”

He grunted. “Aye. Tastes like quinine.”

“Or lye.” She nodded toward the ballroom. “He’s dancing now. Unless he’s in the market for a wife, he won’t dance with the same woman twice.”

Rockley made a fine figure on the dance floor. He easily guided the young woman in his arms through the waltz, and she beamed up at him, surely feeling that she was the envy of all the other girls at the ball. Eva half expected the young woman’s snowy gown to be stained by Rockley’s moral pollution.

“He didn’t want to be leg-shackled,” Dalton said. “Doubt that’s changed.”

“It’s so much easier to ruin girls without having a wife at home.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.

They were silent again, observing the strange rituals of another culture.

Yet Dalton, it seemed, wanted more details about Eva. “They still in London, your parents?”

“Africa. Nigeria, to be more specific, doing good works.” She’d had a letter from them a month ago describing the school they’d built—with considerable assistance from the local populace. Clasping her elbows, she spoke quietly. “I didn’t follow in their footsteps. I believe … I’m a disappointment to them.”

It stunned her that she’d said the words aloud, when she hadn’t fully articulated them to herself. And of all the people she should confess this to, she had not anticipated her confessor would be Jack Dalton.

She waited for his scorn, telling herself it didn’t matter if he jeered at her or said something cutting. It would teach her a lesson about revealing too much of herself to him, to anyone.

“If Nemesis does what it claims,” he said gruffly, “if it makes injustices right, and if you’re part of Nemesis, then you are doing good.”

“But I’m not bringing faith to the ignorant, or clothing those who’ve only known nakedness.”

He grunted. “Bollocks to that. You’re working for the needy here at home, where you’re wanted. Not trying to force belief down the throats of people who might not even ask for it.”

Stunned, she unclasped her elbows and let her arms hang down her sides. “I never thought of it in those terms.”

“About time you did.”

She could hardly believe it. He was defending her work. Defending her . When he had no reason to do so. She knew when someone lied, told her half-truths, or spoke with the intent to flatter and deceive.

Dalton had meant every word.

Without thinking, she brought her hand up to press in the center of her chest. As if she could hold back the pieces of self-protection that crumbled from around her heart. She didn’t want to like him, or feel grateful for his understanding. She didn’t want to feel anything for him.

It couldn’t be helped, though. He’d found a vulnerability.

And he didn’t even know it. He continued to stare into the ballroom. His lip curled as he watched several bejeweled matrons gather in a circle, fanning themselves. “Every now and then, do-gooders would come parading through Bethnal Green, clanging bells and clapping hands. Women like that lot. The way they treated us,” he scoffed, “like we were idiot children.”

Giving herself a mental shake, she brought herself back to the conversation.

She knew precisely what he meant. Some missionaries thought of their charges as little better than animalistic brutes, and it was their duty to elevate them. Not as high as the missionaries themselves, but out of the mud of their ignorance. Her parents, at least, were not so blinkered in their ideology.

Dalton said, “Then they’d get angry when they figured out that us poor folk weren’t as simple as they wanted. We couldn’t be shaped into what they wanted us to be. And more than a few of us didn’t care for their sort of charity .” His jaw tightened. “Most of ’em lost interest after a bit. They’d find another charity or just give it up altogether, like they were bored of poor people.”

“When my parents and I would return to some ladies,” she said, “asking for more donations, they’d look at us with this confusion . Wondering why we’d come back. As though giving a handful of pounds or a few dozen blankets should suddenly, magically cure poverty.”

“Or that we should be grateful to find jobs that barely paid nothing. Honest work, they called it. Anything to keep us low.” He tugged on the silk fabric of the curtain, a swath of fabric that, if sold at a secondhand shop, could feed a man for months. “We couldn’t dream of having this for ourselves. Couldn’t aim for anything beyond just a roof over our heads and a measly bowl of mutton for supper.”

“And you?”

He frowned. “What about me?”

“You must’ve aimed for more than a roof and mutton.” If she was coming to understand anything about Dalton, it was his ferocious determination. A man like him wouldn’t be satisfied with crumbs. He’d want the whole banquet.

“Always had bigger plans for myself,” he admitted. “I wanted out of Bethnal Green, and no dirty factory job was going to make that happen. So I became a housebreaker, then a fighter. Nothing aboveboard, only underground brawls they’d hold in deserted buildings. Earned me the name Diamond Jack, on account of being hard as one of them stones. After that, I came on as Rockley’s bodyguard.” His sneer of disgust seemed aimed not just at Rockley, but at himself. “The most money I’d ever had, all to watch some toff’s back. I took it, and gladly. Didn’t matter to me what the bastard did, so long as I kept him safe and got my wages.”

The bastard in question had ended his waltz and stood talking with two men she recognized as top parliamentary figures. One of the men laughed at something Rockley said, and gestured toward the card room.

“Maybe those nobs are in on the scheme with the cartridges,” Dalton said, nodding toward the men talking with Rockley.

“They aren’t afraid of him,” she said. “You can see it in the way they look at him, the ease of their laughter. He doesn’t have any hold over them.”

Dalton grunted softly, a sound partway between amusement and reluctant admiration. “Ought to consider becoming a card sharp, the way you read folks.”

“The late hours would interfere with my work for Nemesis. And I don’t care much for the smell of cigars.”

Rockley and the other two gentlemen strolled from the ballroom, seemingly eager to immerse themselves in the masculine world of importance.

“Damn,” Eva muttered. “There isn’t going to be another room in Sir Harold’s house that will have a view of the card room.”

“He’ll have to come back through the ballroom to leave,” Dalton noted.

They wouldn’t know who Rockley spoke with in the card room, but at least she knew he couldn’t slip away unnoticed.

Eva leaned forward, bracing her elbows on the windowsill. “Did you ever think about being anything other than hired muscle?”

A fleeting look of contemplation crossed his face, something almost wistful. But it was gone before she could be certain. “Nah. Folks always knew me as a bruiser, and that’s what I became. Either in the ring or on that nob’s payroll.” He held up his fists. “These have always been more valuable than this.” He tapped the side of his head.

“You overvalued the wrong commodity,” she said.

His expression was confused, as though she suggested paying for oxygen. “Muscle is all I’ll ever be.”

Unaccountable anger surged through her. “Stop calling yourself that.”

Again, he looked mystified. “Don’t know why you’re getting so cross. What difference does it make to you how I think of myself?” He folded his arms across his chest as he gazed at her.