Zoë Archer - Sweet Revenge

“All right, madam.” The cabman sounded puzzled, but the hackney stopped rolling.

“I’m not taking you to bed in that place,” Jack growled. “Not where every sodding person can listen in.”

“You’re not taking me to bed in any place,” she said.

Disbelieving, he stared at her. “Right. Because some other lady was grinding against me, not you.” He provoked her on purpose, needing some kind of reaction, some response that showed she was as affected as he was.

She blew out a breath. “It can’t. This cannot go any further.”

“Because you’re a lady and I’m street trash.”

She looked at him scornfully. “Have you ever heard me say that? I don’t think of either of us in those terms.”

“I want you,” he said, his voice so rough and low he hardly knew himself. He took her hand in his, running his thumb back and forth across her wrist. Her pulse came quick and fast beneath his touch. He wanted to pull her across the narrow space of the carriage and start up where they’d left off, with his hands beginning their journey up her legs and her gasps in his ear. “You want me. Simple.”

“Not simple,” she countered. “Complicated. I work for Nemesis, and getting involved with you compromises that.”

“Nobody has to know.” Back and forth went his thumb, learning the softness of her skin.

“ I would know. And it would throw off my judgment. Stop it.” She tugged to free her hand from his grasp. “I can’t think when you do that.”

“You need to think less.” He wouldn’t release her. “Stay too much in your head, and the rest of you dries up and blows away.”

A sudden hurt shone in her eyes. “My thoughts and my work are all I have. I can’t give them up.” She gave her hand another tug, and he let her go. A second passed, as if she waited for him to continue arguing or reach for her again.

He said nothing. There’d be naught to gain this night. He hadn’t known how damn close she kept herself, walled up even more than Dunmoor Prison.

“We’ll go up,” she said after a few moments. “Tell the others what we’ve learned tonight.”

Reaching over, he opened the door to the carriage, noting the way she held herself still when he moved nearer. But he didn’t touch her, only waved toward the open door, letting her go. Maybe gentlemen got out of carriages first and helped ladies down. But Jack couldn’t walk comfortably. Not yet. And his will had already been sorely tested. Touching her made him want more.

She cast him a wary glance before climbing down. As Jack took several calming breaths, willing his body to quiet, she paid the cabman and thanked him for his service.

That thought niggled him again. Was she using the attraction between them to keep him controllable? The closer they got to Rockley, the more Jack wanted his blood. But when Eva kissed him, touched him, thoughts of everything but her fled. He’d be willing to do anything, if only to taste her again.

She wouldn’t rook me like that.

“Coming, Jack?”

“Aye,” he grunted. He stepped down and nodded at the driver before the hackney rolled on.

As Eva unlocked the door to the chemist’s shop fronting the headquarters, Jack stood on the curb, watching her, hands in his pockets. Her back was straight, as if she expected an attack. No, not an attack. An escape.

The door to the shop opened, and they walked inside, passing the rows of silent bottles and the scale.

She really was like Dunmoor Prison, closed up tight, containing walls within walls. It was herself she kept locked away. Afraid of what might happen if she were to break free.

Tonight, he wore a gentleman’s evening clothes, but that hadn’t changed who he was: an escaped convict. He was glad of that. Glad he knew how to break out of prison. It meant that he could help her escape her own. But she was strong, an unknown to him in plenty of ways. She had to demolish her own walls.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Marco stalked into the parlor and threw a newspaper onto the table.

“It’s over,” he snapped, pacing.

Eva set aside her tea then picked up the paper and read aloud for the benefit of Simon, Jack, and Lazarus, also drinking their morning tea. “‘QUEEN TO MAKE RARE PUBLIC APPEARANCE.’”

“Page four,” said Marco curtly.

Turning to the appropriate page, Eva scanned the columns. What she saw made her curse softly.

“What’s happened?” Jack demanded, getting to his feet.

Eva continued reading. “‘John Gilling, a barrister of the Inner Temple, was discovered early this morning near his chambers, cruelly murdered. The poor gentleman had been stabbed to death.’” She gazed up from the paper, stunned.

Everyone made noises of shock and disbelief. Her heart pounded in her ears as she went on. “‘Mr. Gilling’s corpse was discovered in an alley by one Harry Peele, dustman, as Mr. Peele went about his morning circuit. Though Mr. Peele has been taken into custody for questioning, the chief suspect is the notorious criminal Jack Dalton, who has recently escaped from Dunmoor Prison.’”

“Does it say any more?” Simon asked.

She quickly looked over the rest of the article. “Only some editorializing about the sad state of our fair city, where respectable men could be murdered near their place of business by fugitives from the law, et cetera.” She flung the paper onto the floor.

Jack, who had joined Marco in pacing the floor, kicked the offending newspaper, though it didn’t travel far. “Rockley.”

“So it appears,” Eva said. She rubbed at her tired eyes.

Sleep had been scarce last night, her mind and body both too stimulated to allow her any rest. Thoughts of the evidence against Rockley had crashed against remembering Jack’s hands, his mouth, the honeyed ferocity of his kiss. She’d ached everywhere, craving his touch, wishing she’d taken him back to her rooms where they could have stripped out of their evening finery and finally given in to their mutual desire. But she’d made the right decision by refusing him. Or so she’d told herself as she drifted into fitful slumber.

He hadn’t shaved this morning, and he looked so dangerously alluring with stubble darkening his hard jaw, it had taken considerable self-control not to drag him up the stairs to his bed. To save her sanity, she’d kept her gaze away from him, their conversation to a minimum.

Yet she couldn’t stop watching him pace like a caged animal, seething with brutal fury.

“Rockley killed Gilling?” Lazarus wondered, frowning. “When?”

“Sometime last night,” Eva answered. “After Jack and I left Rockley’s place.” She knocked the side of her fist against the table, making the teacups rattle. “Damn it, we should’ve stayed.”

“And done what?” Simon asked. “You would’ve seen Rockley go into his home, but there wouldn’t have been any way to know he’d murder Gilling. Or any way to stop it. It’s easy enough to sneak a body out of a house under cover of night, and if you’ve got men of criminal reputation in your employ. Which Rockley has.”

“But why would he kill Gilling?” Lazarus pressed.

“On account that Gilling went to Rockley and told him about me,” Jack said, still stalking up and down the parlor. “Just as we wanted. We light a fire under them both, and get Gilling to put the squeeze on Rockley. Gilling’s more afraid of what the government will do to him than he is of Rockley.”

“But to Rockley, the weak link becomes Gilling,” Eva added. “He knows about the government contract, knows about the evidence, which makes him a liability to Rockley. Since he can’t get to Jack, he can silence Gilling. So he does.”

“He’s ruined women and killed a prostitute,” Marco said, “but we don’t have any evidence that he’s killed a man before.”