Wicked Temptation (Nemesis Unlimited) (11 page)

Looking out the window, he muttered something.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked.

“I said, ‘You did well back there,’” he admitted.

“Believe me,” she answered, “I’m just as surprised as you are.” She hadn’t even thought about how to best play along with Marco’s rent-collector ruse. Only slipped into the part, though with less finesse than he’d shown.

“Not just the gambit with that poorly dressed oaf.” He glanced at her. “Finding that notepad. Figuring out Devere was heading to Calais and Paris.”

She picked at the stitching of her cloak. “You would’ve found the notepad and figured it out without me.”

“Yes,” he answered easily. “But you deciphered a good deal, too. I’m trained. You aren’t.”

Perhaps she was being as suspicious as Nemesis wanted her to be, but his praise sounded … grudging. As if he didn’t want to admit to himself, let alone her, that she could actually manage the situation, or even thrive within it.

Annoyance heated her cheeks. “Why shouldn’t I be able to do those things? Because I’m a woman?”

He lowered his eyelids. “Perhaps you’ve noticed that both Harriet and Riza are Nemesis agents, and female.”

“My social class, then?”

He gave another Italian shrug. She was beginning to hate those shrugs. They communicated so much while also remaining perfectly opaque. If only there was an English equivalent.

“You may think me nothing but a silly society lady,” she said. “But I’ve seen things. More than most.”

His brows rose in disbelief.

“Consumption isn’t a pretty disease,” she continued.

“I’ve seen it,” he replied, his gaze shuttered.

“And I nursed my husband through the illness. I watched him die. Slowly. Awfully. My life hasn’t been all tea parties and regattas.”

He bowed his head slightly. “Again, I have to offer you my apologies. Your maid didn’t tell us the extent of your involvement with Mr. Parrish’s illness.”

“It was considerable,” she said tightly. “He took his last, labored breath in my arms.”

“It’s not an easy thing,” he murmured. “To see death, to touch it, even, and be unable to stop it.”

What had he seen to give him this shared, bitter knowledge? She’d been terrified when it had become clear that Hugh wouldn’t get better. And some of her fear wasn’t just for him, but for herself. If a young man like him could die, couldn’t she, too? Did Marco think of his own death when confronted with its specter?

Instead, she asked, “When do we leave for Paris?”

“Tonight.”

She braced herself as the carriage rocked with a turn. “He’s been out of the country for three months. Surely we can wait until tomorrow.”

“Doesn’t matter if he’s been gone an hour or a year,” Marco answered. “All time is valuable, and every moment we spend on this side of the Channel is a moment less for us to get your money back.”

Arguing with him would be ridiculous. Clearly, Marco knew what he was about. This wasn’t his first assignment—anyone could see that. He’d already advised her to do precisely what he directed. So she had to trust him, though every part of her shouted that trusting him was almost as dangerous as whatever threat they faced abroad.

*   *   *

Marco couldn’t tally the number of times he’d made the voyage from England to France. He now preferred his intelligence assignments to keep him in Britain and had enough seniority so that his choices were usually honored. But when he’d been a young agent, he spent so many hours ferrying back and forth on the English Channel—on steam packets, fishing boats, cargo ships—he almost qualified as a sailor. Thank God he didn’t get seasick.

Mrs. Parrish might. The Channel was notorious for its rough crossing. Even now, the
Pauline Ann
rocked its way over the water. Most of the passengers had taken to their cabins—if they could afford cabins. The unlucky souls without private accommodation leaned over the rails, denied solitude in their illness.

Earlier, he’d knocked on Mrs. Parrish’s cabin door, but there’d been no sound within. Either she’d been too ill to speak, or she was outside for fresh air. After a quick turn around the ship with no sign of her, he assumed she was sick in her berth. Meanwhile, his own stomach rumbled, but with hunger, not seasickness.

So he found himself a seat in the dining room. Most of the tables were empty, the waiters staggering between the few hardy passengers with plates of roast beef and mashed potatoes, as the chandeliers swung overhead. Just as he was about to cut into his overcooked, gray meat, he glanced up to see Mrs. Parrish standing in front of his table. Immediately, he got to his feet and offered her a chair. She took it, looking not at all green. In fact, her cheeks held a pretty pink color, and he smelled cool air and mist on her skin.

After she sat, he resumed his own place, and motioned for the waiter. She gave her order in perfect French.

“I looked for you,” Marco said once the server had gone. “You weren’t in your cabin and you weren’t on the promenade deck.”

“There’s a way onto the bow.” She sipped a glass of wine, glancing at the mostly deserted dining room. “We’ve got the place to ourselves.”

“Like you had the bow to yourself,” he noted.

He guessed that she modeled her shrug on the one he often made, the one he’d learned from his mother. It often had the consequence of maddening the other Nemesis agents, and his father. Poor English. They never learned the benefit of a proper body gesture. But the Widow Parrish seemed to be on her way.

“Is there a strategy when we reach Paris?” she asked. The waiter appeared with a plate of actually edible-looking chicken and asparagus. He bowed and smiled at her thanks, but disappeared before Marco could demand the same food.

Seeing as how the dining room was nearly empty, there wasn’t any harm in speaking of the plans. “Two Nemesis agents are going to meet us there. You haven’t met them yet—Simon and Alyce.”

“A brother and sister, like Desmond and Riza?” She cut herself a dainty piece of chicken, her table manners faultless even in the middle of a rough evening crossing.

“Husband and wife.”

She raised her brows. “I didn’t know Nemesis agents could marry.”

“No rules to say they can’t.” He swallowed some depressing wine.

Frowning, she said, “But the way you talked, I thought that meant … it wasn’t possible to wed if one was in Nemesis.”

“I used to think so. The work isn’t conducive to happy marital unions,” he conceded, “given that we’re on assignment half the time or working at our other employment the other half. Not many spouses would tolerate that kind of neglect. Yet somehow, there have been exceptions.”

“So some spouses do endure the work.”

“Most wouldn’t.” Was there a Nemesis operative that had caught her eye? Desmond?

His heart unexpectedly pitched. It had to be because of the ship’s movements. What else would cause that sensation?

Not her, or her possible choice. If she wanted Desmond, it didn’t matter to him. It couldn’t. He was on an assignment he didn’t want, and all he had to do was complete it. Whether or not he felt a growing attraction to a spirited, redheaded widow was irrelevant.

Do the job and move on.
That had ever been his axiom, whether working for the British government or Nemesis.
Always forward.

“Simon and Alyce met on an assignment,” he noted. “He was working to oust the corrupt management of a copper mine, and she worked at the mine itself. It wasn’t a likely match. His family title dates to the Tudor period, and she broke rocks for a living. Somehow,
amore
found them.”

He shook his head. Even having attended their wedding a month earlier, Marco still couldn’t quite believe that Simon had become a married man, or found a woman brave—or foolish—enough to take him as her husband.

“He’s got connections to circles we’ll need,” Marco continued. “And as his wife, Alyce can learn things, too.”

“And then?” Mrs. Parrish pressed.

“Then … we figure out the rest of our plan. An assignment is fluid, like the ocean. It hits unexpected squalls, or doldrums, and we adapt. But there is something I know for certain we’ve got to do once we arrive in France.”

“That being?”

Oh, she wasn’t going to like this. “We get rid of your widow’s weeds.”

FIVE

Marco expected his announcement would be greeted with resistance at best. At worst, she’d throw her glass of wine in his face and storm off in a rage.

Neither happened.

Instead, Mrs. Parrish rolled the stem of her glass between her fingers, contemplating it, while a small frown creased between her brows.

“Why?” she asked simply. She didn’t look at him, reminding him of one of those Renaissance paintings of shy, vicious nymphs in attendance on Diana—beautiful, serene, and capable of killing an unwary man.

“The French might not be quite as obsessed with mourning as the English,” he explained, “but they know a widow’s dark clothing when they see it.”

“Surely France is filled with widows,” she murmured. “Unless French men have somehow created a patent medicine that grants them eternal life.”

“Bordeaux is the closest they’ve come to that.”

“It doesn’t make them immortal.”

“Fortunately, no. Men die there just as they do everywhere else.” He, himself, had escaped death more times than his considerable memory could recall. That especially persistent, talented German assassin and their deadly encounter on the rooftops of Constantinople came to mind, though. But only because Marco had a scar just below his kidney to remind him of how near he’d come to the afterlife.

Thank God he had no woman waiting at home for him, worried that he might not return from an assignment. How could he put anyone through that kind of hell?

“Widows in France are common enough,” he continued. “Noticeable, though. Easier to remember a woman dressed in weeds than one out of mourning.”

“And whatever it is we’re going to do in France, we aren’t supposed to be memorable,” she deduced.

“The best way to collect information is through subtlety.”

She did look at him then, her gray-green eyes narrowed. Shadows from the swinging overhead lights drifted back and forth across her face, adding to the illusion that she was some cunning forest creature lying in wait among the trees.

“A spy,” she said abruptly.

He didn’t move. Not a blink or twitch.

“I’ve been trying and trying to figure out what it is you do for employment when you aren’t working for Nemesis,” she said. “The way you took on different personae made me think at first you were an actor. Then a thief, with the skill you had picking locks. But now I see it. You’re a spy.” She shook her head. “Those words didn’t really leave my mouth, did they?”

“They did.” Mrs. Parrish might be somewhat sheltered, but she wasn’t stupid. “I can also deny it, but we’re partners in this mission. It won’t succeed unless we trust each other.”

Her expression barely changed, but he could read her, and the slight parting of her lips, the dilation of her pupils. His lack of denial shocked her, yet she was learning the game, learning how to keep herself opaque. Adaptable, this widow. He liked that.

Softly, she said, “You realize, of course, the chance you’ve taken by admitting your … activities.” Setting her glass down, she spread her hands. “What’s to prevent me from going to some foreign agency—the Russians, for example—and telling them all about you in exchange for a substantial amount of money? More money than Hugh’s missing fortune.”

“Nothing’s stopping you.” He smiled. “Except for me.”

His smile seemed to alarm her. She collected herself. “I could slip away, out of your clutches.”

“Mrs. Parrish,” he said, “I’m thirty-eight years old. Do you honestly think that I would’ve made it to this advanced age if I wasn’t very good at my job? One mostly ingenuous widow presents little challenge, no matter how clever that widow might happen to be.”

Color drained from her cheeks. “That sounds suspiciously like a threat.”

“No more a threat than you suggesting you’d sell me out to the Russians.” He took a bite of his tired roast beef and attempted to chew it.

“Which I’d never do.”

He swallowed, though it took effort, and chased it with the last swallows of his wine. “There you go. We’ve reached detente simply on the basis of mutual distrust.”

“I thought this was about trusting each other.”

“Two sides of the same coin.” He waved the waiter over to refill his wine glass. Once the server had come and gone, staggering, Marco continued. “Besides, I’m already known to the major intelligence bureaus across the Continent and Asia, so exposure isn’t much of a threat.”

“Yet you hold my life in your hands.”

“The man driving a wagon could easily run down people in the street. A ship’s captain could run the vessel into the shoals and drown the passengers. But most don’t. Every day is a delicate balance between our darker impulses and the need to keep the world safe and sane.”

A stunned little laugh burst from her. “Now I know for certain you’re a spy. Words come so glibly to you.”

“I’m half Italian,” he answered. “Either we talk with our hands or with our mouths. But either way, we talk. However”—he lowered his voice—“it would serve us both better if you didn’t make a habit of calling me that word, especially in public.”

Instead of speaking it aloud, she mouthed it silently.
Spy.
It made her lips form intriguing shapes. Shapes that gave him unwonted ideas.

“There,” she said. “That’s the last I’ll say it in public. It’s only … as you said, I’m not exactly conversant in the world outside what I already know. The fact that you are … what you are … it must be very exciting.”

His mouth twisted. He’d thought so at first. Then learned the truth of it. “Sometimes. Mostly it’s ugly, gritty, and dangerous.” He held her gaze as he spoke. She flinched slightly.

He usually worked under cover of darkness, but that didn’t make blood any less sticky, or flow less freely. And he’d spent more than one night awake, thinking of the soldiers he’d sent to their deaths just because he’d passed a piece of paper into someone’s hands.