The Trouble With Moonlight (8 page)

He checked his pocket watch. He had time before meeting with the colonel. Without further consideration, he slipped into the shop to buy the brooch and a black velvet ribbon to secure to Miss Havershaw’s lovely neck.

HIS PURCHASE SAFE IN HIS POCKET, LOCKE CROSSED two more streets to dart between the fluted columns at the Cambridge Circus address. Locke headed directly for the second floor and after exchanging a special password with a brute of a man absently loitering in the hallway, gained admittance.

“Locke, good to see you. I was concerned when you disappeared from St. James the other night.” Colonel Tavish, his old military superior, stood and offered his hand in greeting from the other side of a wide desk. “I half expected to hear you were hand-shackled and well on your way to Siberia.”

Locke grinned tightly. They all knew the consequences of getting caught in this deadly game. The foreign office would deny any knowledge and the unfortunate party would bear the consequences on their own. Their shared laughter covered a relief that couldn’t be otherwise expressed.

“Unforeseen events caused me to leave the club before I could report back to you, sir.” He smiled at his choice of words. The director would never quite appreciate how “unforeseen” Miss Havershaw had been.

“Chasing a skirt, were you? Hah! To be young and available again, heh, Hopkins?” Tavish looked over to a man leaning against the wall in the corner of the room. Hopkins responded with a scowl.

He was a collector. The quiet, inconsequential sort who blended well into the background of a variety of situations and listened, collecting valuable information from unlikely sources. Locke acknowledged him with a quick nod. They all had their specialties. They all knew the danger.

“Enjoy it while you can, Locke.” Tavish raised a meaningful brow. “Just be careful. You know the rules.”

“No connections, no entanglements, put no one at risk,” Locke replied, letting their false insinuations flow by without correction.

“Good man.” Tavish nodded briskly. “Now what have you learned as a result of your reconnaissance?”

“I haven’t located the list as yet.” James shifted uncomfortably, wishing his news was one of success and not another failure. Enough of those, and the results were always fatal. “However, I haven’t extinguished the realm of possibilities.”

Tavish nodded and moved to a map on the wall. “Those agents are our first line of defense. Now that the Suez Canal is open, we should be able to reinforce our troops in India in just three weeks time, but that won’t be fast enough if the tsar attacks. The news from St. Petersburg suggests the Bear is knocking at our doorstep. If our agents in Afghanistan and Kashmir are compromised, we’ll be reconnoitering in the dark.”

“I believe I have a plan to learn more,” Locke added. He didn’t need the map on the wall to understand the threat. At the turn of the century, the frontier between the British India and the Russian Empire was approximately two thousand miles; now it was half of that distance. Granted, the remaining distance was some of the harshest, most mountainous regions God had planted on this earth—but there were passages, and the passages would lead straight to India.

Tavish turned quickly, interest lighting his eyes. “A plan? What would that be?”

“I’m hesitant to go into details at the moment.” He glanced at Hopkins. “But I think I may have stumbled onto something that will give us greater access to reliable information.”

“A new informant?” Tavish raised his thick white eyebrows. Even Hopkins straightened at his post in the corner.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss it at the moment,” James hedged. “Too premature, as it were.”

A coded knock sounded at the door. Hopkins opened the door a crack, listened, then glanced at Locke, laughter crinkling his ugly face.

“There’s a blue-eyed beauty downstairs making quite a ruckus. She’s demanding to see Mr. Locke here and won’t take a ‘by your leave’ for an answer. She says she’s his associate. ”

“Associate!” Tavish laughed. “That’s a new name for it. I’m sure Locke wouldn’t be so foolish as to use a brash young woman as an associate.”

Locke closed his eyes and counted silently to ten. Surely, she didn’t follow him. “I told her I’d meet with her later this afternoon.”

“I can see by them circles under your eyes, you ain’t been sleeping,” Hopkins said. “You must have rubbed this one proper; she jest can’t wait till this afternoon.” The two men laughed, while irritation tightened in Locke’s chest. He wasn’t sure who to be angry with: Miss Havenshaw, whose unexpected appearance was currently making him a laughingstock, or the rat-faced buffoon with the lurid suggestions at the door.

With a forced smile, James ambled over to the disagreeable agent and lowered his voice to a sinister level. “Be careful of your implications,” Locke warned, reaching into the hidden pocket inside his jacket. “I’d just as soon take a knife to your throat than sully the gentle woman’s reputation.”

Hopkins’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment, James thought he would have to back up his threat. Judging from the long scar on the man’s face, he was well used to confrontations of a physical nature.

“For the sake of the men whose lives have been placed in jeopardy,” Tavish interrupted, “let’s remember what we are about here. There are more important concerns than the antics of a ch”—he glanced toward Locke, then substituted— “lady.”

James glared at Hopkins, who visibly backed down and shuffled to a new position along the wall. James readjusted his jacket.

“I trust your plan involves more than pleasuring the feminine populace of the whole of London.” No humor marred the solemnity of the colonel’s face. “Need I remind you that your name is most likely at the top of that bloody list?”

“No, sir,” Locke replied tightly. “I understand the stakes.”

“Make sure that you do, Locke. Make very sure that you do.”

JAMES USED THE MAIN STAIRWAY TO DESCEND TO STREET level, and noted a burly man better suited for the docks than the marble lobby, standing near the base of the steps.

“Mr. Locke, Mr. Locke!” Miss Havershaw sprang forward from a small alcove set beneath the steps, only to be blocked by the guard’s massive arm. A vision in bright blue and white stripes, she pummeled the arm ineffectively, much to the amusement of her keeper. “Let me go, you oaf.”

Locke jerked his head toward the leering man, who reluctantly released her. Miss Havershaw dashed forward like some bright exotic bird, freed from a dull oppressive cage.

“Mr. Locke!” She gasped, her eyes wide and vulnerable. “Thank heavens you are here. You’ve no idea what I’ve been subjected to.”

Wispy tendrils of hair had pulled from her otherwise well-ordered topknot. The placement of her beribboned hat had shifted, causing an ostrich plume to dangle erratically like some contemptuous caterpillar. Every well-placed tassel on her attire shook with aggravation. The sight normally would have brought a smile to his lips, but the situation had moved beyond levity. He schooled his voice to a hard, stern tone.

“What are you doing here?”

Her eyes impossibly widened a moment before the vulnerability receded behind a cool, pointed glare. She straightened her blue bodice with a quick tug. “You said you had a meeting this morning. I thought it best if I was aware of the particulars.”

“
You
thought it best?”

She nodded, the ridiculous plume dancing with the movement.

James placed a hand on her elbow and turned her toward the doors, away from the grinning guard who seemed enthralled with their conversation. Once they were again on the noisy pavements of London, he hurried her away from the building before continuing his diatribe.

“Did it not occur to you, Miss Havershaw, that I would have invited you to the meeting had your presence been desired? ”

“I had to know that you would not divulge my abilities. I saw no other way—”

“So you followed me into the lair of the beast? Into the one place in all of London that specializes in uncovering one’s secrets?”

Whatever she was about to reply died on her lips. She stopped her forward progress and gaped at him in dawning understanding. “I hadn’t thought—”

“That’s stating the obvious, is it not?” He scanned the faces behind her, looking to see if Hopkins or one of his kind had followed them. No one appeared suspicious, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. He tugged her brusquely forward.

“Does not the word ‘trust’ mean anything to you?” He glanced askance at her profile while they walked through the streets of London like a couple long familiar with each other.

She stiffened. “You dropped a net on me. Does that denote trust?”

The dour governess walking in front of them ignored her young charge to turn on the sidewalk and stare. James noted a flare of rosy pink rise in Miss Havershaw’s cheek. Her head dipped and her voice dropped to a near whisper. “I don’t know you well enough to trust you.”

She had a point, though he was loathe to admit it. Perhaps tricking her was not the most efficient way to win her confidence. Even if under the circumstances it had been necessary, and—he stole another glance at the curvy, molded form that sashayed so pleasantly beside him—evocative. A heat, similar to that which had flared on her cheek, burned a path up his chest. He glanced away. His life held no place for a woman. No commitments, no entanglements, put no one at risk.

“Tell me,” he said, taking a deep breath, “given that you felt obliged to eavesdrop upon my meeting, which”—he held up his hand to stop her verbal protest—“was unwarranted, at best, why didn’t you do so in your alternate state?” The word “transparent” had lingered on his tongue, but given their public presence, he thought it best to be a bit allusive.

“I can only do that at night.” Her gaze appeared to be focused on the pavement ahead, so she missed the interested raised brow of the man passing on their left. James flashed the bloody bugger a warning glare before he guided Miss Havershaw across the avenue to a quieter stretch of pavement. Her reputation would suffer if they were observed alone together in a hired hack, so they would need to continue the journey to Kensington House on foot.

“Yes, of course, I’d forgotten,” he said. “You did mention something about moonlight the first night we talked.”

What was wrong with him? How could he forget such a vital fact? The colonel’s reminder about maintaining his distance, coupled with her appearance in his bedroom last night, must have thoroughly rattled his brain. Given her blunt reference to her lack of clothing and her tendency to wander about unclothed, she was no innocent miss. Was she interested in developing a more intimate relationship with him? Was that her purpose in his private rooms? If so, he should dissuade her of that notion right now. Nip it in the bud, as they say. He cleared his throat.

“Last night, when you appeared in full flesh in my bedroom . . . am I to assume that it was your intent to—”

She was no longer by his side. He stopped his forward stride and glanced back over his shoulder. Her icy glare proved a relief both to the humid summer temperatures and to his own heated thoughts. One could clearly see by her rigid stance alone that she harbored no passion of an amorous nature for him.

“What are you suggesting, Mr. Locke?”

Given her frosty rebuke, he couldn’t actually tell her now, could he? He shook his head. No matter how he approached the topic of her various states of dress and undress, he did little more than paint himself as the most base sort of rascal. Which, in retrospect, was probably just as well as it caused her to keep her distance. He regarded the pert indignant goddess with her bustle in an uproar and smiled. Distance would definitely be needed to keep his errant thoughts in check and her alleged virtue intact.

“Miss Havershaw, you have already stated that you neither trust me, nor know me. Might I say that to certain extents, I harbor similar concerns about you. I am merely trying to understand the nature of your abilities and the amount of control you exercise over your various states.”

He stepped closer and took her two gloved hands between his own. “In a very real sense, I will be placing my life in your hands, as you have already placed your existence in mine. Might we place the events of the past few days behind us and move forward in a spirit of cooperation so that we can develop the necessary trust we will require to succeed?”

Lusinda lifted her gaze to his and battled the temptation to allow the protecting press of his hands to comfort her. Had she been hasty in her reproach? Had her need for wary vigilance eroded her ability to trust? How truly wonderful it would be to let someone else carry that burden. Yielding a bit to the charismatic pull of his gaze, to the reassurance in his tantalizing voice, she truly wanted to believe his offer. The temptation to trust loomed like a forbidden fruit. Yet a promise offered today could be forgotten tomorrow with fatal consequences. She bit her lower lip, considering . . .

“You said you harbor issues of trust about me, sir. How so?”

His hands pressed tighter a moment then released, though not before she felt a subtle disparity in the pressure of the squeeze and a slight tremor in his right hand.

“In my business, Miss Havershaw, it is prudent to harbor issues of trust about everyone.” He leaned forward. “Especially attractive females.”

His lips quirked in a way that made her stays tighten. She supposed she could forgive his earlier implied insult. She certainly could understand the pressure of not truly trusting anyone. Wasn’t that an apt description of herself?

He reached inside his jacket. “In the spirit of mutual trust and cooperation, I have a gift for you.”

A gift? Yes, she had noticed he had spent an inordinate amount of time in front of that jewelry store. She never suspected he’d been selecting a gift for her. A giddiness swirled through her as if she had sampled strong spirits. No man had ever given her a gift.