Wicked Temptation (Nemesis Unlimited)
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Authors: Zoë Archer
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To Zack,
aka Nico,
aka the Man Who Can Do It All
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my agent, Kevan Lyon, for her continued faith. Huge gratitude to my editor Holly Ingraham for loving Nemesis as much as I do, and Amy Goppert for getting the word out. Special thanks to Stephanie Kristen Burns, Maribeth Karns, Lynley McAlpine, and Stacy Gail, for all their knowledge and expertise. Thank you to KB Alan and Vivienne Westlake, at whose dining table much of this book was written. The world of Nemesis, Unlimited couldn’t have existed without any of you.
ONE
London, 1887
Bronwyn Parrish haunted her own home. Ironic, given that she was still alive and her husband, Hugh, was chill and alone beneath the earth. It had been eight months since his death, eight lonely months, and yet only now as she drifted from empty room to empty room in her Leinster Square house did she feel the ghostliness of her widowhood. She looked down at her hands, half expecting to be able to see the marble floors through them.
But no—they remained solid. Blue veins threaded beneath the surface of her skin.
Dropping her hands, she looked around at the chamber that had once been the drawing room. It, too, was haunted. By the shadowed forms of servants, who’d at one time silently slipped in and out of the room with glasses of sherry and trays of cakes. By the specters of imported mahogany chaises, and the elegant guests who’d sat upon them and talked of society. She and Hugh had always given lovely dinner parties—everyone had said so. Afterward, she’d retire for the night feeling satisfied with her role as a wife and companion. Before he’d head to his own bedchamber, Hugh would kiss her on the cheek and murmur, “Beautifully done, sparrow.”
Her sigh now echoed off bare walls. It was gone. All of it, gone. And soon, she would be gone, too.
Leaving the drawing room, she walked down the stairs that led to the ground floor. The unlit chandelier hung above the echoing foyer and the front door stood wide open. She hadn’t bothered closing it after the men had come to remove the last of the furniture that morning, including her bed. She’d slept in it last night—or attempted to sleep—knowing that this was to be the last place of her own. It wasn’t even hers now. But the moment she set foot outside the door, she’d have no home ever again.
She went to stand in the room that had served as her private study and practice room, and wanted to hide her eyes from the bookshelves’ nudity. They gaped in forlorn dereliction. God, even her books. Nothing had been spared. She ran her hands over the shelves, saying good-bye to the room that had contained her happiest moments. This small chamber, situated at the back of the house, had been given to her by Hugh so he wouldn’t have to listen to her working out the strains of Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 on her violin. Hugh never objected to her playing once the piece had been mastered—in fact, he loved that his wife had so unusual a talent—but it was the learning of it that always set his nerves on edge.
But Bronwyn hadn’t minded the scratches and skips, the juddering stops and wrong notes. She’d enjoyed the process as much as the end result.
In truth, she’d always nursed a secret desire to play professionally. But hadn’t told anyone—it would’ve been a scandal if a woman with her bloodline actually chose to
work
for a living. But she would have never considered playing the violin work. Still, the idea was the same. An aristocratic woman actually earning money was a disgraceful impossibility.
When she’d encouraged Hugh to take her to concerts featuring violin solos, he’d only imagined she went to appreciate the music. He hadn’t known that she used to picture herself as the soloist, a throb of envy and joy pulsing beneath her chest when she’d watched the swaying figure. That could have been her. It
should
have been her.
Instead, she’d played for dinner parties. And herself.
Would they let her play her violin? Whoever
they
were. The nameless, faceless woman or girl that she hoped might hire her as a companion.
Bronwyn patted her pocket, feeling the small fold of pound notes and a few coins that constituted the whole of her wealth. It had to be enough to last her until she found herself a situation.
A
situation
. It wasn’t the work that she objected to, only that she’d never been asked to do it once in her life, not real work beyond the planning of dinner parties or organizing of charity bazaars. And here she was, lingering for a few minutes longer in her hollowed-out home, with a boardinghouse in Barnsbury waiting for her. She had enough money to last her through the month, plus the expense of taking out an advertisement in the paper, offering her services as a “woman of good breeding to oblige as companion to other women of good breeding.”
Bronwyn had seen those companions. Silent, suffering, pinch-faced, and put upon as they chaperoned debutantes or accompanied single or widowed ladies of means on their travels. Not a servant. Not a friend, or equal. Something in between. A nothing. One of those “surplus women” they talked about in periodicals—mainly, wondering what was to be done about them.
That was her now. A surplus woman. Wanted by no one. Not welcome anywhere, including her sister’s home. Frieda’s husband was an ass, a bully who thought no one’s opinion more important than his own, and he’d made it quite clear that Bronwyn wasn’t to warm herself with coal he’d purchased, nor steal roast off his plate. Even if her sister had defended Bronwyn, living with
that man
was an impossibility.
A humorless smile touched Bronwyn’s lips.
At least I’d get a roof and two meals if I killed him. Until they hanged me, of course.
Neither Hugh’s father nor brother had offered to take her in. Perhaps they blamed her for his death, though all the doctors had said there had been nothing to be done once the disease had settled in his lungs. She’d been the one at Hugh’s bedside when he had died, and for that, it seemed, neither the senior Mr. Parrish nor his son could forgive her.
Quickly, she strode from her former study, back down the hall, across the empty foyer, and into the front parlor, where she stared at the street. Life continued on out there. Carriages rolled by, residents and servants walked back and forth, tradesmen hurried to back entrances. None of them knew or cared about her circumstances. She’d even had to remove the black drapery from the windows and unmuffle the knocker on the front door, so no one would know that death had touched this house with its thieving hand.
Bronwyn pressed her hand to the cold glass. Her wedding band glinted in the pale sun. She’d continue wearing it until … at least two years. Until her proper period of mourning was over. But she might always wear it. It would make her seem more respectable. This world was all about respectability.
Though poverty trumped respectability. A widow only eight months into her first mourning would never move, never leave the house. Of course, that presupposed the widow
had
a home. Which she no longer did.
“Damn it,” she whispered, allowing herself a small act of defiance by cursing. Though it was still a whisper in an empty room.
She ought to stop putting off the inevitable, and leave. There wasn’t anything to be gained by lingering.
She left the parlor then lurched to a sudden stop. Her hand clapped over her mouth to muffle her startled yelp.
A man stood in the foyer. A man who’d appeared out of nowhere and made not a single sound, though her own delicate shoes tapped against the marble floor.
“Get the hell out of my house.” In truth, she didn’t demand this. Instead, she said stiffly, “I was given to understand by Mr. Moseby that I had until two o’clock this afternoon before I vacated the premises.”
The man watched her from beneath heavy-lidded, dark eyes. He held a very fine hat in his gloved hands, and his suit was of far better quality than one might expect from a land agent’s hired muscle. The stranger was also, she noted coldly, exotically handsome. Olive skinned and black haired, with a neatly trimmed goatee framing a thin but sensuous mouth.
Despite the elegance of his appearance, an air of calculation and danger clung to him, like a silk cravat wound about the neck in order to strangle someone.
When he spoke, she shivered.
“You misunderstand, Mrs. Parrish.” He had a deep, husky voice. Cultured, but sounding as though he were used to speaking in dark places. “I’m not here for the house. I’m here for you.”
* * *
Bronwyn took an instinctive step backward. Should she scream? All the heavy bric-a-brac in the foyer had been cleared out with the rest of the furnishings. There was nothing to use as a weapon. Nothing but her speed. Back in boarding school, she’d been a champion runner. She glanced at the space between herself and the open front door. Could she make it past this stranger before he caught her?
As if reading her thoughts, he took a step to one side, giving her an unimpeded path to the door. This alone made her pause.
“Who are you?” she demanded. Her heart beat thickly beneath her widow’s weeds.
“My name’s Marco,” the man answered. “I’m here to help you.”
She ignored his last statement. “Is Marco your first or last name?”
“First.” He offered her a smile, which was perfectly white and straight and even rather coolly charming, but it didn’t calm her at all. “Last names are … unsafe.”
“Yet you know mine,” she shot back.
“Naturally. We know quite a bit about you.” He didn’t fidget or make any extraneous movement, only continued to hold his hat in his gloved hands. “Helping you would be a more complex business if we didn’t.”
“We.”
Ice climbed through her at the word. There was more than one of him, whoever this Marco was.
His dark gaze held hers. “Nemesis, Unlimited.” A pause followed, as though he expected her to react.
“I’ve no idea what or who Nemesis, Unlimited, is,” she snapped.
His lips gave a slight, rueful twist. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” he murmured half to himself.
“Get out.” She pointed to the door, hoping her hand didn’t shake too much and betray her.
“Your husband, Hugh Alistair Parrish, died eight months ago from consumption,” the stranger Marco said, quickly but in a low voice, as if reciting the result of a parliamentary vote. “He caught it after a trip to inspect a Glasgow cotton mill. It took three months for the doctors to finally reach a diagnosis. You went to the spa at Amélie-les-Bains to get a cure, but nothing worked, and he died with you at his side. The room had white curtains and blue-flowered wallpaper.”
Nausea swamped her. These were facts no one but she herself knew.
Yet Marco continued, relentless. “When you finally returned home after burying him, you discovered that your money—including the portion you brought with your marriage—was completely gone. So you approached his financial agent and executor, one Edgar Devere. But Devere told you Hugh had died in arrears.”