Читать книгу Much Ado About Rogues - Kasey Michaels, Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 7

DICKIE CARSTAIRS, pudgy of body and pleasantly vacant-eyed, stood a little too close to the yellow circle of lamplight across the street from the Duck and Wattle to remain undetected. That was Dickie’s job, to be detected, and he performed this office with such brilliance that government clerk Miles Duncan was not only confident but smiling as he nipped out the back door of the inn whilst Dickie was so obviously watching the front.

The smile faded quickly as a firm hand clapped down on his shoulder even as a sharp tug on the satchel he carried relieved him of its burden. “Good evening, Mr. Duncan. Going somewhere? Mind if we join you?”

Miles Duncan did mind, but not for long, all his earthly cares forgotten as he slipped almost gracefully into the fetid puddle that had once been the contents of several chamber pots recently dumped from an upstairs window. Poor Miles Duncan, another victim of the violent crime rampant in certain quarters of London.

Will Browning calmly retrieved his knife from Duncan’s mortal remains and wiped the blade on the deceased’s coat. He then slid the weapon into the cuff of his boot before relieving the dead man of his purse and inferior garnet stickpin, to lend credence to the crime of robbery. “Jack? Mind if we join you? What a strange choice of words. Not where he just went if you don’t mind, thank you.”

Don John Blackthorn, best known as Black Jack, was already undoing the flap of the satchel, to assure himself the pilfered papers the prime minister had commissioned them to retrieve were inside. “Very well, Will. Next time you talk, and I’ll wield the sticker.”

“Ha! Isn’t it just like you to want the fun for yourself.”

Jack ignored the remark, knowing Will Browning employed his knife and sword without conscience or compunction. It was probably a good thing he’d found government service; otherwise, he’d have been hanged by now.

They were an odd trio of rogues. Dickie, third son of an earl, was socially inept, regarded as pleasant enough but rather dim, yet one of the bravest men Jack had ever met. Not just anyone would constantly set himself up as the most visible and vulnerable target. Dickie’s was the public face that made it possible for the rest to work.

Will was the weapon. Handsome, wealthy, smooth, an impeccably dressed darling of the ton, and always ready with a pleasant word and a smile. His sense of right and wrong, however, was his own, and quite singular. There was a certain civilized madness about Will. If you knew you weren’t quite a friend, you never wished to be his enemy.

And then there was Jack, the brains and nominal leader of the trio. Jack, who’d never quite felt at home anywhere. Bastard son of the Marquess of Blackthorn, he hadn’t felt at home on the estate, with his brothers, or with the world in general. He was different, and he’d recognized that difference early in life. He had a fire deep inside him, a need that he couldn’t articulate, let alone grasp. That had made him a wild, impulsive youth, and he’d learned life’s lessons the hard way.

Finding work as one of the government’s most trusted covert agents had fed the fire, for a time. Now he was growing tired of always being on the outside of life, the observer, never a real participant. Once, he’d thought he’d found the answer, a way to the unnameable acceptance he’d always been seeking, the one place where he knew he would fit. But then he’d lost his way, his purpose in living, and knew he could never get it back. Get her back. What he did now was merely exist from mission to mission.

“It’s all there?” Will asked as Dickie joined them, both of them leaning in to see the contents Jack quickly began returning to the satchel.

“I wasn’t made privy to an inventory, but there’s enough here that Lord Liverpool should be satisfied,” Jack answered noncommittally. “And more diligent about whom he trusts with the Crown’s business in future. In any event, we’ll be well recompensed for tonight’s work, and that’s what matters—correct, gentlemen?” He hesitated for a moment, and then pulled one of the pages back out of the packet when he saw a name he recognized. “Damn.”

“Shouldn’t be reading that, Jack,” Dickie pointed out. “We know too much, we could end up like our friend here, and I don’t much care for the neighborhood.”

“He’s not listening, Dickie,” Will pointed out. “You’re scowling more than usual, Jack. Is there a problem?”

Jack was still reading. “You could say that. It would seem the Marquis de Fontaine has gone missing.”

“Really? Haven’t heard that name in a while. Your mercenary mentor in the dark arts during the war, wasn’t he? And then there was that business with you and his daughter. Tess, correct? You never said, but I’m assuming that ended badly.”

“He doesn’t talk about it, no,” Dickie told Will quietly when Jack didn’t answer, but only replaced the page and closed the satchel.

“Still, the war’s over, more’s the pity, or else we’d still be hunting adversaries more worthy of our time than overly ambitious clerks, and de Fontaine has been pensioned off, or whatever we do with mercenaries we no longer need. So what does Liverpool care if the fellow’s taken a flit?”

Dickie carefully stepped over the late, overly ambitious Miles Duncan as Jack led the way out of the alley. “Old secrets or new, they’re probably all the same to Liverpool, yes, Jack?”

“Governments never want to give up their secrets,” Jack answered shortly. The mention of Tess, coming out of the blue along with seeing her father’s name, had set off a cascade of memories he’d rather stay dammed up behind the stone wall he’d built for them in his brain.

“So what are they going to do about the missing marquis, Jack?” Will asked as they climbed into the unmarked coach waiting at the end of the alley.

“Find him,” Jack said at last. “Liverpool’s memorandum to his secretary concerns my next small project for the Crown. It has been decided that, since I know him best, I’m to be asked to find Sinjon.”

“Liverpool wants to know what he might be up to since they set him out to pasture? That seems reasonable enough,” Will said, settling back against the squabs.

“Yes, reasonable enough. Find him. Question him,” Jack said, twisting the gold-and-onyx ring on his right index finger as the image of Tess’s sad, beautiful face seemed to float in front of him inside the dark coach. “And then, for the good of king and country, eliminate him.”