AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So it is a woman that’s got ye crying in your whiskey. I thought you’d had your fill with Charlotte.”
“I had. I have.” Just mentioning her name tightened his stomach into new spasms. As if any moment she’d come through that door. The eternal martyr. The deserted wife. She had the act perfected. What a load of shit. “Stop pestering. You think you’ll get me to spill my guts. But it won’t happen. And it doesn’t matter anyway. She’s long gone.”
Cam stripped out of his breeks. Kicked them into a corner next to the shirt. Even in high summer, the breeze off the loch was cool. Beyond the window, it glittered icy blue and clear as glass. And breath-stealingly frigid. But that was all the better. One plunge into the water would cure the last of the whiskey fog from his brain.
Brodie threw himself to his feet. Made for the door. “Well, the reprieve is over. So finish getting dressed and meet me downstairs. We need to be on the road by noon.”
“Gone responsible on me?”
Brodie looked over his shoulder and laughed. “Bite your bluidy tongue.”
London, England
As he shifted in his seat, Cam caught the woman watching him.
It was an unnerving stare from an unnerving figure. Ornately dressed in a silver-girdled robe of royal blue, she was tall—well over six feet—and with the sturdy, muscled build of a wrestler. It was almost possible to forget the leather breeks peeking from the slit skirt or the long hip boots or the dagger’s hilt Cam swore he glimpsed as she sat.
But surely he’d mistaken that.
With the exception of a white streak, her hair was black as sin. Black as her eyes. Eyes that flicked from him to General Pendergast to the door to the general’s adjutant, Major Eddis. Never resting for more than a moment on any of them as if they were beneath her notice. As if she were running this interview and not the general.
Cam had arrived in London before dawn this morning. Taken rooms at Stephen’s Hotel long enough to rinse off the grime of the road, change clothes, and catch a catnap of minutes before heading here to the Horse Guards. It hadn’t been nearly enough. As he waited patiently for the start of the general’s meeting, he fought the cotton-headed feeling that came with lack of sleep. Only the disturbing presence of the strange woman kept him alert and on edge.
“We should fill the colonel in, General Pendergast,” she said, breaking into the long awkward silence. “My…representative has already been briefed.”
Her voice was as unsettling as her stare. Deep and throaty. It seemed to echo off the walls of the office. Reverberate through his skull as if it were made of paper. After his last bender, not an impossibility.
Pendergast cleared his throat. Shuffled his papers. “
Yes, of course.”
Mayhap she was in charge. The general certainly jumped at the crook of her finger.
Cam leaned forward. “I assume it has to do with the deaths I’ve been investigating.”
“Is that what you call it, Colonel?” Major Eddis interrupted. “It’s been five months and you’ve learned nothing more than we knew after the first soldier turned up dead.”
The taunt was obvious, but Cam refused to rise to the bait. Eddis was entitled to be a pain in the ass. The disfigured face, the empty boot—the man had paid his dues.
The general pushed a paper across the desk toward Cam. “The latest list of victims. The last one just two weeks ago.”
He read the names, but he already knew all nine by heart. All but for the last. Sergeant Tucker. Thirty-fourth Foot. There was nothing linking these men. No commonalities. No ties between them. Nothing but the manner of their deaths. A grim bond, for sure. But it had led him nowhere.
“Whispers are beginning among the ranks. Rumors of an evil infecting the army. Napoleon’s curse on the soldiers who destroyed him,” the general told him.
Cam looked up. “That’s madness. The first deaths were months before Waterloo.”
Pendergast steepled his fingers, his eyes solemn. “You’re right. It has nothing to do with the little emperor or any outside enemy. This cancer eats us from within.”
The woman’s gaze was upon Cam. Even without looking over his shoulder, he knew she watched him. Sized him up. Who the hell did she think she was? And for that matter, why was she here? The army hadn’t begun admitting women to the ranks, had it? God, that was a thought to make him shudder. “Sir, I just need more time.”
“Time is a gift we do not have, Colonel Sinclair.” The soft pad of her boots was almost silent as she moved into his line of sight. “The general and I have consulted. We’ve decided the moment has come to join forces before Neuvarvaan is used again.”
He braced his hands upon the arms of his chair. Tired of being played for a fool. “And who are you? What forces could you possibly bring to this? Some kind of ladies’ aid society? A bevy of matrons armed with teacups and chicken skin fans?”
“Sinclair!” Pendergast barked.
Eddis smirked, the scarred side of his face twisting his smile into a grotesque mask.
