AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Your years abroad prepared you well for this type of mission, though it’s been hard to take advantage of the brigade’s expertise in peacetime. Few members of your outfit remain. And those who survived the campaigns aren’t exactly…” His voice trailed off.
Cam knew what words the general didn’t say.
Stable. Balanced.
Sane.
Supposedly he was all those things. Though what that said about him when the work of the brigade had ruined so many others, he wouldn’t look into too closely.
He tried to ignore the tension banding his shoulders, the dead weight settling across his chest.
“Doran’s from the Wapping area,” he said. “We’re assuming that’s where he’s gone. He’ll know every bolt-hole. Miss Bligh is currently mapping the area. We’ll flush him street by street if we have to.” He kept his agreement with Rastus quiet.
“That’s right.” Pendergast nodded, adjusting his spectacles. “You and the young woman. How is that arrangement working out?”
Eddis’s expression went from merely contemptuous to outright insulting. “Yes, Sinclair. How is she?”
Three little words and the weeks of pressure tore through him. Like a gun going off, Cam snapped. He lunged for Eddis, conscious thought lost amid the animal need to hurt. “You fucking prick,” he snarled.
Eddis stumbled back, catching his wooden leg on the edge of a chair. He brought up his cane in defense, but Cam slid beneath his guard. He’d show them how bloody well the brigade had prepared him.
“Enough!” Pendergast bellowed, slamming his open hand on his desk. The sound breaking through just moments before Cam’s fist connected with Eddis’s jaw.
Cam fell back, his whole body knotted with unfulfilled rage. “You speak that way about her again, I’ll rip your head off—Major.”
Eddis hobbled out of range, his own fury showing in the squint of his eyes, the tic in his jaw. “They were right about you. You’re insane.”
Cam’s chest heaved as he tried slowing his breathing, tried slowing his racing heart. “Damned right. And don’t ever forget it.”
“Sinclair, that’s more than enough. I’ll handle my own staff, thank you.”
“If you don’t, General, I will.” He knew he skated on thin ice. The general could reprimand him for insubordination. Hell, he could arrest him for treason if he chose.
He did neither. “It’s that kind of spirit I’m expecting out of you, Colonel. That’s what will find us this sword. And end this threat once and for all.”
They wanted him this way? On a hair trigger and ready to explode? The demons so close to the surface he saw their faces and heard the whispers every time he closed his eyes?
Just knowing that held him together long enough to get out of the office and hail a cab, sending the driver toward Whitechapel and the gunsmith’s. The army had nearly destroyed him once for their own purposes, yet he’d crawled back. Now they wanted to destroy him again.
He wouldn’t give them—or the demons—the satisfaction.
“And when did you say you married my nephew?” Sir Joshua Sinclair asked, his tone strained in an obvious attempt to remain civil.
Morgan never batted an eye, though she felt Captain MacKay’s gaze boring into her back, waiting for her answer. “I didn’t, sir.”
Cam’s uncle turned out to be all voice. As diminutive in stature as the captain was enormous. But despite his size, his manner brooked no nonsense. A man used to being in charge. Much like his nephew.
He’d ensconced himself in the fanciest chair in the drawing room, the rest of them ranged around him as supplicants. Lady Sinclair perched nervously on the edge of a settee. Their niece took up her subservient position on a bench near the window, strips of shuttered light falling over her delicate features, the pale blue of her dress. Even Brodie seemed cowed, his great frame ranging near the doorway as if he might bolt if given half a chance.
Only Morgan held her ground under the onslaught. She hadn’t lived for twenty-four years under the stern discipline of the triumvirate—as she’d dubbed her father, her uncle, and her grandmother—without learning a little bit about self-composure.
“Well, I’m asking you now. When were you and Cam wed? And why weren’t we told of it? We’re family. You’d think he’d feel at least a slight obligation to let us know when he takes a wife.”
“Cam and I have only been together a few weeks.” Not a lie. Not a truth. She thought she threaded it nicely. “There wasn’t time to send word.”
“No time for the only family he has? Why, Euna’s his own sister”—he motioned to the young woman at the window—“and she hears of his marriage for the first time from a stranger. I have to say this is all highly irregular. Not at all what I expect from a Sinclair.”
Morgan’s gaze fixed on the retiring blonde with the downcast eyes. This was Euna, the spunky child of Cam’s memories? Any backbone had been sucked out of her in the intervening years. She looked like she had all the pluck of a baby mouse.
