Page 1 of A Lady's Handbook of Espionage
1
New York, 1869
Trouble had a way of finding Ronan Callahan. Usually, it came in the form of a fist aimed at his jaw or an informant with an itch to turn on him. But tonight, it was a blonde woman wearing emerald silk.
They were in some uptown mansion he couldn’t be arsed to remember the name of, some railway tycoon’s ostentatious monument to his wealth. She moved through the crush of Manhattan’s elite, pretending to be just another debutante. But Callahan saw beyond the practised smiles. He’d made a career out of seeing what others missed.
She called herself Abigail Smith.
It was, by Callahan’s meticulous accounting, her thirteenth name in two years.
The newspapers dubbed her the Spectre. TheFantôme. A ghost drifting through the lives of the rich to steal anything shiny and valuable. He’d tracked her exploits for months, a bemused admiration in the dispatches he sent winging back to Whitehall. Hard not to marvel at the fucking audacity of her grift.
And the cleverness, if he was being honest. She treated it like a game.
Oh, they had that in common, the pair of them. That understanding that the world was a board, and they had pieces to be played. Toffs and street thieves, Quality and guttersnipes – all people wanted the same things. Wealth. Status. Power.
The only difference was that he went for the straighter way of taking it. He’d beat it out of someone if he had to. Callahan had been born in the rookery, made in the image of dockside taverns and narrow alleys. Forced to make his way with fists and cunning when Whitechapel finally spat him out. He’d tried going straight once – clerk work, factory labour. His hands itched the whole time.
Too wild for honest work.
Too impatient for business.
Too damn mean for the church.
Left one path: government-paid thief. Spy, they called it, like the word made it cleaner.
Buther? She worked the room like she knew this world well. Made men fall in love before she vanished with their fortunes. Never left bruises, just broken hearts. She bent her head as she laughed at some young swell’s tepid wit. Fluttered her fingers against another’s bejewelled lapel with a blush colouring her cheeks.
Every movement was calculated.
There was a certain art to her cons. A poetry that only someone versed in the same could appreciate. Her methods were prettier than his, to be sure, but a mark was a mark, whether you rolled them with a kiss or a fist. And Callahan made a study of her light-fingered exploits. He’d followed her across countries, lost her trail, and thought he’d never find it again. Now, here they were, in the same Manhattan residence.
Kismet, Callahan might’ve called it, if he believed in that sort of thing.
He waited for his moment. Spectre drifted towards the ballroom’s perimeter, pausing to admire the view outside the open terrace doors. Callahan abandoned his whiskey on a footman’s tray and intercepted her path. There was something almost fated about it. The inexorable tug of two bodies locked in opposing orbits, destined to collide.
“Lovely evening,” he said. “Seems a shame to waste it on dancing and small talk.”
Up close, she resembled a figure out of a Rossetti painting, with irises the colour of absinthe and hair like molten gold. An elegant nose. A mouth made for sin and secrets. Her skin looked soft enough to bruise under his fingertips.
Her attention didn’t waver from the immaculate gardens beyond the terrace, but he’d wager she’d clocked his every feature and stored it away in her clever brain.
“I find these gatherings quite entertaining. Perhaps you’d find a gaming table more to your taste?” A smile, faintly mocking.
Christ, but she was a cool piece of work.
“Ah, see, I make it a policy never to gamble if I can help it. With cards or dice, at least. I prefer more unorthodox contests of chance.”
“Such as?”
“Seeing how long you can keep this up before that accent slips.” He leaned in, letting his voice drop low. “I’d lay odds that fetching little voice is meant to mark you as a new money debutante, possibly visiting New York from Philadelphia for a match. But the Seine still shows through when you say certain words. A bit sloppy for someone with your reputation.”
That earned him a swift, startled look. Her eyes flicked over him, cataloguing the austere lines of his evening kit, the hair he’d slicked into submission.
“You’ve a discerning ear,” she allowed. “Mr . . . ?”
“Ronan Callahan, at your service.” He swept her a bow. “And I’ve an ear for many things, Miss Abigail Smith. Tell me, did you come up with that all on your own, or did you borrow it from a headstone?”
