Page 88 of Heart of Iron
The petite redhead nodded sharply.“I cannot risk insubordination.Not now, when we’re so close.Take him away.”She glanced toward the masked figure leaning against the wall.“Leave us,” she murmured.
His gaze flickered toward Lena.
“She wants to know if she can trust us,” Rosalind replied to the unspoken question.Their gazes met.Held.“Perhaps a show of trust is what she needs.”
With a flamboyant shrug of his shoulders, he stepped toward the door.“On your head, so be it.I’ll go see if I can help Ingrid find out whose tongues have been flapping.And how far it’s gone.”
Two steps and he was through the door, with Ingrid on his heels.
It shut behind them and Lena turned to face the woman.They were much of a height and perhaps even age.Or perhaps not.Rosalind’s pale skin bore the creaminess of youth and her tip-tilted nose gave her a permanently youthful appearance.Yet the command with which she had spoken was not that of someone untried.
YouwishedtoseeMercury, did you not?
It was only now that Lena realized that the man had never directly referred to himself as such.
“You’re Mercury, aren’t you?”
Those plump lips pursed.“I’m not going to harm you.”Rosalind slid the pistol into a holster at her hip with a dexterity and ease that Lena envied.
“Who was he?The man?”
“My brother, Jack.He is also Mercury.As is Ingrid at times.Mercury has worn many names and faces over the years, the better to hide from the Echelon.”Rosalind smiled slightly, gesturing toward a chair.“Sit.Talk with me.We’ve been very curious about you.”
“As am I.”Lena dragged out a chair, giving herself plenty of room to move if she needed to.This pretty, pouting young woman seemed friendly enough, but she wouldn’t forget the ease with which she’d killed a man.Nor the cool, emotionless look in her eyes as she’d done it.
Rosalind eased into her chair, leaning back with her arms slung across the chair backs next to her.Calculation cooled her brown eyes.“There are very few who know the truth behind Mercury’s secret.”
“I would never reveal it.”
“Even if your sympathies toward the organization are conflicted?”
Lena paused for a moment.“I would not betray you.If I choose to turn my back on this, then I’ll walk away and try to forget everything I ever saw.”
“Walk away?”Rosalind murmured.“To where?Your life at court?To beg a blue blood to take mercy on you and take you as thrall?How long do you imagine that will last, with your inability to allow a blue blood to feed?”
The only person who knew that was Mr.Mandeville.The betrayal raked her with iron claws.
Rosalind tidied the piles of paper in front of her, then pushed them across the table toward her.“This is everything that we know about you.Compiled carefully in the last year.Jack and Ingrid might think this a risk, telling you of Mercury’s secret, but I don’t think you’d dare.”
A charcoal sketch rested on top.Lena stared down into her own face.The rendering was exquisite, but the expression was slightly disdainful, one eyebrow arched in dismissal.A pretty, hardened flirt.
She lifted it carefully, revealing details about her and her life.Charlie’s name.That made her blood boil.Honoria.Even Blade and Will.The detail went further, examining the minutiae of her life.When she came and went from Caine House.A brief question about why Leo had taken her as his ward, that had been circled in red ink, and daily details about her relationship with him that were shockingly intimate.
No sign of her sharing his bed.Or her blood.I cannot quite fathom the relationship as yet, but I will…
Another page.
They joked of her sister, Honoria, this morning as if he knew her well.Does the relationship go deeper?
And further down.
I find it curious that the Duke of Caine has forgone visiting the house since the arrival of the girl.I’ve spoken to the servants, the thralls about it.His Grace came regularly each Sunday afternoon to play chess with his son but does so no longer.They have never been close, but one thrall claims that she heard them arguing about Miss Todd.His Grace insisted quite strongly that his son “remove that two-faced snake” from his house but the son refused.Something about this situation strikes me as out of the ordinary.Why would the duke’s heir take such a no-account girl as his ward?The duke was once her father’s patron, but by all accounts that ended badly, though I don’t know why.I will endeavor to find more.
A traitor in Caine House who’d been watching her every move.Icy fingers ran through her.“Mrs.Wade,” she whispered, suddenly afraid for Leo.If anyone realized precisely what their relationship was he’d be ruined.Or worse.
“Her loyalty was easy to buy.She has some outstanding debts,” Rosalind explained.“You were a potential liability from the start.One with access to a great deal of resources.We took a vote on whether you were too dangerous to use.Ingrid wanted to kill you.”
Lena shoved to her feet, the chair squealing on the floor.She couldn’t stop shivering.The sweats from earlier had vanished, her body feeling as though someone had turned a faucet from hot to cold.“What do you intend to do with me?”
