“M
r. Merrick.”
He liked when her voice went breathy and uneven like that. Surprise and something else tinting the sound.
“I didn’t realize who my companion was to be or else I would have endeavored better timing,” she said.
She settled into the seat, not showing herself to be out of sorts any more than those first few seconds. She touched a blanket on the side of the seat, darted a quick look to his side of the carriage, then drew it over her lap.
He followed where her eyes had landed on his side only to see the second carriage blanket that rested on his seat. She hadn’t covered herself before making sure that he too had one. His arms crossed, unsure why he felt odd at the notion. It was not an abnormal thought for someone to do something like that for someone else.
Just not for him.
“We will stop in Rochester for the night,” he said, roughly.
“That sounds fine.”
“We will not be exiting at the switches between. If you need to take a moment before we leave, you should return inside.”
She shook her head. “I can make a three- or four-hour trip without difficulty, and I’ve prepared food.”
“Fine.” He rapped the trap, and they began moving.
Her eyes kept contact with his across the flickering shadows cast by the gas lights they passed on the street. The bobbing lamps on the carriage swayed, making the brief light undulate across her face in a sensual wave.
“I didn’t expect you to accompany me,” she said finally, breaking the growing, stifling silence.
That had been obvious. He saw no need to comment on the fact.
“But I am glad,” she said. “Glad that you are with me.”
“Why?” Everything in him stilled.
She smiled faintly. “Why would I not be? I seek your company often enough.”
Something in him vigorously wanted to ask
why
again? But whereas she was obviously willing to share her feelings, he didn’t feel the desire to reciprocate in any measure, and simply asking the question would show some need he was determined to repress.
“You shouldn’t.”
“No,” she acknowledged. “I should seek it twice as often.”
His arms tightened further across his chest.
She smiled at him. “You have doomed yourself to endless hours in a closed vehicle with me, however. Are you not worried?”
“Why would I be worried?” Worry wasn’t his overwhelming emotion at the moment.
“I may uncover all your secrets.” Her tone was teasing, but he stiffened all the same. “You blabbing them all to me, if for no other reason than to stop me from speaking.”
“There are other ways to do that.”
Even in the revolving shadows he could see the blush darken her cheeks. His arms loosened a fraction, and he felt the edge of his mouth lift in absurd pleasure.
“I told you that you might regret this trip, Miss Pace,” he all but purred.
“Oh, I don’t think I will regret it at all, Mr. Merrick,” she said softly.
His arms became steel bands across his chest once more.
She smiled. “Though you have appalling taste in carriage makers. Flatley?” She looked around her, tsking, her tone obvious with its teasing. “Truly, Mr. Merrick? I shall endeavor to help you mend your ways. And to teach you to treat your partners better.”
There were a number of items in that statement to concern him. “I don’t require mending.”
“But perhaps you require infinitely more teasing?” She turned thoughtful. “Not stopping until Rochester—you think we will be recognized?”
“It will be a point of interest that there was a carriage whose occupants did not show themselves, but there are plenty of respectable citizens who desire to remain undisturbed at various stops, as well as travelers asleep inside.”
She tilted her head. “There are people who watch for gossip on the road. That does make sense.” There was something about her voice that was elementally soothing. In such a confined space it was hard to escape from it.
“The desire for information is always flowing,” he said stiffly. “There is nothing recognizable about this vehicle”—unlike a Pace carriage—“or our driver.”
She smiled.
He turned from her smile. “But eventually talk will connect the events with anyone who observed the vehicle leaving the alley. However, an unmarked carriage leaves every hour from that alley, whether there is anyone inside or not.”
He wondered at himself, telling her such things. One in a string of a hundred little secrets he had let slip. Perhaps he would need to keep her at the end of this endeavor. Lock her in a tower and throw away the key.
“That gives us some time,” he continued. It was like a disease. A Phoebe-Pace-inspired disease, this need to speak so much—to explain himself. “Deception works best if it is part of a regular routine.”
She watched him, her mind obviously working quickly behind open, expressive eyes. Open and expressive, but hiding a far more cunning mind than most gave credit.
“It is on our return we will have to be most cautious, Miss Pace.” Don’t think of her as Phoebe,
ever.
“We will use another carriage on our return trip.”
“People watch the alley?”
“Outside the alley, not in it. Inside is a secured area when we choose it to be.”
The look in her eyes said she was thinking of the incident that first night in his office. He waited for her to question him about it again.
“I am pleased that the company I have is yours, Mr. Merrick,” she said instead.
“I have business in Dover,” he said quickly.
“That is most convenient.”
He didn’t respond. She was like some sort of horrid diviner’s rod, poking inside.
“I am happy that our paths are headed in the same direction, Mr. Merrick.”
There was something in that statement that caused him to sit stiffly for the rest of the trip.
P
hoebe watched him across the space of the carriage. She was still uncertain what actually went through his sharp mind, under the emotionless façade that he normally displayed.
They arrived at a small inn in good time—just under three hours. Their driver was skilled and the roads had been freshly treated.
Andreas Merrick withdrew a pistol from a side pocket near the window and checked it over, then slipped it into his coat.
“Wait here. Keep your hood up at all times.” He stepped out of the carriage oddly but turned gracefully to the driver. “Five minutes or drive to the location we discussed.”
She resisted the urge to look through the window to follow his progress. He had her case in his hand and a satchel around his shoulder. Five minutes? He couldn’t promise to secure their rooms and return in that short a time. What location had been discussed? She wasn’t leaving him.
He returned four minutes later without her bag, just as she was starting to fret, said a few low words to the driver, then held out a hand to help her down. She put her gloved hand in his, heart beating faster. She knew that he was simply helping her—it would cause comment to their masquerade if he didn’t—but she was unused to his initiating any contact with her. It was always she who touched him. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her reaction.
He was wearing a large greatcoat and low-slung hat. Altogether, they looked like two chilled and weary travelers. He released her hand but remained close, shielding her as they moved.
She could see the innkeeper curiously watching them as they entered. She kept to the darkness of her hood, keeping her head lowered and her lamp well away from her face. Frankly, she trusted Andreas Merrick, and his paranoia, to keep her safe, and she wasn’t afraid to admit such. It was simple good sense. The man was overly suspicious and prepared enough for two.
“I secured two rooms with a connecting door,” he said in a very low tone of voice. She nodded to indicate her understanding. It was both a security relief and privacy challenge.
Often such double rooms were used for children or servants of higher-paying customers. The more demanding patrons paid for their own convenience instead of having servants double-bunk with the inn’s staff.
He opened a door and poked the lamp inside, doing something that she couldn’t see. Checking shadows? It was quickly done, then he stepped back, eyes sweeping the hall in both directions as he motioned her inside. Yes, he was paranoid—
thorough
enough—for both of them.
He followed her closely inside and shut the door, locking it. He pressed her against the wall near the door, then leaned down, ear to the floor. She stared at him blankly until she realized that he had already risen again and was strolling to the bed, having just checked, at a distance, beneath the frame. Something unsettling went through her at the thought of someone’s hiding beneath.
He pulled a spindle of filament and a small weight from his satchel. He strode back to the door leading to the hall, strung the weight through the string, knotted one end of the string to the base of the handle, then strung it across, weight dangling in the middle, and attached the other end to the edge of a sconce on the other side, ripping the string free of the spindle with his teeth.
“Don’t use the door.”
She nodded to show she understood.
He opened the connecting door and left it open. She leaned against the jamb, watching as he repeated the actions in the other room. His movements were brisk and efficient. But then he was a brisk and efficient man. No movements wasted.
He was bent sharply at the waist to the task, all cool, straight lines. She admired the view from the rear. She wasn’t in some ballroom where she needed to worry about her reputation if she were caught ogling someone.
Not that she had felt the need to ogle anyone before Andreas Merrick. But she could look freely at the object of her interest when they were alone. Privacy freeing her in a way she had never been able to be before. This was what marriage was like, being able to look one’s fill. Her parents had always exchanged glances in such a way, in the seclusion of their own house.
Phoebe wanted that intimacy. The intimacy that was allowed without social repercussion.
He looked at her as he finished the wiring on the door. His face immediately shuttered. She wondered what he had seen on hers. “You should sleep. We will be leaving early. The earlier you can get in to see Edward Wilcox, the better.”
She nodded slowly. He obviously wanted to return to London as quickly as possible. Probably hoping she would be unable to complete any of the other tasks she had planned.
If any of his men had accompanied her, she could have cajoled. Andreas Merrick was mostly immune to cajoling.
Mostly.
But that tiny crack was where opportunity resided.
“Edward is an early riser, and he will likely be in the fields when we arrive in the city. I will wait until noon. If it were Henry, we could go earlier. He tends to rise late, but he stays in the house.”
“If Henry Wilcox is there, you will not go inside.”
“Henry is a friend—”
He leaned forward into her space. “You will leave if he is there.”
She watched him. “Henry is at Fairhaven, so it is an item of irrelevance. Is it not?”
If he chose to pursue the topic, she wanted to make sure he knew that she would be pursuing it as well.
The tightening of his lips said he understood perfectly.
He turned and began to rummage through his bag, his back to her. She tilted her head, something about his body position sparked a thought she couldn’t quite grasp.
There were too many other thoughts running through her head, blocking it out, leaving only a warmed feeling behind. She slipped back into her room to prepare for bed. With the door opened between, she could easily hear him moving about in the other room,
She hesitated; perhaps she should speak to him about her other plans for tomorrow. Spin some tales—or just confess what she planned to do and see how he reacted. She had the notion that he was going to be monitoring her progress tomorrow anyway.
She walked back to the open doors, peeked around, and froze.
He was a tall man but not heavy. Most men of his height and lean musculature were gangly or awkward in their skin. But there was a tight strength about him that spoke of someone who knew exactly how to use his body to its fullest potential. A lethal dancer. A dark Lucifer who could bend and twist and kill.
His shirt was off, his loosened trousers barely hanging on the edges of his hips, one step away from removal. Her gaze couldn’t linger on the thought of seeing a man so unclothed, especially one her heartbeat responded so readily to, as her mind was fully taken with other visual aspects. His back was a tapestry, filled by the cracked art of the streets. A tangle of scars, one overlapping another bunched beneath the nape of his neck, then dove down the tendons and sinew of his back, splitting off, snaking over his spine in lashed patterns.
There was symmetry to a number of the longer marks, indicating that they had been gifted by the same wielder, whereas others along his shoulder blades and waist were clearly single events made by a blade or bullet. There were so many lines in the longer cuts that they overlapped entirely in some parts, the only way to tell that there were two or three separate marks was to see the tails splitting at the ends. She wondered how someone could have survived being whipped that many times.