Nemesis Unlimited [1] Sweet Revenge (31 page)

She and Jack moved into the foyer. It resembled the foyer of any successful businessman’s home, complete with umbrella stand, large mahogany coat rack, and vases of fresh greenery. Piano music and the trill of women’s voices floated down the hall. A central staircase led to two more stories—presumably where the girls did their work. Somewhere in this building was Rockley’s private room, and in that room they’d find his strongbox containing the evidence of his crimes.

“Parlor’s that way,” the bully said, motioning down the hall.

She and Jack exchanged a look. They could try to make a break for it right now, but that would bring the whole house down on their heads. Security may have been lightened, yet it still existed. Other guards were posted throughout the brothel. Better to try to get as far in as possible without struggle.

They were taking a chance, bringing Jack here rather than Simon or Marco. As Rockley’s former bodyguard, he might be recognized, but he knew the layout of the brothel. He also knew how the bullies would fight, if it came to that. She hoped that it didn’t.

Together, they walked down the carpeted hall and arrived at the parlor. The place still resembled a businessman’s home—dark furniture, floral wallpaper, and overstuffed chairs and sofas—except lounging on the furniture were nearly a dozen girls in robes and negligees. Three of the young women played cards, another yawned into her hand. A girl sat on a man’s lap, idly toying with his mustache. In the corner, a young woman with dyed red hair played an upright piano. It was dispiriting how good a musician she was. Eva could easily guess that she’d been some clerk’s daughter who’d been modestly educated in music, painting, and French, but some fall from grace had led her to this place.

Difficult to ascertain their age with the amount of paint they wore, though some couldn’t have been more than fifteen.

An older woman in burgundy silk approached, smiling. “Welcome, sir, and”—she glanced at Eva—“madam.”

Eva dropped her gaze, as if embarrassed.

“How might we gratify you this evening?” Mrs. Arram sounded halfway between a procuress and a grandmother offering tea and biscuits.

Though Jack had doubtless been in many brothels, he looked suitably abashed. “The wife and me, we were, ah, thinking maybe…” He chuckled nervously.

“Of course!” Mrs. Arram said to Eva, “We’ve only girls here, madam. Were you interested in watching, or were you considering a more participatory role? Or,” she added, “did you and your husband want an audience? There’s a wonderful room with plenty of hidden vantage points. A girl could be in the room with you, too, watching. Whatever you desire.”

For a moment, Eva found herself at a loss for words. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jack redden.

She was seized by a rather wicked impulse. “Perhaps we could find a girl for me, and my husband could watch?”

He made a strangled sound, and she smiled inwardly.

“That could easily be arranged,” Mrs. Arram said. “We have many fine girls…” Her words trailed off as she looked at Jack with a frown.

It was only a moment, an expression so quick and fleeting as to be nearly unseen. But Eva saw it. The smallest widening of Mrs. Arram’s eyes.

Jack and Eva exchanged glances. He understood.

“Let me ring for Genevieve,” the madam continued, cheerful. She strolled toward a bell pull. “She’s just the girl for you.”

“Don’t,” Eva said, darting forward. But too late. Mrs. Arram lunged for the bell pull and tugged on it.

A door concealed within the wall’s paneling swung open and a hulking man with thinning hair barreled into the room. He stalked toward Jack. “Lady of the house wants you out,” he said, with a bored tone of voice that spoke to the number of times he’d been called upon to roust unruly customers.

But he’d never dealt with a customer like Jack. Thinning Hair reached for him, and Jack immediately plowed his fist square into the bully’s chest. His would-be assailant staggered back, gasping.

Screaming, the prostitutes leaped up from their seats. The lone customer in the parlor unceremoniously threw the girl in his lap to the floor as he jumped to his feet. He darted out the side door without a backward glance.

“Behind you,” Eva called to Jack as the smashed-faced bully from the front door came thundering into the room. Smashed Face brandished a heavy cudgel and saw immediately that Jack was the threat.

“It’s Diamond Jack Dalton!” the madam screeched.

Both guards’ faces briefly paled with fear as they realized whom they confronted. Eva had known Jack possessed a reputation, but she hadn’t understood its true scope until that moment. These two paid thugs, both clearly hardened criminals, were frightened of him.

But they were rough men, too, and their fear turned to rage. Thinning Hair pulled a knife from a sheath on the back of his belt. Snarling, he waved it at Jack.

Eva stepped forward, intending to help Jack with his two opponents, but saw the madam reaching into the drawer of a table. Metal glinted. A gun. Before Mrs. Arram could pull out the pistol, Eva drove her fist into the woman’s face. The madam went down noiselessly, dropping the gun. The weapon skittered under a heavy cabinet.

In a flurry of lace and perfume, the girls in the parlor fled, shrieking like terrified parrots.

Whirling around, Eva saw Smashed Face charge Jack. The bully swung his club. Fast as fire, Jack lashed out, grabbing hold of Smashed Face’s wrist and preventing the bully’s strike from connecting. Jack seized hold of the other end of the club. Using his hold on the bully’s wrist, he flung Smashed Face to the ground. Smashed Face grunted as he went down hard, and Jack twisted the club out of his hand.

Armed with the cudgel, Jack faced off against Thinning Hair. The bully slashed at him with his knife, gaslight gleaming lewdly off the blade. Jack parried the blows, holding his assailant back with swings of the cudgel. Back and forth, they traded feints and strikes. Eva longed to run to his aid, but if she tried to insert herself into the fray, she’d only distract Jack and likely get them both hurt in the process.

And to watch him fight like this, tough and dirty, mesmerized her. He had a natural skill, an innate understanding of when the next strike might be coming, and he battled back with a street-born warrior’s grace. There were no civilized rules, no gentlemanly principles at play. He only meant to hurt his opponents, by any means.

Thinning Hair took a step back, pushed away by Jack’s assault. But Smashed Face was getting to his feet, preparing to join the fight.

“Jack!” Eva called in warning.

He acted so quickly, so fluidly, she barely discerned the movement. Hardly a moment after Thinning Hair slashed at him, Jack struck the bully’s leading shoulder with the cudgel. In nearly the same motion, he kicked Smashed Face in the chest. The power of Jack’s kick sent the bully careening backward. His head slammed into a heavy wooden side table. Groaning, Smashed Face fell to the ground. His eyes rolled back as he lost consciousness.

Jack didn’t spare the insensate man another thought. He turned back to Thinning Hair, grinning viciously. Seeing his colleague sprawled oblivious on the floor stoked the bully’s fury. He slashed upward with his knife. Jack dodged the strike, then brought his cudgel down on Thinning Hair’s wrist. A sickening crunch filled the parlor, and the bully screamed. The knife dropped from his hand.

Jack smashed his fist into the bully’s jaw. For a moment, Thinning Hair fluttered his eyes like a parody of a coquette. Then he crumpled to the floor, out cold.

Spinning around, Jack readied himself for another assault. But none came.

“That’s the lot of them,” Eva said.

“There’ll be more.” He glanced at the madam, lying across the carpet, then at Eva. His grin returned, a flash of white teeth that, combined with his fighter’s stance, made her pulse kick.

She had to keep her head on straight. She was still angry with him, and they had to find the evidence. “Now where?”

“Rockley’s private room is at the top. Whatever we’re looking for, it’ll be up there.”

She started toward the door to the parlor, but as she passed, he gripped her elbow, stopping her.

Nodding toward the side door, he said, “That leads to the servants’ stairs. Faster.”

She nodded and waved for him to lead the way. Only minutes earlier, the parlor had been filled with feminine chatter and the melodic strains of a Schubert waltz. Now it was silent and empty, save for the three unconscious people splayed upon the floor. Eva smiled to herself. Nemesis had been here.

No—Nemesis couldn’t take credit for the force of nature that was Jack Dalton.

She followed him through a narrow servants’ hallway. A few frightened maids peered out from doorways before slamming them in terror. They’d been too well trained to go to the police for assistance. Then she and Jack arrived at the steep, cramped stairwell reserved for servants. He bounded up them, continuing to hold the cudgel. Her own revolver was still in her handbag, but only as an eleventh-hour resource. Firearms in enclosed spaces were extremely dangerous—they had a habit of hitting the wrong people, or being wrenched out of one’s hand. Her gun would stay in its secure place unless absolutely necessary.

As soon as they reached the second-floor landing, the door there burst open. Another bully charged into the stairwell, armed with a heavy pipe.

At once, Jack and the guard swung at each other. There wasn’t much room to maneuver, and Eva winced as the pipe connected with Jack’s shoulder. He only grunted. He moved to strike at the bully with his cudgel, but the stairwell was too narrow to get a decent swing. He dropped the club and gripped the bully by his lapels, then hit his head against the wall. The guard’s head was thick, however, and the strike didn’t knock him out. He dropped his own weapon and also grabbed Jack by the lapels. Pushing away from the wall, the bully slammed Jack against the stair’s railing, the banister driving right into the small of his back. He pounded Jack against the rail once more, forcing a pained groan from Jack. He struggled to keep from being thrown over the banister onto the steep stairs below.

Eva dropped to the ground, fumbling between the men’s heavy boots as they fought. There! Her fingers closed around the pipe.

She rose up behind the bully, then brought the pipe down onto the base of his skull. The guard made a gurgling sound before sinking to the floor. Jack caught himself before he toppled backward, his hands gripping the railing. Once he’d righted himself, he bent over the slumped bully, his ear to the man’s mouth.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

Jack straightened. “He’ll want to make friends with a bottle or ten of whiskey when he wakes up.” Eyeing the pipe in her hand, he said, “Should consider myself lucky you didn’t do anything like that to me.”

She hefted her acquired weapon. “It’s early yet.”

A corner of his mouth curved up. “Will I get any warning?”

In response, she waved toward the stairs. “Keep climbing, and find out.”

He nodded and started up the next flight, with her following. Either he was foolish, or he truly did trust her. And Jack was no fool.

But they still had farther to go, with a fight every step of the way.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The commotion roused the rest of the house. As Eva and Jack continued to ascend the servants’ stairs, she could hear women’s panicked voices and irritated and alarmed men hurrying out. No one wanted to stay in a brothel under siege.

At the very top of the stairs stood a baize-lined door. Cautiously, Jack eased it open, holding his body in readiness if another bully tried to attack. All they found was an empty carpeted hallway. As they stepped into the corridor, it was eerily silent. Two doors faced each other across the passage. Presumably, one of the doors led to Rockley’s private chamber, and in that chamber was the evidence.

But where was the guard? Surely there had to be one. Even with Jack supposedly dead, a man as paranoid as Rockley wouldn’t leave dangerous documents unprotected.

Jack nodded toward one of the doors. He placed his finger against his lips. She nodded in understanding.

They edged beside the doorway, backs to the wall. Jack stuck his foot out and pressed down on the floorboards directly in front of the door. The floorboards obligingly creaked beneath his weight.

From within Rockley’s private room, four gunshots rang out, bullets flying through the door. Splinters flew. Eva flattened herself tight to the wall to keep from being hit by both the shattered wood and the bullets.

Then more silence. The guard inside waited.

Jack tensed, readying himself to storm into the chamber. She stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Oh, my God!” she screamed. “You killed ’im! You killed the madman!”

The door slowly creaked open. Leading with the gun in his hand, the guard poked his head out. Jack struck instantly, grabbing the bully’s hand and slamming it into the door frame. The guard’s hand opened with a pained spasm, and the gun dropped from his grip. Eva lunged for the gun just as Jack shoved the guard back into the chamber.

She caught the pistol before it hit the ground.

A tremendous crash sounded from inside Rockley’s chamber. Inside, she found Jack and the guard furiously trading punches. This guard was just as big as Jack, just as brutal a fighter. The two men threw vicious blows, pummeling each other as if they were in a Bethnal Green brawl rather than an elegantly furnished bedroom in St. John’s Wood. She immediately discarded the idea of taking a shot—with the two men locked in combat, she ran the risk of hitting Jack rather than the bully. But she kept the gun, just in case Jack got himself into a tight situation.

She had to make use of the time he was buying her. Dodging the men as they threw each other into walls and furniture, she checked under the four-poster bed and behind the framed paintings. No sign of a strongbox or vault.

She tugged open a dresser’s drawers and dumped their contents on the ground. Bile rose in her throat as floggers and restraints tumbled over the carpet. She had a feeling that Rockley wielded rather than received the flogger. And he’d never consent to be restrained.