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“Some might argue that so do you. ”
“I like things to be tidy. ”
“I like things to be where I put them,” he replied, a slight hint of huskiness in his voice.
She was slowly coming to understand him. Though desire roughened his voice, he’d not make a single move toward her.
Their gazes met. All of a sudden she could remember the cool exhale of his breath against her throat and the feel of his fingers cupping her arse. A part of her wanted to shatter that icy control, to drive him panting to the edge of desire, the way she’d done in the enclaves.
A troubling thought.
Rosalind graced him with a smile to hide her inner turmoil and turned away, the hem of her skirts swishing over his boots. The smile slid off her face as soon as her back was turned.
“How is Garrett this morning?” she asked, pretending that nothing had just happened.
“Recovering. ” Behind her, Lynch let out a low exhale she almost didn’t hear. “Thank goodness. I thought for a moment…” His voice trailed off, then strengthened. “But Doctor Gibson tells me he should recover, if somewhat more slowly than usual. ”
She wouldn’t have expected it, but she was honestly grateful. “That is good news. And the rest of your morning? I thought you gone for the day. ”
“Evidently. You’ve written those letters?”
Rosalind rested her hands against the back of the settee and glanced over her shoulder. “On my desk. ”
“Excellent. There are some files there too. Can you bring them to me? I need you to take some notes. ”
When she turned, she found him bent over his desk, rifling through the stacks of papers as if to see what she’d done. The weak sunlight fell across his pale skin and the roughened stubble of his jaw. Dark shadows smudged his eyes, making the gray almost crystalline. He’d been out all night, she’d bet. Searching for her. Or for Mercury.
The thought should have made her smile, but instead she frowned. “Have you slept at all?”
A quirk of those dark brows. He didn’t bother to look up. “Are you still interviewing for the role of wife?”
Rosalind bit back her initial retort. “I was concerned, sir. You look like hell, but I’ll refrain from acknowledging such in the future. My apologies. ” Sweeping past him, she headed into her own smaller study and immediately saw the files on her desk. He must have sat them there when he realized she was in his own study.
When she returned, Lynch eased back in his chair and looked at her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ve caught me at a bad time. I’m out of sorts and exhausted. ”
Rosalind sat the files on his desk. She’d not have expected an apology. The force of his control, his exquisite manners, and his cool politeness were all things she’d not expected. He was an enigma and she enjoyed trying to understand him.
Far too much.
“That’s quite all right,” she found herself saying. “You’ve made no progress with the case?”
“Either of them. ” He closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair, raking tired hands through his hair. For a second his expression was unguarded; frustration warred with exhaustion, and she found herself almost tempted to reach out and touch him. To cup his cheek in her palm and turn his face to hers.
The moment shook her. To forsake it, she asked tartly, “Either of them? Lord Haversham, do you mean?”
At that his eyes opened. The light struck them, rendering them almost blue-gray and something tightened in her chest. An ache. A longing. She turned away, fussing with her skirts.
“Not Haversham, no,” he replied quietly. “Have you heard of the humanists?”
Rosalind schooled her features. “It seems to be all anyone speaks of these days. People are concerned about what the Echelon intend to do about them and whether it will spill over into their world. ”
“I have to find them first,” he said bleakly. “Before anything can be done. ”
“I have no doubt you will,” she said, though she meant not a word of it—not if she had anything to do about it.
“You’re right, of course. It just takes time and that is something I don’t have. ” Lips thinning, Lynch pushed to his feet. “Here. Sit. I need you to take dictation. My own writing is appalling. ”
“I’ve noticed. ”
He circled her as she crossed to the chair, his head turning as she passed. That prickling awareness between them shivered over her skin and Rosalind took refuge in the chair, picking up the spring pen. Lynch crossed to the hearth and stared into the cold fireplace, his hands clasped behind his back. The pose drew attention to the long, smooth muscles of his spine and the way his trousers caressed the taut curve of his buttocks. Rosalind nibbled on the end of the pen and looked her fill. There was no point in not admiring him after all. Searching for weaknesses, she told herself with a self-deprecating smile.
And finding none.
“Annie Burke. Serial number 1097638,” he said briskly. “Missing her entire left arm. The arm has been replaced with a hydraulic bio-mech piece manufactured by Craven’s. The hand is standard issue—”
There was more, but her pen paused and Rosalind stared down at the piece of paper, her mind going blank as his words droned on.
Clever man. Looking for a mech, was he? In all the wrong places, of course, but still, the tenacity of the man bothered her.
“Rosa?”
She looked up and found him watching her over his shoulder. He’d evidently heard the pen trail off.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, hastily scrawling down the last of his words. “I wondered how you can remember all of this. ”
“I remember nearly everything,” he replied. “I trained myself to do so years ago after a fire swept through the first building and took all of my notes. Now I rarely put anything important to paper. ”
The pen nib pressed hard on the paper, leaving an ink blot she silently cursed. Damn him. She’d spent days hunting through his files for naught. She’d wondered where he kept the important information. Now she knew. It was in that head of his. And she had no way of getting at it.
Unless… He would have to tell her of it. And if she played her game well, he might just take Rosa Marberry into his confidence.
“Why now?” she asked boldly.
“I’ve examined the files of all of the mech women in the enclaves and after viewing them, found that none of them match the one I seek. Which means she must be elsewhere. ” The hard note in his voice took her aback. “Once you’ve taken down my thoughts, I’ll compile them into a description of the woman and what I know of her bio-mech hand. Then I’ll send Byrnes through the enclaves to question all of the blacksmiths. ”
“Woman?” she asked lightly.
That steady gaze flickered to hers, as if he’d just realized she was still in the room. “The humanist leader, Mercury. ”
“You sound quite…enamored of her. ” She idly traced several letters on the paper, concentrating hard.
“She made a fool of me. I won’t suffer to be made a fool of. That is all. ”
It wasn’t all. Not by a long shot. Rosalind looked up beneath her lashes and saw the intensity of his gaze drift past her, out the window. He was thinking of Mercury. She could see it in the sudden tension of his hands and shoulders.
A faint smile touched the edges of her lips and she dropped her gaze again. “Shall we continue?”
***
Candlelight flickered in the night, lighting up the ceiling of his room. Lynch stretched his arms back and pillowed his head in his hands, staring up at the dancing shadows. He needed sleep desperately, but it wouldn’t come. Instead, all he could think about was the taste of his revolutionary’s mouth and the way she’d writhed against him, her legs locked around his hips.
His cock swelled, the end of his nightshirt riding over the sensitive flesh tormentingly. Fuck it. He bared his teeth, jerking his hand out from u
nder his head. He’d never get to sleep if he didn’t take care of this. It was bad enough during the day, the encounter with Mercury whipping him into a lather of frustration and desire and now Mrs. Marberry flirting with him. If he didn’t control this, he’d break apart, torn by hunger and need, when he most needed his senses in place.
His hand wrapped around his cock in a brutal grip and he hissed as pleasure tightened his balls. Closing his eyes, he threw back his head and thought of that moment in the alley when Mercury had kissed him. Driving her lithe little body against him, her tongue darting into his mouth. And then, once the shock of it had left him, how she’d rubbed her body against his as he shoved her against the wall and possessed her with his mouth.
He came with a gasp, all too quickly. Collapsing back on the sheets, he groaned as his body trembled, his need barely sated. Witch. Licking his lips, he cursed her name. His body was half-hard again, desire a raging inferno that couldn’t be quenched. No woman had ever left him so undone before, not even Annabelle.
Slowly, he touched himself again, stroking his sex-slick skin. He would rid himself of this hunger, this need. No matter what it took.
Then he would hunt her down and do what needed to be done.
Eight
“You’re certain the woman wasn’t in the archives?” Caleb Byrnes asked, his arms folded across his chest as he leaned back against the laboratory bench. Sunlight from the high windows bleached the tips of his brown hair and sparked off his very blue eyes. A cold bastard. And dangerous too. But at least Lynch knew he could trust him to do his job; Byrnes was a force of nature when it came to tracking his prey. Intense and furiously focused. Indeed, he liked it a little too much.
“Certain,” Lynch replied absently, slowly turning the page on one of Fitz’s books. A History of Biomechanics. Horrendously dull reading, but the diagrams were what he was interested in.
There was a distinct smoky flavor to the air, no doubt a previous experiment of Fitz’s that had gone awry. Scars and frequent little burn marks covered the battered workbench he leaned against. The rest of the men referred to this as the dungeon, and it was the frequent epicenter of explosions and small fires.
“You ever known ’is lordship to be wrong?” Doyle snorted.
Lynch flipped a page and then paused. He lifted the book and turned. “I only glimpsed her hand, but she had something like this designed into the mechanics. ” He showed it to Fitz.
“A Carillion blade? That will help to narrow it down. There’s only a handful of craftsmen in the city who know how to forge one correctly. ” Fitz’s thick eyebrows shot into his hairline and he smiled in rare anticipation. Burn marks turned the center of his left brow into a stubbly mess and the tweed suit he wore was acid-stained at the cuffs. A young rogue blue blood who had found his calling here, working with strange devices and inventions.
A fluttering started in Lynch’s gut. He was getting closer to finding Mercury. He knew it. “I want their names. ”
“The problem is…” Fitz murmured, taking the book and peering at the diagram. “They belong to the Council. ”
“How the devil does a revolutionary get work created by one of the master smiths?” Byrnes asked.
How indeed? Lynch’s mind raced. “What makes a woman hate a blue blood so much that she wants to destroy them all?” This was his forte, his genius, predicting his adversary’s moves and motives. “She’s come into contact with the Echelon, I’m certain of it. Perhaps the loss of her hand itself is key?” He frowned. He could have his men question the members of the Echelon about a young human woman who’d lost her hand, but that would start people asking questions he didn’t want them to. He needed to find her, not deliver her straight into someone else’s hands.
“You think one of ’em took her ’and?” Doyle frowned. “That don’t seem a strong enough motive to want to destroy ’em. ”
“Who knows how people perceive such things? To some, such a loss might be reason indeed,” he retorted, pacing the small laboratory.
“If one of the Echelon cost her the hand, then someone helped her get a mech replacement,” Byrnes said. “I’m thinking a blue blood again. Master smiths don’t come cheaply and the only merchant’s who might be able to afford one wouldn’t have contact with them. ”
“Maybe they weren’t asked to create it,” Lynch suggested.
“Again, that brings me back to a blue blood,” Byrnes frowned. “And it would have had to be done quietly or some rumor of it would have reached our ears. The master smiths don’t create mech parts, not for mere humans anyway. ”
“No missing or kidnapped master smiths in the past twenty years?”