The Secrets of a Scoundrel Read Free Page A

eyebrow in grim agreement.
    The Bacchus Bazaar was a secretive, underworld auction held every other year, where the top dealers in all sorts of illicit goods gathered to trade their wares, make deals, settle scores, and form alliances.
    “We’ve got a lot of work to do if you decide to help me,” she continued. “Time is short. The auction is set for the first half of December.”
    “Did you manage to get a game piece yet?”
    “Well, I did, but that’s the trouble. It’s disappeared, along with my assistant, John Carr. He went missing a week ago. Considering the nature of the people we are dealing with, I am not optimistic.”
    “You think he’s been murdered?”
    “Or added to the roster of captives to be sold.” She paused. “He’s a very beautiful young man.”
    “I see,” he murmured, indeed, probably more than she cared for him to see. Namely, that the worldly widow did not merely “entertain herself” investigating crimes, but also by enjoying the services of some young, pretty-faced cavalier serviente. Who had blundered in some way and mucked up all her progress.
    If she was telling him everything.
    Which she obviously wasn’t.
    Fair enough.
    Nick did not know why he should be so irked to hear about her toy boy, but it helped him step back from the snare of her beauty to think a bit more clearly about all this. And remember his own interests.
    “Without a game piece, I am stymied,” she said, heaving a sigh of frustration as she paced the other way. “I’m shut out from the next round and can’t move forward. I know the rendezvous point is in Paris, but if I don’t present the game piece when I get there, they won’t tell me the location of the Bacchus Bazaar.”
    “Er, they may also kill you,” he pointed out dryly. “You can’t go in there acting like an insider and not present your proof.”
    “That’s why I need you. I need to get my hands on a second game piece, and you’ve participated in the auction before, from what I understand. Time is of the essence. These girls have no hope if we don’t act. So will you help me?”
    In light of his own unpleasant circumstances, Nick eyed her warily, fighting the inborn urge to rush to the aid of a damsel in distress. Instead, he simply drawled, “What’s in it for me?”
    She smiled in cynical amusement. “I thought you’d never ask.” Then she pushed away from the bars and paced slowly back and forth before his cell.
    Nick watched her with riveted attention.
    “You can get out of that cage today, as I said, Lord Forrester. And if you’re a very good boy, you won’t ever have to come back.”
    “Really?” He held his breath, shocked.
    “Once our mission is completed, the Order has agreed to give you back your freedom—on certain conditions, of course. Put you on parole, as it were.”
    “How in the world did you do that?”
    “Well, as it turns out, I’m not the only one who’d like to see you freed. I understand the graybeards have been under constant pressure for months from your fellow agents. Lord Beauchamp and Lord Trevor Montgomery in particular have been campaigning without ceasing behind the scenes, trying to gain you an early release.”
    He was stunned all over again to hear this. They hadn’t told him. They mustn’t have wanted to get his hopes up.
    “And you did take that bullet for the Regent,” she added.
    “Damn,” he mumbled, still shocked. Mired in shame over his failures, abandoning his blood vow, Nick had assumed that his brother warriors agreed that he had only got what he deserved, landing in this cell. But they wanted him out?
    After what he had done?
    He was touched—and slightly chastened—to hear it. But maybe he should have trusted a little more in their loyalty to him, even after his own to them had faltered.
    Obviously, his going rogue last year had never been meant to hurt them, nor, of course, to betray his bloody country. He just couldn’t take it anymore.
    Turning mercenary had simply