Wicked Temptation (Nemesis Unlimited) Read Free Page A

class that had little use for females who could think for themselves. He didn’t know to what end she’d use that intelligence of hers.
    He hadn’t wanted to take this job on at all. Nemesis was for the powerless, the poor, not society widows with dead spendthrift husbands. Nemesis wasn’t for the upper echelons at all—not if he had any say in it.
    Entitlement was a poison, infecting a whole class. Her class. He should know.
    But he’d been voted down by the other agents. Worse still, he’d been given the lead on the mission since he was the one operative with enough free time to take on the case.
    Yet he was a professional in all capacities. He might not want this job, but once assigned to it, he’d do his damnedest to make sure it succeeded.
    They emerged onto Bayswater Road, with the broad green expanse of Hyde Park just on the other side of the street. Beneath a watery early spring sun, nannies pushed their infant charges in expensive prams, and a few impeccably dressed women strolled along the paths. One or two gave him a second glance, but he ignored them.
    He liked to break everything down into specific components, goals that needed to be met one at a time. In that way, even the most difficult mission became possible. And right now, he had to escort the Widow Parrish to the Cottage Rose Tea Shop.
    He hailed a carriage, but Mrs. Parrish hesitated before stepping into it.
    “Easy to see why you’re mistrustful,” he said, holding the door. “Your husband had the bad manners to die in debt, leaving you to fend for yourself when you haven’t done it before. Your finances gutted. Your home taken. And then there’s me, a bloke you’ve never met, claiming to be here to help. Why should you trust me? What’s to say that this carriage won’t speed you to the docks, or into the clutches of some procurer?”
    Though he couldn’t be sure, he suspected she raised an eyebrow. “My goodness, you certainly know how to inspire faith.”
    “Ask yourself this,” he continued. “Why would I go out of my way to abduct you, when it’s all too easy for women in this city to be preyed upon? Would I really show up at your home and tell you in detail things that no one else knows just to fill a bed in some whorehouse?”
    She reared back a little at his candid language. Maledizione, he was going to have to learn to curb his vocabulary around her. He wasn’t used to being around women of her class. Women who found an innocuous word like whorehouse offensive, even though London had hundreds, no, thousands of them.
    But she didn’t run. Instead, she tilted her head as if contemplating what he’d said.
    Then she took his offered hand and stepped into the hired carriage.
    Damn, that wasn’t the first time she’d caught him off guard with her courage. There might be more to the Widow Parrish than he’d initially deduced—an unpleasant thought. Something about her, something he couldn’t name or yet understand, took the careful wiring of his brain and rearranged those wires.
    There was … a need in her. A desire for something other than the emptiness within.
    No. People of her station weren’t like that. He had too much experience with their vapidity, their casual cruelty, to think that, aside from some superficial differences, she wasn’t just like the others. No matter her prettiness or the glint of intelligence in her eyes.
    He was a man, yes, but he preferred to think of himself as a mechanism: expertly calibrated, created specifically for its task. In need of occasional lubrication. Always reliable.
    He got into the cab and signaled the driver to move on. The ride to Edgware Road was made wordlessly, thank God. She didn’t press him with questions, or chatter nervously. Mrs. Parrish seemed to understand the value of silence. Though she did have a pleasant voice, musical but strong. She probably used it only to be heard above the crowd at a party, or to complain to her dressmaker.
    As the streets rolled by, he