Who are you?
Nora’s question had so many more possible answers than she could guess. And it was obvious that she was particularly interested in only one aspect. If Ash wanted her help, he had to prove he was worthy of it. That was fair enough.
“You’re right,” he began. “Whoever Albert Morrison first spoke to a year or so ago, I’m not connected to any of that.”
“What is your role?”
“It’s not so different from what I’ve claimed,” he said. “I was asked to come here and discover what happened to Albert Morrison. The group I’m working with was concerned about him.”
“How did you know to come here exactly?” she asked.
“Because that’s where I was told to go,” Ash replied with perfect honesty. “I was given a small amount of information, and requested to learn all I could, then bring that information back. Someone else must have learned the location, and they sent the information on.”
“That sounds a little too simple.”
“Well, it’s not turning out to be simple, is it?” Ash asked. “They may as well have tossed me in the middle of the ocean and told me to start swimming. Nothing here is what it was supposed to be.”
“Not a particularly well-informed organization,” Nora said, with a little smirk.
“If they knew all the answers, they wouldn’t send people to find them, I expect.”
“That’s true enough. How long have you been working for this group?”
If Ash told her it was his first—and only—assignment, she’d never trust him. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” he hedged.
“Then tell me about the group.”
“I can’t do that either.”
“You’re not offering much,” Nora said, with a warning in her voice.
“I wish I could tell you more, but I can’t.”
“What’s the group’s name?”
He sighed. “Also secret.”
“Mr Allen!”
“Call me Ash.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Is that even your name?”
“Yes. Ash is short for Ashley.” And Allen was short for Allander, but the last thing he needed was for this woman to ever hear his full name. That would eventually lead her to his full reputation.
“But you can’t tell me the name of the group?” Nora went on, blessedly passing over the issue of his name.
“What good would it do you? It’s clandestine by definition. No one would ever recognize it, or admit it if they did know of it.”
“Perhaps, but I would like to know. Call it a show of good faith.”
Ah, what did it matter? Though it pained him to think so cynically, he had to acknowledge that Nora wasn’t exactly a threat. As she already pointed out, once someone was declared mad, nothing she said would be listened to.
“You can’t tell anyone,” he prefaced.
Nora shot him a withering glance. “Who would I tell?”
Edmund Morrison, perhaps. Ash briefly considered the notion that this was some sort of elaborate ploy that Nora and Edmund were working together on, in order to expose him. Then he dismissed it. The two weren’t allies. The bandage on Nora’s face was all the evidence he needed for that.
“The group calls itself the Zodiac,” he said.
“Why?”
Ash blinked. “Who knows? Who cares? It’s just a name.”
“You’re a member of this group and you don’t even know why that’s the name?”
He wasn’t a member, but again, he couldn’t tell Nora that. It would destroy the tiny amount of confidence she had in him.
“What’s important is that I’m here,” he said. “Now you can take advantage of that or not. Your choice. But if I leave, how many more chances do you think you’ll have?”
Nora swallowed nervously. “None,” she murmured.
“Let me help you,” Ash said. “You haven’t been able to change your situation on your own. Now I’m here. Why not take advantage of me?”
She raised one eyebrow. “Take advantage of you?”
He smiled, acknowledging the innuendo. “Of my presence, I meant.”
Nora rolled her eyes, but he caught the tinge of pink in her face. The innuendo hadn’t been lost on her. In any case, since she’d already begged a kiss from him, Nora couldn’t claim to be uninterested.
He didn’t know much about convincing reluctant witnesses to speak to him, but he definitely knew how to talk to women. “Nora,” he said, keeping her hand in his, subtly running his thumb along the top of her hand, just where he’d want to kiss her again, if the situation had been different. “You can trust me.”
“You’re rather persuasive,” she muttered. “Is that something they teach you?”
He learned that skill in an entirely different setting, one he never wanted to talk about with Nora or anyone else. “I just want to help you,” he said, avoiding the question.
“Because it’s to your benefit,” she said. “You’re taking advantage of me.”
“No, I’m discussing an alliance. The benefit is mutual. I complete the task assigned to me, and you get your liberty back.”
“Ah.” The little sigh that escaped her lips was barely audible, but it told him everything he needed to know. That was what Nora wanted. Freedom. That was what she wanted more than anything else.
“Are we allies?” he asked, keeping the eagerness out of his voice. The decision had to be hers.
Nora sat there for what seemed a terribly long time. Ash was patient. He could feel her thinking, almost hear the flood of thoughts inside her. All he did was hold her hand. What he wanted to do, he realized, was hold all of her. He wanted to keep her very close, in his arms, and keep everything else out.
Ash wasn’t used to that sort of feeling. He didn’t generally feel inspired to protect the women he was with. Granted, the sort of women he associated with didn’t need protection, or want it. Certainly not from him. Nora was different.
She sighed, clearly having made her choice. Ash awaited, unexpectedly tense.
“We can be allies,” she said.
Relief washed through him. He raised Nora’s hand to his lips and kissed it, without really planning to.
She looked surprised, then her eyes narrowed. “I said allies. Not friends. Or anything else.”
“Understood,” Ash said. “I’m just glad you agreed.”
Nora’s skeptical look slowly softened. Then she smiled back, rather cautiously. “I…I’m glad you asked.” Then she glanced around the room, as if she’d forgotten where they were. “You should go now, though. For this to work, we absolutely can’t be found together.”
Ash stood up, promising discretion. He left Nora’s room in a state of combined exhaustion and exhilaration. He’d learned more in the last few hours than he’d known since the very beginning of this whole misadventure. Yet he felt as if he was just falling deeper into an ocean that might not have a bottom.
Nora’s story was unbelievable. Still, he believed her. She was a surprisingly cool and convincing witness, with an answer for nearly every question Ash had thrown at her.
Then there was the way she looked at him, as if he was a hero instead of a villain. It should be more difficult to earn the status of hero, he reflected. Especially for him.
Safe in his own room, he looked at the little box that held his supply of the drug he relied on. At the moment, he didn’t feel an urge for it. His need for it was always greater when he was bored, or feeling anxious.
He certainly wasn’t bored now. Though he felt a bit on edge, he wasn’t experiencing the overwhelming anxiety that usually sent him to the drug in order to lose himself in the haze. Relieved, he put the box back.
He fell asleep pondering all he’d learned, and dreaming of Nora as a medieval lady imprisoned by a dragon. The threads got tangled in his exhausted brain, until he found himself arguing in his sleep with a dream-image of his brother, who insisted that spies didn’t need suits of armor. Ash pled his case, telling Bruce he’d feel differently if he’d seen the lady or the dragon. Bruce said that Ash lacked the training to be a true knight. The dragon would eat him.
He woke from his strange, uneasy sleep when Crewe entered the room. “Morning, sir. Sleep well?”
“No,” Ash said, the image of a fire-breathing dragon still in his brain. “Perhaps some sun will help wake me up.”
“No luck there. Dreary outside, worse than the day we arrived.”
“Blast.” Ash sat up and swung himself out of bed.
“Sir, I’m sorry to say that your dressing robe has gone missing,” Crewe said, sounding upset. “I’ve looked everywhere, and I can’t find it.”
“Oh, sorry, Crewe. Not your fault. There was an incident the first night.”
“An incident? Did you spill something on it?”
“No. A ghost stole it.”
To Crewe’s credit, his only outward reaction to Ash’s comment was to deliver a silent stare lasting exactly two seconds before saying, “Is that so, sir? How unfortunate.”
Ash would have to tell his brother that whoever was training these criminals-turned-servants was doing an excellent job.
Of course, now he’d have to explain everything to Crewe. So as he washed and dressed for the day, he told what happened, starting with Nora’s sudden appearance on the roof and later in his bedroom, on to the events of last night—well, most of the events. He left out the kiss, and the fact that he’d lain in her bed. He did relate what she’d said about the Morrison brothers.
“If I may say, sir,” Crewe noted after considering the whole revelation, “she doesn’t seem precisely reliable.”
“Interesting observation. What did you say your previous professions were again?”
The valet said with wounded dignity, “I wasn’t operating from behind the walls of an asylum!”
“Perhaps you would have been, if the circumstances of your life had been a little different. What if you were born rich, with a family willing to pay to put you away somewhere rather than endure a scandal? What if you were a woman, with no ability to contradict a husband when he announces his wife is mad? What if the world wasn’t fair, and sometimes the wrong people ended up in small rooms with bars on the windows, while the people who should be locked up are free to walk the streets?”
“See your point, sir,” Crewe said. “But I’d feel better if you knew a bit more about her story.”
“I can’t ask Morrison anything about it, not without risking her safety. And Lloyd and his missus are either in on it, or will accidentally reveal that I know of Nora. I can’t even contact the brother, because Nora doesn’t know where he’s living—also, though she’s quite confident in their eventual happy reunion, I wonder for a moment if he benefited from marrying his sister off. I’m a bit trapped here.”
“Good thing you’ve got me.” Crewe grinned. “I’ll send a request to the Disreputables. They’ll be able to hunt down some facts about the lady.”
“How fast can they do that?”
“Don’t know, but the sooner I ask, the sooner they’ll get on it. I can post something from town. That way no one here will get wind of it.”
From the way Crewe spoke, Ash knew he was far more skeptical about Nora’s story. Once he spoke with her, Crewe would be convinced.
But if the Disreputables uncovered something that contradicted her story, what would Ash do then? He’d already put himself on the line. He told Nora the name of the Zodiac, which all on its own was more than he should have committed.
If she turned out to be mentally unbalanced, that would certainly end any possibility of the Zodiac listening to him. And it would be the last straw for Bruce, who was probably already looking for a reason to recall Ash from this assignment.
Yet Ash did believe Nora. Despite all the outward strangeness—the running about on rooftops, the claim of identical twins, the admission that a doctor called her mad—there was something fundamentally convincing in her story. Or perhaps he was inclined to look beyond the surface. After all, he had plenty of experience being judged for what others said about him, rather than his own actions. Nora didn’t deserve the same thing happening to her. No one did.
Then there was Nora herself. Ash couldn’t stop thinking about her. His reactions to her were so out of the ordinary for him. And not simply because she had appeared in his room one night. He often had women in his bedroom, but always because he invited them there. Nora was the opposite. She wasn’t looking for diversion. She was seeking escape.
Ash would help her do that. The first step was learning everything he could about Nora’s invention, and about the man calling himself Albert Morrison.