The Mech Who Loved Me (London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy #2)(5)

"Here," Garrett called, gesturing the fellow through the glass doors onto the patio. "You look lost. Can we help?"

The footman seemed breathless. "Is the duke inside?"

"More specifics, man," Garrett said. "At last count we had two of them."

Lynch, the Duke of Bleight, and—

"Malloryn," the footman replied.

The Duke of Malloryn was the head of the Company of Rogues, the group of spies and assassins Ava had been asked to join. "I'll fetch him. Why not sit and rest? You look like you've been running."

"It's rather urgent."

Perry and Garrett exchanged a look. "We'll keep the bridal party distracted," Perry said, slipping her hand over the crook of her husband's elbow.

"And I'll find the duke," Ava promised, though she had no intention of leaving it at that.

With thoughts of Perry's mad scheme plaguing her, she didn't plan on remaining for the rest of the wedding breakfast. Especially not with Kincaid in the room.

How on earth was she going to ever look him in the eye again?





Two





THE DUKE RETURNED with a placating smile for the party.

Kincaid watched Malloryn swim through the crowd, murmuring platitudes. Malloryn reminded him of a shark. All white teeth, smooth glide, and hunting eyes. And something was up. With the way Ava had suddenly reappeared and commandeered Malloryn's attention, he knew it had something to do with the work Kincaid undertook for the Company of Rogues.

It was about bloody time something happened.

The Sons of Gilead, a terrorist group they'd been hunting six weeks ago, had vanished off the face of the earth, and there'd been not a single sighting of the dhampir who'd been working with them either. The Company of Rogues had become restless, none more so than Kincaid.

He'd worked damned hard during the revolution to overthrow the corrupt prince consort and his bloodthirsty pack of blue blood aristocrats. The last thing he intended was seeing the blue bloods that had lost their rank at the top of the food chain ever regain it.

Speaking of blue bloods, the Duke of Malloryn crooked a finger at him. "Meet me in the study in five minutes."

Then he moved on.

Kincaid glanced around the room, handing his empty glass of champagne to a passing footman. Finally. Some action. He slipped away from the room, leaving Byrnes and Ingrid behind with the guests in the parlor of Malloryn's ducal manor.

What had roused Malloryn's ire? The icy duke kept all emotion off his face, but Kincaid had begun to learn his tells—the faint flicker of a muscle in the man's jaw, the thinning of his lips.... Something had the duke's drawers in a right knot, and as much as he would usually enjoy watching Malloryn squirm, it also meant danger might be afoot.

He asked for directions from the footman, then made his way upstairs.

Kincaid pushed through the doors to the study, startling someone who was sitting at Malloryn's desk.

Ava gave a small squeak, standing in a sudden flounce of lacy skirts. "What are you doing in here?"

"Waiting for Malloryn, as requested," he replied, easing the door shut behind him. "I do work for him, remember?"

"How can one forget?" Ava smoothed her skirts, studiously avoiding his gaze. The duck-egg blue of her overjacket washed out her pale skin, but drew his attention to the gilded highlights in her dark blonde curls. Every inch of her from the throat down was hidden, from her gloved hands to the tips of her pointed ankle boots. There were so many ruffles on her skirts he could barely make out her figure beneath it.

A pity.

She was beautiful in her own way, though firmly on his do-not-touch list. Even if he'd wanted to flout his own set of rules and poach a virgin, Byrnes had threatened him with dismemberment if Kincaid even looked at her. He wasn't scared of Byrnes, but Byrnes had a rather large advantage in any fight: he was now married to a verwulfen woman with a fiery temper, who happened to quite like Ava. Byrnes probably wouldn't even have to lift a finger. Nobody in their right mind crossed verwulfen. Their berserker rages were legendary, and even a blue blood would have a hard time taking one down.

Hell, Kincaid had seen Ingrid dismantle a vampire piece by piece, and that was possibly the only thing scarier than her.

Still... nothing was quite as tempting as a woman you couldn't have. Kincaid crossed his arms over his chest. Ava hadn't asked what he'd done with the blasted flowers. Indeed, she'd barely looked at him as he entered, though her cheeks bore a trace of color. "What's going on?"

"I don't know. A messenger arrived with something urgent for His Grace."

"You didn't listen in?" She had superior hearing after all, thanks to her cursed blue blood nature.

"Of course not. It was private."

"And at least one of you knows what that word means," Malloryn said, entering the study as silently as a ghost, with Isabella Rouchard, his right-hand woman—and mistress, Kincaid suspected—on his heels.

Gemma Townsend and Charlie Todd entered behind them. Together with Byrnes, Ingrid, Ava, and himself, they made up the Company of Rogues, Malloryn's hand-picked team. Gemma, both seductress and assassin, looked ravishing in red silk, and Charlie was a man just over the threshold of adulthood. Both were blue bloods.

In fact, he was currently surrounded by them, which always made him a little uneasy.