Luke frowned, dark brows pulling low over pale blue eyes. “According to whom?”
“Evie.” He tossed the soiled rag of a shirt onto a nearby workbench. “She seems to think I’mhis think afraid to admit how deeply the attack affected me.”
His friend regarded him for a moment, his sharp face as unreadable as a blank slate. “Are you?”
“No.” Alastair settled his hands on his hips. “This concern for my welfare is appreciated, believe me, but I’m getting a little tired of everyone thinking I’m headed for a cell in Bedlam. I’ve had people try to kill me before.”
Luke’s expression didn’t change. “This is the first time it was someone you fancied yourself in love with.”
“I didn’t love her,” he scoffed. No, but he had liked her awfully well.
“Fine. You cared for her, and you believed she cared about you, right up until the moment she led you into a trap that resulted in your being stabbed, crushed beneath a carriage and left for dead. I don’t understand how you can be all right with that, either. I wouldn’t be.”
“You seemed fine enough when your former mistress tried to kill you,” Alastair shot back. It had been little more than a year since Rani Ogitani revealed herself as a traitor and almost got Luke and his wife, Arden, killed. At the time, Alastair had been in love with Arden, and part of him wouldn’t have minded comforting his friend’s widow. After all, they’d believed Luke to be dead for seven years before that.
Well, Alastair had believed him dead. Arden had never given up hope. She had never stopped loving a man who really had no idea how lucky he was to have her. Luke knew now, though. The forced amnesia that had kept him from his wife hadn’t completely gone away, but Luke hadn’t needed his memories to fall in love with Arden again.
Luke scowled. He was devilishly good at scowling. “I never loved her, and she never pretended to love me.”
“I guess that makes you a better judge of character than I am,” he said, sounding like a peevish five-year-old, “because I thought Sascha’s affection for me was genuine.” Right up until she stuck a dagger in his side. Fortunately, she missed all the important bits. She hadn’t expressed even a hint of remorse when she limped away from the carriage, leaving him pinned beneath it, her betrayal cutting far deeper than any blade could.
The thing that cut deepest, however, was the realization that he’d allowed himself to be played like a fool, like a boy right out of the nursery.
Luke’s scowl deepened. “This isn’t about me. It’s about you, you great ginger arse.”
“I told you, I’m fine.” And he was, for the most part. “Are you too thickheaded to understand that?”
“You’re the one who’s mentally impaired if you think I believe that load of horse shite. You’re not fine, Alastair. No one in your situation would be fine.”
Alastair paused, on the verge of telling his oldest friend to go straight to hell with hopes of being buggered by the very devil. Luke was only concerned for his well-being, so why was he denying what the other man so clearly understood? What was he trying to prove by lying?
“You’re right,” he admitted. “I’m not fine, but I will be, and I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want tobec’t wa discuss her or what she did—not until I can do so without blaming myself for being such a naive fool. That said, will you please leave it alone?” Or would he not be satisfied until Alastair laid himself flayed open before him, whining about how he’d thought himself so smooth, seducing the German girl into gathering information for him, only to realize too late that she was a Company sympathizer set up to seduce him, and the lover of the same man he’d been sent to investigate?
Luke’s mouth tilted. “Not another word. Show me what you’ve done to this great hulking beast.” He gestured at Alastair’s custom-built Velocycle, which was equipped with concealed weapons such as aether pistols and a tracking mechanism that allowed him to “call” the machine to him by simply pressing a button.
Grateful for the change of topic, Alastair showed him the modifications he’d made, such as a small aether cannon over the back wheel for firing upon pursuers. “I put a new engine in her. She’ll top fifty now.”
“Miles?” At his nod, Luke whistled. “I’ll have to get you to take a look at my machine. You’ve always been the more mechanically inclined of the two of us.”
Yes, for all the good it had done him. “Bring it over some afternoon. I’ll take a look.” He pointed out the other improvements he’d made—mostly cosmetic. Tinkering on the Velocycle had kept his mind occupied, giving him something to think about other than having been made an arse of by a woman he’d entertained a future with. Though, when he first met Sascha, she’d simply been a substitute for the woman he couldn’t have—Arden. That only added insult to injury—that he’d been completely taken in by a woman he’d seen only as a diversion.
A bell rang as Luke studied the Velocycle. It was for the handset and mouthpiece that provided communication between the building that stored his engine-based vehicles and the main house. He grabbed the handset on the second bell. “Yes, what is it?”
His housekeeper’s voice filled his ear. “Begging your pardon, my lord, but there’s a young girl here who says she has a message for Lord Huntley’s ears alone.”
It had to be W.O.R. business. Only the Wardens of the Realm would send a verbal message. Notes were too easily found and read. Verbal messages could be turned into lies if the messenger was set upon. Verbal messages could be taken to a person’s grave.
“Send the girl out, Mrs. Grue.”
“Of course, sir. Right away.”
Alastair hung up and turned to Luke, who stood beside the Velocycle, watching him. “Something wrong?”
“There’s a messenger here for you.”
Luke frowned. “Warden?”
“I assume so. Are you on assignment?”
His friend shook his dark head. “I meant it when I gave my and Arden’s resignations. I haven’t done any work for the W.O.R. other than consulting on Company operative interrogations.”
“It must be important for them to track you down here.” They hadn’t bothered with Alastair much at all since his return, but he had no desire to seem petty, so he kept that to himself. Plus he. elf. Pl’d wager Ashford—the bird-beaked ponce—was enjoying his position as acting director too much to risk Alastair’s taking it from him.
“It had best be.” Luke wore a dark expression that would make even Alastair think twice about engaging him. The man’s skeleton was entirely augmented with gregorite—the hardest metal known to man—and he’d been trained to kill by both the Wardens and that organization’s enemy agency, the Company.
The rivalry, for lack of a better word, between the W.O.R. and the Company went back to the years leading up to the war with America. The Company had started in Boston, but quickly spread its tentacles around the world, gathering up those who wished to bring down the British Empire—and its friends. They’d started as rebels—idealists—but now had their own agenda for world domination, their goals long since bastardized and twisted.
At least that was how most Wardens viewed them. Alastair reckoned Company agents saw themselves as the heroes in their intrigues, just as any Warden might regard him/herself. Sometimes he thought right and wrong amounted to little more than point of view.
A few moments later there came a knock upon the door. Alastair opened it to find a young girl of perhaps twelve standing at the threshold. “Lord Wolfred?” she inquired. “I’m Betsey Meekins. I’ve a message for Lord Huntley.”