‘What if I agree, but you then decide I’m not suitable for this...agency?’ she asked abruptly.
‘If we decide at any time during your initial training period that you are not suitable, we will give you three months’ salary and part ways.’
‘And the pay?’
‘As I mentioned before, twenty pounds a month to start, including whatever costs you incur as part of the job. You should find accommodation close to the Institute...’
He paused, wondering if they might be lovers. He didn’t know why that possibility had not occurred to him before. The man was older, but probably no more than forty. It was possible.
‘Is it just the two of you?’ he asked brusquely.
‘Also my wife, sir, and miss’s younger brother, but he’s away at school,’ George stated.
Michael ignored his faint relief at the giant’s response. He noted the woman’s change in expression, her shoulders pulling downwards, as if the weight of responsibility was physical. Her lips parted slightly, but she said nothing and he noticed for the first time the soft fullness of her lower lip. He shifted slightly in his seat, annoyed by the sudden tension in his body. He was assessing her as agent material, not as a potential mistress.
‘Very well, the pay should be enough for all of you. If...’ he deferred to her with a faintly sardonic bow ‘...you decide to accept our offer.’
* * *
Sari forced herself to straighten in her chair, inspecting the man facing her. In the dark, with her nerves singing with fear and pain, he had appeared to be a giant and a devil. His size was still formidable, but in daylight his threat was more refined.
Firstly, he was too handsome...no, perhaps handsome was not the right word. In the dark the shadows had painted his face in harsh angular lines. The full light of morning streaming through the windows only softened those lines a small degree. His eyes were deep-set and glinted with a strange grey she found hard to identify. His mouth was tightly held, the tension apparent in the grooves that bracketed it. He had a perfectly sculpted nose and cheekbones, the only features that she could actively label handsome. The rest of him was far too forbidding, too challenging.
His black hair was cut short and simply, unlike the artfully curled fashions that were now common, and his clothes were equally subdued and tasteful. There was no ostentation about him or about the room in which they were seated. It was blatantly his space. The walls were lined with books, but there was none of the haphazard air that had characterised her father’s studies. Apparently he controlled his environment with as much rigidity as he held himself. A sudden twinge of pain throbbed in her arm. Seeing him in the light of day made her all the more aware that he could have killed her that night.
‘Had I not been a woman, would you have taken that second shot?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Yes,’ he replied, his mocking air disappearing instantly, his eyes unequivocally telling her the same. Their colour was not as dark as she had thought. A rim of slate grey held in a paler ice. The combination was disconcerting, almost feral.
Sari shifted back slightly in her chair, removing herself from the intensity of his gaze. She rather thought it was not the smartest thing to do, putting her fate in his hands. He would use her thoroughly for his own purposes with little thought to the consequences. He was a man with an agenda and she was merely a small means to his ends.
Still, what option did she have?
‘Very well.’
He lifted one eyebrow at her laconic response. Then he half-smiled and pulled a sheet of paper from his desk.
‘Good. I will give you an address. Arrive on Monday morning and ask for a Mr Anderson. He is responsible for the new recruits. Meanwhile, here is a draft on my bank for twenty pounds.’
It was Sari’s turn to raise an eyebrow—she was surprised he trusted them not to simply disappear with his money. Then she saw the faintly disdainful look in his eyes, as if he knew precisely what she was thinking. Her sense of helplessness and fear shifted into a surge of anger at this cold, unyielding man who dangled salvation with little concern whether she took it or took herself to perdition.
A perverse, rebellious demon took hold of her and she stood up and strode briskly to the desk. Even as she saw his disdain turn to wariness, she extended her hand, the abruptness of her gesture making a mockery of its polite antecedents.
‘A pleasure doing business with you, my lord,’ she said.
Michael stood up, unhurriedly, inch by towering inch, making her hand look very small indeed. Just as she thought she would have to withdraw it, he reached out and grasped it in his. A rush of heat rose up her arm and she was peculiarly aware of the texture of the large hand that held hers; it was firm and warm and calloused and it seemed to engulf more than her hand. She was swamped by the same mixture of fear and anticipation that had rushed through her on the Heath. She tried pulling away, but he did not immediately let go. Finally, he released her hand slowly, and she felt each finger as it grazed her palm.
Despite the fact that she stood closer to him now than she had ever been, his voice sounded distant.
‘As you said: a pleasure.’
Sari breathed in deeply, picked up the address and draft and strode out without another word, followed by George.
* * *
Michael remained standing after the door closed behind them. He flexed his right hand. That had been a mistake. He had merely been responding to her aggravating bravado, but the moment he had grasped her hand every nerve-end had gone on alert. He had felt for a moment just as he had before a battle, every sense and instinct ready, focused on danger and survival. It was a ridiculous response to a mere handclasp.
He had a premonition that perhaps this was not his best idea. She was too independent for their purposes. They needed someone who could follow orders. Then he remembered her stone-cold focus as she had aimed the pistol at his head, even as blood dripped down her arm. He had to face the fact that she was as good as they were going to find. The fact that she brought out the worst in him and that she clearly disliked him was beside the point. After all it was Anderson who was primarily responsible for new recruits, not he. Hopefully, by the time she went through her training she would have learned some discipline. He turned back to his correspondence. He would keep an eye on this experiment. Just enough to make sure she didn’t turn the whole Institute on its head.
That evening he found Anderson at Brooks’s Gentlemen’s Club, lounging behind a newspaper in his favourite chair in a quiet corner by the tall windows overlooking St James’s Street.
‘My highway robber paid me a visit today, Sinjun,’ Michael said casually as he sat down next to him.
‘You sent her away, of course,’ Anderson said hopefully, folding his newspaper.
‘Not at all. We are to expect a visit this Monday morning. Unless she absconds with my twenty pounds.’
‘Michael, you cannot be serious. What on earth are we going to do with her? I thought we agreed it wasn’t suitable.’
‘We agreed to no such thing. I merely said that with any luck she would not show up. It seems your luck is out. Don’t be so negative, Sinjun. She might prove useful.’
Anderson leaned his forearms on his knees morosely, and Michael tried not to smile. Unlike Michael, Anderson had no sisters and he had always been diffident around women. Though he had frequently professed to being in love with some pretty girl or other in his youth, he conducted his liaisons the same way most men dealt