face.
A knock on the door behind her had Gemma edging quickly away, breaking the spell. She backed up until she pressed against a bulkhead.
“Catullus?” asked a female voice on the other side of the door. The woman from earlier.
Graves and Gemma held each other’s gaze, weapons still drawn and trained on each other.
“Yes?” he answered.
“Is everything all right?” the woman outside pressed. “Can we come in?”
Continuing to hold Gemma’s stare, Graves reached over and opened the door.
Immediately, the fair-haired woman and her male companion entered.
“Thought it was nothing,” the man said, grim. “But I know I’ve caught that scent before, and—” He stopped, tensing. He swung around to face Gemma, who was plastered against the bulkhead with her little pistol drawn.
Both he and the woman had their own revolvers out before one could blink.
And now Gemma had not one but three guns aimed at her.
“Astrid, Lesperance,” said Catullus Graves as though making introductions at a card party, “you remember Miss Murphy.”
“From the trading post?” demanded the woman. Gemma recalled her name: Astrid Bramfield. She had exchanged her mountain woman’s garb of trousers and heavy boots for a more socially acceptable traveling dress. Yet the woman had lost none of her steely strength. She eyed Gemma with storm-colored eyes cold with suspicion, an enraged Valkyrie. “Following us all the way from the Northwest Territory. She must be working for them.”
Them?
“Let’s give her a chance to explain herself,” said the other man, level. Though he didn’t lower his gun. Nathan Lesperance, Gemma recalled. He wore a sober, dark suit, as befitting his profession as an attorney, but the copper hue of his skin and sharp planes of his face revealed Lesperance’s full Native blood.
A white woman, an Indian man, and a black man. Truly an unusual gathering. One Gemma was glad she’d followed.
“I retrieved this from her,” Graves said, holding up the notebook.
“What does it say?” Astrid Bramfield asked sharply.
Graves glanced down at the notebook. A frown appeared between his brows. Gemma nearly smiled. Her handwriting was deplorable, mostly because she deliberately made it illegible to anyone but her. No sense letting other reporters read her notes. She may as well give those buffoons in the newsroom all of her bylines.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
At this, Astrid Bramfield looked surprised, as though Graves admitting a deficiency in any knowledge was shocking.
“If I may translate,” Gemma said, holding out her hand. She did not miss the careful way in which Graves returned her notebook, avoiding the contact of her skin.
Wanting her own distraction, she looked down at her notes, although she hardly needed them. Every word of the conversation she’d overheard was inscribed permanently on the slate of her memory. She recited everything she had heard.
“Eavesdropping,” snapped Astrid Bramfield. “I prefer to call it ‘unsupervised listening,’” Gemma answered.
A corner of Graves’s mouth twitched, but he forced it down and looked serious.
Gemma closed her notebook and slipped it back into her pocket. “All very strange and bewildering, you must admit.”
“We need not admit anything,” Astrid Bramfield replied.
“You’re a journalist,” Graves said with sudden understanding. His keen, dark eyes took note of her ink-stained fingers, the tiny callus on her right index finger that came from holding a pen for hours at a stretch. “That’s what you were doing at the trading post in the Northwest Territory.”
Gemma nodded. “I had planned on writing a series of articles about life on the frontier. But when you crossed my path, I knew I would find a hell of a story. And I was right.”
“A journalist,” Astrid Bramfield repeated, her tone revealing exactly how she felt about reporters.
No doubt most members of Gemma’s profession deserved their reputation. But Gemma wasn’t like them. For one thing, she was a woman. Not an automatic guarantee of integrity, yet it was a small mark of distinction.
Something that looked suspiciously like disappointment flickered in Catullus Graves’s eyes before being shuttered away. “You’ll find no story here, Miss Murphy.” He took a step back, and she found, oddly, that she missed his nearness. “It is in your best interest, when this ship docks, to turn around and go home.”
Back to Chicago? She would never do that—she had crossed a continent and an ocean for this story.
“Who are the Heirs?” Gemma asked.
Graves, Lesperance, and Astrid Bramfield all tensed. None of them spoke as a sharp silence descended. Very surprising, considering recent developments. Then—
“They’re called the Heirs of Albion,” Lesperance said.
“Nathan!” Astrid Bramfield exclaimed, and Graves looked alarmed.
Yet it couldn’t be stopped now. “A very powerful group of Englishmen,” Lesperance continued. “They want the entire world as part of the British Empire, no matter the cost. But Astrid, Graves, and I are going to stop them. With the help of the other Blades of the Rose.”
“Lesperance, enough,” growled Graves.
Astrid Bramfield was at Lesperance’s side in a heartbeat, alarmed and concerned. Though she still held her pistol pointed at Gemma, her other hand cupped Lesperance’s face with tender anxiety. “What are you doing, revealing such secrets? This woman is a stranger.”
Frowning, Lesperance murmured, “I don’t know. I only know that we can trust her.”
“But she’s a journalist,” was Astrid’s reply. Her words fought against a sense of betrayal by one held so deeply within her heart. As Gemma had seen thousands of miles ago in the Northwest Territory, the connection and bond between Astrid Bramfield and Lesperance was palpable, enviable.
She’d never had that connection, that bond. And never would, given the choices in life she had made.
Gemma shouldered aside that familiar loneliness. “Don’t blame him,” she said quickly. “It’s an … ability I have. To get answers.”
“Ability?” Graves repeated, raising an eyebrow.
She did not want to dwell on something that might derail the entire conversation. “But Mr. Lesperance is right. You can trust me.”
“There is no such thing as a trustworthy reporter,” retorted Astrid Bramfield.
“You
