that had completely taken her off guard. If it were not for George’s relic of a firearm, they would both either be dead or be on their way to the local magistrate. The thought sent a chill through her. Not merely for them, but for her brother Charlie.
From her limited experience, she’d thought of all aristocrats as indolent—men more concerned with cravats than with fighting skills. This man was probably an officer from the wars. Trust her to hold up someone of his calibre.
She inspected him more carefully. Until now she had focused on him so intently she had hardly registered anything about him apart from the most crucial facts such as his firm aim. Now she could see he was tall, a few inches short of George’s six and a half feet. In the half-darkness she could only make out the main lines of his sharply cut features. The lamp at their feet accentuated deep-set eyes, a tight mouth and clearly defined chin and cheekbones. She tried to lock all of those into one image, but it escaped her. She knew she was tiring. The throb had spread to her fingers and deep into her chest. She wished he would go so she could get home and lie down.
But a job, above board, with good pay. Offered by a man, a lord according to his servants, whom they had just tried to rob and whose carriage now sported a bullet hole courtesy of her pistol. He was clearly demented. She decided to humour him. Anything to get rid of him.
‘It sounds most appealing...my lord,’ she added as a slightly mocking afterthought.
Ignoring the nervous movement of her gun, he reached into the pocket of his coat.
‘This is my card. I am usually in during the early morning. And you may bring your...friend here if you feel the need for protection,’ he offered drily.
He moved to hand her the card, then with a glance at the rigid way she was now holding herself he handed it to George, who took it promptly.
‘I am quite serious about this. If, however, you decide not to accept my offer, I hope you have memorised the coat of arms on my carriage as I would rather not run into you two again.’
The smile he gave them made Sari’s hand clamp on to her pistol more firmly. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but it was unequivocally a warning.
* * *
‘What on earth were you doing? What if they had killed you?’ Alicia demanded as he re-entered the carriage.
Michael gave her a reassuring hug and settled back into the relative warmth of the carriage. He didn’t envy the poor devils. Highway robbery was cold work.
‘I do not think they were intent on blood.’
‘Not...not intent on blood? What on earth is that then?’ She indicated the hole by his head.
‘That, my dear, is ventilation,’ he said lightly, but he relented as she began to splutter. ‘It was a good foot from my head, as it was meant to be. I thought them quite...interesting. I merely wanted to find out more. And you still have Mama’s brooch, which, if you do not mind, I will put in a nice deep safe at my bank.’
Alicia turned away with a huff, her beauty marred by the petulant moue on her lips. She had not even been ten years old when he had left to join the army and he sometimes felt he didn’t really know her. He sighed and turned his mind to the two highway robbers. It was about time the Institute recruited a woman. He would discuss it with Anderson when they met for their game of chess the following day. His lips curved in anticipation of his friend’s response. Poor Anderson.
‘By all that’s holy, Michael, you were lucky to have escaped with your lives!’
Michael frowned ruefully across the chessboard. He had tried to keep the story to the barest minimum, but perhaps it was the fact that Alicia had been with him in the carriage that had shocked Anderson. He was well aware that his mild-mannered friend was becoming increasingly enamoured of his spoiled little sister. Under other circumstances he would have been delighted at the connection. John St John Moncrieff Anderson, or Sinjun to his friends, was possibly the best man he knew, but his sweet temper might not be the best match for Alicia’s wilful nature.
He and Anderson had been friends since going up to Eton as children and they had both served in the army, though in very different capacities. Anderson had been one of Field Marshal Wellington’s aides-de-camp, and while he had witnessed much of the carnage of war at the great commander’s side, unlike Michael he had not participated in its bloodier aspects. It was precisely for this reason that Wellington, aware of the connection between them, had asked Michael to take a role in setting up the ‘Institute’ for the War Office.
‘I’ve been campaigning for thirty years now, Crayle, and I’ve no stomach for another war,’ Wellington had told Michael. ‘You know what I mean more than Anderson would. He’s a good man and one of the best minds for organisation I’ve had the pleasure to work with, but I need someone on the spot who knows what it means to get over rough ground as lightly as possible. I know you have other fish to fry now you’ve decommissioned, but this new venture needs everything you learned with the Ninety-Fifths. You’ve always been able to get your men to follow you into the mouth of hell, the devil knows how, and some of the men you’ll be recruiting won’t be easy to manage. Will you do it?’
Faced with this direct approach, Michael had found it impossible to say no. He sympathised with Wellington’s wish to avoid future wars more than he would have admitted to the commander he admired so much. He was still paying a heavy price for going into those mouths of hell, as Wellington had called them. The thought of being responsible for other men’s lives again, and the inevitability of failing them, was something he preferred not to contemplate. The nightmares had mostly faded, but not the memories. He had consoled himself with the thought that this was a substantially different battlefield.
He shook off these thoughts and inspected the chessboard. Apparently Anderson had been even more distracted than he.
‘Pay attention,’ he remonstrated. ‘You just left your poor bishop completely exposed.’
‘Never mind the bishop! You might have been killed!’
‘For heaven’s sake, Sinjun. I told you they had no intention of shooting anyone. They were damn amateurs.’
‘It didn’t sound so amateurish to me.’
‘Not in execution, perhaps, but I would have heard, and so would you, if there was a woman highway robber on the North Road. They cannot have been at it long.’
‘Well, from what you said, she was not the one who was supposed to be doing the talking. For all we know she may have been at it for years...’
‘Unlikely, but still, that is beside the point. We both agreed after the Varenne incident that you could use some females at the Institute. She is perfect for our troop of spies.’
‘Agents, not spies,’ Anderson corrected absently as he withdrew his bishop. ‘And I was thinking along the lines of an actress available for the odd job and so were you. What the devil will we do with a female criminal?’
‘The same thing we do with the male criminals. Train her and use her.’
‘They are not all criminals!’ Anderson protested. ‘And...hell, between setting up the Glasgow office and taking care of that business
