The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie

“You Scots like to hear yourselves talk.”

“At least you’re no longer calling me English. Now, from my dear aunties and my stepmother I learned about love. Real love, not just using people to make yourself feel good. Which is how I know that you can bleat on about Violet being your girl, but you never loved her. You taught her things and were proud when she parroted you. You had no idea what handing her over to that man to pay your debts would do to her. I think that in your muzzy little brain, you thought she owed it to you, that she’d be happy to let another use her to help you.”

Jacobi’s face hardened. “She was . . . ungrateful.”

“I’m glad you said that. You’ve just made things so much easier. But I want to tell you about a few more people who raised me, while we have a moment. My dad and uncles have valets who are amazing. Trust the Mackenzies to pick up odd strays to work for them instead of going the usual route. Angelo, my dad’s man, can do anything with horses. He taught me all about gentleness and how to make a beast trust me. Hart’s man, Wilfred, once was an embezzler. He taught me all kinds of tricks about how paperwork and ledgers can be manipulated, and how to spot when someone is trying to do it to me. Uncle Hart liked him so much he made him his secretary, to make sure others weren’t trying to cheat him. Uncle Ian’s valet is a pickpocket, and trust me, I made him teach me everything he knew.”

Daniel held up the knife he’d just plucked from Jacobi’s coat pocket, and Jacobi’s eyes widened. “He taught you to be a criminal?” Jacobi asked with a sneer.

“Not a criminal. I never steal from the innocent, like you do. Let me tell you about one more man, my Uncle Mac’s valet, Bellamy. Know what he taught me?” Daniel tossed the knife into his left hand and balled up his right. He grinned. “Pugilism.”

He gave Jacobi a swift, tight, and very satisfying punch to the face. The man’s head rocked back, and blood streamed from his nose.

“Your mistake,” Jacobi said. “You’re paying for that.”

Daniel knew he would pay. Jacobi would never have let Daniel in here to find him alone. Jacobi had prepared, as he’d stated.

Four men came through the door to the next room, four more from the hall. Bad odds, but nothing Daniel hadn’t faced before. Simon would have gotten Violet well away by now, which was the point of Daniel standing and talking at Jacobi for so long.

As his borrowed pugilist engaged Jacobi’s men, Daniel grabbed Jacobi and hauled him down to the table, shoving his face to the wood. “Give me the name of the man you let touch Violet. Now.”

Jacobi gasped, then he laughed a little, blood puddling on the tabletop. “I don’t remember.”

Another thump of his head, and Jacobi grunted. “I think you do,” Daniel said in a hard voice. “Want me to jog your memory again?”

“He’s no one you can best. Trust me.”

“You don’t know my friends. I don’t mean the ones I brought tonight.” Daniel slammed Jacobi’s head into the table once more. “A name.”

Jacobi groaned and whispered it. Daniel didn’t recognize it, but he knew plenty of people who likely would.

Two men hauled Daniel off Jacobi, and Jacobi sat upright, catching his breath and wiping blood from his face.

Daniel was ready to fight. He wrested himself free, then dove in, yelling. He blocked a blow, and punched, his fist connecting with a gut. An upward cut to another, then a third man grabbed him from behind. Daniel elbowed the man as he spun loose then threw a punch upward to the man’s jaw. Daniel still had the knife clenched in his left hand, ready.

This wasn’t stage fighting, where each opponent waited politely for the hero to be free to engage him. The men came at Daniel at once, four on him. Daniel fought off four pairs of fists, feet, knees, elbows, he making practiced jabs with his knife before a chance bang to his wrist made him drop it.

No matter. He’d finished making speeches to Jacobi, but if Daniel had gone on, he could have explained that he’d learned all kinds of fighting in addition to what Bellamy had taught him. Daniel had learned much in the backstreets of Paris and Rome, as well as in Greece and the dark cold of Russia. He’d learned fast knife fighting in Morocco and Alexandria. The London man from the Japans, who’d given him the tattoo, had shown him some even more interesting hand-to-hand fighting—Daniel had never been able to best him.

He enjoyed putting all the fighting techniques to use. He might take a beating tonight, but Daniel would hold his own all the way. Violet would be safe, and Daniel would get her free of Jacobi no matter what he had to do.

After that? Well . . . Daniel had plenty to concentrate on here first.

The men Jacobi had hired were quite skilled. The odds were four to one, since the French solicitor wasn’t a fighter at all. The poor man had already surrendered, sitting on a wooden chair and shielding his head with his arms. That left Daniel and Sutton’s solicitor to fight against eight.

And Jacobi? He’d disappeared.

No, there he was, the bastard, slipping away into the hall. Going for reinforcements? Or just running for safety?

Daniel tried to fight his way toward him. But as good a fighter as Daniel was, trying to beat his way out from under four trained men wasn’t easy.

As Daniel took more blows—to his head, his gut, his chest—he swore he heard voices he recognized. Not the pugilists Mr. Sutton had lent him, who were, with Simon, protecting Violet on her way back to the hotel, but the voices of men he’d known all his life.