London
Standing in the center of the study in his elegant town house, Royce dropped the last of the files he’d cleared from his desk into a storage trunk. Chances were he’d never look at them again, but they were, in effect, all that remained as proof of his existence over the past sixteen years.
He stood looking down at the trunk. Felt the full weight of all he’d done, all he’d ordered to be done, over those sixteen years. Knew the price—exacted on so many different levels—he’d paid that it all should be so.
Faced with the same choice, he would pay that price again, regardless.
He’d been barely twenty-two when he’d been approached and asked—all but begged—to take on a very particular commission with His Majesty’s Secret Service. Despite his lack of years, there were few others with connections in Europe the equal of his, still fewer with his talents, with his inherent ability to command, along with the zeal to inspire others with similar background and skills, to willingly go into extreme danger, trusting in him to be their anchor, their only contact, their sole lifeline to safety.
Few who could have, as he had done, readily recruited the best, brightest, and most able of a generation of Guards.
Especially when they hadn’t, quite, known who he was.
Memories threatened to claim him; abruptly shaking free, he stalked back to his desk. Rounding it, he dropped into the leather-covered chair behind it. Once again his thoughts circled; he would have preferred not to indulge them, yet the hour was, it seemed, one for taking stock.
He’d never lost an agent, not one solely under his command. That, he felt, was his greatest triumph.
His greatest failure was equally easy to define; he’d never succeeded in identifying his “last traitor,” a fiend he and his ex-colleagues now knew to be flesh and blood, a man they’d come within a whisker of catching a month ago, but, as always, he’d slipped through their—his—fingers.
Although it went very much against his grain, he’d accepted that he would have to let that failure lie; he’d run out of time.
But as for all the rest—all the years of keeping strictly to himself, a social pariah of his own making, while ruthlessly and relentlessly managing the reins of the agents he’d deployed far and wide across the Continent—he was more than satisfied with what he’d achieved, the contribution he and those men had made to England’s safety over the last fraught decade.
They’d been good men all; some—the seven members of the Bastion Club—he would now consider friends. They’d consistently included him in the adventures that had befallen each of them in returning to civilian life.
Now he faced the same prospect, although he seriously doubted there would be any interesting adventure attached.
Fate, in his experience, was rarely that kind.
His resignation from his commission was effective from that day. He’d spent the last weeks tidying up, writing and delivering the inevitable reports to various ministers and government functionaries.
Many had requested a briefing, seeking to remind him that they existed, to establish a connection with his alter ego—his real self. He’d viewed such requests with due cynicism, but in the main hadn’t denied them, knowing he’d have to make the transition to his other self sooner rather than later.
That as of today, the individual known as Dalziel had ceased to exist.
He snorted softly. Steepling his fingers, he set them before his face. Relaxed in the chair, he stared across the room. And consciously tried to bring his other self to mind. To life.
But sixteen years was a long time.
And a name changed nothing of what a man truly was.
Distantly, beyond the solid walls, he heard a horse clatter up and come to a stamping halt in the street outside; although his mind recognized and identified the sound, sunk in a survey of the past he didn’t register its import.
The front door knocker was another matter; plied with considerable force, it jerked him from recollections—some painful—of his distant past.
Hauled from his reverie, he focused on the door. Ears straining, he heard his butler, Hamilton, cross the front hall. An instant later, muffled by doors and walls, came the sound of men’s voices—Hamilton’s and one other’s. Presumably the rider’s.
The cadence of the unknown rider’s accent unexpectedly kicked premonition to life.
Had his heart pumping just a tad faster, had him steeling himself against what was coming.
His mind raced, imagining what the message might be, what latest hurdle was to be erected in his path.
What else his father might think to throw at him.
He was waiting, tense inside but outwardly at ease, his hands, long fingers relaxed, draped over the end of each chair arm, when Hamilton approached the study door, knocked briefly, and entered.
Royce’s gaze went to his butler’s hands, expecting to see his silver salver with a missive lying upon it.