Page 1 of The Falcon and the Flame (The Birds: On Her Majesty’s Sapphic Secret Service #2)

Chapter One

W hy was every damn song about love?

Lottie Finch was a bombshell in a red satin gown with a split up her thigh and boobs to make the gods weep.

She had a halo of curls, the voice of a sinner and was, as Lottie frequently mentioned herself, as hot as hell—a fact she pushed to every possible advantage and had all her life.

It was a game she played to perfection—one that usually got her everything she wanted.

Well, mostly.

Often .

Okay, sometimes.

She crooned a Frank Sinatra song into a silver microphone like 1959 was cool again and fluttered her eyelashes at an older butch woman propping up the bar in a business suit. She expected a wink at the very least. The woman sipped her whisky and barely moved.

The fuck? Was she losing her touch?

And why was every damn song about being love’s fool?

Lottie sang the blues in a piano bar in a dark corner of London.

It was a club in Blackcroft, right on the Thames, where the law kept a distance and the city’s oldest, most esteemed criminal families were the truest powerbrokers.

Lottie had been part of this world since she first drew breath, and though she’d tried to escape it innumerable times, something always drew her back.

The club was dim and dingy with a vintage vibe that suited its clientele—the queer side of London’s elite.

You had to know precisely the right person to get through the door of a bar like this.

Lottie knew everyone.

Twenty-eight was far too young to be as jaded as Lottie felt, but she’d been blessed with a mind as sharp as crystal, a voice like smoke, gin and sex, plus the hips and cleavage to match.

Add in a flexible set of morals and she was the entire package.

She’d never been shy about using that to her advantage.

Singing in London’s most exclusive and dangerous piano bar for the city’s well-healed LGBT elite gave her her pick of well-monied women.

Lottie let them take her to bed all the time.

She let them take her. London’s richest lesbians seemed to have a type—and it was Lottie’s magnificent gift that she could be that type—no matter what it was.

She had a talent for keeping women happy, becoming just what they needed, opening their hearts, their legs, and loosening their tongues.

Money, secrets, favours, intelligence—Lottie would take payment in any form.

She was a spy—plus a few other things—who sang like an angel and fucked even better—but why was every damn song about the state of her heart?

Her accompanist had no mercy. Harry was a wicked old dyke, dapper in a bow tie, a bottomless martini on the top of the baby grand that she only had to tip her chin at for some pretty young thing in the audience to buy her another.

She played the jazz standards like they were the blood in her veins, and tolerated nothing less than perfection.

She threw them body and soul into a Billie Holiday hit and Lottie nearly rolled her eyes at the irony.

“Pick it up, darlin’,” Harry muttered.

“ My heart is sad and lonely— ” Lottie sang, and gave Harry the finger as she did. She got a grimace-smile back, which was generous considering in the past such disrespect might have won her a spanking. Harry tilted her head to a particular corner of the bar and gave Lottie a significant look.

Lottie sighed into the song, threw her tits out and sang the damn thing properly.

That corner of the bar was most of the reason Lottie was feeling low.

Her boss sat in the corner. The guv. The woman who ruled London. Her codename was The Nightingale and she was, without shadow of a doubt, the most powerful, influential and dangerous woman in the country.

She was the leader of the Circle. Known only to its members and the Queen of England, the Circle was the world’s finest intelligence agency—ruthless, sophisticated and impenetrable—and it served the crown and the British people at a level above and beyond government and everyday democracy.

It had done so since 1862, when Queen Victoria the First had gathered the finest female minds in the Commonwealth to her service.

The Circle had continued through the reign of the five queens that followed her.

It survived—and neutralised—the one king who tried to take it down, and now it served Queen Alexandra of Great Britain and All Her Realms and Territories.

The Nightingale herself was devastatingly beautiful, blisteringly brilliant, lethal with a knife and had saved Lottie’s life—more than once.

Lottie had been obsessed with her ever since, but the Nightingale barely looked her way.

The woman was completely, wholeheartedly and sickeningly in love with someone else.

Lottie watched with the weight of the spotlight on her eyelashes.

Lottie had spunk. It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried.

She’d thought she was in with a chance when the Nightingale herself had come to spring her from a tight spot in Libya at a time when Lottie was beginning to fear she’d played her last card.

There had been a luxury private jet after that—only two of them on the flight back to London.

A girl’s got to take advantage of every opportunity offered, right?

But the Nightingale had simply smirked, cruelly, Lottie thought, and then resisted every trick in Lottie’s not-insubstantial playbook.

The woman was inhuman. Had to be. There was no other explanation.

It was just Lottie’s luck that the only woman she’d ever been genuinely interested in was not only her boss, but hopelessly infatuated with another woman.

That other woman was Rose Martin—an ex-cop, Lottie thought darkly, though she also had to admit she was pretty decent.

Right now the two of them were kissing in the corner of Lottie’s bar like the world was ending.

In her workplace , damn it. Was that fair?

The Nightingale had her fingers under Rose Martin’s chin in that greedy, possessive way Lottie had enjoyed a thousand times when she played with other women and secretly wished was real.

She wiped Rose’s lips with her thumb when they were done and Rose took it into her mouth and bit it with a cheeky look that nearly lit up the whole damn club.

It won her a soft slap to her cheek, fingers around her throat again—and another stupidly long kiss.

Ugh.

Lottie had to squeeze her thighs together and concentrate on her pelvic floor. She sang the wrong verse and hardly heard Harry mutter “For fuck’s sake, Finch.”

It hurt a bit, which was curious because Lottie Finch always prided herself on being note perfect. She was on top of her game. Lottie Finch was one of the Circle’s best operatives. She won every time.

Well, nearly every time.

Mostly.

Really. Often.

Lottie won because she made sure she didn’t have a heart to hurt.

She watched the Nightingale and the Rose canoodling in the corner and considered not having a heart would be whole lot easier to bear if she didn’t have to sing endless fucking songs about it.

Harry was clearly on a tear. She tinkled the intro to Let’s Fall in Love .

Lottie gave her a sultry smile and mouthed ‘ bitch’ but once again Harry gestured to the club. Lottie followed her gaze.

A woman had joined the Nightingale’s table and the whole song tumbled out of Lottie’s lips without her even knowing she was singing it.

The newcomer was striking. Wealthy and queer of course—she wouldn’t be in the room if she wasn’t—but Lottie had the impression of an exquisitely cut suit and the glint of an expensive watch on a slender wrist. She had a natural style that put every woman in the room to shame, and most of the men.

Something about the set of her shoulders and the tilt of her head that suggested she carried a power that eclipsed even the Nightingale’s.

It was difficult to tell in the low light of the club—even harder with the spotlight blaring down on Lottie’s falsies—but had the Nightingale just stood and bowed to her?

What the hell?

The woman brushed it away with a wave of her hand then kissed the Nightingale’s cheek like they were old friends—and Lottie wasn’t sure it had happened at all.

One thing was certain—the woman was extraordinary.

And Lottie was a hopeless simp for a powerful woman.

She sang the rest of her set to her, not even realising the fun Harry was having.

Our Love is Here to Stay, Somebody Loves Me, I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.

The Gerswhin boys and Cole Porter had some shit to answer for, but Lottie was crooning Nice Work if You Can Get It when all three women at the Nightingale’s table suddenly turned and looked at her.

Even through the dingy club, the woman’s gaze burned on Lottie’s skin like fire.

The women didn’t watch her like other idle audience members enjoying the background music. They watched her with sharp, assessing eyes, with frowns, and decisions on their lips.

Once, Lottie would have died to have the Nightingale watch her like that.

Now, she only cared about the mystery woman at her side.

Every damn song was about love and Lottie could make them sound like sin and salvation, so why didn’t she have a chance in hell of ever loving a woman like that?

Harry had to swat her shoulder to let her know their set was over. “Take five, lady soul,” she said. She followed Lottie’s gaze. “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” she added softly, nudging Lottie til she stalked off stage. “That’s one conquest you should probably leave alone.”

“You doubting my talents, Harry?”

Harry knew all of Lottie’s talents. She’d helped her refine quite a few. Lottie threw her shoulders back and enjoyed the way the movement drew Harry’s eyes downwards. Lottie had tactics. She had D-cup strategies. She wasn’t afraid to use them.

“Put them away, Finch. That woman out there is way, way out of your league.”

“Who is she?”

But something pretty and far too young for Harry offered her another martini and the moment was gone. When Lottie looked up, the Nightingale and her companions were too.

Lottie could live with that.

She lived on her wits and she served the Circle. She was a spy by day and sang the blues by night, and life had been far worse too many times in the past. She didn’t need love—not really—but some of those old-fashioned songs sure made it sound nice.

Harry was a total bitch and opened her second set with Aretha Franklin.