Page 11 of To Heist and to Hold

Well, that could have gone better.

Heloise blew out a sharp breath, tilting her head to one side and rubbing at the ache in her neck.

Then, grabbing the tongs and pulling the metal from the furnace, she positioned it over the anvil and brought her hammer down on the glowing piece, sending a shower of bright sparks flying.

The heat of the furnace pulsed through her muscles and sent sweat trailing between her breasts, the reverberation from the contact of metal against metal traveling up her arm and making her bones shudder.

And yet, though she had been aimlessly pounding at the bit of iron since her return to the Wimpole Street house an hour past, though her work typically cleared her mind of its troubles and relieved her tension, it seemed only to be adding to it, making her mind race and the strain in her neck and back become almost unbearable.

She scowled down at the scrap of metal she was currently abusing, taking great pleasure in imagining that Mr. Sinclaire was in its place before she deliberately brought the hammer down on it again.

The whole morning had been fraught with frustration.

It had been bad enough that the man had kept her clear of Dionysus for most of their time together.

She’d had little opportunity to become familiar with the place, and every moment counted.

But even when she had put aside her aggravation and done her best to seduce him during their outing, he had done everything in his power to physically keep away from her.

An impressive thing, really, considering their proximity inside the carriage.

Worse, he had managed to confuse and fluster her to the point that she had made several blunders, mainly in disclosing information about herself that she would have preferred he not know.

But she would not, could not, think about her stumble now or she would go mad. Instead, she would focus on one very important question about the whole morning: how had Iris’s suggestions for seducing him gone so horribly awry?

Truly, she didn’t know what she had done wrong.

She had followed Iris’s instructions to the letter.

She had simpered and fawned and done her best to build up the man’s ego, though each mindless compliment had tasted as bitter as Iris’s tinctures in her mouth.

Truly, she felt as if she had betrayed her very soul in attempting to portray herself as a helpless female in awe of the big strong male.

She paused in her work, swallowing down the bile that rose in her throat at the lengths she had gone to. There had to be a better way.

Yet she still didn’t have a clue how to succeed. In fact, she felt even more in the dark about it than before.

But these ruminations were getting her nowhere.

And she did not have the time for trial and error to figure out how to get herself in his bed.

She had to seduce the man, and fast. But that would never happen if he continued the little dance of avoidance he had perfected as the morning wore on.

She frowned. Though, strangely enough, he had also made certain to keep her near him, hadn’t he?

A nearness that had at times distracted her from why she was there.

Not that she had ever forgotten her purpose.

No, she had always been fully aware of what needed to be done.

But that did not mean she did not appreciate how muscled his arm had been under her fingers, or how delicious the spiced smell of him had been, or how when he’d looked at her with those nearly black eyes of his she had felt as if she were about to topple over into a fathomless abyss that she was strangely eager for…

She shook her head to dispel the disturbingly tantalizing thoughts.

The inescapable truth was that she had not managed to take a single step forward where he was concerned.

In fact, with Mr. Sinclaire’s constant movement, constant momentum, constant working, she had quite possibly taken two gigantic steps back instead.

Gritting her teeth, feeling the full weight of her responsibility on her aching shoulders, Heloise raised the hammer, bringing it down on the metal with as much force as she could manage.

The clang of it rang through her skull, bouncing about, mingling with the aggravated words that spilled from her lips.

“That frustrating”— clang —“utterly maddening”— clang —“bastard.” Clang.

“Shall I assume you’re talking about the enigmatic Mr. Sinclaire?”

Heloise, in the process of administering a particularly brutal thwack with the hammer, started at the unexpected sound of Sylvia’s voice.

The ball tip of the tool veered off course, bouncing off the iron in a wild manner.

Scowling down at the hammer as if it had done it on purpose and were somehow in league with Mr. Sinclaire, she felt the tension in her boil over, and she cried out, “The man never stops!”

“Well, that sounds promising, darling,” Sylvia drawled, sinking onto one of the stools in Heloise’s forge, carefully rearranging her skirts as she did so. “That could only be a boon in a potential lover.”

The woman’s words succeeded where Heloise’s work had not.

Oh, they didn’t banish her frustrations.

No, there was not much in heaven or on earth that could accomplish that just now.

But Sylvia, however unknowingly, had reminded Heloise that there were other people involved in this job that she had brought to their door and was in essence responsible for.

She had to do well. And that started with hiding her uncertainties regarding her abilities.

If the other Widows guessed that she had no confidence in herself, they would lose their confidence in her. And that she could not bear.

Fortunately, Sylvia saw none of her internal conflict. Unfortunately, however, she was still quite focused on Mr. Sinclaire. She leaned forward, her eyes sharp as she considered Heloise. “Do tell me, though, what Mr. Sinclaire did to frustrate you.”

Heloise forced a laugh. “What hasn’t he done?” She moved about the forge, hanging up her leather apron, putting things to rights, more to avoid Sylvia’s too-knowing gaze than anything else. “But he is a man in a position of power; it is no wonder that dealing with him would be somewhat difficult.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Sylvia spoke, her voice softer than before. “You know, you don’t have to seduce him, Heloise. I’m certain we can find another way to access the private areas of the club.”

A suggestion that did not sound at all confident on Sylvia’s lips.

Putting the last of her things away, Heloise turned to face the woman.

“We have racked our brains, Sylvia,” she replied firmly.

“There is no other way. Dionysus is as protected as any castle would be during a siege, everyone involved in the place like foot soldiers closing ranks against an enemy. Even Euphemia’s disguises would not get past the public rooms there.

” And it was too true. Heloise had taken in every small detail she could while sprinting about after Mr. Sinclaire that morning, and every employee in attendance had looked at her with a healthy dose of distrust. It would not be easy getting past them.

Which, of course, was where Mr. Sinclaire had to be used.

While they treated her like the outsider she was, watching every movement she made with narrowed eyes and crossed arms, they had looked at Mr. Sinclaire as if he were their savior, come down from on high to grace them with his presence.

She could not recall witnessing such unwavering loyalty to anyone in her entire two and thirty years.

Which, unfortunately, only solidified her certainty that she had been right in planning to seduce him. Damn it.

But she did not want to think about taking the enigmatic Mr. Sinclaire to her bed just then.

Shaking her head to clear it of a particularly vivid image of the man’s strong, scarred hands on her body—goodness—she forcibly turned her attention back to Sylvia and, more importantly, the business at hand.

“I’m sorry for not coming to you straightaway when I returned from Dionysus to give you a summary of my time there.”

“Oh, pish,” the woman said, waving a hand in the air. “You know very well you don’t need to report every little detail to me. I trust you.”

Which shouldn’t have affected Heloise as it did.

Clearing her throat of the sudden tightness there, she took up a clean cloth and wiped her face, praying the action also hid the emotions flooding her.

No doubt the woman had only said it to be kind.

Heloise could not afford to be complacent in her position here.

Being complacent would mean being the weak link in the chain. And that she would not do.

“If you have time,” she said, with perhaps more firmness than was warranted, “I’d like to go over it with you now.”

To which Sylvia said… nothing. For a moment the woman merely gazed at her with an expression that appeared almost sad, as if she had seen beneath her bravado to the frightened woman beneath. Heloise tensed, ready to… what? Fight? Flee? Whatever it took to continue concealing her doubt in herself.

Blessedly, Sylvia soon reverted to her typical mischievous expression, the laugh lines bracketing her mouth and radiating from the corners of her eyes back in place as she stood and shook out her skirts.

“You know I always have time for you. Shall we walk while we talk? I have been seated at my desk all morning writing correspondence, and I could use the exercise.”

So saying, she linked arms with Heloise and guided her from the forge and out into the brilliance of the back garden. And Heloise did not know whether to be relieved or sad that her subterfuge had worked so well.