The Merchant and the Rogue by Sarah M. Eden

Brogan wasn’t sleeping. He’d spent the entire afternoon and a good bit of the evening with Vera. They’d passed two hours with Mr. Newport, talking about stories and life and any number of interesting topics. His daughter hadn’t returned while they were there, which was likely for the best. If she’d been there, Hollis would’ve been more likely to drop in as well.

After their long chat with Mr. Newport, Brogan and Vera had walked back to the shop. The distance took a full hour to cover, and it had been one of the best hours he’d passed in years. While he had kept to his false name and hadn’t talked at all about his work as a writer, he’d told her of growing up in Dublin, of coming to London with Móirín a few years back. He’d not told her why they’d come; that was a confession for another day.

Vera had talked of her childhood in Southwark and the printshop they’d had there. She’d told him of her mother, how she’d pined for Russia and had, in the end, decided England was no place for her and had left her husband and child behind to return home, how they’d abruptly sold the shop south of the Thames and had opened the one they were in now.

They had a surprising amount in common—similar interest in stories, in history, in people. Talking with her was easy, friendly, comforting.

Thus, he wasn’t sleeping. Thoughts of her spun in his mind. He would be at the shop again in the morning, but that felt too far away. He missed her, and he’d only just seen her. Lying atop his blanket, hands threaded behind his head, eyes on the dim ceiling above, Brogan felt a very pleased smile spread over his face. Vera Sorokina was turning him to mush, and he wasn’t the least unhappy about it.

The tiniest creak of the floorboards pulled his gaze to the doorway. Fletcher stood there, probably laughing at him; the light was far too dim to know for certain.

“Móirín let you in, did she?”

“Didn’t need to,” Fletcher said, keeping his voice low.

“You ‘let yourself in,’ then.”

“Needed to talk to you.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“Ain’t that late, Brog.”

They were both keeping their voices low. Fletcher, despite his insistence the hour wasn’t so unreasonable, must’ve realized Móirín was asleep in her own room.

Brogan rolled off the bed. His feet protested the cold slap of the floor, but they’d adjust. He took hold of Fletcher’s arm and swung him about, setting him walking away from the bedchamber and toward the staircase.

They moved more or less silently down to the ground floor. Brogan wasn’t the least surprised Fletcher had managed to breech the house and navigate it undetected. All the Dreadfuls were stealthy, but Fletcher made most of the rest of them look like lumbering dullards.

“I have to say I’m a little disappointed,” Brogan said as they slipped into the front sitting room. “You gave yourself away with the angry floorboard. The Phantom Fox would never have been so careless.”

“Yes, well, unlike her, I am not a sneak thief by trade.”

The Phantom Fox—a London thief with a reputation for a shocking degree of stealth—was a friend of theirs. Brogan and Hollis, in fact, were the ones who had discovered her actual identity. The other Dreadfuls knew now who she was, though her identity remained a mystery to the rest of the world. Enough so that Vera had, unknowingly, spent hours at the Phantom Fox’s house talking with the thief’s father.

Brogan lit a small lamp and set it on the table, where he sat with Fletcher. “Now, what’s so urgent and secret that you’re needing to climb in through a levered window in the middle of the night?”

“This.” Fletcher pulled from his coat pocket a folded and sealed piece of parchment, more or less identical to the one he’d handed Brogan in the Quill and Ink weeks earlier. “I was told not to delay.”

“And, saints, you certainly didn’t.”

Fletcher tossed out one of his characteristic smirks.

Brogan flipped the note over and broke the wax seal. He unfolded the note.

Donnelly,

Mr. Sorokin was confirmed to have been in a shadowy corner of London, visiting a place rumored to be a hiding place for questionable people. That he is likely also connected to the Russian ambassador’s troubles strengthens our suspicions regarding him. Learn what you can of where he goes when not at his shop. Worry inside the embassy is growing.

DM

Brogan’s heart dropped. “Sorokin’s acting suspicious.”

“Apparently.”

Mr. Sorokin was out and about often, but Vera had always said he was at the paper mill or seeking out new print orders. And the people he interacted with at the shop were customers and neighbors.

Brogan pushed out a breath and leaned back in his chair. “Would you think me a coward if I told you I’d rather not dig into any of this?”

“That’d depend on your reason.”

“A simple one,” Brogan said. “I don’t want to find out that Mr. Sorokin is a criminal or connected to anything that has to do with Four-Finger Mike or the Mastiff.”

“I didn’t realize you were so fond of Mr. Sorokin,” Fletcher said.

“I’m not.” Brogan didn’t dislike Vera’s father, but ’twasn’t him Brogan was most worried about.

“Ah,” Fletcher said with a nod. “But you have grown rather fond of his daughter.”

Brogan had no intention of denying it.

“I think you need to be ready for the possibility that Miss Vera might be involved in this as well.” Fletcher’s gaze was both sympathetic and unyielding.

“’Tis easier said than done, Fletch.”

“Difficulty don’t matter either direction. It has to be done. If she’s in this, and it proves something truly nefarious, you have to be prepared for that.”

’Twas a very real complication he’d not thought of while daydreaming in his bed and reminiscing fondly of the afternoon he’d spent with her. He’d been sent to the print shop to investigate. Instead, he’d begun losing his heart. He needed to regain his perspective and his distance. He needed to be ready, as Fletcher said, for whatever answers presented themselves.

He might be able to convince his mind to be, but his heart was a different story altogether.