For example, hiring the empire’s most expensive assassin.
“I have three unequivocal policies that my clients must be aware of.” Argent ticked them off on his fingers, beginning with his trigger finger. “The first, I don’t intimidate, maim, rape, or torture, I execute. Secondary, I leave no messages, clues, or taunts behind for the police or anyone else, handwritten or otherwise. And tertiary, I don’t kill children.”
Dashforth forgot to be afraid for a moment, and his thin, dry lip curled up in an imperious sneer. “An assassin with a code? How very droll.”
“Not so droll as a confirmed bachelor who pays to bugger young, foreign boys.” Argent didn’t only rely on observation.
“How dare you accuse me—”
Argent stood, and the lawyer gasped in a breath so abruptly, he choked on his own spittle. It wasn’t just his uncommon height that reminded the man of his fear, Argent knew. It was the contrast of his appearance. The flawless press of his expensive suit against the unfashionable breadth of his body. The crook of his repeatedly broken nose against his aristocratic features. The gold and diamond cuff links above hands so scarred and callused from years of forced labor, they could never have belonged to a man of blue blood.
“The daylight is fading, Sir Dashforth,” Argent stated calmly over the man’s indelicate fit of coughs. “And I mostly work in the dark.” Turning from the sputtering man, he counted out five measured paces.
“Wait!” The lawyer wheezed, hacking up a last bit and pressing a trembling hand to his heart as though willing it to slow. “Wait,” he repeated. “My employer doesn’t wish the child harm, I promise … It is his dreadful mother that is to be—disposed of and the document recovered from her.”
Argent faced Dashforth, who cleared his throat once more behind a fist and loosened his tie. “Go on.”
“So long as the boy cannot be traced back to his father, whether the child lives or not is inconsequential.”
Argent blinked. It was not uncommon for nobility to try and get rid of their bastards; he only had to ask his employer, Dorian Blackwell. “And this woman,” he inquired. “What did she do to incur the wrath of your client?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not especially.” Argent ambled toward his vacated seat and lowered himself back into it, unsure of the structural dependability of the chair beneath a man of his size. “What matters is how much you pay me to do the job.”
Bending to his desk, Dashforth made quite a show of dipping his pen and scrawling an astounding sum on a scrap of paper. “My employer is prepared to offer this recompense.”
Had Christopher Argent been prone to sentiment or emotion of any kind, he imagined astonishment would have been where his features would have landed. As it was, he wondered if he might need to show some just so he could perform the human expressions and responses he’d been practicing.
“That’s quite a sum,” he affirmed tonelessly. “Who does your employer want me to murder, the queen?”
Behind his spectacles, Dashforth’s eyes widened at the word murder, and again at the treasonous implications at the mention of the death of the British monarch. “Have you heard of Millicent LeCour?” he rushed on.
“Who hasn’t?”
“She may be London’s darling, but she’s nothing but a treacherous viper.”
Still looking at all of the zeros on his scrap of paper and doing some quick calculations in his head, Argent gave the man a distracted, “Is that so?”
“Millie LeCour is not just an actress on stage,” Dashforth continued. “She’s a thief, a prostitute, and a blackmailer, who has forced my employer’s hand in this matter.”
Argent stood again, crumpling the paper in his hand and tossing it into the fire. “I’ll take half the payment up front, and when the job is finished, I’ll return for the rest.”
Dashforth also stood, though he steadied himself on his desk before shuffling to the Diebold safe in the corner of the room. Though the gold dial gleamed and the safe was obviously new and expensive, the bulky item seemed as out of place in the frilly room as Argent, himself.
Once Dashforth extracted a leather satchel from the safe, he turned and pushed it across the desk at Argent. “This is more than half. Millie LeCour premieres as Desdemona in a special presentation of Othello at Covent Garden in two days’ time.”
“I know.” Looking inside the case, Argent picked up a pile of banknotes and counted them.
“She’s constantly surrounded by people,” the man continued. “But we know she has apartments above Bow Street not far from the theater. That’s where she keeps the child.”
Argent snapped the satchel closed, causing Dashforth to start. “I do my own reconnaissance. I’ll contact you within three days when the job is done.”
“Very good.” Dashforth put out his hand for a shake, but Argent only looked at it before striding for the door and retrieving his jacket from the stand.
“Don’t let her fool you,” the solicitor called after him. “She’s the best actress in London for a reason. That gutter whore has left a trail of corpses in her rise to the top. The woman deserves less than the swift death you’ll give her, make no mistake. She may be incomprehensibly beautiful, but she’s unfeeling and unspeakably ruthless.”
“If that’s the case, then she and I have much in common,” Christopher remarked. “Except my trail of corpses is indisputably longer and bloodier than hers.”