Free India Black and the Rajah's Ruby by Carol K. Carr Page A

they’d be lying in the gutter with their lips glued to a bottle, but I don’t stint when it comes to expenses. On the other hand, I don’t hesitate to charge a stiff price for the services on offer at Lotus House. Why shouldn’t I, if the gents are willing to pay?
    So things were rolling along merrily, until one Sunday afternoon a pudgy cove named Latham slipped his cable at Lotus House and departed this life. I could have dealt easily enough with the fellow’s death, but for the fact that he turned out to be a clerk in the War Office carrying around a secret memo discussing the state of Britain’s military (dire, I suppose, would best describe it). I was unaware of this, of course, and thought I had only to worry about disposing of the body, when a poncy bastard named French entered the picture. He was a special agent for the prime minister, that dear old queen Disraeli, and wanted to get his mitts on Latham’s memo. I would have obliged him, but the confounded document had disappeared. It seems the Russians (treacherous Slavs) also wanted to lay hands on the memo, as they had a mind to invade the Ottoman Empire if they thought they could get away with it, and the strength of the British army was just the kind of information they needed to know. Latham’s document ended up at the Russian embassy, and I found myself roped into retrieving it. French affects to be a gentleman, but there was nothing nice about the way he blackmailed me into recovering the War Office memo. It was a wild ride, I tell you, with me ending up as a prisoner of the Russians not once, but twice, and a fair amount of swordplay and gunplay and bumps and bruises. We made a good fist of it, but in the end the memo disappeared into the sea off Calais, along with the wily and wolfish Russian agent, Major Ivanov.
    Whenever French is around, I complain loudly about the experience, but the truth is that I found the whole scenario a good bit more thrilling than umpiring spats between whores and paying the butcher. I’ve always had a taste for adventure (who’d run a brothel if they didn’t?), and careering around England, trailing Russian spies and shooting Cossack guards turns out to be my cup of tea. And there’s the added bonus of consorting with the most powerful men of the land, who are prepared to grovel charmingly when they ask for my help. What more could a woman want?
    Consequently, when French came calling again, asking for my help in protecting the Queen from a group of Scottish nationalists, I was only too pleased to assist. We caught the leader of that crowd of assassins, but not before blood was spilled (oh, not Vicky’s of course, or we’d still be hearing about it) and yours truly stared death in the face. I still shiver when I think of looking down the barrel of that revolver and seeing the bloody murder in the eyes behind it. I admit that after that adventure I’d been content to put up my feet for a bit and drink tea while my tarts did the heavy lifting. But inactivity palls, and between the lack of espionage missions, the blasted weather and the venomous atmosphere of a cathouse with too many pussies and not enough mice to play with, I was getting bored.
    French, you see, had disappeared. I hadn’t seen him for weeks. The last I’d heard of him was a note I received the day after our return from Scotland. Two words, scribbled in pencil on a piece of grubby notepaper:
Called away
. There was no mention of where he’d gone or why, or how long he’d be away. I can tell you, I was chapped.
    Aside from the fact that he is often brutally oblivious to his need for my help, there could be only two reasons why French would bolt and not take me along. First and foremost, he has an exaggerated notion of my feminine vulnerability. If his current mission was a dangerous one, he might have felt compelled to go it alone. I found that a bit hard. I mean, the bloke’s exposed me to the clutches of the
Russians
,
for God’s sake, who