Free The Trouble With Moonlight by Donna MacMeans

would never quite appreciate how “unforeseen” Miss Havershaw had been.
    “Chasing a skirt, were you? Hah! To be young and available again, heh, Hopkins?” Tavish looked over to a man leaning against the wall in the corner of the room. Hopkins responded with a scowl.
    He was a collector. The quiet, inconsequential sort who blended well into the background of a variety of situations and listened, collecting valuable information from unlikely sources. Locke acknowledged him with a quick nod. They all had their specialties. They all knew the danger.
    “Enjoy it while you can, Locke.” Tavish raised a meaningful brow. “Just be careful. You know the rules.”
    “No connections, no entanglements, put no one at risk,” Locke replied, letting their false insinuations flow by without correction.
    “Good man.” Tavish nodded briskly. “Now what have you learned as a result of your reconnaissance?”
    “I haven’t located the list as yet.” James shifted uncomfortably, wishing his news was one of success and not another failure. Enough of those, and the results were always fatal. “However, I haven’t extinguished the realm of possibilities.”
    Tavish nodded and moved to a map on the wall. “Those agents are our first line of defense. Now that the Suez Canal is open, we should be able to reinforce our troops in India in just three weeks time, but that won’t be fast enough if the tsar attacks. The news from St. Petersburg suggests the Bear is knocking at our doorstep. If our agents in Afghanistan and Kashmir are compromised, we’ll be reconnoitering in the dark.”
    “I believe I have a plan to learn more,” Locke added. He didn’t need the map on the wall to understand the threat. At the turn of the century, the frontier between the British India and the Russian Empire was approximately two thousand miles; now it was half of that distance. Granted, the remaining distance was some of the harshest, most mountainous regions God had planted on this earth—but there were passages, and the passages would lead straight to India.
    Tavish turned quickly, interest lighting his eyes. “A plan? What would that be?”
    “I’m hesitant to go into details at the moment.” He glanced at Hopkins. “But I think I may have stumbled onto something that will give us greater access to reliable information.”
    “A new informant?” Tavish raised his thick white eyebrows. Even Hopkins straightened at his post in the corner.
    “I’m not at liberty to discuss it at the moment,” James hedged. “Too premature, as it were.”
    A coded knock sounded at the door. Hopkins opened the door a crack, listened, then glanced at Locke, laughter crinkling his ugly face.
    “There’s a blue-eyed beauty downstairs making quite a ruckus. She’s demanding to see Mr. Locke here and won’t take a ‘by your leave’ for an answer. She says she’s his associate. ”
    “Associate!” Tavish laughed. “That’s a new name for it. I’m sure Locke wouldn’t be so foolish as to use a brash young woman as an associate.”
    Locke closed his eyes and counted silently to ten. Surely, she didn’t follow him. “I told her I’d meet with her later this afternoon.”
    “I can see by them circles under your eyes, you ain’t been sleeping,” Hopkins said. “You must have rubbed this one proper; she jest can’t wait till this afternoon.” The two men laughed, while irritation tightened in Locke’s chest. He wasn’t sure who to be angry with: Miss Havenshaw, whose unexpected appearance was currently making him a laughingstock, or the rat-faced buffoon with the lurid suggestions at the door.
    With a forced smile, James ambled over to the disagreeable agent and lowered his voice to a sinister level. “Be careful of your implications,” Locke warned, reaching into the hidden pocket inside his jacket. “I’d just as soon take a knife to your throat than sully the gentle woman’s reputation.”
    Hopkins’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment,