Forged by Desire Read Online Free

duel.
    “Lynch being the only exception.”
    Byrnes wouldn’t have been her first choice to work with. But her partner, Garrett, was currently serving as Master of the Nighthawks after Lynch’s promotion, and for some insane notion, he had set Byrnes upon her.
    After years of working solely with Garrett, knowing how he moved and thought and anticipating his directions, trying to work with a man who wanted no help from her was a lesson in frustration. She’d long been used to the Nighthawks ignoring her skills because she was a female. Byrnes’s only saving grace was that she didn’t think her gender had anything to do with his perceptions.
    “Come. We’re late—and you know who shall bear the blame for that.”
    Perry fell in behind him as he strode toward the guild headquarters, his long legs eating up the distance. She barely noticed the people around her, her hands tucked into the pockets of her long leather coat and her gaze on the cobbles in front of her.
    The only thing she noticed was the paperboy’s distant cry echoing in her ears. “ The Moncrieff is back! Read all about it! ”
    No reason to suspect their paths would ever cross. But a shiver ran down her spine all the same.
    ***
    “So kind of you to join us.”
    Perry shut the door, her gaze raking over the inside of Lynch’s study. Or Garrett’s now, rather. She had to stop expecting to see her old master here at the guild. He often visited, but he’d made it clear that he had a life outside the guild now.
    The room was almost precisely the same as it had been under Lynch’s reign. The enormous desk dwelled beneath the windows, curtains drawn back to allow light to enter, and dozens of books lined the mahogany shelving. The whole place looked and smelled like male . If she took a breath she could almost capture Lynch’s presence. Not his scent of course, for blue bloods had no scent, but the familiar accompanying odor of leather and ink, his cheroots, and the enticing, mouthwatering scent of the blud-wein he’d liked to drink.
    Two men sat on the sofa before the cold fireplace. Perry nodded at Fitz, who nervously toyed with the frayed sleeve of his tweed coat. He hadn’t aged a day in the time that she’d been there. Perry herself had stopped aging at roughly twenty, her skin still as smooth and creamy as a youth’s.
    Fitz’s left eyebrow was growing back in after a laboratory accident, his blue eyes wide behind his glasses. A slender man with shoulders narrower than hers, he’d found his place in the bowels of the building, turning that significant intellect toward matters of a mechanical or alchemical nature. The man was a genius. His inventions had eased the difficulty of investigations dramatically.
    At his side, Doyle was his polar opposite. The only human member of the guild, he ran the place like Garrett’s quartermaster, his grizzled bark stripping the hide off a number of the raw recruits. Once, long ago, a blue blood novice had made the mistake of challenging Doyle, considering himself above a mere human. They still whispered about it down in the novice halls.
    “Apologies,” Byrnes said with a slightly mocking drawl, tossing his coat over the back of an armchair and easing his large frame into it. “Perry wanted to stop and survey the society pages.”
    That brought her attention to the last person in the study. Not that she’d been unaware of him since she’d entered. No, she’d felt his gaze on her the instant the door opened.
    Looking up beneath her lashes, she caught a glimpse of Garrett’s blue eyes on her and nodded. Hot blue eyes with a question in them.
    “The fault was mine,” she admitted, slipping her own coat from her shoulders.
    There were three seats remaining. One crushed between Doyle and Fitz, or the entire sofa facing them, where Garrett would no doubt take up residence. Cursing Byrnes under her breath for moving faster than her, Perry crossed the room and tentatively slid her own coat over the back of