My Lord and Spymaster sl-2

by Joanna Bourne

  “Sorry, mate. I’ll be more careful next time.”

  He chirruped, still grumpy.

  “Are you going to pull all my braids out, or just that one?”

  He’d made his point. He took his place on her shoulder and dug his claws in, stretched up tall, and pointed his nose to the wind. South, he ordered.

  “Fine with me. Let’s go visit Captain Kennett’s account books.”

  Two floors down, Eaton’s clerks were emptying out of the main room, going to the tavern for lunch. She’d enter through the attic and slide right through an empty building. Lord, but she loved burgling.

  Fifteen

  Meeks Street

  IT WAS RAINING IN A SULKY, ENGLISH WAY WHEN she paid off the hackney driver. It wasn’t night yet, but windows glowed up and down Meeks Street. There’d be warm fires and bright lamps in all these big, comfortable houses and folks sitting over cups of tea. Cheery.

  Meeks Street was a complacent row of stucco houses. They built walls around the gardens to keep the grass and trees from wandering. More trees, with small round leaves, grew in a thin line of garden that ran up the middle of the street. The air smelled wet and green.

  Here she was. British Service Headquarters.

  As soon as she turned in the gate, the dog started barking inside, deep as a bronze gong. No sneaking up on Number Seven.

  It was a dry pain, knotted in her belly, how much she needed to be with Papa. When he was through yelling at her, they’d sit together and talk about Russian sable and brandy and the price of indigo and pretend to each other that everything was going to turn out fine.

  The brass plate beside the door read “The Penumbral Walking Club.” The British Service, having their little joke.

  Yanking the bellpull was one of those pro forma actions. They knew she was here. She could feel somebody watching her from the windows upstairs, from behind the curtains. They’d send Trevor to open the fool door when they felt so inclined.

  She waited. The rain settled down to the task of making her miserable. She had time to renew her acquaintance with the green-painted front door and the bars on the windows. There were bars on every window in the house, upstairs and down. The old man who did the cooking in the kitchen downstairs kept a shotgun propped near the window where she could just see it. You’d have to get by him before you even tried for the windows. Then there was the dog. This had to be the least crackable house in London. Not an amazement, considering.

  Papa was going to ask about her recent activities. If she didn’t tell him, he’d just ask Pitney. Peach on her in a minute, Pitney would.

  The lock scraped and the door opened. But it wasn’t Trevor who’d come to let her in. It was the Captain. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

  Some days it doesn’t shower luck down on you. She’d counted on having a little more time before she had to face him. “Good afternoon to you, too, Captain. Mucky weather we’re having.”

  “You were on the bloody roof. Have you lost your mind?”

  “There’s a school of thought that holds that opinion.” Somebody from Eaton had trotted over and told him his books had gone missing. He’d figured out she’d been on the roof. Canny as a parliament of owls, the Captain.

  “It’s fifty goddamned feet up. One slip, and they’d have scraped you off the pavement into a bucket.”

  “That’s a vivid bit of description. I put your books back before I left. Did they tell you?” When it started raining, she’d nipped back inside and dropped the ledgers off in a corner office, stacked on the desk in a neat tower. “Look, am I going to stand out in the rain till I get old and gray or what?”

  He pulled her over the doorsill like he was taking in lobster pots. “You think this is funny? You think I’m not going to lock you up.”

  “I don’t have any idea, actually. I’m disenchanted with locks, lately. Everybody ignores them.”

  The front parlor at Meeks Street was formal and ugly and damp and stone cold, about as unwelcoming as it was humanly possible to make it. They did it on purpose. She pulled off her cloak. At least it wasn’t raining on her in here. They’d do that, too, if they could figure out how.

  “Sit. Over. There.” The Captain clenched his teeth. If she was his cabin boy, she’d find herself something to do at the other end of the ship, right smart.

  “I’m here to see my father, not you.”

  “Do what I say and you’ll see him a lot quicker.”

  The Captain was going to be a stone wall when it came to reasoned argument, so she went over and sat, tame and polite, in the chair he’d picked out for her and let him take her wet cloak and bonnet and throw them over the arm of the sofa.

  He went down on one knee to toss coal on the stingy, midget fire in the grate and poke at it like a demon on duty in hell. Oh, he was in a champion snit, he was.

  The fire, what there was of it, felt good on her face. “You were right about the weather, now that I think of it. You said it was going to rain today.”

  “You could have killed yourself, getting to my damned account books. Don’t do that again. Don’t do anything like that again.”

  So they weren’t going to talk about the weather. “Fine. Next time I’ll sneak in at night and tie up the guards and ransack the place. That’s the way it’s done. And I’ll steal the boiled sweets.”

  The fire wasn’t going to get her warm, not if he poked at it till doomsday. She leaned her head against the back of the scratchy, red velvet chair and closed her eyes. She was always cold and tired these days, and she’d been up since dawn. The glow she’d brought back from milling Eaton’s had worn off. The joke didn’t seem funny anymore—just desperate and scary and moderately pointless. “You’d think it’d put a crimp in this rash of housebreaking we’ve been having, the amount of rain that falls in this town.”

  “Don’t fall asleep on me.”

  When she opened her eyes, sure enough, he was standing over her with his let’s-keelhaul-another-hapless-seaman expression, trying to intimidate her with his size and his muscles and being enraged. Old tricks, but they worked fine.

  “You sneaked out the back of Whitby’s. You dodged the men I put there to take care of you. You crawled up Eaton’s like a damned monkey. You’re shivering. You’re filthy.” He reached out and found a spot of grime she hadn’t scrubbed off her cheek. “I could sink a barge in the circles under your eyes. You actually think I’m Cinq.”

  “You could be.” She shouldn’t have said that, not straight out. She was too tired for this.

  “You think I’m Cinq.” He grabbed the back of the chair she was sitting in. She jerked awake. “You think I’m a murderer and a traitor, and you don’t have sense enough to get out of my house.”

  “Nodcock, that’s me. You would not believe how many people have pointed that out.”

  That hatchet face was close, jaw clenched. If half the rumors were true, he’d flattened men with those efficient, sledgehammer fists in every port around the Mediterranean. The other thing they said about him was true, too. He was soft with women. He never thought of touching her when he was like this. In the years that lay between that boy in the cold mud of the Thames and the man he’d become, he’d changed into someone who couldn’t lay angry hands on a woman. The chair was having a hard time, though.

  “Did you find anything, Miss Whitby? Did you find one solitary jot of proof worth risking your neck up among the chimney pots?” She had a furious, just fit to be tied, angry Captain here. “How is it you’ve survived in the world as long as you have?”

  “One of life’s mysteries. I—”

  “Did you find one word that says I’m a traitor? One syllable? One line in a ledger?”

  Found out you’re making a roaring profit on Greek sponge. “I didn’t find anything marked ‘payment from the French Secret Police’ in among the red coral and carpets, if that’s what you’re asking. Nobody keeps illegal profit in their company accounts. You’d have to be naïve as a daffodil to go looking for
it there.”

  There were twenty thousand thoughts in back of his eyes. “You’re talking about the evidence we have against your father. You’ve seen—”

  “I’ve seen what your tame forgers planted. You couldn’t nick Papa for smuggling, so—”

  “This isn’t about smuggling.”

  “You think not? Papa used to thumb his nose at the Customs cutters and sail home with bullet holes through the hull. He’s been an itch in the breeches of His Majesty’s government for twenty years. Now they’re scratching him.”

  “The British Service doesn’t play cat’s-paw for Customs.”

  “They work for the Foreign Office.” I’m going to regret making him this angry. “And the War Office, and the bloody lord high admiral. They all want to pick the bones when Whitby’s falls. So the Service jiggery-pokeries up the proof.”

  “Bilge.”

  “You arrested Papa on nothing. On lies.”

  “Don’t call me a liar, Jess.” An inch from her cheek, his hands bunched and strained. His tendons hardened into iron.

  But it wasn’t just anger. Anger wasn’t the half of it. All this time he was yelling at her, he wanted her so much he was shaking. He kept his hands clenched on the chair so they wouldn’t get loose and drag her over to that cold, lumpy red sofa. That was how much he wanted her. The force of his self-control crashed on her like high tide on a breakwater.

  “You should back away,” she whispered. They both knew what was going on. There wasn’t enough ignorance in this room to cover the palm of her hand. “You don’t want to do this.”

  “You’re talking to a bastard sea captain, Jess. Let me tell you exactly what I want to do.” Soft words. Soft words. He didn’t move an inch. “I want to haul you over to the nearest flat surface and flip your skirts up. I want to climb on top and lace my fingers right down into the marrow of your bones and cast off and fly. I want to sail you like a kite in the sky. I want you holding on to me for dear life.”

  “Oh. Well.” A kite. Flying in the sky like a kite. It might be like that with him. Everything south of her brain wanted to go tumbling through the sky with him.

  He said, “I spent the last three hours waiting for somebody to knock at that door and tell me you were dead.”

  She could see him, waiting out the hours while she’d been enjoying herself on the roof. Him, pulling back those thin curtains upstairs every time a carriage came down the street. Him, pacing the room. Plenty of time to get angry. She’d walked into all that anger. “You don’t plan to actually try any of that, do you? The flying part. I thought you were leaving it up to me. I don’t like the looks of that sofa.”

  “Hell.” He lowered his great dark head. “Bloody hell.” His hair fell forward over his face, shiny and black as poured ink. She wanted to reach out and slide her fingers right into that. A shiver ran through her, everywhere under her skin, when she thought of stroking his hair, smooth as water and warm from the fire. She was a fool.

  He let go of the chair, deliberately, finger by finger, and pushed away from her. Everything about him was leashed power. Everything disciplined. “Go see your father.”

  He stomped across the room. His shoulders and the back of his neck kept right on being expressive. When he ended up in front of the ugly sideboard next to the parlor door, he looked in the mirror and their eyes met. Lord, but he was hungry. He could have been a wolf howling down the whole length of the cold night sky and she was the moon or something. Not paltry, the Captain’s appetite.

  Time to get out of here, before he came up with new ideas. A kite. Hah.

  She had to pass him to get to the door that locked off the rest of the house. She wasn’t surprised when he put out his arm to block her path. Part of her had been waiting for that. Maybe she’d walked by him this near so he’d stop her. The little jar of touching him, light as a leaf falling, shocked her breath away.

  He said, “One more thing.”

  The fine, white Irish linen of his sleeve stretched out in front of her. She stared past him, at the door, barely breathing. But he didn’t move. Of course, he was too canny to touch her, here, where the Service might be listening and Papa was locked up down the hall. That was why Sebastian Kennett was so good at destroying her peace of mind. All that cleverness.

  He might be Cinq. Or he might be a reasonably honest man who just wanted to hang her father. No way to tell. Being this close to him felt like running along a dark coast at night, five or six miles out at sea, and not knowing whether that line of land was friendly or about to reach out with cannon and grappling hooks and claw the ship down into the sea.

  He took over the space between them and filled it with his breath and his heartbeat and the heat that was coming off his body. He smelled of sweat and anger. Totally male. She kept having these awkward moments with the Captain.

  “I wouldn’t keep black dealings in the company books,” he said. “You know that. You went up to the roofs, trying to clear me. Because of what’s between us.”

  “There’s nothing between us.” And that was a right old lie.

  The gather of her dress brushed his arm when she shrugged. That set off another shudder. It behooved her to walk away from him, some time or another, and get through that door there. Soon, like.

  “You didn’t find what you were looking for, did you? As far as you’re concerned, I could still be Cinq.”

  She could have told him, to the shilling, his return on capital for every ship in his fleet, and she didn’t have one idea in her head how to go on with this particular conversation. “You could be.”

  “I’m not. You’re going to prove it. While you were larking about on the roof, I went through your charts and calculations—”

  “The ones you stole from my office.”

  “The ones I borrowed.”

  “You—”

  “Put it aside.” He made an impatient sweep of fingers against her cheek, half caress, half comment. “Would it do any good if I apologized? Would you be less angry? Would it wipe away what I had to do? We’re finished with that.”

  No, we aren’t. “You took my damn lemon drops.”

  “And we all enjoyed them. Now listen. You have four dates the War Office lost secrets. You cut your list of blood-thirsty, murdering scum in half, because most of them didn’t have ships in London all four dates. I take it Kennett Shipping did.”

  He was waiting for an answer, so she said, “Yes.”

  “If I get you all those dates, the dates the secrets went missing, can you find Cinq?”

  That’s half of what I need. Only half. Sometimes at night, in her dreams, she saw ships slipping across her maps—black ships the size of her thumb, headed for France, carrying secrets, snickering at her.

  “Jess . . .”

  “The Service doesn’t have those dates. It’s Military Intelligence. Colonel Reams.” Reams wore bright scarlet regimentals and had a big office at the Horse Guards and he made the dregs of the docks look like gentlemen. Reams will eat me alive if I make one tiny mistake.

  “I know. We’ll deal with Reams. Think about how to do it.” He took a minute to read her face. “You’ve already come up with a way to get to him, haven’t you? Fine. You’ll tell me what you’re planning and I’ll help you.”

  I wish you could. I wish I had you at my back, holding the ropes, keeping me safe. “I don’t know why you’d help me.”

  “That’s something else for you to think about.” He turned and took a long step to pound on the door, telling Trevor to come open it and let her into the rest of the house. “You’re going to trust me, Jess. You’re halfway to it now.” His voice rumbled and buzzed in her bones, clinging to her senses like toffee. The very last of her anger leached away. What topped up the foam on the beer was how much she wanted to do just that. Trust him.

  The key turned in the lock. Trevor hadn’t been far away.

  “When you talk to your father, tell him to get you out of England. You’re not safe here. And stay next to the fire
so you don’t freeze to death.”

  PAPA stomped around the study they’d given him, expressing himself. He’d been at it a while. Seemed like it was her day for getting yelled at by angry men.

  “Does tha ask me? Does tha? Am I in the Bay of Bengal that tha’ can’t send word?”

  “I—”

  “What use is it to me or to anyone, thee dying in thy blood on Eaton’s doorstep? Eh? Where am I then, when tha breaks thy neck like a chicken?”

  “I was careful.”

  The windows held a streaky view of rain at sunset, seen through iron bars. Pretty soon, they’d draw the curtains and keep the night out.

  “Careful? I swear by God, if I hear tha’s been skiperting across the roofs again, I’ll put thee on the next ship out of England. I won’t have it.”

  “Yes, Papa.” He’d about finished yelling at her, which was a relief to both of them and likely everyone else in the house.

  “Pitney don’t need another idiot to look after, him having the whole London office for that purpose and half the fools at Customs and the Board of Trade.” She was sitting on the low stool by the fire. Papa put his hand on her head, as if she was still a child. “Tha’s to stop taking daft risks.”

  He was worrying about her. Papa was locked up, and any hour of any day they could take him off to Newgate Prison and lay charges against him. He wasted his time worrying about her. “I’m careful.”

  “Oh, that’s a reet comfort, that is. My Jess says she’s careful. Where’s thy common sense, lass? If tha’ need must break into Eaton’s, hire a man. There’s sneak thieves on every street corner. It’s not like we don’t have the brass.”

  Might as well shout her business from the rooftops as hire a thief. Not a one of them honest. “Yes, Papa.”

  “Or bribery. There’s a mort of trouble saved in this world by simple bribery. Happen that’s how someone got his fingers into our books to plant the poison. It’ll turn out to be one of the clerks and a little bribery.”

  “Happen you’re right.”