My Lord and Spymaster sl-2

by Joanna Bourne

  “Because your damn letter didn’t say maps in 1550 or plans of what. It just gave a whalloping great price for them. In francs. You have to watch that.”

  He laughed at her. A pirate, burned all brown with the sun, laughing at her. “You’ve decided I’m not Cinq?”

  “Dunnoh who is, yet. I know you’re not.”

  “Good then.”

  He started stroking along her eyebrows, using the side of his thumb.

  “I have funny eyebrows. They don’t curve. Makes me look angry all the time.”

  “They’re fine.” Sebastian just kept on finding her amusing. “You worry too much.”

  What black eyes he had. Hungry, keen, obsidian eyes.

  He paid attention to her eyebrows some more. His fingers were getting in the way of seeing things, weaving back and forth between her and the light of the sky. So she closed her eyes. He drew lines on her forehead, back and forth. She should tell him to stop. Felt nice, though.

  Hours later, when Sebastian woke her up, it was to tell her it was time to go to the Admiralty. She knew he’d been beside her all afternoon, watching her while she slept.

  Thirty

  The Admiralty

  “THE FIRST LEAK WE KNOW ABOUT WAS MARCH, five years ago.” Adrian stood in front of the long bank of windows, facing her. “The most recent was two weeks back. Where do we start?”

  Jess didn’t know who’d been ejected from his office at the Admiralty. Somebody important. This was a huge room with a commanding view over the parade ground and a globe the size of a wheelbarrow in one corner.

  A pair of armed marines stood outside the door, looking tough and alert, guarding things.

  She unrolled the first of her charts. These were tides, weather conditions, winds, and the phases of the moon for every month, every year. Give her a ship, and she’d tell you how far it could travel on any given day, all up and down the Channel. It had taken a while to put this together. “We’ll start with the oldest and go on from there.”

  “I knew you were going to say that.” Sebastian started restacking books. He had Kennett ledgers and Whitby ledgers. Some from other shipping companies. To his right was what looked like the shipping books from Lloyds. She wasn’t going to ask how he’d come by those.

  The Service had torn London apart, giving her all this. Spread out on the tables was an amazing collection of ship manifests and paper from the Customs, Board of Trade clearances, naval logs. There must be two hundred pounds of government paper that didn’t have any right to be here. There was a fine selection of British Service agents to help her sieve it. They stood at the long table, twenty of them, each commanding a small kingdom of paper, waiting for orders. Trevor’d put himself beside her, behind a stack of clean paper, ready to make notes.

  “It’s your show, Jess,” Sebastian said. Adrian brought her the big, red leather chair from behind the desk. She was in the center of the long table. Best seat in the house.

  The pompous young man from the Admiralty hovered protectively over his own stacks of records. “May I say it’s an honor to meet you, Miss Whitby. I’ve been working with Captain Kennett on the Whitby ledgers since they were brought in. I’m thoroughly familiar with the Whitby system. I’ll explain anything you don’t understand. Your father’s accounting methods . . . even under these circumstances, I have to say they’re tremendously exciting. I only wish I were half the accountant he is.”

  “If you’re half the accountant my father is, God help us all.” If he started explaining the mysteries of bookkeeping, she’d scrag him. “Can we send one of those monkeys at the door to bring us tea?”

  The men from the British Service were watching her. The room got quiet.

  This was going to work. She’d make it work.

  She rested her fingers on the tabletop and looked from man to man, up and down the room. “March twenty-fifth. A memorandum on troop movements slipped out of the War Office. It surfaced in Boulogne on April third. Let’s see who sailed.”

  A tall man, thin as a scarecrow, unsmiling, was already deep in the files Lazarus had sent over. Trevor picked up the pen and took ink.

  A man to her left said, “The Pretty Henrietta, owned by George Van Diehl, sailed on March twenty-sixth. Bound for Bristol.”

  Another voice, “The Parrot. March thirtieth. But that’s just a coastal lugger.”

  She said, “Put her down.”

  Sebastian angled a Whitby ledger out of his pile and slid it in her direction.

  From the end of the table—“The Nancy Lee, seventy tons, bound for Bristol. March twenty-sixth. No cargo listed here. Owner is . . . I can’t read it.”

  She knew that one. “Michael Sands, owner and captain.” It was time to add the Whitby ships. She leafed to March. “Northern Spirit, for Lisbon. She didn’t weigh anchor till April first. That’s cutting it close, but put her in. Northern Destiny sailed March twenty-seventh.”

  “Island Dancer on March twenty-sixth, bound to Cagliari,” Sebastian was started on his own ships, “which would put her well past the coast of France before April. I suppose she could have hove to in a bay somewhere and waited a week. The Belle Dancer didn’t sail till April seventh.” He closed the Kennett books and picked up another ledger.

  “Red Tempest from the Red Star Line, bound for Boston, April first,” someone said. Trevor wrote it down.

  “Cross Northern Spirit off. She put into the Isle of Thanet on April second and set two sailors ashore. Measles. Didn’t leave there till the fifth.”

  “The Manatee, owned by Gregory and Fitch, April first for Boston. Likewise the Haughty Girl, registered at Plymouth.”

  She could eliminate some of these. The Van Diehl books were down the table. She headed that way and leaned over a shoulder to check an entry. And here it was. A fine bit of memory on her part. “It’s not Pretty Henrietta.” She’d had her hands on these books for about an hour, three weeks ago. “Hunt bought a crate of Sheffield knives, in Bristol, on April fifth. Had to be off the Henrietta. Here it is.” She watched Trevor strike out the name.

  “The Crystal Jane, out of Bristol. She left . . . No . . . didn’t leave March twenty-eighth.” A rustle of papers. “She sailed April first, instead. Delayed for refitting.”

  “Cross that one off, too.” Sebastian said it before she could. “That’s Pettibone. They went out of business the next year.”

  Mr. Admiralty was still playing bump on the log. She fixed her attention on him. “You need help with those naval vessels?”

  “I am perfectly capable of addressing the naval vessels.” Admiralty was talking around that wad of annoyance he was keeping in his mouth. “The ships of His Majesty’s Navy, unlike merchant vessels, weigh anchor on time. They go exactly where they are told, and they stay there. They most definitely do not carry illicit memoranda, and they do not—”

  She said, “You would not believe what naval vessels get up to.” He didn’t know much about lace smuggling, did he? “Get to work or get out.”

  “Another ship for Boston, the frigate Oak Tree, registered in Baltimore to McFarlane, sailing April first. The sloop Betty of Newark, registered in Plymouth to . . .” He’d uncovered a whole flock of them, Boston bound.

  “You can cross every one of those off. This isn’t going to be a ship moving all chummy in convoy.” The Service didn’t know a thing about shipping, did they?

  Adrian set a cup of tea by her elbow.

  NINE hours and twenty-three minutes later, she closed the Whitby ledger for August. Her eyes stung. She put her head down into her hands and pressed her fingers tight to the bridge of her nose.

  “We’ll finish tomorrow,” Sebastian said.

  “Jess, we can stop this now,” Adrian said.

  The Admiralty man said hoarsely, “I’ll get you some tea.”

  Sebastian snapped, “She doesn’t need any more of that.”

  “No tea.” All kinds of pain shot through her back and her legs when she stood up. She hurt everywhere. A clean sweep, w
hen it came to pain. “I don’t need to finish tomorrow. You know that as well as I do. We’re done here.”

  The agents from the British Service stood up when she did, every man jack of them. Adrian opened the door for her without saying a word. Only Sebastian followed her out.

  They walked past the marines and through the corridors of the empty building and out into the night. The big court-yard was shadowy with distant lanterns. Out on the street, Sebastian had a hackney waiting. He opened the door and flipped down the steps and helped her in. No comfort and explanations from Sebastian yet. He was just getting her away from the Admiralty.

  Twenty feet farther along the street, the Whitby small wagon was pulled to the side of the road, the horse and driver dozing. A man sat huddled up in his coat on the back, waiting.

  It was Pitney. She’d known he would be here. If anyone had asked, he’d say he was here to pick up the Whitby books. But he was here to see her.

  “Stop. Over there.” It was the first thing she’d said to Sebastian. “I need to talk to him.”

  She opened the door of the hackney and put a knee down on the floor and leaned out. “Pitney . . . I’m finished in there.”

  Pitney saw everything in her face. Had to see it.

  “I found . . .” It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. Her throat closed tight as a fist. “I traced everything . . . to the Whitby ships. I know . . .” Breathe in. Breathe out. It cut like knives. “I’ll see Papa tomorrow. I can’t face him tonight.”

  “Jess . . .”

  “I can’t . . .” She’d run out of words. Pitney looked flat and unreal, like he could tear into strips and blow away. “I have to get out of here. Are you going to be all right?”

  He shook his head. There was nothing to say. Nothing to say. He’d been Papa’s friend for thirty years. “Jess—”

  “Leave her be.” Sebastian pulled her roughly back to the seat and reached past her to pull the door closed. The coach started.

  It was Whitby ships. The secrets crossed the Channel with smuggled goods, carried by crewmen under orders, who didn’t even know what they passed along. Whitby ships. It was in the records, again and again and again.

  The design on the leather walls of the carriage was fleurs-de-lis, imprinted in worn gold leaf, one about every four inches. Sometimes the pattern made diamonds, sometimes squares, sometimes long, slanted rows. It depended on how she looked at it. The horses clattered through St. James Park and into the silent streets of Mayfair. Nobody was out at this hour. The wide, dark spaces between the streetlamps were empty. Once, a cat darted across the road in front of them.

  At some point Sebastian put his arm around her and pulled her against him, and she started crying, noisy and wet, gasping into his jacket like she was choking on something. If he hadn’t been holding her, she would have broken into three or four pieces.

  They pulled up in front of his house. After they’d waited there a while, she wiped her nose on her sleeve and drew herself up stiff and held her breath. A couple more sobs got out. It was hard to stop.

  “I’m . . .” It scraped the inside of her throat. “I’m sorry. I’ll be out of your house tomorrow.”

  “You’ll stay. You have nowhere else to go. Jess, we have to talk about this.”

  “I don’t want to talk. Let me go inside, Sebastian. I’m so tired I’m shaking with it.” Of all the useless emotions of her whole life, being in love with this man was the most hopeless and useless of the lot.

  “Listen to me. Your father—”

  “I’m about to start crying again. Will you please, please, let me go do it someplace that’s not in front of you.”

  “Fine. We’ll talk when you’re not exhausted. Go to bed.”

  She let him climb out and lift her down from the coach. Someone was waiting in the lighted doorway. Eunice. How did she always know?

  She was crying again even before she got up the stairs. Eunice didn’t say a word. Just held her.

  Thirty-one

  Kennett House, Mayfair

  IT WAS EASIER AFTER SHE’D SLEPT A WHILE. Nothing changed, but events got separated somehow. She went to sleep and woke up and everything had happened yesterday instead of today.

  She wouldn’t think about yesterday.

  She lay in bed looking at the slanted ceiling. She could get a man out of England. No problem with that. A Whitby escape route was always laid out in every city where Whitby men worked. The London route would be in just quivering readiness. Pitney’d made sure of that himself. The Swedish sloop, Ilsa Lindgren, with no ties to Whitby, lay anchored in the Thames. A dory was tied up at the Asker Street docks, manned day and night, ready to row somebody out to her.

  She’d help him escape. She didn’t forgive—no one could forgive what he’d done—but she wouldn’t let him die. She didn’t have the iron heart and metal guts for that kind of justice. She’d get him away safe. She’d make sure she never saw him again.

  She didn’t want to think about any of that.

  The night outside her window was thin and gray at the edges, with light as weak as seawater. It was so early the women hadn’t started bringing milk around. No hubbub of voices. No clanking pails. It was the private time of night when no one was up but thieves and women with light morals. She was both of those. No wonder she was awake.

  When she stole Cinq from the gallows, it made her guilty, too, didn’t it? That’s how Sebastian would see it. He was a man who had a good call on vengeance and the steel innards to enforce it. He wouldn’t pardon what she’d done, when he found out.

  And that was another thing she didn’t want to think about. There wasn’t space enough to turn around in her head, she was avoiding so many subjects.

  She’d leave England soon. Nothing left for her here anyway.

  Outside, one bird woke up to sing ten or twenty notes and then rolled over and went back to sleep. Still early.

  This was another long, hard day in front of her. There were going to be some good parts to it, though. She’d best get started.

  She padded down the stairs barefoot and opened the door of his room a crack.

  “It’s me,” she said softly. “Don’t throw a knife at me or anything when I come in. All right?”

  His voice came from the bed. “I’m fairly careful about that.”

  He slept nude. She’d been right about that. It was a nice warm night for it. Warm dawn, actually. She pulled her nightgown off and dropped it next to the bed and climbed in with him.

  Naked slid on naked. It was startling, touching her whole skin against him this way. Like jumping into a warm sea with every nerve surprised at once. She hoped he’d give her a few minutes to get used to this.

  He might not. He was very interested in her. On the other hand, he was also laughing. A complex person, Sebastian.

  He leaned up on one elbow and ran the tips of his fingers down her side, reassuring like. “Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

  There was just enough light to see him. The hair on his chest gathered into a line and grew right down across his stomach. It got thick down between his legs. She didn’t quite look there, feeling shy. That was something else she didn’t expect. Feeling shy. “What I thought was, I’d get in bed with you and let you decide what to do about it.”

  “Well.” He sat up and started undoing her braids. Either he liked her hair or he was giving himself time to think. “So here you are.”

  “You keep talking about how much we both want this. Turning into gold, you said. I’d like to try that.”

  “I did say that, didn’t I.” He unwound her braid, pulling the strands out between his fingers.

  She was going to put Cinq beyond his reach forever. She was going to steal his vengeance. This morning, before she betrayed him, was her only chance. “If you could forget who I am for a while—”

  His fingers were on her lips. She wasn’t used to how quick he moved sometimes. He was just one place and then another without any time in between. “It’s not
that. Jess, let me tell you what we—”

  She didn’t try to match his speed, but she covered his mouth with her hand. “Don’t. Please. If we talk about it, I’m going to cry again, or we’ll fight. That’s not what I want to do right now. Please.”

  He kissed her hand, where it was pressed against his lips. “Then we’ll talk later.”

  There isn’t any later. That was part of what she wasn’t going to think about. She put her mind on how fingers felt when a man was kissing them. She didn’t want to miss any of this, because she only had the one time. “Have you decided?”

  “Jess, I’m still trying to wake up. Can we go at this a little slower? Decided what?”

  “Whether you’re going to make love to me or not.”

  He took up where he’d left off, kissing the palm of her hand. “I decided that long ago.”

  SEBASTIAN listened to a horse and cart clatter through the square. When they passed, it was quiet again. Jess lay beside him in the dawn, wearing a pale, silk ribbon around her neck and the locket on it and not a blessed thing more. Pretty soon he’d lay her down underneath him and take her.

  Nothing could have been more natural. It was as if they’d been married a dozen years and she’d come back from checking up on the kids. She let her nightgown slip down around her feet and took the empty spot in the bed. In all creation there was no woman so right for him. She was his.

  She loved him. It was written in her eyes for him to read, her loving him and hurting about it and planning something hazardous to her safety fairly soon. She’d try to break into Meeks Street or storm Parliament. He’d talk to her and put a stop to it. Adrian was sure he could get Whitby transported to Australia, not hanged. He’d explain that, and some of the desperation would go away.

  Right now, she didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. She was hurting and afraid, and she’d come to him to hide for a while.