Beauty Like the Night

by Joanna Bourne

  There was a man killed that night. Miss Séverine had shot the fellow, who apparently needed it. The warehousemen knew all about it by dawn, somehow. They spent the day bragging, proud and possessive of their eccentric lady.

  That morning, Miss had emptied out this closet and found a blanket. MacDonald had set the first of many meals on those stairs to the attic.

  “You can stay here till it stops being so cold,” she’d said.

  Since then there’d been more blankets, this straw mat, a lock installed on the door, regular food, and the sound of MacDonald snoring away every night, guarding. There’d been the bustle every morning when Miss Séverine came in, leaned over her desk to frown at her working notes, and thanked whoever brought her tea.

  It wasn’t icy cold on the street anymore, but the meals and the safety continued. And the errand boy Peter made himself useful, learning the way around the magistrate’s offices and the Inns of Court, through the prisons great and small, the records offices, the newspaper file rooms, and the cubicles of all the petty officials of London.

  It was an interesting life and it suited her. She followed Miss Sévie into the rookeries of St. Giles and Seven Dials to look at corpses and comfort the weeping family. Everywhere, they walked past dangerous men who didn’t touch Miss Séverine because she was protected by the most powerful people in London. Not just the British Service and her highborn French relatives. A surprising number of villains had reason to be grateful to her.

  Besides, Miss carried a gun. She was teaching Pilar how to load and fire one.

  For a long time she’d trusted Miss Sévie completely. It would have been easier to tell Miss everything and ask her help, but Miss had turned out to be a great meddler in everyone’s life and stupidly protective. If she’d known her errand boy was a girl and in danger, that girl would have been whisked off to a boarding school in the provinces so fast her ears would flap.

  Weeks passed. No evil men sought out Miss de Cabrillac asking what she knew about an amulet. No one hunted Mamá’s daughter to her hiding place. No one showed any interest at all. Sometimes it felt as if Mamá had died and her memory had dropped like a stone into the sea. Raoul Deverney didn’t come.

  Then he did come and he was only a problem and a complication. He was not her father anyway. He was nothing.

  A rolled-up jacket made a good pillow, once she got it in just the right position. At least Deverney was making Miss Sévie look at Mamá’s death. That was useful, even if he said stupid things about his responsibilities and his honor and wasted time being suspicious of Miss. She was glad she wasn’t a Deverney if they were that stupid.

  Miss would track down the evil men responsible for Mamá’s death. She was the best in London at finding the truth.

  Then nothing more would be needed but to kill them.

  Pilar turned over on her mat. There were hours of sleep left in the night. Three, maybe. When it was light she would help Miss Séverine find murderers. Everything was going well.

  Seventeen

  NOTHING like an early start to the day. With mice.

  The coach Sévie took across London ran with its lanterns still lit. It might be dawn out there on the orders of the nautical almanac, but the sun was not yet on duty.

  She made the trip with her pistol laid across her lap, as she did when she was working on a dangerous case, and she ordered a roundabout route to her office. She let the stolid and incurious hackney driver roll right to the door and asked him to wait till she let herself into the building. She took no chances.

  She’d turned down Anna and Anson’s offer of the dog Muffin to accompany her to work. That was not altogether childish fancy. Muffin was retired from years at Meeks Street. Ten stone of fighting dog, gray-muzzled and a little stiff, but with six-inch fangs, was protection not to be despised.

  That was why she left him in the front hall, guarding her home.

  This morning would be a morning of housecleaning. She’d sweep the corners of her office for broken things and put her files back in order. It would give her time to think.

  One of the laborers from the loading docks stood outside the double doors, holding a lantern, waiting for the arrival of an early shipment. He waved at her as she went up the front steps and put her key in the lock.

  When the light was better she’d go back to Sanchia’s flat and continue searching. Deverney expected her to find something she hadn’t laid eyes on yet.

  She closed the door to the building behind her and locked it. The entryway was dim and empty. There were no lamps lit and the hall was silent. Nobody seemed to have arrived at the front office of Fielding and Sons.

  She climbed the stairs, making mental lists. That was a comforting activity and perhaps even useful.

  She’d start a case file on the death of Sanchia Deverney. She’d collect the papers Deverney’s man of business had walked off with from the Kepple Street appartement. Collect all his Deverney records, really. She’d send Peter off to copy the coroner’s report and the accounts from the newspapers. She’d better see the magistrate herself.

  She had no neat item on her list for what she’d say to Deverney when he showed up. She hated being uncertain more than she hated being wrong.

  Then she turned at the landing to the second floor and saw the door to her office stood a little open, letting out a line of light across the hall floor.

  That could be MacDonald, up to greet the dawn, sweeping and sorting. It could be one of her many informers from the rougher parts of the city, come with useful information, picking the lock, and hiding in her office. It could be someone very nasty indeed. She was always meeting problematic and interesting people.

  It was probably Deverney, however.

  She had the pistol out, not even thinking about it. She held it level, close to her side, and entered the room.

  Two shocks hit. One shock of complete amazement and one small, troubling shock that didn’t actually come as a surprise.

  The small shock was Deverney—and wouldn’t he be annoyed to know she’d expected him? He sprawled, lean and sardonic, on a familiar and ugly red sofa. He’d picked a pile of her letters for his morning reading.

  The larger shock was everything else.

  She confronted a scene of strange normalcy. Her office was restored to . . . maybe not exactly order. The red chairs and the not-quite-matching sofa had grown wings and flown here from Meeks Street. They were familiar as her back teeth and utterly, bizarrely out of place.

  The disorder was vanished away. The floor was clear of chair stuffing, of broken glass, of shredded cloth. Her desk had been straightened intelligently and knowledgeably. Ink-stained papers were gathered into flat stacks. Her books, her files, her case boxes were back on their proper shelves.

  Deverney said, “Your colleagues have restored order and propriety to your world,” as if she hadn’t noticed. “You must be relieved.”

  Meeks Street was filled with men and women who’d known her since she was in pinafores. They knew—nobody knew better—how she’d slogged through battle and horror, killed when she had to, and now consorted with pimps and murderers on a regular basis. They didn’t often take care of her.

  “I wish they wouldn’t do this sort of thing,” she said, and knew that she lied.

  Hawker had brought this ugly furniture from the front parlor at Meeks Street. The green blotting paper came from Stillwater’s desk in her austere, neat, little house. The ordering of her papers and case files would be Pax’s work. When he visited here he’d have casually noted the exact placement of everything on the shelves. It was the way his mind worked.

  The kindness of old friends surrounded her. She might fight free of their protection, but it warmed her heart when it was offered, as it was today.

  “I watched them carry furniture in and furniture out,” Deverney said. “A little crowd of them, stumbling about in the dea
d of night. I did not feel impelled to assist and eventually they departed, quite in the manner of thieves. I felt free to enter and make myself comfortable since half of London had preceded me.” He patted the sofa he sat on. “Using ‘comfortable’ in the loosest sense.”

  “They’re meant to be lumpy. It discourages unwelcome visitors.”

  “As I am unwelcome?”

  “Very.”

  She stalked past him and didn’t look back, but she carried an acute consciousness of him across the room with her. It prickled along her shoulders and neck. It settled as a warmth in her belly.

  Papers crinkled behind her. Did the man do nothing but help himself to her files? His boots scuffed on the floor as he rose and followed her across the room, the noise a deliberate communication. He told her exactly where in the room he was, when he could have been silent as a table. Her life was filled with people whose natural mode of action was silence and secrecy. She recognized it at once.

  Here was the coup de grâce, this chair at her desk. They’d brought her the armchair from Hawker’s office at Meeks Street till her own was repaired. Brought her a chair of gravitas and history, a witness to the unrolling of great events.

  She walked around it and curved her hands over the back. Deverney stood at the other side of the desk, facing her, incalculable as flame that rose upward from a fire. She was not in the mood to be patient. “I have work to get through today, looking for your Pilar. Go away and let me do it. Alone.”

  “You need me.” Deverney didn’t sound patient himself.

  “I doubt it. And I decide.”

  “A reminder, then.” He said it low and his voice was perfectly serious. “The men who killed Sanchia came here, to the heart of your power, to deliver their threat.”

  “That’s a dramatic way to put it.”

  “You lead a dramatic life, Séverine.”

  “I’m not Séverine to you, monsieur.”

  “You’re Séverine, whether I say it out loud or think it. You’ve been that in my mind for a while now. Séverine, they know where you live.”

  “A fine selection of the most vicious criminals of London know where I live.”

  “There’s a small army of men, craftsmen in death—none of them terribly law-abiding—who’d tear London apart looking for anybody who hurt you. But you’re dealing with people who don’t know that or they don’t care. Or they have powerful protection.”

  “Or they’re stupid as cows.”

  “Or desperate. In any case, you need somebody with you. I don’t claim I can guard your back, but I can give you one minute’s warning so you can guard your own.”

  “I have MacDonald.”

  “And your undersized errand boy. A formidable array. Bring me too.” Deliberately he leaned across the desk toward her. His hands, fingers spread, took possession of a territory of wood. “Besides, I know things I haven’t told you yet. That’s your best reason to keep me close. You never know when I’ll become talkative.”

  True. All that was true. She wrapped her arms around herself, holding in the annoyance that had taken up residence in her chest.

  On every side, in file boxes and folders, her work surrounded her. She’d chosen to confront greed, violence, and stark ugliness. To face the occasional chance of death. To see the worst of mankind in its natural habitat. This life had matched her mood when she came home to England, battered, exhausted, disillusioned, and sick of spying. She’d come home more broken than even Maman realized.

  In this shabby corner of London, in this office, slowly, she’d glued herself back together. She’d become someone who mattered. Each of these case boxes was a puzzle solved. Sometimes, a man or woman saved from hanging or transportation. Sometimes, the small triumph of justice. Sometimes, one or two lives made better.

  She held that knowledge to her heart on the nights she woke and stared at the ceiling and life felt very empty. This was her work. This was one thing she’d done right.

  Deverney’s damned self-possession and tough, elegant turn of mind tore up the peace she’d built for herself. He made her want something more than the sensible, useful, careful life she’d created. He made her long for madness again. He did it just standing there and breathing.

  She met his eyes and fell into them. She’d packed passion and its train of attendant demons away and slammed the lid down hard. But she wanted this man. She wondered if it showed on her face, in her eyes, in the way she held her body. He was the sort of man who would see such things.

  “You need me,” he repeated.

  It was an echo of her own thoughts. She hoped he meant something more innocent by the words.

  He said, “Something I know or can discover is key to this puzzle. I am a treasury of secrets.”

  “I know men who could lighten you of those.”

  His lips quirked. “The British Service? Will you give me up to their curiosity?”

  “I’m tempted.”

  “But you won’t do it. You’re a woman who will always commit her own mayhem.”

  Did the gods laugh when someone smug fell off the high scaffolding of good resolutions? Did they punish hubris by tumbling the culprit into an obsession with the most unsuitable person at hand? It had happened to her, anyway, and she did not like it.

  “That’s settled then,” he said. “Unless you need to commune with your new furniture, we’ll go see my man of business. You want those papers he took from Sanchia’s rooms, and I want to see his face when he hands them over. I told him to be in his office.”

  “It’s early.” The first light was not yet leaking through the ragged dark line of buildings.

  “On the contrary, we’re three months late. Let’s get started.”

  Eighteen

  PILAR gripped the brass railing that ran around the roof of the hackney coach. MacDonald took the best spot, next to the driver, and left the slippery, tilting top for anyone else who might be on this expedition. The errand boy was left clinging on where the luggage traveled. The best that could be said for it was there was an excellent view.

  It wasn’t raining. It also wasn’t not raining. This season of the year, London offered a choice of a dozen states between bone dry and actually underwater. It tried them out, one after another, all day long. This made life slippery and cold for those who weren’t tucked up inside the coach with a lap robe over them.

  Better not to think about being warm and comfortable. That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. There was much to be said for the life of an errand boy, but it was marvelously uncomfortable.

  On the other hand, perched up on top of the coach one could hear most of what was being said inside the hackney.

  “. . . your supercilious Mr. Hayward who sneers at me and does not meet my eyes.” That was Miss Séverine.

  “I don’t hire my man of business because he’s likable. I hire him to collect rents and repair my London property.”

  “You need not patronize me, monsieur. I own extensive properties in three countries. My mother set me to managing them when I was fifteen.”

  The hackney rattled over a course of noisy cobbles and the voices inside the hackney became indecipherable.

  “. . . know the difference between integrity and a pleasant nature. Your man did not give you all the records of the trust he administered for your wife and daughter. There should be account books for—”

  “My wife’s daughter,” Deverney said. “Not mine.” Cold words that sounded as if they had been repeated many times before. Truth could be very cold.

  “You have an exact and meticulous nature,” Miss Sévie said. “I’m not sure I admire it. And that does not change the number of account books I expect to find.”

  The coach arrived in Kepple Street and pulled up to Number Twenty-nine. Revelations ended. MacDonald counted out coins for the driver and growled that some boys needed to stir th
eir stumps and get down to see Miss out of the coach.

  There were three or four ways to get to the ground from the top of a coach. Simplest was to ignore those rungs on the side and scramble over the boot, setting foot in the spokes of the big back wheel and jumping to the ground. This was when you hoped the coachman had the brake set tight so you didn’t accidentally get your toes cut off when the wheel moved. The life of an errand boy was one of continual nimbleness.

  There was no need to rush. Deverney provided all the help Miss Séverine needed in getting down from the coach, and then some. His hands were polite and impersonal, but his eyes were sharp on her when she wasn’t looking at him directly.

  Miss did more than her usual glance up and down the neighborhood. She was sizing it up. It would have been interesting to know what she thought of it.

  Miss Séverine improved the next few minutes going through a list of errands that had to be discharged all over London. That started with five letters to deliver, three of them to men at the Magistrate’s Court, one to the coroner’s surgeon, Mr. Tweed. There’d be lunch with Mr. Tweed today. She did that every week or so because they were old friends. Then there was a letter to Annie, the chief of Miss’s Eyes and Ears around town. A spoken message went to William Doyle, Miss Sévie’s father. He’d be in one of half a dozen public houses, some of them unsavory. William Doyle was to be told that Deverney had showed up. Nothing was put on paper and the words were for William Doyle’s ear only.

  Then there was a grocery list. Working for Miss Sévie was an education in so many ways.

  MacDonald wasn’t given errands to run. He stumped across Kepple Street to stand at the door and guard Mademoiselle de Cabrillac from anything dangerous, including Monsieur Deverney.

  • • •

  BARTHOLOMEW Horatio Markham—Bart to his family and his friends at Eton, Bar to his twin brother, technically the Honorable Bartholomew Markham—jogged along Whipple Lane with Latin books knocking against his back. He turned the corner and paused, pretending to shrug the books easier on him, actually looking back over his shoulder.