My Lord and Spymaster

by Joanna Bourne

  “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.”

  He set his knuckle on her cheekbone, telling her all the things he wasn’t going to put into words. “Tha’s a gradely bruise forming here. Very fetching.”

  “I’ve been avoiding mirrors. But it’s not important.”

  “Not important to tell thy father tha’d been hurt? I must hear it from Pitney. He comes and tells me and looks ashamed the whole time. Tha’s put him between two loyalties, Jessie. It wasn’t well done of thee.”

  That was another of the demons clawing at her. She had to see Pitney get grayer and more haggard every day he walked into the office. Pitney worried about her. “I’m safe enough. Did you know I have bodyguards trailing after me? I swagger around town like that Roman emperor everyone was aiming knives at. Caesar.”

  “That’ll be some of that expensive education I bought thee.”

  “So it is. I’m hoping for a lull in folks attacking me, what with these vigorous men following me everywhere. And I moved out of the hotel. I’ve gone into hiding, like.” She didn’t mention she was hiding in the Captain’s house and that he might be Cinq. A delicate omission, her governess used to call that sort of thing. “You wouldn’t believe how cautious I’m being.”

  She’d made him smile. “Tha hasna taken care since the day tha was’t born.” Papa squeezed her shoulder and let go and walked across to close the curtains. “The Foreign Office came by again.”

  “Ah.”

  The Foreign Office had got worried about the Whitby holdings in the East, afraid Jess Whitby might absentmindedly marry some Frenchman or Russian. It was all nods and winks and nobody saying anything right out, but the bottom line was, if she married some reliable Englishman they picked out and gave him half the company, Papa walked free. How long he’d live after that was anyone’s guess. Nobody more ruthless than diplomats.

  Except the military. Colonel Reams didn’t wink and hint. The colonel made his proposal right to her face, all hoarse and threatening and spitting a little when he got excited about the whole business. He was another one promising to set Papa free, the minute the ink was dry on a marriage license.

  They must all think she was a right idiot. “Colonel Reams dropped by the warehouse.”

  “Ah.” Papa settled the curtains, one against the other, closing off the draft, making it snug. “Bidding, then.”

  “Bidding.” On her. The Military and the Foreign Office were watching each other, and both of them watching her.

  Papa said, “Don’t be alone with Reams. Keep Pitney by.” A wise man, Papa.

  They’d been in less comfortable prisons. This was a good strong fire at her back. The Times lay open on the desk. An old pewter chocolate pot was set by the hearthback to keep warm. Papa’s clay pipe had its rack on the mantel. The Service took care of Papa, if you ignored the bars on the window and the fact they were about to hang him.

  She wouldn’t tell him she planned to burgle Kennett’s study tonight. They could find other things to talk about.

  “I took Kedger with me today, when I visited Eaton.” Good. Her voice was steady as a rock. “He had a grand time, just like the old days. He must have brought me every quill in Eaton’s, one after the other. A right muck he made of it, too. Got himself spotted like a leopard. Ink everywhere.”

  SEBASTIAN found Adrian in the stuffy little room the Service used as a listening post, leaning on the wall, tilting a black-bound notebook to the lantern light. “We need to talk.”

  “Don’t snarl at me, Bastian. I don’t send her crawling around on roofs.”

  “You didn’t stop her.”

  “I am not, all evidence to the contrary, omniscient. I had no idea she planned that particular idiocy.” Adrian put a finger in the notebook to mark his place. “If you keep your voice down, the Whitbys will not hear us and be distracted from what is doubtless an illuminating conversation.”

  In the room next door, Jess was catching hell from her father. The walls vibrated with a bass voice, bellowing. Then came an interval of quiet that might be Jess, answering softly. Then Josiah, yelling again. Fine. Let the entire Coldstream Guards harangue her if it would keep her off the roofs.

  Trevor, square, serious, and young, was taking notes. He hunched at the table to the side, his ear pressed to a brass ear trumpet that curled up out from the wall. His pencil cast a twitching shadow in the white oblong of light that came from the open side of the dark lantern.

  There wasn’t space for three men in this cubbyhole. Sebastian flattened himself against a rack of pistols. “I’m going to stuff her in a damned crate and ship her to China.”

  “Will you?” Adrian gave him the same meditative consideration he’d been using on the book. “Welcome to the select band of men
who want to ship Jess somewhere distant and inaccessible.”

  “She’s going to break her neck trying to save that old hyena. Or somebody will break it for her.” There were a dozen ways for Jess to kill herself. She seemed to be trying them out, one after another.

  Trevor kept writing. He had a smirk on his face, as if he enjoyed eavesdropping on Jess.

  “Enough.” He slapped his hand on Trevor’s notes. “This stops.”

  The boy shoved to his feet, fists bunched at his side. “I don’t take orders from some—”

  Maybe he’d take this pup outside and teach him some manners. “They know you’re listening.”

  “Trev.” Adrian waited till the boy scowled and opened his fists. “Take Whitby his tea. Put some sausages on the tray for Jess. She forgets to eat when she’s engaged in lunacy.”

  “We should keep her here, where she’d be safe. Captain Kennett,” the boy crammed a barrelful of derision into the title, “just wants to get her into bed. It’s obscene, letting him put his hands on her when he’s the man piling up evidence against her father. We could make her comfortable, and she’d get to be with her father. We could put her in the second guest room.”

  “How snug,” Adrian murmured. “Our very own collection of Whitbys.”

  “He’s not taking care of her. Besides—”

  “Besides, you want to run around holding the key to her bedroom. Having beautiful women in your clutches isn’t nearly as much fun as you’d think, Trev.”

  The boy was young enough to blush. “It’s not like that.”

  “You disappoint me. Take your notes with you, and this,” Adrian held up the book he’d been studying. “Galba wants the summary by tomorrow morning. Translate the Russian for him. It’s not one of his languages.” When Trevor didn’t move he added gently, “Now.”

  A muscle twitched in the boy’s cheek. “It’ll get done. You’re making a mistake handing her over to him.” He slid pencils into the pencil case, taking his time. “She’s said all along those are forged entries in the Whitby books. Maybe the Captain did it. He’s the only man who’s had them.” He clicked the door closed behind him. Quietly.

  What the boy needed was a year scrubbing decks on a merchant schooner. Fortunately, Adrian’s apprentice spies weren’t his problem. “Is that the British Service theory now? That I’m Cinq?”

  “That is Trevor’s working hypothesis. But he’s fifteen and smitten. And he’s never shared a filthy French pigeon loft with you.” Adrian sat on the edge of the table in front of the lantern, blocking most of the light. “If you feel the need to discuss that with him, don’t break the bones in his right hand. I need them. Why am I talking to you instead of eavesdropping on Whitbys?”

  “Common decency.”

  “A virtue in short supply hereabouts. Did I explain to you that we’re spies? Surely I mentioned that at some point.”

  “Give her some privacy with her father. She doesn’t have many more hours with him before he hangs.”

  “I’d rather not hang him at all, thank you.”

  I wish we didn’t have to. I wish he wasn’t Cinq. “You’re scaring her. I want you to talk to her, face-to-face.”

  “She won’t see me.”

  “Do it.”

  “There are very few things I can give Jess at the moment. My absence is one of them.” Carefully, because the metal was hot, Adrian turned the dark lantern, lighting up a different portion of the room. “I’m playing jailer here. I’m not going to force her to be polite to me to get to her father.”

  “She thinks you’re going to hang her.”

  A fierce, impatient shake of the head. “She can’t think that.”

  “She does.” He let the silence lie.

  “I suppose I deserve that.” Adrian rubbed thumb and forefinger together, looking at them. “How very far we have come from St. Petersburg. You will convince her she’s being ridiculous.”

  “Not while you’re sneaking around behind the walls, peering and taking notes. She’s afraid of you. Talk to her, for God’s sake.”

  “She would appall us both by spitting in my face.”

  The door opened inward. “There you are.” Doyle, wet-haired, radiating cold, stood holding the knob. “And the Captain. Good. Is that damned unrestful woman going to stay put for a while? I want to send the boys home and call in a new lot.”

  "You should have an hour. ” Adrian gestured to the wall behind him. “Trevor’s bringing food. She’ll stay to see Josiah eats.”

  “I’ll get some food, too. No telling what she’ll decide to do next.” Doyle’s greatcoat dripped lines of wet onto the hall carpet. “I would very much like our girl tucked up safe in bed tonight. All night. Can you see to that, Captain?”

  Doyle had a lot to answer for. “Why the hell didn’t you stop her?”

  “Now that’s exactly what I keep asking myself.” Doyle reached up easily, hooked his fingers over the door frame, and leaned into the cubbyhole, looking from one man to the other. “The whole time she was climbing the side of that building like a fly I asked myself why I didn’t talk her out of it.” He snorted. “Next time you two come along and try.”

  “No, thank you.” A slim black knife appeared in Adrian’s hands, tossed from palm to palm. “I kept her out of mischief for three nerve-wracking years. If you think she’s bad now you should have known her at twelve. Is the Irish contingent doing anything interesting?”

  “Hanging around Kennett’s place, pestering the servant girls when they go out. Watching the Whitby warehouse. Following Jess. Fletcher’s boys and girls are keeping an eye on them, but there’s no sign of Cinq. Not yet.” Doyle glanced both ways in the hall. “I’d like Trevor on duty, if you can spare him. He needs time on the streets, and it’ll get him away from Jess.” There was no trace of Cockney in Doyle’s voice. “He’s unreliable when it comes to the girl.”

  “We all are.” Adrian stilled. In the dimness, the knife was nearly invisible. The thin silver line of a razor edge seemed to hang, suspended. “Let Trev be gallant. We get so few chances.”

  If he annoys me, I can always send him to Madras. “She’s making you into a bogeyman. Face her.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Because you arrested Whitby?”

  “Mostly.” Adrian tossed the knife and caught it, two-fingered, by the blade. He’d done that a thousand times in the years Sebastian had known him. Toss and catch. “There’s more to it.”

  Doyle said, “Just tell him.”

  Adrian laid the knife on the table beside him. “The last time I spoke to Jess . . . I’d managed to get Josiah shot through the lung. We were old friends, and he let me use the mansion in St. Petersburg as a base of operations. A mistake on his part, as it turned out.”

  “Josiah knew what he was doing,” Doyle said.

  “There were three or four dead men in the salon and I was carrying one of those vital documents we always seem to have. The fate of nations depended on it, of course.” His voice was bleak as sea water. “So I walked out. I left Jess in the front hall, with the tsar’s men breaking down the door and her father’s blood running out through her fingers.” Adrian’s face was in shadow. Only his eyes picked up a gleam of light. “He lived. Jess and Josiah spent a month in a Russian prison and Jess never forgave me.”

  “You never forgave you,” Doyle said. “You saved twenty, maybe thirty men’s lives. If the Russians had got that memorandum back, it would have been a thousand dead.”

  “I shall wrap that warm thought around me in the long reaches of the night. She was fourteen.”

  He didn’t want to see what was showing in Adrian’s face. “It’s been years. Whitby’s alive and snapping. Jess can get over being annoyed at you. I’ll set up a meeting at my house.”

  Adrian picked up the knife again. “I’ll think about it.” “You do that.”

  The brass listening-funnel that extended from the wall was filled with wisps of Jess’s voice. He could almost understand. If he
stayed here, he’d keep trying to. “I’ll be upstairs going through Jess’s papers. Send somebody home with her when she’s through with her father.” He put his hand on the door. “Not just a guard. She needs company, so she’s not alone.” It galled him to say it. “Send the boy.”

  “Trevor?” Adrian gave a spark of amusement. “He will manfully protect her through the wilds of Mayfair, hoping for brigands. He’s green with envy that you got to kill men for her. I am very glad she is not locked up here. Sebastian . . .”

  Trevor could daydream all he wanted to. “What?”

  “Subdue your gentlemanly scruples for a minute. I want you to look at this.” Adrian pulled aside the curtain on the wall to show a panel set at eye level.

  “I won’t spy on her.”

  “But you pass the idle hour pawing through her dainty underlinens. These distinctions escape me. To be hair-splittingly accurate, I am spying on him, not her. They know I’m watching. Think of it as a sort of game. Be quiet now. They can hear us when I open this.”

  Adrian closed the lantern and threw the room into darkness. The panel opened smoothly to show a square of light, filled by mottled fabric. The other side was a bland landscape on the wall of the study. He doubted it fooled the Whitbys for a minute.

  Jess sat on a low footstool in front of the fire, her hands clasped together, her forearms resting on her knees. Her hair was loose from the long braid, drying. Josiah Whitby, short, barrel-bellied, heavy-shouldered, and bald, stood beside her, his hand spread on the cascade of wheat-gold hair.

  Faintly, he could hear the man say, “. . . a job lot of woolens. MacLeish can do the bidding. There’s space on the Northern Light for the next St. Petersburg run.”

  “I can buy tea,” Jess said. “I don’t know why everyone thinks I can’t bargain for tea.”

  “Tha’s a fine, wise lass and I wouldn’t send thee to dicker for soap in a bathtub.”

  Whitby wore the dun-colored worsted coat and old-fashioned breeches of a stout countryman and a poppy-red silk waistcoat. How had that squat, brown toad sired a woman like Jess?