My Lord and Spymaster

by Joanna Bourne

  Kedger nudged again. She whispered, “It could mean anything. It’s no better than what they have on Papa.”

  She knew what she had to do. She had to give Sebastian to the English authorities. They’d let Papa go. Her father would live, and Sebastian would hang, and she’d crawl away into a hole and be sick. She was sick now.

  The clock chimed. She packed everything away neat into the strongbox and closed it up and put all the lights out, except one to carry with her, and went out into the Dark.

  HIS bed was next to the window. He liked to turn his head and look out at the sky over the trees in the square when he was falling asleep, losing himself in the stars the way he used to do when he was first mate and took watch. Sometimes, when he was drifting off, he caught himself trying to chart the course of the house, calculating its latitude from the height of the North Star.

  He’d fallen asleep to the sound of rain. But he’d passed too many nights in dockside taverns to ever sleep deeply. Stealthy footsteps woke him instantly.

  That was light in the hall. That would be his sneak thief, Jess, plying her trade.

  She’d crept past Quent’s room, not even pausing. Good. He didn’t have to go out there and knock his cousin endwise.

  She’d stopped outside his door. No. Outside the door across the hall. She was not, unfortunately, coming to share his bed. She was breaking into his study. It took her half a minute to get through the lock. A woman of varied and interesting skills, Jess.

  He’d listened to her putter around his office, making rustles and clicks he could barely hear. Then there was no noise at all. Jess was comfortably ensconced, going through his desk. He could almost see her, working away at it when she should be resting.

  He lay with his hands clasped behind his head, looking at the night, fighting an absurd impulse to go in there and help her ransack his office. She hadn’t slept, had she? Not more than an hour or two. When she was through with this bit of burglary, she’d stumble out into the dawn and start running Whitby’s.

  He slept off and on, waiting for her to be finished. Keeping watch, in his way. At last, his study door opened and closed quietly. Barely a click. He heard the swish of cloth on skin. She was headed back to her room.

  He’d go flush himself out a thief.

  He didn’t make noise getting out of bed and grabbing a banyan, wrapping it around himself and walking to the door. When he opened up, they were expecting him. Her foot-high gray lookout was reared up, snarling silently. Dozens of tiny, menacing teeth gleamed in the candlelight.

  She wore a white nightgown, long-sleeved and high-necked, with a big, dark shawl close around her. Her hair was in two long braids that hung down over her breasts.

  “Miss Whitby and escort,” he said. “A little restless tonight? ” Then he saw her eyes, and it wasn’t funny anymore. “What’s the matter?”

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said dully. “I went down to the kitchen. I wanted . . . tea.” It was a poor, limp, amateur job of lying.

  “You were in my office.”

  She wore the pale, overwhelmed look of somebody who’d been punched in the stomach. “I have to get back to bed.”

  “What did you find in my office? What?” She’d come across something that shocked her. He couldn’t imagine what.

  She started away, and he stopped her. He made his hand soft on her shoulder, but he held her there, letting her know he was twice her size and willing to hold on indefinitely. The ferret made a sound like pebbles boiling. “Tell me what you found.”

  “Nothing.” She brushed her face, as if she’d walked through cobwebs. “I can’t talk.”

  “There’s nothing to find in that study. What did you see?” She didn’t answer. Her candle was shaking. The candlelight on the wall shivered and swirled like the lights at sea.

  He’d come a long way, luring trust out of her, little by little. He’d lost all the ground he’d ever gained. If he let her go, she’d bound off like a gazelle. If he didn’t, the damned rodent would take his foot off.

  A door opened. Quentin stuck his head out into the hall, wearing a nightcap and blinking like an owl. “Is that you, Bastian? What’s the matter?”

  “It’s just Jess, looking for something. I’ll take care of her.”

  “Miss Whitby? Jess?”

  “Go back to bed.” He didn’t give orders to Quentin often. He didn’t remind him whose house this was and who was in charge here. It was hard enough on Quentin, living on another man’s allowance. Tonight, he didn’t have time to worry about Quentin’s delicate sensibilities.

  His family would get used to seeing Jess in his bedroom. When she was ready for it. When she wanted them to know. Not yet, though. Not now.

  “Sebastian? This won’t do. I’m sure this is perfectly innocent, but it presents the appearance of impropriety. I have to say, this won’t . . .” Quent stayed ducked behind his door. He wouldn’t want to be seen in his nightshirt, showing his skinny shins. He’d always been vain as a monkey. “This is extremely unwise. I strongly suggest you wake Eunice. She is the voice of reason. I don’t expect you to take my advice, and maybe you’ll—”

  “Please. You don’t have to bother.” Jess squirmed, but quietly, not wanting to call the whole brigade out into the hall. “I didn’t mean to wake anyone. Really.”

  “I’m afraid I must insist. Your situation here is delicate enough without the suggestion—”

  The ferret stopped sniffing and clucking. Suddenly, it dropped to all fours and darted down the hall, making a dead set for Quentin. Quent slammed his door just in time.

  “I wish he wouldn’t do that.” Jess shook in his hands and her skin was cold.

  Quentin was probably leaned against his door, ear pressed to the wood, listening.

  “I’m taking you up to bed. No. Hold your tongue. Or else shout real loud and wake Eunice up so we can discuss your visit to my study.” He pushed her down the hall in front of him. The ferret kept pace, slinking close to the wall.

  “I don’t want to do this,” Jess whispered.

  “I don’t give a damn what you want right now. Go. Upstairs. ”

  He followed her, watching her heels swish in and out of her nightdress. Through that thin cotton she was wearing, he could see her legs outlined by the candlelight. When she twisted to look back at him, her breasts made beautiful shadows, swaying. The nipples were delicate pink, like dainty, round seashells. Yes. Pressed up against the embroidery on the bodice. There were his little friends.

  He was going to want this woman when she was a wrinkled hag. Want her everywhere, every day, under every conceivable circumstances. Tonight, when she looked like this, she stunned him.

  The ferret scuttled half a staircase ahead, then looped back to look, then ran ahead again, playing chaperone.

  She stopped when they got to her door and set a hand out, braced on the doorframe. As if that would make a difference. She was prepared to dig her heels in and discuss this at length. Stiff, nervous, rebellious, she breathed out, “I don’t . . .”

  “You don’t. Not tonight.” He’d made his point. “You’re going to trust me, one of these days. You’re going to trust me more than any evidence you think you’ve found. More than your own eyes.”

  He gave her a little shove towards her room, sending her in there alone. “Put the bolt on. I won’t leave till I hear it click. And for God’s sake get some sleep.”

  SHE didn’t sleep though. She looked at the plaster ceiling till she’d about memorized it, then decided that, no, she wasn’t going to sleep. She got up and took a pencil and paper and went over to the hearthrug.

  Time to settle accounts.

  The last thing she’d stole had been those jade figurines. There’d been twelve of them, slick to the hand and kind of glimmery green and heavy for their size. She’d had them on her when she fell. For all she knew they were still under the rubble of that old warehouse.

  She wrote, “Twelve pieces of jade. White house on Slyte Street.”
Carved jade from the Orient. She had no idea what that kind of thingumbob was worth. “Ask Kennett about value,” she wrote. She’d set Doyle to finding out who’d lived in that house, ten years ago.

  I won’t believe some damn letter. Especially not a letter from that worm, Reggio.

  Three days before the jade, she’d stolen banknotes and gold coins across town in Mercer Street. “Banknotes and guineas. Mercer Street.”

  Even if I lie to Reams and get the list from him, that’s not the end of it.

  Thirty gold guineas, more or less. Banknotes. She chewed on the pencil. A hundred pounds? She couldn’t just knock on the door and ask them, could she?

  Wish I wasn’t such a bloody coward.

  Better say a hundred and fifty to be safe. She should work out the interest, shouldn’t she? Because she wasn’t a thief anymore. The books have to balance. Debts must be paid. It was a good thing Whitby’s had lots of money.

  Seventeen

  Garnet Street

  SEBASTIAN FOUND HER ON THE LOADING DOCK, moodily watching Irishmen and blacks file past, wood frames on their backs, straps over their shoulders and across their foreheads. They were lugging sacks of rice from the warehouse out to the wagons. A cool wind nipped through the streets, but the stevedores hung their coats along the railing outside and worked in shirtsleeves.

  Jess wasn’t checking inventory. She stared blankly as the men walked around her. He wasn’t the only one watching, wondering why she was there. Her floor manager kept an eye on her in between checking off cartloads.

  Her color was better and the bruise under her eye was almost gone. She’d heal a damned sight faster if she didn’t spend her nights creeping around his house, breaking into his office. She’d gotten up at the crack of dawn and left for work before it got light. She’d done it to avoid him.

  “You missed breakfast,” he said.

  “I bought a bun at a shop.” She acted as if she’d been waiting all morning for him to show up. “I invested in hot cross buns all round, actually. One for me and a dozen for the bodyguards to share among them. And I sent the boy from the front desk to get coffee for everybody. Between you and the Service and Pitney, I’m putting together my own private army. The buns are a line item in the books under ‘military supplies, miscellaneous.’ ”

  Light, easy words. But it wasn’t the contingent of guards that put that desolation in her eyes.

  What are you thinking, Jess? What did you find in my office last night that sent you scampering out of my house this morning? “Interesting cargo?”

  She looked at the rice as if she’d just noticed it. “Not particularly. Thirty tons of Carolina Gold, out of Charleston. The contract reads June, clear as day, but that still came as a surprise to some people. It’s been on my hands a week. The buyer is Bennet Brothers.”

  “You’re a trusting soul.”

  “Not really. I have their rice, after all, and I charge them penalties and stowage. Pure profit, since I had to inventory anyway. I wonder sometimes why God made so many idiots. I really do.”

  “Letter of credit?”

  “From Bennet Brothers? You have a sense of humor, Captain. Pound dealing only for Messieurs Bennet. I collected the last of the demurrage this morning, along with the usual bushel of whining. Now I’m getting their rice out of my warehouse before it attracts rats. I hate storing foodstuffs.”

  Her warehouse was cleaner than his kitchen at home. Maybe he should put a woman in charge of his warehouse storage. “You run a tight ship.”

  “No profit in being slovenly. There’s a whole long list of things I won’t keep in this warehouse at all.” Two men came out of the stacks, carrying a heavy trunk between them. She flattened to the wall to get out of the way. She still hadn’t looked directly at him. “We strip the burlaps off at the loading dock and shake out the vermin. You would not believe what travels with tea and silks.”

  “I took at look at you yesterday, through the peep, when you were talking to your father. There’s a listening post, off to the side of the study.”

  “I know about it. They watch us. There’s actors at Drury Lane who attract less of an audience.”

  More laborers passed, carrying rice. “Let’s walk. I’m making MacLeish nervous, standing here watching his loading.”

  One of the advantages of being so much taller than Jess was she couldn’t get ahead of him without actually breaking into a run. They covered half the length of her transient storage before that occurred to her. She pulled up beside a consignment lot of fifty wood boxes stenciled Pezzi Meccanici . . . Thessaloniki all over the sides. Machine parts for Thessalonica. That probably meant they were guns being smuggled into north Italy. God alone knew what the customs clerks made of the Whitby shipping documents.

  “We had a little cobra bite one of the boys once.” She lifted a hanging slate with the ship name and a date marked on it, then let it swing back. “Crawled out of a bale of India printed cotton. About thirty men beat it to death out there on the loading platform.”

  You’re afraid I might just be like that cobra. He didn’t like to see her haunted and unsure. It didn’t suit her.

  She picked at a splinter on the corner of the closest Thessalonica crate. “He lived—the boy who got bit—but he lost his foot. MacLeish trained him as a clerk. He’s in Sweden now. I know about the spy holes at Meeks Street. Why are you telling me this?”

  Because she was his. Nothing and no one would keep her from him, not even the hurt he’d done her. “So we know where we stand. I don’t want lies between us.”

  “Bit late for that.” She’d found another jagged piece of wood and started niggling away at it.

  “I won’t spy on you again.”

  “Forthright as a sunny day, that’s you.” She gave him a quick, searching, worried glance, then looked away.

  “What did you find in my study?” Tell me, Jess. Stop brooding about it and tell me. “I went through it this morning, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t have shown you if you’d asked. Not a thing.” He let a minute pass with her not answering. “If I were Cinq and I thought you’d found something important, you wouldn’t have made it to work this morning, alive and free.” He watched her pull more splinters out of that crate. “You’re not good at being prudent. There’s no point in trying to start now. What did you find?”

  “I’d have to be frothing mad to talk to you about it.” Belatedly, she tried some caution. “If I’d found anything at all, which I’m not saying I did. If it’s all the same with you, I’d rather get back to work. I’m busy this morning.”

  She pulled away and took off, her long strides kicking her skirts in front of her. They turned corners at random, surprising men busy at inventory or restacking cargo. They passed a neat stack of boxes, huddled together, marked Fragile in five languages and slabs of white Carrara marble, stored at a slant, separated by blocks of pine. She saw none of it. She’d withdrawn wholly into herself, her face set and resolute, her eyes distant.

  They ended up in the far corner where the staircase led to the upper floors. She stopped with her hand on the wood railing, muttering, "... if he lets me go. No guarantees of that.”

  She was steeling herself for the next stupidity on her list. She’d probably thought of something more dangerous than crawling across the roofs to Eaton’s. Trevor was right. She should be locked up someplace.

  It was easy to block the stairway. It always surprised him, that he was so much larger than her. “You’ll work with me. You need my help. You don’t have to trust me to make use of me.”

  “You’re eloquent, Captain. I can’t tell you how much I distrust eloquent. I’m just sure to my toes that Cinq is eloquent as hell.”

  It was time to tell her. She had to know what lay between them. “My ship, the Neptune Dancer, sank with all hands, two years ago. Men who belonged to me died because Cinq passed the sailing information to the French. The first mate was an old friend.”

  He watched pain stab though her. Every merchant and
shipper had friends who’d never come home. She was remembering Whitby ships, lost, and the men on them. Maybe she was remembering that boy, Ned, who didn’t come back to her.

  She said, “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”

  “That’s why I’m not Cinq. Why I couldn’t be.”

  Her eyes were shadowed. “The world is so damned full of things that just happen. Maybe you could even be the spy and sink your own ship by accident. I don’t know. But my father isn’t guilty.”

  “Then find out who is. Find Cinq, and I’ll destroy him.”

  “I’m trying.” The rest of it hit her then. “You think my father killed your friend and your men. Every time you look at me, you think about that. I’m surprised you can touch me at all.”

  “When I look at you I see nothing but Jess. It’s a cosmic joke that you’re related to him. You’re not your father. You’re nothing of his.”

  The straight, slashed eyebrows pulled together. The gold eyes hardened. “I’m Josiah Whitby’s daughter, blood and bone.”

  “Jess—”

  “He’s the most honorable man I’ve ever known. He’d die before he’d betray England.”

  When he tried to put his hand on her shoulder, she chopped his wrist. “Don’t.” She hit hard enough to let him know she meant it. “You don’t touch me. Not at the warehouse.”

  “I don’t?” He kept his voice mild.

  “Look around, Captain. There must be a dozen men who can see us right now. Up there, to the right. See that? That’s the clerks’ office behind that window. You want to bet there’s six or eight of them watching us this minute?”

  He glanced up. She was right.

  “I can work in this warehouse and run this business because I got a hundred chaperones. I’m not a scandal because I’m always in plain sight, morning to midnight. A dozen men can swear I’m behaving myself proper. I can give orders here because I’m Whitby Trading to these men. They don’t think of me as a woman.”