“Women do not think alike, mon vieux. Do not expect me to understand her merely because I am a woman.”
“But you’re a sneaky woman. Have I ever told you how much I admire that? We can eliminate the easy places—all the drawers and bookcases.”
“Certainly, that is a foolish place to hide something.” She set aside her distaste for the man who searched this apartment. It was not the vandal she must understand. It was Jane Cardiff.
“I’ll send men to pick the place apart. It’ll take a few hours.”
But she did not want to wait for that. Neither did Hawker.
“She is no sweet squire’s daughter to trust a secret drawer in her desk.” She had picked up the poor, sad obscenity of the broken shepherdess. The lingering of malevolence disturbed her more than she had realized. “The man who did this was one of her lovers. He comes to her apartment and searches it as such a man would.”
She had Hawker’s attention. “Tell me.”
“He gives his time to the places he knows. His world. The salon, where she entertained him. This bedroom, where she practiced her art upon him. These are important to him, so he thinks they are important to her.”
“What he searches, he destroys.”
“Her clothes, this pretty dressing table, the sofa in the salon. This vulgar object.” She set the little shepherdess upon the desk. “He crushes all the trappings of a harlot. And he takes his jewelry back.”
Hawker pulled at his bottom lip, thumb and forefinger. “Searches the familiar territory. His territory. What he feels like he owns.”
“You see that. But Jane Cardiff has lived a different life in this apartment. This bed is the stage upon which the courtesan plays her role. Whatever power she found there, she did not enjoy. This room . . . I will tell you. I have been in rooms like this.”
“You don’t have to say it.”
“But I will. I have acted horrible games upon exactly such a bed. Long ago. I understand this room.”
“Owl, you’re not Jane Cardiff.”
“It is the same.”
“Well, bugger that for a lie.”
He stomped off to look out the window. She had made him angry, in that sudden way she sometimes did.
She said, “I was also a whore.”
“Don’t say that.”
He was angry for her sake. Even after all these years, always angry. Perhaps she had healed, because she knew her anger still lived inside Hawker. “I understand her this well. She doesn’t sleep in that ugly, red bed. Look here.”
She opened the door of the small room beyond and brought the lamp. There was barely space for both of them. The disorder was less. Here was only a narrow bed with wool blankets and the simplest of rough linen sheets—something a young maid might have been given. The table held an oil lamp and an oak box, flat-topped, a foot square. It had been pried open. A rush-bottomed chair stood under the window. The white curtains were closed, leaving the room dim in the earliest light.
She said, “This is her place.”
“You think she slept here?”
“When she was alone, yes. This is her private place. There are nuns who own more, but everything here is hers. If she has secrets, we’ll find them here.”
They would not find clandestine drawers under the bed frame or secret panels in the table. Such hiding places were for fools and amateurs.
“Floorboards.” Hawker did not sound enthusiastic. It was a tedious job, on hands and knees, pulling at floorboards. He was examining the pieces of the ruined box. And frowning.
“Lift the light, will you?”
“You have found something?”
“I think . . .” Hawker ran his thumb along the back of the box where the wood was pried away and turned the wood to a slant against the light. “We have something . . .” He picked it out between thumb and forefinger.
A tiny triangle of metal glinted on his palm.
“That is the point of a knife,” she said.
“Second-rate steel. Dagger point. Half an inch of it broken off. Somebody was impatient in his prying. I keep telling people a knife is a delicate instrument, not a pry bar. No one ever listens.” He pulled out a handkerchief and wrapped the bit of metal. “A gentleman always carries a handkerchief,” he murmured. “There’s a knife in London missing its tip. Needle in a haystack comes to mind.”
“It is likely someone will try to stab you with it soon.”
“I will hold that happy thought in mind.”
“He did not find what he sought in that box.” In this spare, childish room, there was nowhere else. “I think it is above this table. Whatever it is, when she wants it she climbs the table and steps upon that box and reaches up.”
She moved the chair from the window. When she stepped up on the table, it was obvious what section of the molding had been touched again and again. She pressed, and the spring released. The panel slid away easily.
She took a small black leather book out. Hawker’s hands around her waist lifted her down and set her upon her feet on the floor.
THEY did not stay in that stark room. The light was better on the terrace, but that was not why they went to stand there.
“In code . . .” She turned the pages.
Hawker read over her shoulder. “French. And old. I think that’s the first of your codes I ever learned. I can probably read it better than you.”
“Almost certainly. You are good with codes. It was expunged many years ago. If she had been working with the Police Secrète, she would have changed to a more recent one.” She flipped through the pages. “Everything is undated, but see how the ink has gone pale at the beginning of the book. This is years of writing.”
“Let’s see the last pages.” He opened the book near the end. A minute passed. “She’s not just using the old symbols. She’s added new stuff. And it’s in English.” He frowned. “It says, ‘I have failed in my . . .’ There’s something I can’t read here. ‘In my mission once again. The rifle was inaccurate. Le Maître will not be pleased.’ Owl, we’re going to find it all. It’s in here.”
“Her mission. Her Master. She was working for someone.”
“She says, ‘I have been seen. I must wait until their suspicions are—’”
She heard a whistle below, from the garden. A snatch of song.
She would have ignored it. A boy in the lane on an errand.
Hawker leaned over the railing of the balcony and watched the man who had entered the garden. Watched hand signs. Made one of his own and then another.
“Outside,” he said. He headed for the front door of the apartment, hurrying.
She did not make complications when important matters went forward. But she also did not follow blindly. “What is happening? Give me ten words.”
“There’s a body on the street out back. A woman. I think we know what became of Jane Cardiff.”
They went downstairs and circled the house to go look at the body.
Forty-nine
JUSTINE PULLED THE SHADES OF THE WINDOWS OF the coach. She did not think anyone was observing Jane Cardiff’s house, but there was no reason to advertise their presence here, where a murder had so recently happened.
She was not stunned by the death she had confronted. She had seen many men die, and women too. But it had seemed Jane Cardiff’s blank eyes stared at her accusingly before Doyle had reached his big hand to close them.
She sat beside Hawker in the coach. The dead woman and Doyle, who must deal with the grim formalities of death, receded behind them. She said what she had been thinking for a time. “She was what I might have become.”
“You’re not Jane Cardiff,” Hawker said. “You’re not anything like her.”
“If things had gone differently—”
“Never.”
“We cannot know.”
“I know,” Hawker said. “You’d have woke up one fine morning and stabbed the bastard. Nothing more certain.”
“I hope so.”
“We’
ll deal with him now, you and me.” He shifted on the seat so he held her against the motion of the coach as they turned the corner, not letting it jostle her arm. Always, at every instant, he was careful of her. “I know how I’m going to do it. Just a matter of settling some of the details.”
“Always, it is the small details that trip one up.”
“I’ve never wanted to kill anyone as much as I want to kill the man who sent a knife after you.”
Adrian Hawkhurst sprawled beside her on the seat of the coach and constructed the scheme that would end in a man’s death. She imagined she could see the plan stretching through his mind, weaving itself in strong simplicity, like the threads of a snare.
They were still dressed for the evening party at the Pickerings. He, in black coat and starched neckcloth. She, in lilac silk.
Last night, she had watched Sir Adrian Hawkhurst weave his way among the charming, flirtatious women of the ton. They had followed him with their eyes, admiring and speculative. Not one had seen beneath the deceptive surface of him.
“You’re thinking,” he said. “Tell me.”
“I am thinking of what we have become over the years, you and I. Where we ended up.”
“The head of an obscure government department. A shopkeeper. Ordinary folk.” He spread his fingers over the silk of her sleeve, appreciating it. She saw the smile in his eyes before it showed up on his lips. “Let me hold you, shopkeeper.”
“I would like that.”
His arm came around her waist. He did not merely hold her. He lifted her to sit sideways upon him, leaning against his chest. It would have been entirely innocent, except that he began immediately to stroke her breast, taking pleasure in it, making a deep sound in his throat. “This silk thing doesn’t just look like a flower. It feels like one. Like stroking a petal, with you inside it.”
It was a comfort beyond description to be held with such care and knowledge. To be caressed by a man who delighted in the textures of her body. To relax into the strength and the old familiarity. Shoulder, ribs, along her thigh, he drew her in to him again and again, closer.
The coach ground and rumbled forward at a walking pace, swaying, and the street was filled with the sound of carts and wagons. She lay her cheek on his jacket and closed her eyes and enjoyed this moment. In all of her life, there had been so few times she could rest from wariness.
“You are not a restful person, Adrian Hawkhurst. I have never understood why I feel at peace with you, sometimes, at moments like these.”
“One of life’s mysteries.” He ran his fingers over her nipple and lanced a shock through her body, downward, deep inside, like a star falling from the sky. Her nipples crinkled up, feeling his hand through silk, through the linen shift she wore beneath the silk.
“That’s nice,” he said, speaking of the shudder she made. He was a man entirely too perceptive.
He kissed her forehead. Little shivers began at the edges of her, everywhere. Her skin, wanting. Her nerves, anticipating.
She said, “This is good. I like you touching me.”
“I could do it for the next decade or two. Have you given any thought to marrying me? It’s probably slipped your mind, what with so much going on, but I did ask.”
“It has not, as you put it, slipped my mind. I have decided to leave things as they are.”
“Good reasons for that, I suppose.” He did not seem dismayed. He kissed across her forehead and down her face to her ear. She heard his breath there. Warmth. Whispers. Chouette. Mignonne. His breath and murmured love words filled her. Mon adorée. Ti amo.
The coach that moved through the streets of London was their universe, a little world where they were alone. There was no reason to refrain from this indulgence. No need to hold back. No cautions to lay upon the surface of her mind. She could give herself wholly to the moment and to him. He held her in his lap, and she felt every impact of the horse’s hooves, every irregularity that jolted the wheels, through him. Through his body.
She put her hand upon his shoulder and turned to him to take his mouth. She kissed him deeply and inventively.
She said, “We are idiots to tease ourselves this way. We should stop.”
“You’re right about that, luv.” He slid his hand between her legs to begin sparks and persuasion there. The road vibrated beneath them steadily, and her desire for him was almost unbearable.
When she moved in his lap, he closed his eyes and groaned.
“We will be at Meeks Street soon,” she said.
His hand upon her, stroking, went still. When he took his touch away, the pulses of pleasure inside her did not stop. They breathed into each other’s faces, deep, almost in unison. Ten breaths. Twenty.
He said, “You feel this, don’t you?”
“Desire? It is fire and madness in me. I want you very much.”
He shook his head impatiently. “I don’t mean that.”
Abruptly, he brought his hands up into her hair. His long, clever, lock-picking fingers held her face as if she were infinitely precious. He kissed, once, just upon the threshold of her mouth. “We got a rare amount of wanting between us. That’s fine. That’s good. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in this world.”
She would have looked away if she had not been held so closely. When a man so hard and secret opens his heart, there is no way to reply except with honesty. “I have never wanted anyone else.”
“But it’s never been just wanting, has it? Not even the first time.” He shook his head impatiently. “It’s the rest of it. You and me, we belong together. We always have.” The carriage jolted over the road, turning a corner. His hold didn’t waver. “Marry me.”
Years lie between us. Years when I made dark and difficult choices. “I am not the woman I was at twenty.”
“I’m not that man. But there’s never been anybody else for either of us. It’s not going to change if we wait a dozen more years.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know you like skin knows an itch. All that time in Italy and Austria, everywhere, working against each other, we could always figure out what the other one was going to do. We might as well have been sitting like this the whole time, we were so close.” The nape of her neck, the bare skin of her shoulders, her back beneath the silk . . . he ran his hand over her. “There is not an inch of you, inside or outside, that I don’t know.”
“There is no reason—”
Fingers crossed her lips, stealing the words. His breath was warm on her face. He whispered, “Dammit. I love you.”
“I am not an easy woman,” she said.
“I’m a bloody difficult man.”
She had no words for what she needed to say. She had thought they were not in her. Then, somehow, they were.
“She said, “It has always been you.”
His fingers sank into her shoulders. “Marry me.”
She said, “Yes.”
It was not enough for him. Dark and intent, he demanded, “Why? Why are we getting married, Owl?”
She said what he needed to hear. She said, “I love you.”
Fifty
HAWKER DIDN’T LOOK UP WHEN FELICITY CAME IN.
He stood in the middle of the study at Meeks Street, holding the knife, waiting for the play to start. This was the knife that had been sent after Owl. The poison was still on it, filmed across the working edge of the blade. Owl’s blood was dried on it too.
Felicity said, “He didn’t come alone. He brought that lick-spittle dog with him. Reams.” She scowled at the teacups sitting on every bare surface in the study. “I suppose you expect me to clean up in here.”
“That would be nice.”
“It’s not like people couldn’t walk over here and put away their own dishes.” She clattered cups together and thumped through to the dining room to tumble them into the dumbwaiter. “Not as if they have something more important to do, like standing around in the middle of the room staring at the wallpaper.”
He
said, “Did you know, there are waiters across London who could remove every cup in the room so silent and swift you’d never see them.”
“How very adroit of them.”
“I didn’t think that would work. You are the most annoying chit. Where did you leave Cummings and his dog? In my office?”
“Front parlor.”
“A wise and moderate choice.” The big desk was clear except for a two-inch pile of papers and a black leather book. He set the knife beside the book, blade facing him, the engraved initials upward. “I need Justine. Find her.”
“I suppose I can.”
“She is not in the Outer Hebrides. Try the library. Get Doyle and Pax too. And Fletcher. He’s downstairs in the workroom. And find Sévie. Tell them it’s time.”
Felicity shrugged, deposited a few more cups into the dumbwaiter, and left, slamming the door behind her.
The desk in the study carried expensive and formidable locks. He’d picked them a dozen times, back in the old days. Now he was the man with the key. Times change.
He took an envelope out of the top drawer and tapped the broken knife tip out onto his palm. A tiny triangle of shiny silver metal, A lesson not to use fine knives for prying into wood boxes. He put the tip on the envelope, centered on the desk. Almost ready.
These papers should go somewhere artistic and obvious. Stage-setting. A show of power. So. Half on the table beside the sofa—yes—stacked up as if somebody’d just finished reading them. A few left on the desk chair. Another pile on the windowsill. He was satisfied when he’d finished. This was a picture of men called away in the middle of a consultation. Felicity had missed a few coffee cups, adding to the fine, heedless air of haste.
And the black book. He was deciding whether to leave it on the desk or put it up on the mantelpiece when Owl walked in.
“You are looking pensive,” she said. “I dislike it when you are introspective. Matters always become enigmatic. Is it time?”
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