“I’m being followed.” She started in the middle of the conversation, without the preliminary social niceties. She’d been thinking about him so much in the last dozen hours it was almost as if they hadn’t been apart. “I point this out because you’ll notice and worry and possibly injure someone if I don’t.”
“Even now, I don’t kill people without a good reason.” He was gravely polite or deeply satiric. One could take a choice.
“Observe the boy over there, pretending to be fascinated by that carriage horse. Brown hair and blue smock. Do you see him?”
“I see he’s keeping an eye on you. Not making a secret of it, is he?”
“He is one of Nature’s open and honest souls. Did you hurt yourself badly last night, being chivalrous and letting me escape?”
“As you see.” He lifted the arm that rested behind her back and turned it, demonstrating a lack of pain. She would have believed this from another man, perhaps.
“You should let me do any further stabbing of your person. I’ll be more careful than you are.”
“I’ll bear that in mind. Your boy’s been joined by another. There, coming up on the other side.” A minute nudge to her arm. “See?”
“There are three of them, taking turns.” They were her best assurance of safety this morning. Those who had business with Lazarus were sacrosanct till he finished with them. The King of Thieves didn’t tolerate men interfering in his criminal livelihood. Lesser thieves and killers would keep their hands from any prey Lazarus had marked as his own. “They send children, who are thus assumed to be harmless.”
“You weren’t a harmless child.”
“Nor were you,” she said softly.
“There’s the third. I almost didn’t spot her.”
“They are not without a certain naïve competence. Right now, they want me to see them.”
Pax’s hand closed firmly on her shoulder. His voice, by contrast, was entirely calm. “You’ve aroused the interest of someone powerful. You’re not frightened, so you know who it is.”
She shrugged. How much to tell him?
“There are only a few men and a few reasons you’d let attention fall on you. I don’t like any of the guesses I’m making.” He released his hold. “Let’s walk. I’m not comfortable sitting here. I don’t like all this empty space at my back.”
“No one’s going to attack us in broad daylight.”
“Once upon a time, on a day very much like this, I killed a man twenty feet away from Braddy Square at three in the afternoon.” He stood and turned and offered a hand.
“I imagine he deserved it.”
“One of the Tuteurs. Jean-Emile Cambert.”
“Ah. Many of us would have enjoyed ending that life.” She let him pull her to her feet and he drew her arm through his. The wool of his sleeve was rough under her fingertips. He smelled like pepper and snuff and, in some way, himself.
That had been the smell of him last night. That was what she’d tasted on his skin and breathed in his mouth when he’d kissed her and she had kissed him back. The scent that snuck past her defenses and struck wanting into her flesh.
In the daylight, on this open path, in the midst of children rolling hoops and pigeons chasing bugs through the grass, madly and stupidly and immodestly, with great exactness and specificity, she wanted him. Her body was not wise.
“I don’t think the Service is setting street kids on you,” he said. “Doyle might, I suppose. You remember Doyle.”
The air had become transparent as glass after last night’s rain. Shade lay on the path, patched with irregular sunlight. The fabric of his coat, where she held his arm lightly, showed hard use. There were fine pulls of thread and tiny worn spots. Under this disguise, Pax seemed likewise worn. Seen close, by someone who knew him, he didn’t look vague and amiable. He looked like a panther on a long hunt. Weary and wary.
She wanted to stop, right in the path, and kiss the corners of his mouth and the line between his eyes. She’d have to stand on tiptoe to reach his forehead or he’d have to lean down to her. Then she’d kiss the lobes of his ears.
Apparently she was going to lead a lively and interesting life in her imagination.
She said, “I’m not likely to forget William Doyle. He came from London with questions and scared me to death. Twice, in fact. The first time when I was shaking with fever and they’d barely washed the seaweed out of my hair. He was suspicious of me because I was such an unexpected addition to the Leyland household. But I looked woebegone and afflicted and very young and I fooled him handily.”
“It’s what we were trained for.”
She watched her shoes and the gravel path. “I was lucky to get away with it. After that, for all those years, when the Leylands visited London I avoided Meeks Street like the plague. If I hadn’t I would have run into you sometime or other, which would have been awkward for both of us.”
Pax said nothing, which was tactful of him.
They strolled toward Gunter’s, matching steps. She let herself enjoy the little pleasures she could distill from this brief time. Small dogs ran in circles and barked. Grass grew docilely between the pathways. Sun warmed her face. Ardency and heat glowed between her legs. It was also simple enjoyment to keep pace with deadly, masculine grace that stalked beside her, pretending to be a scholar. It was his joke on the world. Her joke that she could see through it.
Desiring him awakened every sense, made the sun brighter and the grass a deeper green. She could feel his attention on her, in that same way, with that same awareness. If they’d been friends, they could have spoken of it and laughed together.
Coaches lined up along the pavement across from Gunter’s Tea Shop in the shade of the big plane trees of Berkeley Square. Waiters hurried in and out, carrying trays to barouches and landaus so My Lady This and Her Grace of That need not deign to enter the shop and mingle with the populace. The Fluffy Aunts always made tart comments about that, trading aphorisms in Greek and Latin, over their macaroons and tea cakes. They were such radicals.
Pax kept a light, alert touch on her as they passed between two of those coaches and into Berkeley Square. The urchins who worked for Lazarus crossed, too, pretending to play games around the horses, getting chased off by the coach drivers.
At the front window of Gunter’s, they stopped. She said, “I’m not here because of any threats you made.”
“I know. You’re here because I kissed you. We’ll both have to deal with it. You couldn’t walk away from that. I can’t walk away either.”
“It made everything complicated.” She had seldom employed the art of understatement to such good effect. “I’m here for practical reasons, too.” She watched Berkeley Square and Pax and the three children who followed her and belonged to the King of Thieves. Probably there were others taking an interest. As she’d said, it was complicated. “I need help. You were right about that.”
“We have lots to talk about, in short. Gunter’s is a good place for it.”
“It is the quintessence of all that is frivolous and innocent. We must face grim realities, so naturally we go to Gunter’s to do it.”
She’d lured Pax into a grin. He said, “The day I got to London, the day I walked into Meeks Street, Doyle took me to Gunter’s and bought me chocolate ice cream. I sat there the whole time, worried I’d make a mistake and give myself away. Couldn’t even enjoy it.”
“My aunts—” The stab of pain was getting familiar. She could almost ignore it. “I mean, the Leyland sisters—took me to Gunter’s when they brought me to London the first time. The Tuteurs had tipped me into the cold ocean to introduce me to England and I acquired pneumonia. I wasn’t recovering fast enough so the aunts wanted a London doctor to listen to me cough. The ice cream was a treat afterward.” Irony. Irony. Life was full of small, ridiculous coincidences. “It was chocolate.”
“The indulgence of choice for young spies. Or old ones, like us. Come. I will ply you with sweetmeats and we will discuss serious matte
rs.”
She might come to like Pax, as well as Devoir.
“The first of which . . .” He pushed the door of Gunter’s open and stood aside to let her walk in before him. “Is Mr. Smith.”
Twenty-four
Three things a man must have to live well—good bread, good wine, good friends.
A BALDONI SAYING
The flowered ice cream cups stood empty at the side of the table, the spoons sitting in them like upright flags. Pistachio ice for him. Bergamot water ice for her. Gunter’s was open and airy, the windows full of light. Waiters in white aprons lingered at the tables to flatter old women and be indulgent to the children who kicked the chair legs and whined and were arrogant with their nursemaids.
Cami watched steam gather on the surface of her teacup and wondered what to do. It was an unusual sensation, this being uncertain. She didn’t care for it.
Pax had left his tea untouched. His hair fell across his temple to his cheek, straight and emphatic. She wanted to lift that pale line and stroke it back, behind his ear. It was very distracting.
“You aren’t drinking,” she said. The tea was excellent. Everything at Gunter’s was excellent.
“I don’t want to leave you to go piss. You might decide to not be here when I get back.”
“How well you know me.” Since she wasn’t going to arise and flee, she drank some tea. “Are you quite certain this is the Merchant? There was universal rejoicing when he died. There was no doubt.”
“Now there’s no doubt he’s alive,” Pax said. “I saw him.”
“He didn’t show himself to Cachés. None of us knew what he looked like.”
“I do.”
Such coldness when he said that. It was as if shadows flew in thin ripples between her and the sunlight. She was left with no doubt Pax knew the Merchant very well indeed.
At a table nearby, under the benevolent eye of a governess, two beautifully dressed little girls giggled together, licking ice cream from their spoons, innocent and greedy as young goats. Beyond them, a boy of thirteen or fourteen sat alone, reading Latin, giving his ice cream and the book equal attention. That could have been Pax, when she first knew him, if the scholarly boy had been white haired and starved thin and knew fifty different ways to kill somebody.
Revolution and war seemed a long way away.
Pax watched her without seeming to do so. “I don’t know why the Merchant is in England, but he’s going to kill people. Will you tell me when and where you’re meeting him?”
She sighed. “When I was walking from Brodemere to London, I made extensive plans to deal with a blackmailer and I felt very clever.”
“That sounds like you.”
“I had intended to hire four men with guns and conduct a simple ambush. It would seem I underestimated Mr. Smith’s ruthlessness and his resources by several orders of magnitude. I am now very afraid.”
She stirred her tea. They fell silent while a waiter came to remove the empty ice cream cups.
Pax watched the street outside, the waiters, the long counter where men and women entered the shop to buy pastries and carry them away. He’d be able to sketch any of those people if someone asked him to.
The British had acquired a good spy when they’d been infiltrated by Pax, though it was possible they didn’t see it that way.
“Whatever he has of yours,” Pax said. “Whatever you want from him, it’s not worth your life. Walk away.”
Which was good advice and, like most good advice, difficult to follow.
She blew out a long breath and watched it ripple on the surface of her tea. “I wish it were that easy. I wish I could stand up and walk out of here straight to the docks and take the first ship leaving England. I’d go somewhere very far from here.”
“And never look back.”
She’d been talking to her teacup, because she wasn’t going to see anything useful on his face anyway. Now she turned to the harsh, ascetic profile. “Remember the night we planned to run away to a tropical island? We were all going to break out of the Coach House and steal a ship on the Seine and sail away.”
“We were going to become pirates.”
She remembered a long, cold night in January with everyone huddled together, sharing blankets, whispering back and forth in the dark. “That was one of the days they decided not to feed us. They’d whipped . . . it was Guerrier. We had him in the middle of us, still shaking.”
“He’d made some mistake in his English.”
“The Tuteurs were in a bad mood. I told Guerrier about the island we’d find, far away from everywhere. It’d be warm and we’d dine upon pineapples and oranges every night and keep a monkey for a pet. I’d just read Robinson Crusoe.”
“I would have eaten the monkey if I’d got my hands on one.” Pax’s bony wrists rested on the edge of the table. His hands were half-curled, as if he held something carefully. There were ink stains in three or four places. It plucked at her breath, seeing something so familiar. Devoir, with ink staining his hands. Pax with the same ink marking him.
She said, “They bite, you know. Monkeys do. At least, the squire’s aunt had one with a bite like a bulldog.”
“Then I won’t buy one.”
“Just as well. I can’t picture you with a monkey.” She smiled at the thought. “There are no more desert islands in my dreams. If I walked away from here right now, I’d go to New Orleans or Baltimore, or Kingston and set up a shop to make hats for dowdy colonial matrons. Or maybe I’d become a jewel thief. I’m temperamentally suited to be a jewel thief.”
“Now, there’s a practical plan.”
“If I were practical, I’d—” I’d let Camille Besançon die. The Fluffy Aunts would never know. She buried the thought. She unthought it. It had never been in her mind. “I’d be in Barbados, selling hats. I wouldn’t be here, feasting on ices, getting more and more afraid.”
“You should be afraid. You stand between the Merchant and something he wants.”
“And he is deadly.”
“Perhaps the most ruthless man you will ever meet. Mad in a way. When you face him, you won’t see death coming. Most men give some sign before they kill. He doesn’t.” Pax’s fist twitched on the table next to his cup. “Don’t make me step across your dead body on the way to killing him.”
Across the room, a small crisis took place with raspberry syrup and a pink dress. Napkins all in a flurry. Three waiters and the promise of sugar cookies.
Innocent people leading harmless lives. Lucky children who knew nothing about the world that existed beyond their safe garden walls.
The Merchant killed innocents like these.
Pax followed her glance. “You won’t leave the Merchant loose in London. When and where are you meeting him?”
“You complicate my life.”
“Good. You complicate mine. Infinitely.” His smile flickered by so fast she might have missed it. “You can’t do this alone. I can help you. I understand how he thinks. When and where, Cami?”
She tilted her teacup and looked at the pattern. Bone china. The light showed through. It was fragile, delicate, beautiful. Easily broken. The Leylands’ niece could be just as easily destroyed by men who hunted the Merchant at all cost.
She set it down. “My family—my birth family, not the Leylands—have a saying, ‘In the history of every disaster, there is a moment when someone says, “I trust you.”’ We’ve arrived at that moment.” She spread a hand palm up, fingers wide, to show the ineffable perversity of life. “I think I’m about to trust you.”
“You already do.” Pax’s eyes found hers and didn’t waver. “You didn’t come to me because I made threats.”
“I disregarded them.”
He reached to her hand where it rested on the table and ran his index finger over her knuckles. “You came to me because of this. You feel it between us.”
She twitched away from that little scrap of contact.
“And because I kissed you,” he said.
&nbs
p; “Lots of men have kissed me.”
“Lucky men.” He kept the touch between them. One tiny hot island of heat there on the back of her hand. “I want to kiss you here, across your knuckles. I want to bite a little here, here, here.” He applied his nail, lightly, up and down the cusps and valleys of her knuckles. “I’ve never done that to anyone. I want to do it to you.”
Heat exploded inside her. Shocking. Unexpected. Breath devouring. She was half-blind with it.
“That’s why you came to meet me,” he said. “Not because it was sensible or because I made threats. Not so we could concoct a plan to deal with that murdering bastard. You’re here because when I kissed you, you kissed back and everything changed. We didn’t expect any of that.”
“I didn’t anyway,” she said.
“A shock to both of us.” He turned her hand over and touched the center of her palm, holding all her thought, all her intention and awareness, right there, in that spot.
She closed her hand around the sensitivity, around the little fireball of excitement. Her voice was rock steady. “I don’t have time to want you.”
“It won’t take more time than we have. We’ll plot the death and downfall of the Merchant during the day. Give me the nights.”
She looked away when she made her decision. “As long as you understand I’m not doing this because you seduced me into it.”
“I didn’t let you go from the bookshop because you seduced me.”
“I didn’t—” She hissed impatiently and batted at the words. “Forget it. We’re both making mistakes. Points about even.”
And she told him about Camille Besançon.
“Cami.” He interrupted after only a dozen words. “There’s no chance that little girl survived.”
“I saw her. I think she’s genuine. And genuine or not, she’s going to die if I don’t get her away from the Merchant. The Besançons died so I could be placed with the Leylands. I won’t have another death on my conscience.”
Rogue Spy Page 16