A fencing operation. Well. It should be no surprise that the lanyani had carved such a niche for themselves.
Rare tugged a handkerchief from Maeve’s bodice. She wiped the blood from her hands. Monogrammed. On this sort of errand, she brought her damned monogram. Maeve had been a woodcock bumbling into a snare. Thinking back on it, Rare was amazed she’d suffered her so long.
“Eager buyers of EC goods,” she mused. “I’ll remember that.”
Rare swept her skirts away from the puddle of blood. She cast the handkerchief down on Maeve’s frozen face.
As she walked off, Rare heard the aigamuxa hefting the body, and the clink of coin, and all her other gifts making their way back up the hill.
She hailed a hackney cab four streets down, lightening one purse by a quarter clink. Regency Square wasn’t so far off, and she felt a powerful need for a bath and a bed.
It was nearly past noon dinner. And, really, it had already been a very long day.
6.
Anselm Meteron lifted his chin, watching the reflection in the gold-tinted shaving glass carefully. Rare leaned close behind him, the straight razor’s edge just under his Adam’s apple. Her hand scraped upward with expert care. Still, the wry twist in her lips at moments like these gave him pause.
“What?” Rare wondered aloud. She wiped the blade on a cloth beside the basin. Anselm could feel her bare chest pressed between his shoulder blades, the graze of her nipples against his skin. “Don’t trust me, love?”
“I have a mark under my right ear that remembers the first time you did this.”
She kissed his earlobe, then nipped it sharply. Anselm winced. A moment later he felt himself stirring—a surprise, given how little rest he’d had since they’d finished, but then again, Rare could do that. It was her particular gift.
“I was practically a baby then,” she purred. She lifted his chin and tilted his face toward hers. “Seventeen, maybe.”
“Damned if I remember.”
They were in his master bedroom suite at the top of Regency Square. It was not the tallest of the apartment buildings that shared the skyline of Corma with the spires and bell tower of the Old Cathedral and the Custom House, but it was doubtless the most extravagant. A smallduke and two smallduchesses called it home and probably glared up from their lower balconies with some resentment at the shadow cast by Anselm’s penthouse. To have their station surmounted by a scarcely retired criminal—the owner of a gambling house and, if rumor held true, financier of more than a few brothels and gentlemen’s clubs—was galling in the extreme.
Keeping a suite in the Regency was costly, but Anselm could afford it—one look around his apartments and their gold-chased refinements, the deep-piled carpets and burnished cherry floors, confirmed his means. He lived alone, apart from Rare, who came and went with the entitlement of a well-stroked alley cat, lingering a few days or weeks before disappearing on a whim. He never asked where she went, or why, and she never asked who occupied his sheets between her comings and goings.
Anselm’s day had begun late, as ever. He kept the calendar his business demanded, which meant rarely rising before one in the afternoon. At dawn, he had gone to sleep alone, awaking after the dinner hour to find Rare perched above him, shimmying free of her skirts and running a hand under the satin sheets and between his legs. Her hair smelled of soil and sweat, the perfume of some recent sideline.
Anselm had been especially slow to quit his bed that day, and then only to share a long bath and a leisurely accounting of human anatomy. Afterward, Rare had moved the washstand to the foot of the four-poster, Anselm sitting on the bed’s edge. She knelt on the mattress behind him, shaving his cheeks and jaw and trimming sideburns to the narrow strips he preferred. Anselm studied her reflection, reading the lines of her smooth, ivory body, the pillars of her thighs as she leaned around him. He had never tried his hand in an artist’s studio. His sister had been the one with a gift for visualizing and sketching. She could draw up almost anything in staggering detail. Still, the curves of Rare’s body made him wish for the skill to mold her in clay.
“You should let me shave the moustache,” she said suddenly. “It’s going white, just like your temples.”
Anselm sighed and policed the urge to shake his head. The blade grazed just past the corner of his mouth. “Leave it.”
“But why?”
“I like it, and it’s my face.”
A few more strokes. She did leave the moustache. At times, Anselm supposed, the girl would listen.
“Why white?” Rare mused. “Even pale blondes like you usually go gray first, don’t they?”
“I’ve always been precocious. Shouldn’t you be saying it makes me look distinguished?”
“Makes you look old.”
“Bitch.”
Rare laughed and finished with a snapping motion that cut a cleft just under his chin. Anselm hissed and snared her wrist, twisting in place and turning her hand back, hard. She gave a little shriek of pain and delight and hooked a leg around his waist, pulling him over. In a moment, Anselm was on top of her, pinning her hands above her head. The razor lay forgotten on the coverlet.
Rare pressed her hips against him and smiled. “Hello. I feel that. Ready again?”
Anselm kissed her forehead, her nose, her lips, her chin, and dwelled over the thumbprint of her collarbone. “No time,” he sighed into her throat. “Gammon’s been waiting a quarter of an hour.”
Rare’s ice-blue eyes flashed. Her hair was still wet from the bath, looking more golden than usual in its damp, tousled state. “So keep her waiting. Make her remember who’s in charge.”
Anselm rolled away and snapped the towel off the basin. Frowning, he dabbed at his bloodied chin. “No one’s in charge, kitten. That’s the reason the system works.”
He threw the towel over the back of a settee, walked to the armoire, and began the search for something expedient in the way of clothes.
The Regency’s entire penthouse level belonged to Anselm, though he cared little how badly it was wasted on his bachelorhood. Indeed, the master bedchamber could have contained both the guest rooms with space to spare. The bed at center was draped with curtains Anselm never bothered to close, though the north wall was almost entirely windows and balustrade, the rest of the room studded with furniture of white-lacquered wood and golden marble. He stepped into black silk lounging trousers and slid into a dressing gown, pausing at the armoire’s mirrored door to see if he’d need a plaster.
Rare had cut a neat little “V” just under his sharply tapered chin. Scowling, he licked a thumb and dabbed at it. She’d been right, of course. There were a few white hairs in his thin moustache, cousins to ones at his temples. Only a woman who came as close to his face as Rare was likely to notice, and those sorts of women had very few illusions, regarding Anselm with an appetite that had little to do with aesthetics. He rolled his neck along his shoulders, cracked his knuckles—all nine, without an option for his shortened right forefinger but to curl its scarred stump toward his palm. Somehow, though he knew it was impossible, he was sure he felt a crack. He looked down at his hand ruefully. It had been years since the injury, and still he felt an ache right where the fingertip should be, never quite done haunting him.
In the armoire mirror, Anselm saw Rare sprawled on his bed, regarding him languidly. She rolled onto her back and stretched a leg in the air, turning her ankle idly.
Anselm watched her in earnest. The most damnably frustrating part, he thought, is that she knows how perfect she is.
“I don’t understand why you don’t just buy her, Ann,” Rare sighed.
“I already have—with information. It’s the best coin for both of us.”
“She could still sell you out.”
Anselm glanced at an elaborate water clock on the nightstand. Nearly five. A half hour late now.
“Be a good girl,” he said. “Stay here while the grown people talk.”
“Go to hell.”
�
�Later. I want to take you to the club tonight. Make sure you wear something striking.”
City Inspector Haadiyaa Gammon was slender as a riding crop and half again as stiff, her hawkish nose raised against Anselm’s arrival as if it carried in a whiff of brimstone. Among her own kind—the gendarmes and clerks and pages of the constabulary—she was rumored to be quite amiable, but putting the roof of Regency Square overhead snapped her tight as a sail in a gale. She was on her feet as Anselm entered the solar, the jacket with the insignia of her office draped over her arm, its epaulets as heavy as the look she offered her host.
“Haadi.” Anselm smiled innocently. “Leaving so soon?”
Gammon did not consult a chronometer. She seemed to have her own, mysterious internal mechanism, wound to the second.
“Soon,” she sniffed. “It’s five o’ the clock. We were to meet at half past four.”
“The clock in my chamber is badly off.” Anselm stopped by the mahogany sideboard and poured himself a whisky. There was a silver chaser resting beside it with a folded galvano-gram. He opened and scanned it, then tucked it into the pocket of his dressing gown. “You’ll take a drink, I hope?”
“No.”
“It’s quite charming that after all these years, you still refuse even the least hospitality.”
“If hospitality matters so much, do me the courtesy of dressing properly when we meet.”
Anselm tsked, feigning woundedness. “I don’t offer sartorial advice when I come to the constabulary, do I?”
Gammon’s unpainted lips pressed in a hard line. “I’m never in my nightclothes there.”
“You might consider it.”
She turned on her heel, making for the door.
“Haadi, for Reason’s sake, sit down and at least look at a glass of whisky while we talk. It’s only civil.”
Gammon eyed Anselm, stonily silent, and finally returned to her seat. Anselm slipped the galvano-gram into one of his escritoire’s lower drawers before sweeping back to the sitting area, armed with a second drink for his guest. He nudged a smoking box at the inspector. Gammon snapped the box open and lit a cigarette from it with one of her own lucifers.
“I saw in yesterday’s gazette you collared Brietney,” Anselm began. “Brava, Inspector.”
Anselm enjoyed watching Gammon’s guarded expression sift through layers of hostility, color rising along the copper of her throat right up to the steep angle of her short, glossy hair. A trifle masculine, that cut; still, it suited her, apart from that unfortunate nose.
“It went well enough, though your estimates were overgenerous. The transaction was for ten thousand sovereigns of opium, not twelve.”
The difference caught in Anselm’s ear. Ten thousand. He tapped his own cigarette in the ash stand to cover a momentary hesitation. Then he shrugged.
“The information was less complete than I would have liked. Everyone has an off day.”
Gammon snorted. She glanced down at the whisky glass. Anselm smiled crookedly. With a sigh, the chief constable raised it to her lips.
“Tell me what you know about the Reverend Doctor Nora Pierce.”
Anselm studied the ceiling. “Pierce. . . . Oh. Yes. Rather tiresome woman, but supposed to be brilliant in her field. Sharp eye for figures, does business in the harder sciences. I heard she’s going to keynote the Decadal Conference this weekend.”
“Nothing else of interest?”
“Nothing, unless . . . wait.” Anselm tapped his temple in a gesture suggesting he’d nearly forgotten something. “She spent a deal of last fall at the club. For a while, things were going well by her—breaking even, then coming out ahead. I was starting to think she was running numbers, and then the streak broke. She’s in my red book now for fourteen thousand, give or take.”
Gammon’s eyebrows climbed. “And that almost slipped your mind?”
“There are a lot of people in my red book, Haadi.” Anselm sighed. “If I’m remembering right, she was trying to scare up funds for her research. The junior scholars don’t fare well in the scrap for grants. I put a stay on collecting through this winter and drew the debt up as a private note.”
“Very kind of you.”
“At twenty percent interest.”
“I take it back, then.”
Anselm stubbed his cigarette out with a fatalistic flourish. “It seems she might avoid paying out after all.”
Gammon’s dark eyes were expectant.
“Haadi, you’re asking me the sort of questions you always ask before I learn someone is missing or dead. Which is it this time?”
“Missing. The Council Bishopric contacted the constabulary late this morning. Pierce’s research partner got a spark from Lemarcke saying she would miss the keynote. Some kind of travel mishap.”
“Happens often enough. Any reason not to believe it?”
“It’s the Decadal Conference keynote. And her home district’s bishop finds it out of character that she’d have traveled so far afield so close to the conference.”
“Haadi, you must forgive me.” Anselm offered the inspector a sympathetic look. “I think I’ve missed something. Is this a case of a missing person in Corma or somewhere else? It doesn’t seem to me you have jurisdiction.”
Gammon smiled. “You’d have made a good lawman if you weren’t such a moral degenerate.”
“Turpitude is my problem, not degeneracy. A law-abiding life was out of the question from the start.”
Gammon finished her drink and walked toward the balcony windows that gave the solar its name. She watched the skyline chuff smoke against a sinking sun.
“I agreed to look into the matter as a courtesy,” she said at last. “It’s procedural. She hasn’t yet overstayed her amended itinerary. Still, there is a lot of competition for the keynote address, and shared research doesn’t usually earn that showcase. Perhaps Chalmers decided to put her aside to secure an exclusive billing. Such things happen.”
“Hmm. No.” Anselm shook his head. “I’ve heard a little of this Chalmers. There are some old books on my shelves with more spine than he has. And, for the record?”
The city inspector turned. Anselm Meteron leaned forward, nine and a half fingers steepled.
“I’ve been called many things, but never a bad banker. Corpses don’t repay notes. I hope you remember that if the Reverend Doctor Pierce should turn up in ill repair.”
Gammon pursed her lips. “I’ll try.”
“Good.”
The inspector returned to her seat, donning her coat and hat. “I intend to take Chalmers in for questioning, just to be certain. If I find out anything that sheds light on whether your note will be repaid . . .” She let the sentence trail.
“Of course. Assuming nothing comes of that, what’s the rate of exchange for today’s conversation?” A moment passed, utterly silent. Anselm smiled innocently at the furrow in Gammon’s brow. “It’s not that I don’t love our time together for its own sake, you understand.”
“I had thought conveniently ignoring the two thousand sovereigns of opium missing in the Brietney deal would settle matters. I’m surprised, Anselm. I hadn’t thought you the type to expand into the chemical trade.”
Anselm gestured vaguely and rose. “I’m a hobbyist. Always seeking new diversions.”
He offered Gammon his hand.
Most people, Anselm Meteron had learned, found shaking a hand missing its most critical digit rather too disconcerting an experience to repeat. The vacancy in his grip was but one of many things that might make a person uncomfortable shaking Anselm’s hand. He considered it a credit to Inspector Gammon’s resolve that she had never refused the gesture.
Anselm saw Gammon out the suite’s main door. He lingered long after it closed, running a thumb over the stump of his finger in small, irritable sweeps.
“Are the grown-ups done talking now?”
Anselm turned toward Rare’s voice, behind him at the solar door. Her hair was dry and done up in a loose, piled affair, ash b
lond strands falling into her face. She wore one of his white dress shirts, its lower hem barely covering her buttocks.
“When I told you to put on something striking,” Anselm said dryly, “that wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”
Rare sauntered into the solar and swung herself into the chair Anselm had just vacated, draping crossed legs over one arm. “Either Gammon is a worse copper than I took her for, or she’s lying.”
Anselm studied Rare from the doorway, his arms folded. She began fishing in a sweet bowl and, the silence stretching on, glanced up absently.
“You look cross, love.”
“I’ve just realized you’re right. I must be getting old.” Anselm’s right hand ached, this time from clenching it too hard. “Sentimental, at least. I had actually persuaded myself that you came here to roll in my sheets and stroke my ego awhile.” He snorted. “Perhaps I was right about the second part.”
“And the first. Your point?”
“Because of you,” Anselm said in a tight voice circling the edge of real anger, “the city inspector is now under the impression that I’m in the opium trade.”
She smiled. “Brietney going under was a good thing for both of us. After how he tried to screw you last spring, no one from our end of the world will feel sorry for him. Besides, that was a lot of goods to just walk away from.”
“So you did lift the last two thousands’ worth.”
“Oh, come off it, Ann. It’s not as if you haven’t pinched something from one of the cases you’ve informed on before.”
“Before I’ve given my estimate of the take, yes,” he snapped. “When I said twelve and Gammon found ten, she must have thought I’d lost my edge or my wits. Probably both. And now I’m going to eat her looking the other way on your account.”
Rare affected a perfectly beautiful pout. “Do you have a problem sharing your good connections all of a sudden?”
“I have a problem sharing them when they associate me in trades I’m not prepared to work.”
“Well.” She shrugged. “Maybe you aren’t, but I’ve done my homework.” Rare studied the ruby-red candy she’d picked and popped it into her mouth, lips lingering salaciously on her finger. “Go on. Ask. You’re dying to, I can tell.”
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