My Lord and Spymaster

Sixteen

IT WAS MIDNIGHT WHEN SEBASTIAN PAID OFF THE hackney. The house looked quiet under the rain, with one light in the lantern at the front door and another in Eunice’s room, upstairs. It was pouring down, cold and harsh, but he made the round of the house, unlocking the gate to the garden and checking everywhere, just to be sure. Nobody was lurking in the areaway or the stairwell. Nobody in the wet bushes in back.

There was no trace or track of Doyle’s men out in the dark. He didn’t expect to see them.

At the side of the house he shaded rain off his face with his hand and looked up. Jess’s bedroom window was dimly lit. Eunice had found a night candle for her. Good. He hoped Jess was sleeping, not lying awake, worrying.

Nobody could get to her tonight. He climbed the steps to the house that had once been his damn-hell father’s and was now his and let himself in with his key.

The foyer was piled with merchandise of some sort. He threw his sopping greatcoat over the bannister. Eunice, carrying a candle, walked around stacks of boxes toward him.

“There you are, dear.” She steadied herself with a hand on his shoulder and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Such a night. I wondered whether you’d come home or sleep on the Flighty. I told them to leave lights in the hall, just in case. Jess is tucked up safely.”

“Thank you.” He didn’t have to say what he was thanking her for. For taking care of Jess. For telling him Jess was safe. For knowing that it mattered. It was good to be home.

“I sent for her pet, by the way, and we’ve installed him in her bedroom. That should steady her. She’s promised to keep it upstairs, so it won’t bite Quentin again.”

Now he was giving hospitality to the vermin. He’d known it was going to happen sooner or later. “Good idea.”

He dropped his hat on the side table, next to Quent’s big dispatch case. It was half-open, with fifty papers ready to slide out and get lost. Tomorrow, Quent would swear he’d locked it tight as the Bank of England. He had a mind like a sieve. God only knew what damage he did at the Board of Trade.

“That young man who works for Adrian brought her home. Trevor Chapman. I asked him to stay for dinner, and he stared at her over the lamb cutlets as if she were the Holy Grail. Very bracing for her, I should think, to have an ally there. I gave her a whiskey after supper instead of tea, so perhaps she’ll sleep. What does Adrian intend for her father?” After a pause, she said, “I’ll ask him, if you can’t say.”

“We don’t know yet. We just don’t know.” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked around. He was used to wood crates arriving, but these had an ominous shape to them. “Why is the front hall full of coffins?”

“Armor.”

He must have looked blank. She said, “Full body armor. Medieval.”

“I don’t object, but why is someone sending us armor?”

“Historical Society meeting.”

He’d forgotten. Another damn thing to worry about. “The last Friday of the month.”

“Which is tomorrow. Teddy Coyning-Marsh is giving the lecture. He’s very solid on German mercenaries, I believe, but he does tend to ramble. The men are coming tomorrow morning early to assemble the upright figures. We will arrange vambraces and gorgets and couters upon tables in the drawing room. Far too many people are coming, of course, and they’ll chatter through the lecture. I wish some nameless fribble hadn’t decided the Historical Society was fashionable.”

“If you’d stop feeding them, they wouldn’t come.”

“It’s not as if the food was reliable. They come to see what the next culinary disaster will be. I’ve bullied Jess into coming on the grounds that a minor annoyance will distract her from more important ones. You needn’t attend if you don’t want to, but I’d feel better if you were taking care of her.”

His house would be packed with rich dilettantes and socially ambitious matrons. They’d eat Jess alive. Or she’d eat them alive. Either way, likely to be an interesting evening. “I’ll be there.”

“Good. Standish is going to display the Agamemnon krater in the front parlor. For the armament on it. And Windham will be here. He has promised faithfully not to discuss the Reform Bill. You look tired, Bastian. When did you last sleep?”

He’d spent last night rummaging through Jess’s office and today going through copies of her papers. “I’m headed up to do that now.”

“A few weeks ago you told me you’d found the man responsible for sinking the Neptune Dancer. You said you knew the name of the traitor. You meant Jess’s father, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I spoke with him several times, three years ago. Standish was shipping pots to that German collector. Your Whitby impressed me. An astute man. Straightforward, unpretentious, very hard underneath. Honest, I think. I find it difficult to see him as a traitor.”

Here was one more person, telling him Whitby was innocent. Just about a clean sweep. “There’s evidence.”

“So I should imagine. Sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.” Eunice pushed him in the direction of the stairs.

He didn’t take a candle with him. Upstairs was black as a coal pit, but he navigated darker decks every night at sea.

Jess was in the attic. Not far away at all. She’d be under the covers, wearing one of those soft, pretty nightdresses she favored. If he knocked on her door, she might invite him in. They hadn’t finished talking.

But neither of them was interested in just talking. “The hell with that.” He undressed in the dark and lay down in bed. He could feel Jess in his house, as if she were a sound just out of the range of hearing. As if she were a spinning top somewhere, humming.

JESS heard the night watchman calling two o’clock and woke herself up. She was in bed, in the chill of a rainy night, in the middle of the sleeping city, in her room in the attic. A tiny lamp burned dim and yellow in one corner. The curtains were pulled to shut the Dark out. It was raining steady now, a muffled tapping on the roof just a foot or two away. Made her think of being shipboard. She’d spent a lot of nights at sea, listening to rain on the deck above.

Kedger slept in a ball at the bottom of the bed, picking the one spot where he’d get kicked every time she turned over. He had a wide streak of perversity, that ferret.

Time to be up and doing. It took half a minute to pull her working kit from under the bed, Kedger nosing and sniffing at it the whole time. She didn’t want to get caught roaming the halls with these useful toys, so she folded them into a shawl and put it in place, secure and unobtrusive, around her shoulders.

Carrying a candle, she went down the stairs, stealthy as thin soup, with Kedger loping along behind her.

Dark closed in behind her as she passed. Dark waited everywhere outside the circle of light. She knew about Dark. Dark is huge. At night it slithers out of the cellars and rears up, solid and powerful, big as half the world. It stretches out on every side, all the way to dawn. Dark was hungry for her. She could feel it staring at her back, every step she took. If she stopped and held her breath, she’d hear the rustle of it in the corners.

Pitiful, when a woman her age was scared of the dark.

She was on the second-floor hall now, where the family slept. She set her feet down softly. She knew—somehow she was absolutely certain of it—that Sebastian was a light sleeper. She had to be, as she used to tell her old thieving cronies, quieter than an army of mice.

Down the hall. This was Claudia’s room. It smelled faintly of violet pastilles. Quentin’s room. That was soap and leather polish. Then she was outside the Captain’s bedroom, just across the hall from his study. Kedger sniffed along the bottom of the study door and passed it as empty. She jiggled the skeleton key in the lock. The tumblers turned over, silent as water, and she slipped through the door and closed it behind her.

She lifted the candle, shielding it with her hand. Captain Kennett’s study. Hers for the taking.

His office was like him, practical and shipshape and—if she was going to be honest—intimidating. His desk sat foursquare in the center and commanded the place. Rolled maps were in the rack in the corner, ledgers in a bookcase at the wall. Newspapers were piled up and tied with string. She did that, too. She saved newspapers and journals and took them on board. Mornings, when the sky was clear and there was nothing but blue water to the horizon, she’d haul a chair on deck and put her feet up on a coil of rope and drink coffee from a mug and catch up on stale old news.

Kedger wandered off to investigate the desk, looking for quill pens. She padded over to take her own intelligent interest in the Captain’s affairs.

There’d be evidence here, if Kennett was Cinq. Not a letter signed with a pair of dice, but names and places and numbers that didn’t add up. There’d be a whiff of corruption in the accounting. She was hoping not to find anything.

A big folder sat in the middle of his desk. When she untied the ribbon and opened it up, she found a nice collection of lithographs and watercolors, and some maps. Maps so old they crumbled at the edges. She couldn’t judge art, not the way Papa did, but these looked very fine. They’d have been a temptation to her, some years back, when she was still thieving. She retied the ribbon, getting the bow exactly right. “More like it was than it was to start with,” Lazarus used to say.

Then she sat herself down comfy in Sebastian’s chair to do some invading of his privacy. Sebastian’s desk smelled like the ocean. He carried the sea home with him in his pockets, rolled it up in his maps, buckled it into the leather telescope case. Salt water smell.

She lit candles on his desk—there were five of them in the lamp under the green shade—and blew hers out. It was quiet in the West End this time of night. Under the wind, the house creaked like a ship. If she listened hard, she’d hear the Captain breathing. He wasn’t that far away.

He struck her as a man who’d sleep naked. He’d be stretched out long and lean in the sheets, relaxed, rocking a little with his breath, like a ship at dock. If the Captain had been a ship, he’d be one of those Revenue cutters. He’d be all prow and proud lines and boards lapped down tight. Deft and shipshape. Implacable, the way Revenue cutters were. Skillful in motion. Wise with the sea. Powerful.

He was strong and fierce and sleek-bodied. She wasn’t thinking about coastal vessels anymore. She was imagining his body above her. Herself, rocking under him, being the sea that held his ship. Opening to him. Rising up to meet him.

And that was a waste of time and a frustration and just a blatant invitation to madness, thinking like this.

The first three drawers in his desk slid out easy as butter. Citadels of dullness. When honest folk had something to hide, they locked it up. Saved a thief endless trouble.

If she just went and got into the Captain’s bed and didn’t make any more fuss about it, she’d stop lying awake at night. She’d stop jerking out of sleep, sweating and gasping, her body twisted around her pillow. She’d stop dreaming about him. She’d sleep like a rock in the Captain’s bed, after they were through with each other. There was nothing like the sleep after lovemaking. That was sleep of some profundity.

Morals that would make an alleycat blush, that’s what she had.

What she wanted was in the bottom drawer. Well, well, well . . . Eureka, as one of her governesses was fond of saying when she found her knitting bag. We have found something worth locking up. She pulled out the metal box.

The little felt packet was wrapped up in her shawl. It unrolled to reveal the whole sweet set of lockpicks, each resting in its pocket. Her charms, she’d called them in the old days, when she used them fairly often. They were accustomed and friendly as her own fingers.

She crossed her legs and cradled the strongbox into her lap. Not heavy. That was good. That meant she wasn’t about to waste her time breaking in on jewelry or coin. And look what a delightful lock was adorning this pretty box. Louis Girard made these in Lyon, every one sneaky and excellent. Had to be something interesting hiding behind all that intricacy.

What are you hiding, Captain? What do you care about this much?

She closed her eyes to pick, the way she always did. Lord, but it was satisfying to be busy with something she loved. Back when she used to go a-stealing, the men she worked with told her she whistled under her breath when she picked a lock. She never noticed it herself, but it used to make them nervous as hell. They were always breaking her concentration to tell her to shut up.

She never got annoyed at locks the way some people did. It was such a joy when your fingers finally saw how the tumblers fitted together, and the whole sweet mechanism lay in your hands, ready to swing open.

Maybe this was how Sebastian felt when he was trying to seduce her . . . like he was opening a complicated lock. Except he was more like that Greek cove who just cut the whole business in half with a sword. Her governess had been right. There was more to those Greek stories than you’d think.

The clock marked the half hour. Kedger balanced up on his back feet and stood up and watched her. The lock made tiny, contented, burring sounds, like a pigeon, as she eased the picks around.

She’d learned lockpicking from Lazarus. He’d stolen dozens of locks for her to practice on. He didn’t let her pick pockets, not from the day he bought her. It made sense, of course. It had to be more profitable robbing a strongbox than a pocket, and it was no more dangerous, since you got hanged either way.

Nothing in London was safe when she’d been Hand. Damn, but she’d been good.

The lock clicked open. She let her breath out, long, slow, and contented. The box was hers. Captain Sebastian Kennett could just stir that in his tea. That would teach him to put his trust in expensive ironmongery.

She chucked the banknotes out. Lots of them. The Captain liked to be prepared, didn’t he? Funny to think of banknotes as something to clear out of the way. Time was she’d have fetched that home to Lazarus and counted this an evening well spent.

What the Captain had here was letters. Lovely, lovely, letters. She lifted out the stack and flipped it, starting from the bottom.

Letters from other shippers and traders. Letters from his agents in Greece and Alexandria. He gathered up news, just like Whitby’s did. Politics, cargoes in and out, shaky banks, and suspect merchants. And some letters of credit Kennett had issued. He wasn’t earning as much return as he should be. He needed a business manager, really, to tighten up how he handled liquidity. Kennett Shipping was large enough to afford one.

In the middle of the stack she came to a thin blue notebook, the sort of thing a schoolboy might write his Latin exercises in. But this was Arabic. And in Kennett’s blue black ink. A diary maybe? Had to be something important if he kept it in Arabic and locked up.

He probably thought he was safe, keeping his secrets in Arabic. Thought he was being clever. Hah.

She might not read Arabic, but she could copy it. She pulled writing paper from the top drawer and unstoppered the ink, let the book fall open where it wanted to, and started.

Kedger came over to sit in her lap, helping by nudging her hand every so often.

She’d filled six pages with loops and squiggles and dots when the clock chimed the hour. Time was just scampering along, wasn’t it? That was writing from two places. That should be enough to find out what it was.

Time to hurry. Never overstay your welcome. That was another thing Lazarus had taught her.

More letters. More gossip. Kennett really did run his business well. Statues from Greece. Good profit in that if you knew what you were about, which the Captain seemed to. Here was his agent in Marseilles, talking about troop movements with a candor that’d get him shot by the French. Kennett pulled that kind of loyalty out of his people. Some likely trading ventures into the Balkans. Fascinating, but nothing she should be looking at.

Then a letter in Italian . . . “The sale of plans and maps was completed with only trivial difficulty.”

Plans. She skipped to look at the signature. Giovanni Reggio. She knew the man. A short, untidy, dark rogue who smelled of garlic—that described half of Minorca—but this one was shrewd and treacherous and a direct pipeline into France. Her father used him, too.

Your merchandise arrived safely in Paris. You may expect payment from LeClerque to your American brokers within the week. I have been the soul of discretion, of course, as always, and the principals in Paris are entirely satisfied. My correspondent is most anxious for the next shipment from London. After my oh-so-tiny commission . . .

Maps and plans. She changed francs to pounds in her head. The sale had been for 800 pounds. A small fortune.

The letter sank down to her lap, feeling too heavy to hold up. She sat for a long time, staring at it.

This was how you felt when the ship crunched up on rocks in the night. Shock and helplessness and nothing ahead but cold, dark water closing over you. Lots of struggle you were going to lose at.

She’d worked so hard, looking for this proof. But it had been almost a game, these last few days, searching his house. She’d been so sure she wouldn’t find anything.

“It’s not proof. It’s just paper.” Kedger nudged under her hand and she reached to hold him. “It’s just paper.”

She’d thought she understood the Captain. He was stern outside. He walked around looking at the world like he was about to board it with a cutlass between his teeth. But she’d felt warmth glowing out of the center of him, like a sun. Cinq would be cold and selfish as winter. Not like the Captain. Could she be so wrong?

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.