My Lord and Spymaster

Seventeen

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.

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.”

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.”

Which showed even smart women could be fools. There wasn’t one of these laborers or clerks who hadn’t imagined pulling her skirts up and laying her back on one of these bales of cloth and having her. They were men, not capons. She was so protected by her father and Pitney and her warehouse managers that she didn’t even know.

So wise a Jess. So practical and clever, and so naïve. Fairly soon, he was going to seduce her.

She turned and walked up the stairs. Saffron today. He smelled it on her as she pushed past. That would be smuggled goods from the south of France. It sneaked up on him every time he got close to her, this knowledge he had of her, this intimacy he felt. He knew how she ran her business. How she estimated demurrage on contract goods. How much sugar she took in her tea.

He knew what she looked like with her clothes off. He knew that.

She shook herself, as if some of his hunger had brushed across her. “I need a cup of tea. Come up to my office, and I’ll fix you some of the black we bring in through Kyakhta, into Russia. I might even find a sweet bun for you. Must be my morning for being hospitable to the British Service. And I figger we’re about finished with the mauling-Jess-Whitby part of the day.”

I doubt that extremely. He followed her. “Jess.”

Impatiently, she waited at the landing for him to catch up.

He was level with her now. “You can do it, can’t you? When we have the list of secrets stolen, you can match it to the ships moving in the Channel.”

“Yes.” She didn’t move, but deep in her eyes, a part of her went distant from him, into some abstract place he couldn’t follow. That unique, ingenious mind of hers was plucking away at the problem. “I could do it with thirty dates. I could sort through every tub that floats in the Thames. Twenty dates would work if they’re stupid or have only the one ship.”

“You’ll find Cinq.”

“I have to, don’t I?” She looked haunted. She turned her back on him and started climbing again.

“I’ll help. You’ll trust me to help you.” At the change in his voice, she turned around, right into his arms. Nobody could see them here at the turn in the stairwell. “Think of this as one of my arguments.”

She fitted neatly up against the curve of the staircase. Her mouth tasted of surprise and honey and black tea from the hills of China. She put up no fight after the first quick intake of breath. God, but that felt good—feeling her not fight. She was ignorant and shocked for the first second. Then she was ignorant and willing. The edges of stubbornness softened.

“This isn’t convincing me,” she muttered, when he let her mouth free for a second.

“Then I’m not doing it right.” He stroked up and down her back. “Let’s try again.”

Tension and urgency pulsed in his groin. Demand and hunger. Oh, but he had endless desire for this woman. No point trying to fool himself about that. Evil or virtuous, good or bad, whatever she’d done, he was going to have Jess. She’d figure that out pretty soon.

He’d had years of experience caring for women and loving them. He knew how to control his own need. He put that knowledge to use, tempting Jess.

“I wish you’d stop this.” But she was holding on to him. Deliberately, he used his mouth to seduce. He felt her trying to think. He breathed into her ear and murmured. Nipped at her earlobe. Took her with little bites, suckling and tonguing all over her face. All of it was to distract her, to chain her to this moment and what he was doing to her. She never had a chance.

When she quivered in his hands, when he knew he had her, he brushed her nipples through the fabric of her dress. One rasp. Another. Scratching with his thumbnail. Gently. Gently. Already there was no shock left in her, no defense, just that cry and thrash. And another thrash and another, till her legs were open and she rubbed herself against his thigh.

His beautiful Jess. He’d toss her into the sky and let her soar. He’d give her joy, again and again, with his body. This was her first taste of it.

So he kissed her for a while. It was a fascination, to feel the vibrating begin in her, like an echo of his own feeling. He could almost reach into her and touch the butterfly of heat that fluttered so unwillingly into life and then spread its wings inside her and beat rhythmically.

He wished he could take her the whole way to the end. That would be something—Jess turned into pure sensation and burning under his hand.

But this wasn’t the time or place for it. Not here, in the heart of her own citadel. He wouldn’t take away her pride like that. So he only warmed her a little, to remind her there were other things to life besides worrying and risking her life and trading spices. He stayed at her lips and her breasts and took her no further than kisses would take her. Well, maybe he made a few excursions. He set his mouth on her at the base of her throat and sucked against her skin and made marks, two or three of them, so the men working here would know he’d been there and keep their distance.

Then he stopped and just held her, and let her come down slow. He’d raised only a small heat in her, so it shouldn’t be too hard. “Later. There’s more, later.”

She rubbed her lips on his jacket, trying to hold on to what he’d been making her feel. Then she breathed out and put her head down and let it all go. Some of that tension she carried around went, too.

She was going to remember this when she was in her office with her paperwork, when she sat across from him at dinner, when she lay in bed. She wouldn’t be able to keep herself from thinking about it.

He propped her against the handrail. If he’d let go, she would have tumbled down the damn stairs.

“That was a mistake.” She lifted her head, looking stunned. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t just do that with you. Mistake. Mistake. Mistake.”

She combed through her hair with her fingers, bringing a lot of it down around her face. It was late to worry about what her men thought, if they saw her now.

It was too complicated to find the words, so he just reached out and stilled her hands. “Let me. And no, that wasn’t a mistake. That was damned deliberate.” He guided strands of hair over her ears and tucked them in at the nape of her neck.

He traded artwork halfway round the world—statues from Greece, Byzantine Madonnas, old carved figures from the deserts of Egypt. Not just for profit. It was for the joy of it. For the length of a voyage, he could hold beauty in his hand and marvel. Touching Jess was laying claim to that kind of beauty, but warm and alive. She took his breath away.

“I liked that,” he told her. “So did you.”

“Get out of my warehouse.” But she didn’t have her breath back yet, and she didn’t stop him when he coiled up loose hair and curled it away among the braids.

“We’ll continue this another time.”

“Not this side of hell.”

“Be home in time to change for this Historical Society meeting tonight, or I’ll come get you. Are you steady enough to walk the rest of the way? Those clerks of yours are going to start wondering.”

“Those clerks of mine have it figured out by now. They’re not fools.”

Grimly, she climbed ahead of him and swung around the iron ball that topped the staircase and stalked down the hall, snarling. A messenger boy took one look and hastily backed into the nearest doorway.

He watched her all the way into her office. When she strode down the center aisle of the clerks’ desks, every man was in place, quill raised, eyes on the paper in front of him, industrious.