My Lord and Spymaster

Twenty-three

IT ENDED WITH BADGER FLOPPING ON THE FLOOR and the Captain adjusting his neckcloth, calm as a cucumber. Everybody enjoyed the show. Just another of Lazarus’s bloody spectacles. Never a dull moment in the padding ken. That was something else she’d managed to forget in the last couple years.

When Lazarus jerked his head toward the back room and invited the Captain to talk, Jess was glad enough to follow and get away from all the eyes watching her. She’d known Lazarus would keep her safe. Known it all along. He’d taken his bloody time getting around to it, hadn’t he?

The back room where Lazarus conducted his private business had been a fancy parlor once. The wallpaper was peeling and most of the plaster had cracked off the ceiling. The place reeked of piss and onions. She wouldn’t have noticed that ten years ago. The table held an oil lamp, unlit, and a wine bottle and glasses. Ropes with climbing hooks were hanked up neat and stored in the corner. The tools of her old trade. One chair held an open book and a stack of newspapers. Lazarus read everything he could get his hands on. A crowbar leaned against the hearth. They’d use that for milling kens when they weren’t poking the fire with it.

“My pied-à-terre, Captain. Make yourself at home. Jess . . . you two . . . in here.” As he walked, Lazarus pulled his jacket off and let it drop. The current toy, that girl he was tormenting, bent and picked it up and folded it over a chair-back. She went to curl up in a chair near the curtained window, looking pregnant as hell. Generally Lazarus sent them home when they got pregnant.

She couldn’t help that poor woman. Nobody could. Not till Lazarus got bored with her.

Black John took up a place at the wall where he’d have a good line of fire. The Hand slid in and crouched down in the corner, being alert and inconspicuous. And her, she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to act with Lazarus when she wasn’t Hand. So she stood there feeling sick and shaky, getting cold where her clothes stuck to her skin.

Lazarus stretched and yawned and took the chair beside the fireplace, kicking his boots up onto the empty grate. She’d got reasonably good at guessing what Lazarus was thinking, back when she was Hand. Just now, he was cold, bite-yer-arse-off angry. She wouldn’t have crossed him for any money.

She finally made herself meet his eyes. He said, “Welcome home, Jess.”

That was him telling her she was staying. He must have been planning to take her back ever since she walked into the padding ken. Always had to do things complicated, Lazarus did.

“Yes, Sir.” She rubbed her face and tried to think of some way out of this. Her brain had gone numb as a potato.

“Don’t get comfortable, Jess. You’re not staying.” The Captain prowled the room, working off the fighting edge he hadn’t been able to use on Badger. This was another man she didn’t want to cross right now.

There was no one like Sebastian. No one. Lazarus could beat him to a pulp, or slit his gullet and have him dumped in the afternoon tide. Kennett acted like he was on the deck of his own ship with fifty men at his back. All those years with Lazarus, and she’d never seen anyone stroll in so insolent. You’d think he wanted to get killed.

“Is that what you think?” Lazarus said.

Kennett helped himself to the other chair and sat, confronting Lazarus. There was nothing conciliatory anywhere in either of them. He said, “We have things to say. Clear these ears out of here.”

“My people don’t have ears unless I tell them to.” Lazarus was pretending to be genial. A king cobra, being genial. “Sorry to spoil your fun with Badger, but I can’t let you kill my pimps for being stupid. We’d be knee-deep in carcasses.”

“You let him raise a knife to Jess.”

“She could outrun that clod when she was six.” Lazarus gave a lazy, malicious smile. “Generally. I showed the Brothers she hasn’t gone soft. They’ll accept her now. Fluffy, I have a guest.” He snapped his fingers impatiently. “Wine. For God’s sake, girl, anybody’d think you were raised in a barn.”

The toy scrambled to her feet and went for bottle and glasses. She carried the silver tray balanced over her protruding belly and offered first to Sebastian, who took a glass, then Lazarus. She didn’t offer any to Jess. Even the toy knew Jess wasn’t a guest.

“I wonder if you made a mistake coming here, Captain.” Lazarus must have been holding the Medici Necklace all this time. He held it up next to the Burgundy in his glass, comparing color. “You have the reputation of being shrewd. You’re sure you won’t try the wine? It’s excellent.”

The Captain wasn’t playing the game at all. He was grim as a rock-bound coast. “Let’s talk about Jess.”

“You’re always wanting some woman from me. Can I interest you in Fluffy here? I’m about done with her.” Lazarus took a sip and gestured with his glass. “A little close to whelping for some men’s taste, but a lively bit. Do you know how I pick these girls? Every one of them’s done something a poor girl would get hanged for. Every one. Shall we hear what Fluffy did?” He motioned the woman to him.

She came, stiff and unwilling, ducking her head behind a curtain of hair. “I had a maid. She was fifteen. I . . .” No telling how often she’d had to confess this.

Lazarus was showing off how evil he could be. She hated it when he did that. He wasn’t like that. Not really. You’d think he was doing it on purpose to see how far he could push the Captain.

Sebastian stopped it. His voice would have sawed through hardwood. “Do we have to waste time with this? I get your point.”

“As you say, you get my point.” Lazarus touched the blonde girl. “Go. Did you own women, out in Turkey and Syria, Captain? They say you can buy any color or shape of woman in the East. Women of infinite sexual variety.”

“I hear the same about London.” Sebastian finished the wine in a single, long pull and tossed his glass to the Hand. “What are you going to do with Jess?”

Lazarus smiled. “Whatever I please. That’s the joy of it.”

They glared at each other like hawks or eagles or something. Made her feel like a mouse trapped between them. She didn’t know what this Fluffy was feeling like. Yesterday’s catch, regurgitated into the nest, probably.

Sebastian said, “She lives in my house. I pay the pence. The agreement is, you don’t molest my people.”

“Captain . . . Captain . . . she was mine before she grew hair between her legs. I own her right to the bottom of her miserable soul. Look.” Lazarus made the hand sign. She was beside him before she thought about it, feeling surprised to be there. Habit. She hadn’t lost it, seemed like. He snapped out, “Who do you belong to, Jess?”

“I belong to—” She caught herself. Damn. Almost, that had been, “I belong to Lazarus.” She must have said that ten thousand times. When Lazarus first made her move into the crib, he asked that fifty times a day, and she had to give that answer. In the end, she’d believed it. “It’s been a long time, Sir.”

Lazarus wasn’t looking at her anyway. He was watching Sebastian. “Do you know what my people have to do? My special ones? The ones I own. They have to kill somebody for me, even pretty girls like Jess here. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, Sir.” He had to bring that up, didn’t he? The worst night of her life, brimful of death and terror and having nowhere to run, and he had to keep harping on it. After all this time, it didn’t matter why she’d sold her soul to Lazarus.

But Lazarus was just reveling in it. “She came to me with the blood still on her. She’s one of us. She’s mine. Men who come asking for what’s mine get hurt.”

Sebastian didn’t look impressed.

“I don’t need rescuing, Captain,” she said. “Clear off and leave me to—” Crikey. Now she’d got Lazarus irritated at her. She’d made it worse. She knew better than that.

Lazarus said mildly, “Jess, do you have advice on how I should deal with the Captain?”

She shook her head quickly. Stupid. Stupid.

“I didn’t hear you, Jess.”

“No, Sir. Nothing to say. Not a word.”

“I didn’t think so.”

He turned back to the Captain. “It took me months to teach Jess silence. For a long time, whenever she begged me to leave someone alone, I was forced to be especially loathsome to them. It was a difficult time for both of us.”

The Captain’s eyes glinted like sharp knives. “That was a long time ago.”

“Was it?” Lazarus held the bauble up. “Report to me, Jess. The necklace.”

The Medici Necklace. Easy. “Eleven rubies, perfectly matched. All flawless, except the central stone. That one’s twelve carats and historic as hell. Legend is, it dates to the Rajput in the ninth century. The upper right-hand quadrant holds a crystal inclusion, visible to the naked eye. The third on the left is from the twelfth-century diadem of the princess of Navarre. The necklace was assembled in 1480 for Lorenzo de’ Medici. Louis Bolliard lifted it from the Romanov treasury two years ago and fenced it in Geneva, where Whitby’s bought it. Intact, it’s worth eight thousand on the gray market in London. Its white market breakup value is less than six, after three identifiable stones are recut.”

The Captain’s face was stony cold. She stopped, abrupt like, having caught on to what Lazarus was up to. This wasn’t about the necklace.

Lazarus whispered, “I took infinite pains with her, Kennett. One of my most valuable possessions. I never found another like her.”

That made her sound like a pocket watch. But it wasn’t like that. Hours, they used to spend talking, in the old days. He’d taught her everything. How to pick locks. How to rope her way down a building. How to plan a caper. That last time, when she’d fallen so bad and got herself trapped in the dark in the old warehouse, it had been Lazarus who came in for her. He’d crawled in the whole way and pulled her out, with the building collapsing around their ears and bricks and timbers hitting them. He’d risked his neck. She hadn’t been a bloody pocket watch. He was goading the Captain, pure and simple.

The Captain and Lazarus stayed, eyes locked, not making any sudden moves. It was like they were two men on a tightrope, neither of them shaking the rope.

Then Sebastian leaned forward. “I’ve taken her to bed. She’s my possession now.”

Oh, bloody hell. The Captain expected her to lie to Lazarus. She couldn’t do it. Lazarus could read her like a newspaper.

“Jess?” Lazarus poked her.

The Captain swung round and ran his eyes up and down her, looking like a man who’d tumbled her, maybe a couple dozen different ways, and enjoyed all of them. She remembered lying beside him in his bunk on board ship with the rain hitting the deck above—him dark and strong as a black angel, smelling of salt and sweat. She’d wanted to bite into him, like bread. She’d wanted to open her legs and tell him to touch her there . . .

Damned if she didn’t blush like a schoolgirl.

“I see. Oh, yes, I see. She has grown up, hasn’t she?” Lazarus laughed, a great bass rumble that came up from his belly. “Makes ’em just about useless.” He gestured impatiently. The Hand jumped up and Lazarus coiled the Medici Necklace down into the boy’s cupped palms. “Take that and put it away someplace. ”

“Sir.” The boy gave a cheeky grin, stuffed fifty carats of rubies in his breeches, and sauntered out.

Lazarus watched him. “You can’t get good help. On her worst day, Jess was worth thirty of that one. She doesn’t strut when she carries valuables. That astonishing object in her pocket, and even I didn’t know she had it on her till she tossed it to me.” Without changing tone he said, “She thinks you’re the spy, Kennett. The whole time she’s warming your bed, she’s fingering you for the drop. Interesting bedsport, even by my standards.”

“I enjoy it.” Sebastian just kept on lying to Lazarus. Nobody lied to Lazarus.

Lazarus took a last swallow of wine and held the empty glass out. Fluffy scrambled to take it from him just before he let it drop. “Josiah Whitby can rot in hell. And I leave spies to Adrian Hawkhurst. But Cinq came into my streets and hired Irishmen to kidnap one of my people. That I don’t allow. Where were you when Cinq almost grabbed her?”

“Protecting her.”

“You’re doing a damn poor job of it, you and Josiah. My Jess walks in here, covered with bruises. She’s so scared she came to me for help. Why should I let her go? At least I protect what’s mine.”

“By keeping her . . . here?” With a flick of his fingers, the Captain said what he thought of the padding ken. “She’s not twelve years old anymore. Let her go before you have to hurt her.”

They did more of that staring and talking back and forth without saying anything.

The Captain laid out another line of words, like hard pebbles. “If you don’t kill me, I’ll come back for her. If you kill me, you can’t hold on to Jess. Look at her.”

They both did. What was she supposed to do with her face? Flummoxed her.

“Come here, Jess,” Lazarus said. That was when she noticed she’d been edging over toward the Captain all this time.

So she went over and stood square in front of Lazarus, not trying to talk. He hadn’t changed much in the years between then and now. There were more lines in his face.

“You should have told me you were coming,” he said at last. “Weren’t you paying attention all those years? You tell me when you’re going to pull one of your damfool stunts. What am I supposed to do with you, anyway?”

“I don’t know, Sir.”

“Since you’re mine, I should probably keep you here and do try to make something of you.”

It was quiet, for the padding crib. She couldn’t hear anything but the blood pounding in her head. She didn’t say anything. Couldn’t.

“Ten years ago, I tried to get you back from Josiah. Did you know that? He got you out of England too fast for me. I sent men after you a few times when you were still young.”

“In Athens. And Oslo. And again in St. Petersburg. You almost got me in Athens.”

“You were remarkably hard to kidnap.”

“I tried to be, Sir.”

“And you’re still not scared of me. You’re so clever in every other way, but you were never scared of me.” Lazarus turned to the Captain. “It has a certain attraction. It’s like owning that bloody necklace—the finest thing of its kind in the world. If her father hadn’t taken her away, I’d have made her the best thief in Europe.” He brooded on it a bit more and added, “I still could, but I’d have to train her all over again. When I think of the trouble she was last time . . .”

“You have the power to keep her. Or you can let her go. That’s absolute power, if you want it.”

“Don’t push me, Kennett. An hour ago I didn’t expect to ever see her again. And bedamned if I’ll give her back to Josiah. Where does that leave me?”

More silence. She didn’t even try to think.

“Sell her to me.” Kennett said it so calm and reasonable she couldn’t believe she’d heard right. “We can settle on a price.”

The unreality of this was so dense she could have gone floating in it.

“Sell her? Sell Jess Whitby?” After a long minute, Lazarus began to chuckle. “Oh, that’s a sweet thought. That is a beauty of a thought.” Lazarus was on his feet, tromping around the room, looking at her, looking at Sebastian.

Sebastian stood up, too, ignoring everything but Lazarus. She’d swear they were both blazing amused. She didn’t see anything funny, herself.

Lazarus murmured, “Sell Josiah’s daughter to a sea captain. That’ll make the old bastard mad enough to spit nails. That is a beauty of an idea, that is. Damn. I could get ten thousand pounds for her.”

“Easily.”

“Or double that. I could get his damned warehouse. We just need to agree on an appropriate amount, don’t we? Does there happen to be a shilling on you, Captain Kennett?”

Sebastian was already fishing in his pocket. He held up a shiny new Dundee shilling between thumb and forefinger. Tossed it. She watched it flip through the air, spinning silver.

Lazarus caught it. “Done. She’s yours. And may God help you. Jess!”

“Sir?”

“Who do you belong to, Jess?”

“I belong to . . . I . . .”

“Exactly. You’re not mine. Don’t call me ‘Sir’ again. Get her out of here, Kennett.”

Sebastian gripped her arm, applying somewhat more than necessary force, pulling her along.

She dug her heels in. There was one thing she had to say. “Lazarus.” She’d been eight, the last time she called him Lazarus. The people who belonged to him called him “Sir.” “I didn’t just leave. Not willingly.” It’d been the week after she fell so bad. Papa hired men who just picked her up and walked off with her, right out of the padding ken. She’d been knocked out with opium for the broken arm. Broken couple of things. Her ribs, too. “I didn’t even wake up till we were two days out at sea. That first year . . . I tried to get back to you.”

“But not later.”

“No. Not later.”

He considered her from under heavy, sleepy-looking eyelids. “You’d better get her out of here before I change my mind, Kennett. The challenge of it alone. If holding on to her wasn’t so damned complex . . .”

The Captain gave her a fine, hearty shove in the direction of the door.

“One more thing,” Lazarus said.

The Captain was carrying a knife somewhere on him. That featherlight change of balance was him thinking about pulling it and using it. “Yes?”

“Take that girl with you. The one you’ve been pretending not to notice. Fluffy. Give her to that interfering aunt of yours. I’m tired of looking at her.”