“I’m not—”
“You stay under these conditions.” Oh, but he was angry with her. Not that he’d been all beer and skittles up to this point, but now he was particularly scowling. “You will behave yourself while you’re under my roof. No more lying to my aunt. Keep away from Quentin. And don’t spar with Claudia. You will lash down that lively tongue of yours when you talk to her.”
“Civil as a nun’s hen. That’s me.”
“I should boot your pretty arse out of here so hard you bounce on the front steps. You’re part of a foul business, Miss Whitby. You’ve brought it into my house, touching my family. But there are men out there, waiting to swallow you whole. I can’t send you back to that.”
“I’m perfectly—”
“I know exactly what you are.” He slipped his fingers to the back of her neck, twining into her braid. It gave her a shiver all up and down her spine, feeling him delving deep in her hair, warm and intimate, and not even thinking about it. They seemed to have skipped a couple steps in getting to know each other. “This room belonged to the governess in the old days. It’s quiet and private up here. The door has a bolt. My aunt keeps the women here, the ones she takes off the street, because they need to feel safe. Do you know why I put you all the way upstairs, Miss Whitby?”
“You’ve run out of guest rooms downstairs? Always makes me feel so crowded and inhospitable—”
“You’re as far from my bedroom as you can be, with the whole house between us. No matter how tempted I am, I’m not going to come sneaking along, knocking on your door in the middle of the night. You can sleep easy, knowing I won’t come to get you. If you’re an honest woman, this is your fortress. But you’re not an honest woman, are you?”
Nothing she could say to that. She’d never had the luxury of being honest. It was too late to start now.
“My bedroom is two flights down, fifth door on the right. How long before you come to me?”
“A century or two.” She licked her lips. Wrong thing to do. She knew it as soon as she did it. He was looking at her mouth. “Never.”
“And there’s another lie from you, Miss Whitby. There’s not a speck of honesty in you, is there?”
He left his hand nestled loosely in her hair. It had plans for her, that hand. She could feel it begging to slide down her back and slip over her, everywhere.
“I don’t like you touching me.” But she didn’t pull away, did she?
“I don’t like any of this. It’s vibrating across the room between us right now. Me wanting you. You wanting me. My hair’s standing on end there’s so much lightning built up in here.” His fingers, just the tips, stroked the outer curve of her ear. The warmth between her legs went answering back. “Don’t pretend you don’t feel it. You’re no innocent.”
She wished she was innocent. She’d have given a lot, right then, not to understand him.
She’d wondered, sometimes, if she’d ever find a man she wanted to bed with. She never had, not in all these years since Ned. She couldn’t count the nights she’d spent, tangled in the sheets, twitching, climbing a pillow, pretending there was a man touching her. She’d met a parade of bankers and merchants and handsome young soldiers, with hot smiles and insinuating hands they tried to sneak over her when they could get her alone.
Not all of them were after her father’s fortune. Some of those men she’d liked. Not a one of them she wanted to wrap up close to her and take inside her.
Tonight, in bed, her dream would have Sebastian’s face. She’d finally met a man who got her teakettle whistling. One of those cases of being careful what you wished for.
Light, light, he stroked down her neck and her body played a chord of music for him.
He whispered, “Remarkable. You are remarkable. Did you know that? Last night I thought I’d netted a mermaid out of that muddy alley. Something magical.” Black fire writhed in his pupils. If she relaxed, even an instant, she’d slide right down into him, into all that fire, and get burned up. “You came to the Lane to throw a net around me, using your eyes and your hair and that wet dress sticking to your skin. By God, you caught me. But you caught yourself, too. That wasn’t part of your father’s scheme. You didn’t plan on feeling anything, did you?”
I didn’t plan on any of this.
“There’s no limit to what you’d do, following his orders. You’d risk your neck on Katherine Lane. You’d connive and blackmail yourself into my household.” He put both hands on her now, tilting her head to look at him. The touch was gentle, but his voice was hard as iron. “You’d lay on your back right now, as sick and hurt as you are, and let me have you, if it would give you a place under my roof.” He held her head, and his thumbs ran along the underside of he cndeet r jaw where the skin lay thin over the bone, sensitive. “Not a magical creature of the sea after all. You turn out to be someone who’ll crawl into my bed whenever that old bastard tells you to.”
“My father is not—”
“When you come to me, make sure you come with hunger in your belly. I want you to ache for me. Everything else between us is a lie, but the wanting is real.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.” His whisper was liquid music, trickling through her body, pooling between her legs. “You’re doing it now. Wanting. See how easy it is?” That frightening, focused intelligence studied her, inches away. Slow as if he were moving through water, he picked up the long braid from her shoulder and ran it between thumb and forefingers. “Do you wonder what we’ll be like, the two of us?”
Yes. “No.”
He wrapped the braid in his fist, oh so gradually, and wrapped and wrapped like he was taking up towline. “Two flights down. Fifth on the right. You’ll open my door. I’ll be waiting for you, thinking about what I’ll do to you. You’ll slip out of your nightclothes, out of every stitch on you, and come to my bed. You’ll be hungry and needing, and I’ll be on fire for you. We’ll neither of us be able to stop it, once you walk through that door.”
He pulled, slow and persuasive, reeling her in a little closer, a little closer, using the length of the braid, till his hand rested next to her throat. A sailor’s hand. She could feel it there where she breathed, hard as deck wood along his knuckles, smooth as polished teak.
“You’ll lean to me, and you’ll ask me to touch you. You’ll tell me what you need. I’ll do it all. I’ll do everything.”
His voice sent a tremble up her spine. It wasn’t fear. It was anticipation. Stupid, stupid, body she had.
Gently, the back of his fingers stroked the path that carried her heartbeat. He was caressing her pulse, there at her throat. “See how your breasts are crinkled up already. They’re imagining my mouth on them, the way it’s going to be. That’s how strong the pull is between us. Your body is already thinking about me.”
“I—”
“We’ll be magic. We’ll turn into gold. Slippery gold fire, melting into each other. Hush.” That rasping, velvet voice crawled right under her skin. “We both know what’s going on.”
His eyes were black wells of infinite possibility. She got fascinated, looking in. Probably this was how those fish felt when men came after them, night fishing, with lanterns. They hung in the water, staring and dazzled, waiting to be speared. Dim-witted as a fish, that was her.
“Half of me wants you to stay in my house,” he whispered. “Because I want those nights with you. If you don’t want that, too, then I suggest you get out of here. I can have you out of London in an hour, to Hampstead, and that old captain of mine. Will you go? Or will you stay here with me, knowing you’ll be in my bed in a day or two?”
“You’re trying to scare me off.”
“Clever Jess. That’s exactly what I’m doing.” There was a fraught little pause. He might have been a shark, deciding whether to circle in widdershins or t’other way round. “Be wise, sparrow. Run from me.”
She held perfectly still. Not because he had hold of her. Because she cou
ldn’t have moved if her life depended on it. “No.”
“Wrong choice, Jess Whitby.” He let go of her. Took his hand away and let her free. “Wait a day or two before you come to me. Neither of us would enjoy bouncing on those bruises.”
“I liked you better when you were a ship’s captain named Sebastian.”
“I liked you better when you were a street whore.” He smiled, enigmatic as an oyster, if oysters smiled. “Stay then. Be polite to Claudia. And if you ever look at Quentin the way you’re looking at me now, I’ll make you regret you were ever whelped.”
Outrage chopped off any speech she had in her.
Kennett didn’t even stay to see the effect of that grenade. He lobbed another as he walked out the door. “You’ll want to send for some dresses. I can see all the way down your tits in that one.”
Nine
Dorset Street, Whitechapel
CINQ WORE BLACK—A BLACK GREATCOAT THAT fell to boot top and a black, low-crowned hat with a wide brim. A scarf of raw wool, colorless in the streak of light from the high, barred windows, covered nose to neck and hid what the gloom didn’t.
“Liam’s dying.” The Irishman sounded more annoyed than anything else.
Good, Cinq thought. If that hag in the corner didn’t kill him with her nursing, Lazarus would slit his throat. Lazarus didn’t allow outsiders to hunt in his territory. “Your share will be that much larger.”
“You’re a cold one.”
“I can be.” The voice was low and deliberately unmemorable. “Get me the girl.”
“Not so soon. It’s too dangerous altogether.”
“You will take her now, before they hustle her out of town. She’ll leave the house sooner or later to go to that warehouse in Garnet Street. I’ll send word. Grab her there.”
“And isn’t it brave you are, when it’s my neck.” The Irishman took a final look at the figure laid out on the pile of straw. Watched the labored breaths that kept the corpse an inch this side of death. “I need more money for this. Fifty pounds.”
“We keep to the agreement.”
“Sean and Fergus are dead in their blood. Cut down like dogs, God help them.”
“Then they’ve no need of money. Deliver the girl.”
“Ye said it’d be easy, damn yer eyes. There’s five men dead, and Liam’s on his last. Bastard Kennett’s after our necks. This ain’t the job we was hired for, not at all. Fifty pounds more.”
“Ten. For your losses.”
“Fifty, I say. Fifty now and the hundred when we bring the girl.”
“And I say you’re a bungler and a fool. I handed her to you on a silver platter. I told you where she’d be, and even then you lost her. There’s men upstairs who’d take this work and be glad of it.”
That was bluff. These Irish scum were the only men stupid enough to lay hands on Whitby’s only child. She was protected by Lazarus, too. And now Sebastian. It was simple suicide to touch her, and every thief and brawler in London knew it.
All the more reason to secure the girl before this fool found that out. “Follow her. Take her. And don’t hurt her again. Dog-meat’s no good to me.”
The man spat on the dirt floor. “She’ll be alive. The money better be waiting when we bring her to the boat.”
He wouldn’t live to enjoy it. Lazarus would see to that. Or Sebastian would. Really, it was laughably easy to eliminate witnesses.
“One more thing. Hire some harlot and get her into the house. There’s always a new slut cringing and whining at the door. They’ll take her in. She’ll tell you what the Whitby girl’s doing. Use her to bring the girl to you, if you can. This is five for the whore.” Cinq dealt pound notes onto the rough table. “It’s enough. Don’t tell the pimp, then, if he’s greedy.” More pound notes joined the ones on the table. “Five for you and the men. And five goes to . . .” a nod toward the dying man, “. . . his care. Or his family, if he dies.”
“I’ll see to it.” The Irishman scraped the money up. It was that easy to ensure death, muffled and swift, to the man in the pile of straw. To him and the crone crouching in the corner. Two more people who’d seen Cinq would be tidied away.
When the Revolution swept through London, this rabble would be washed away with the rest of the Old Order. Napoleon would find a use for them in the army of the Revolution.
Cinq pulled the scarf higher and climbed the steps out of the cellar, walked through the tavern, out to the wretched street, and stepped into the crowds of workmen, sluts, beggars, and thieves hurrying to work.
Ten
Douglas Hotel, Bloomsbury
“HELP ME WITH THIS.” GRUNTING, SEBASTIAN lifted the corner of the bed. Adrian slipped an edge of carpet under it.
“Well, that was a waste of time.” Adrian straightened up, brushing his hands.
“We had to look. Let’s get the chairs back.”
He set a wide bergère chair in front of the windows in a patch of late afternoon sunlight. The other chair, a big, soft armchair, belonged by the hearth. The table went beside it. The lamp went on the table, then the bowl of roses. When they finished, it would be like nothing had been moved. They’d done this before, when they were gathering evidence in France.
The Whitbys lived in unobtrusive comfort in this hotel when they were in England. A suite of bright, high-ceilinged rooms overlooking Russell Square were kept for their exclusive use. Whitby owned the hotel.
If Jessamyn Whitby was part of her father’s treason, the proof might be here, in her bedroom, away from the prying eyes in the Whitby offices. He found himself hoping he wouldn’t uncover anything. What did it mean that he was already looking for ways to make her innocent?
“You’re not going to find stolen papers.” Adrian stood in the center of the Aubusson rug, turning slowly, considering possibilities. “If she’s keeping anything here—which I doubt—her hiding place will be obvious. Diabolically, cleverly, unfathomably obvious. Once I find it, I’ll kick myself.”
“You do that. I’ll start on the bookcase.” He pulled stacks of books from the top shelf and began going through them. Jess wasn’t keeping letters from the War Office on an open shelf in the corner of her bedroom between Curiosities of Greece and By Mule Through Serbia, but it’d be obvious enough to suit Adrian.
He might not find stolen papers, but he was going to discover Jess. Parts of her were scattered here, everywhere, in the place she lived and the things she owned. This room was going to tell him who she was. “What does Doyle say about the Irishmen?”
“Five dead on Katherine Lane, where they have become the magistrate’s problem.” Adrian strolled over to poke into the dressing table. “One Irishman is hors de combat somewhere in Whitechapel. Lazarus has picked up another. Lazarus is not amused when men come to his part of town to maim and kidnap, that being his prerogative. That leaves four walking around loose.”
“More than I’d want after me.” Four men, hunting Jess Whitby.
“And Ireland is not yet emptied of villains, alas. I’m glad she’s sleeping in your house tonight.” Adrian lined up the comb and brush on her dresser. “Among other things, it lets me search her bedroom.” He made faces in the hand mirror, laid it down, and sniffed at a scent bottle. “Jasmine. From Houbigant in Paris. I used to buy that for her when she was twelve. She has not quite rooted me out of her life. What else . . . ?” He slid a drawer out. “No powder. No pots of rouge. No arcane aids to beauty. From this we will infer there is no man she wishes to entice. A welcome breath of simplicity in this convoluted affair.”
“There’s nothing simple about Jess.”
“On the contrary. There’s no one more candid. She is a veritable tutorial in how not to tell lies. How is she?”
“Frayed around the edges. In pain, and trying to hide it. She’s probably asleep now. Eunice will let me know if she gets worse.” He went down the stack methodically, unfurling one book after another and replacing it on the shelf. “I put her to bed. Maybe I can intimidate her into staying the
re for a day or two.
“Good luck on that. We’re all behind you.” Adrian began to set the contents of the drawer on the dresser top. “Handkerchief. Always useful. A fan. Ivory and lace. That’s very pretty. Pound notes. Coinage of the realm. One glove. Where do all those lost gloves go, I wonder?” He opened the next drawer. “More of her feminine mysteries.” He drew out a cuff pistol. It was small, German-made, with fine engraving on the barrel and grip. “Nice.” He inspected. “Not loaded recently. She feels safe in London. I cannot help but feel that is unjustified.”
“She’s safe with me.”
“Thereupon I do rest my constant hope and reliance. Would I feel better if Jess went about armed with small but accurate pistols? I must think upon that.”
Her books were in French, German, and Italian. One by one they turned out to be somebody’s travels in Greece, Arabia, and Macedonia, by foot, camel, and donkey. No account books. No codes. No marking on any of the pages. No secrets stolen from Whitehall.
Next row. He thumbed across the titles. Tell me about Jess . . . and the books did. These were stories from lands at the edge of the map, halfway to fable. I was right to see the Viking in your face. Samarkand and Timbuktu and Persepolis. What are you looking for, Jess? Or what are you trying to run away from?
When he left her this morning, she’d been pale and shaken, holding herself together with pure bravado. That was courage, straight and simple, and it drew him as much as the beauty of her.
One moment burned in his memory like a live coal. He’d taken the curve of her cheek in his hand. Jess stared back at him. He could have seduced her, gently, carefully, taking account of that collection of bruises. She was so bloody desirable, and she wouldn’t have stopped him.
But she could be that beautiful, and still be part of her father’s filthy business. So he’d snarled and let her go. The other choice was laying her down in bed and stripping that borrowed dress off her.
My Lord and Spymaster sl-2 Page 9
