My Lord and Spymaster sl-2

by Joanna Bourne

  For an instant she saw—what?—in Claudia Ashton’s eyes. Sardonic humor? Anger?

  Claudia wasn’t a fool. She had to know her brother cheated. Did the Captain know? It must make for absorbing evenings, them at the card table, congratulating each other on being well-bred, and Quentin cheating nineteen to the dozen.

  I’m not going to be bored here.

  “Greed, of course, is the bane of the mercantile classes . . .” Claudia kept talking.

  But Jess didn’t hear. She was listening to the silence. Downstairs, it had got quiet.

  Silence, where it doesn’t belong, terrifies. Sets the hair on end. There’s the silence when the ship is still, all at once, in the eye of the storm. Silence in the woods after the distant yip yip yip of wolves. Silence in a tavern when somebody pulls a knife.

  In the kitchen, at the back of the house, the murmur of voices and muted clatter suddenly stopped. She was already on her feet before she heard the crash and the sudden sharp scream that came up through the floor.

  She took off, running.

  JESS skidded down the kitchen stairs, full tilt, in her stocking feet. The treads were worn smooth from servants trotting up and down. Hold on. Grab the railing. Hurry.

  The big cavern of the kitchen was lit like a stage. Whitewashed walls blazed under the bright lamps. In a single glance, Jess took in the gray flagstone floor, copper pots boiling on the stove, blue-and-white crockery, long, brown wood tables with a white landscape of flour.

  At the back door, Eunice faced a beefy, red-faced beast of a man, bellowing and drunk.

  The cook and two kitchenmaids huddled in front of the fireplace. A girl in cheap red satin cowered on the floor, bawling her head off. There were no footmen down here. Nobody to help Eunice. The place was full of terrified, shrieking women.

  “Gimme what’s mine!” He was unsteady on his feet. Savagely, brutally half-witted with drink. Only a born fool would walk into this house and threaten this woman. “I been good to her. Girl belongs ter me.”

  Eunice was alone, confronting twenty stone of drunken brutality. Her body said, You don’t get past me. Said, You can’t have her. Just by standing there, she said it.

  I didn’t realize how small she is. How old. She has bones like a bird.

  “. . . sticking yer nose inter me business . . .” He raised a clenched fist.

  He’s going to hit her. He’s drunk enough to hit her.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid to touch Eunice—somebody Lazarus protected. Stupid to invade the West End to retrieve a girl. Drunk and stupid as dirt.

  Jess rounded the bottom of the stairs. She yelled, “Look at me! Hey! You! Dogface. Look at me, you bloody pig!”

  He didn’t hear. He wouldn’t hear if she shouted it up his nose. Mindless drunk. He’d batter right through Eunice to get what he wanted.

  “. . . wring your neck. Yer got no rights to what’s mine . . .” Staggering, he drew back, prepared to swing.

  The cook and the maids screeched like parrots. Why isn’t Quentin here?

  Pots bubbled on the stove, giving off steam and the smell of onions and chicken. She grabbed a big one by the handle, using both hands to pick it up. Heavy as hell. Sloshed all over the floor. Soup. Something full of vegetables, anyway.

  The handle was hot. I’m gonna spill it on my bloody feet. Soup splashed over the edge. Too hot to hold. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts—Past Eunice. Don’t slop it on Eunice, for God’s sake.

  She swung the pot and sent an eruption of lumpy, hot soup into the drunk’s face.

  He howled like a banshee and clawed at his eyes.

  I need—What? What? To the side, by the door, shawls and coats hung. She grabbed a big black cloak off the hook and threw it over his head. He doubled over, yowling, and plunged across the kitchen, charging from side to side like an enraged bull. He crashed into the table. Dishes skittered and toppled to the flagstones, shattering.

  “Run, for God’s sake.”

  The kitchenmaids did. The girl who was the cause of all this sat with her arse glued to the floor, mewling like a cat, while Eunice struggled to pull her to her feet.

  God save me from fools. “Get her the bloody hell upstairs. ”

  The pimp fought free from the cloak. He came out roaring like a fiend, brick red, dripping vegetables. The swollen, half-blind eyes were holes of madness. He shook his head and saw her . . .

  Never hurt a man, Lazarus used to say. Kill him or run. Never just hurt him.

  He charged. She had no chance to run or dodge. Eunice was still behind her. She needed something to fight with. Anything. Her hand found a big pitcher on the table. She heaved it at him and hit him square on the nose.

  He didn’t even wince. He just kept coming.

  Twelve

  ROUGH HANDS GRABBED FROM BEHIND AND pushed her out of the way. Cold panic drenched her. She started to hit out.

  The next instant, she knew. She knew the size and shape and the brusque sureness before she had a good look at him. It was the Captain. She’d never been gladder to see anybody.

  He put himself between her and all that mad rage. He stood between her and the vitriol dribbling through those thick, blistered lips.

  “. . . sodding bitch . . .”

  “Out.” The Captain cut through curses like a knife. He knocked aside the fist aimed at her, grabbed the upraised arm, and twisted it backwards. “Out of my house.”

  The table shuddered as men knocked against it. Plates and bowls crashed. A howl trumpeted from the drunk as Sebastian’s knee connected with his groin. He bent over, gasping and bleating.

  The Captain gripped the man by his leather coat and spun him around and sent him stumbling out the kitchen door. He fell, sprawled on the sharp corners of the entryway steps.

  A last housemaid, ducking and bobbing in the shelter of the pantry, shrieked like a whistle. The drunk groaned and hugged the bricks. When the Captain followed him outside, he frantically crawled his way up the stairs on his belly, yowling. Before he got to the top, Kennett picked him up by the scruff of his neck and tossed him bodily onward, down the path, to land flat on his face on gravel.

  “I didn’t do nuffin’. I didn’t do—”

  The Captain hauled him up. “If I ever see you . . .” The Captain slammed his fist into the man’s ribs. “. . . near my house. If I see you . . .” He took the jerking, spasming body by the throat and shook him like a dog shakes a rat. “. . . near my family. If I see you near any woman in my household. If I pass you on the street . . .” He held the figure upright and punched a final, short jab. “I will kill you.”

  This wasn’t a fight. This was Kennett punishing a man. He threw the bloke away like offal and turned his back on him. He didn’t even bother to watch as, shambling and weaving and crying, the man staggered forward and fell against the back gate and fumbled it open and fled.

  She’d followed the fight out of the kitchen, up the areaway stairs, just to see if the Captain ended up twisting anybody’s head off. Always better to know what was happening than to try to figure it out later. In the garden, she laced her fingers into the iron railing and held on, taking it all in.

  Behind her, in the kitchen, sobs receded in stages. Eunice was finally getting that damn, damp parcel of misery upstairs.

  When he was through with the pimp, the Captain came up to her and stood, looking past her.

  A pair of footmen jostled up against each other, trying to get out the back door and into the garden. The footmen in this house were wiry and muscular old sailors. These two would have been helpful a few minutes back.

  “Where have you been?” But the Captain didn’t wait for excuses. He dressed these fellows down with a few dozen choice words and sent them slinking back to the kitchen. Pure ship’s captain, he was, doing that. All he lacked was flapping sailcloth in the background and a wide open sea.

  Then he turned his attention to her.

  She told him what he wanted to know, first off. “He didn’t touch Eunice. Not a hair on
her head.”

  “I saw.” He walked towards her. “He got within ames ace of knocking the hell out of you, though.”

  “Didn’t he just.” She pulled back against the railing and made space for him to walk past. She was giving her attention to the knotty problem of whether she should sit down, careful, on the stairs till she got over being dizzy or if she should shortcut the process and just collapse in a heap.

  The Captain surprised her with a gentle hold that kept her upright. “Here we go. That’s right.” The garden, green and brown and gray in the dusk, swam by as he guided her along for ten or twelve steps, across the garden, walking on the grass, till they got to the bench at the side. “I’ve got you.” His voice slicked along her nerves like a warm touch. Then she was sitting on the bench and he was next to her.

  She closed her eyes and considered slipping off onto what looked like fairly soft grass. There was a big patch of it to the left here.

  “Don’t faint.” He fitted his arm around her, over her shoulder.

  “I’m not going to.” But maybe she would. Cold pricked all over her body. Even her lips were numb.

  He turned toward her on the bench and she felt his hand on her cheek. Calloused fingers, warm and smooth, ran over her eyelids, touched her mouth. “Damn. You’re cold as ice.”

  Absently, as if he’d had practice at it, he smoothed down her hair. “I won’t ask why you’re wandering around the house barefoot.”

  He took her left hand and put it in her lap, palm upwards, so he could study it. “Did you get burned?”

  “Burned? Oh. From the pot handle. No damage done. That bloke, though—” She swallowed the rest of what she was about to say. She didn’t talk flash anymore. Not for years now. “That man. He’s not going to be pretty when he heals up.”

  “He wasn’t pretty to start with.” The Captain had turned her hand up to the light from the kitchen windows, searching it like the lines on her palm held the secrets of the universe. “Some pink maybe, from the burns you tell me you don’t have. And here we have the scrapes from last night, when you were dodging Irishmen. I cleaned those for you.” He pointed here and there. It tickled, even though he wasn’t touching at all.

  “All part of my catlike retreat. Always puzzled me cats don’t seem the worse for wear more than they do. I suppose it’s all that fur.”

  “I’m sure it is. And this.” He trailed a fingertip along the edge of her hand, where the old scars were. “You acquired before you met me. Looks like you put your hands through glass.”

  “A reasonable guess.” They were tooth marks, actually. She remembered how she’d got those bites, and it was a bad, cold memory.

  Maybe he felt her shiver. He didn’t ask again. He closed her fingers up, wrapping her hand inside of his. Then he let go. “You keep getting hurt, Jess. I’d like to put a stop to that.”

  “Me, too.”

  He didn’t say anything for a while after he put her hand away.

  This was the Captain in a different mood. He wasn’t angry with her, which was one of those small pleasures in life you had to be careful to enjoy when they went swinging past. He’d been stiff and furious when he stomped out of the attic this morning, full of bite and sarcasm. He seemed to have gotten over that. No telling why.

  The kitchen was filling up again with a twitter of women’s voices, high-pitched and excited, discussing at length and deploring in depth. They were sweeping and putting things away and cleaning crockery up. Making the world right again. Doing what women always did when the men were through rampaging. It was reassuring to hear, but she didn’t want to join them. She leaned her head back and felt him behind her. Felt his arm, strong and solid, under a layer of wool and one of linen.

  She shouldn’t just relax like this, on a man’s arm. She didn’t know him well enough, and she didn’t like him, and he might be Cinq.

  Though it was hard, just this minute, to make herself believe Kennett could be Cinq. She’d try again later and see if she did a better job of it.

  He didn’t seem to notice she was leaning on him. He just looked up at the sky, musing like. “I get indications, Jess, that you’ve led an eventful life. Didn’t anyone ever warn you not to square up against charging madmen?” Her shoulder was against his chest, they were so close. When he spoke, she could feel his voice with her body.

  “Wasn’t like I had much choice. You can’t talk to a man that drunk. He would have broken Eunice like kindling. Then he’d have torn that weeping tribulation of a girl into scraps.”

  “So you waded in, armed with a saucepan.” With his arm still around her, he settled back and stretched so his boot heels dug into the gravel . . . a man at ease in his back garden, watching the last light ebb out of the flower beds and weeds. He curled his arm to pull her closer. It seemed rude to complain when he didn’t mean anything by it. He wasn’t even looking at her.

  “That was a damn fool stunt,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t do it for you.”

  “I know that. You did it for her. I was at the top of the kitchen stairs when I saw you heft a soup pot and go for him.” The hold around her tightened. “It took me a century to get across the kitchen. Every second I was telling myself you were strong and smart and you wouldn’t let her get hurt. I trusted you as if you were my own hands.” He sounded . . . She didn’t know what he sounded like. Like he was talking to an old friend, instead of her. “When I left this morning, I planned to come back and start prying you out of here. I’d worked out some strategies. I still thought I could scare you, for one thing.”

  “You’ll have to wait your turn. I’m not finished being terrified of that last fellow.”

  “Oh, you’re terrified all right. You’re quaking with fright.” Amusement burred, low in his throat. “I’m not going to evict you. Stay. You’ve earned a place here. Move in, bag and baggage. Bring your cat.”

  “I might.” She should bring Kedger. That would teach him to go offering hospitality wholesale.

  He’d shifted around on the bench again, making himself comfortable, and she ended up leaning against him. Where they touched, side by side, was a long strip of warmth, and the rest of her was chilly. His fingers moved idly, tapping at her arm where he had his hand wrapped around. She felt the touches land on her, one by one.

  It was strangely companionable, sitting beside him, watching the night creep into the garden by inches. She let herself soak up his heat where they were sharing it. She could almost relax. It was like sitting next to a wolf. One who’d just eaten. A wolf with a full belly and his tongue lolling out. A wolf in excellent good humor.

  Still a wolf, though. “I thought you’d kill that man. When you picked him up and started hitting him, I thought you’d pull out a knife.”

  “Not in front of Eunice.”

  “I figured that out, afterwards. Whatever you do to that man, you won’t do it in front of her. You won’t even tell her about it.” She’d learned something else about the Captain. He played a role when he was in the West End. He kept the violence inside him, secret and controlled and he didn’t bring the dangerous parts of his business home. “You never show your family what you are.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “They’d be shocked, I guess. Would you have killed him, if it’d been just me watching?” She couldn’t believe she asked him that, straight out. Probably it wasn’t wise, asking the wolf questions, even when he was in a good mood.

  “I already killed a man in front of you, didn’t I?” He ran his eyes over her before he went back to admiring his garden. “I won’t make a habit of it, Jess. You’ve seen the worst of me. Most days, I’m a respectable trader. I don’t murder everybody I get angry at.”

  “That’s moderate of you.” He had family inside the house, his aunt and uncle and cousins. But he was out in the evening talking with her. Maybe he didn’t have to hide what he was so much. Maybe he could say things to her he couldn’t say to the others. “Anyway, you don’t want dead
men in your back garden. I mean, who would?”

  “Good point.”

  They could sit like this as long as nobody brought up any awkward topics of conversation. Neither of them said anything. Complicity was the word that came to mind.

  The dark corners and clumped shadows under the bushes didn’t make her uneasy tonight. Nothing would dare to lurk in the dark with the Captain here. He held her in a friendly way, like they got along fine. Like they’d done this a hundred times. Like they always wandered out here into the garden whenever the weather was good and that bush over in the corner was in bloom. If it bloomed.

  They sat for a while, and he stroked her arm the way a man might pet a cat, not thinking about it. A buzz slid under her skin. Not quite innocent, not quite sensual. Building bit by bit. Just a little heat. She let herself enjoy it, because he wasn’t noticing.

  She wasn’t an expert on gardens, but this one looked neglected. There was a pair of matching bushes at the back garden gate with something overgrown and exuberant running wild next to them and a scraggly row of roses against the wall. Somebody’d left a garden rake leaning there.

  “A clear night.” That was the Captain, taking in the sky. “There’ll be rain tomorrow, late in the day.”

  “That’s going to amaze the populace. Rain.”

  “See over there.” He drew his free hand across the sky and showed her a swipe of thin cloud, red in the sunset. “The mare’s tail. The rain’s following that, coming in from the north. Heading our way at about fifteen knots.”

  “I’d like to do that. Predict the weather. I have weather records from all over Europe in a storeroom at the warehouse. I play with the numbers and try to make sense of it, but I never can. They’ll have books of weather tables, someday, the way they have tide tables.”

  “Maybe. Then we won’t have to set our wits against it.”

  She watched his face while he watched the sky. He and the weather were honorable adversaries, looked like. A lot of sailors felt that way about the weather. He smiled, liking the challenge.