The main clerks’ room was thirty feet long, high-ceilinged, lined with account books and cluttered with files. Jess’s office was at the far end. A wide pair of plate-glass windows let her keep an eye on the clerks. On the other side of her office another window looked down into the warehouse below. Nothing moved at Whitby’s she didn’t know about. This was the heart of the kingdom.
She was in her office. She sagged at her desk like a jib sail with the wind spilled out. He headed for her, past rows of desks punctuated with quills and ink bottles.
She wasn’t entirely unprotected. The man with her—it was the Whitby London manager, Pitney—stopped rearranging the ferret cage and came around to the desk so his burly body partly shielded her from view, giving her some privacy. It looked like he was in the habit of taking care of her. A small point, but telling.
She wore sober dark green today. Her wheat-colored hair was pulled back ruthlessly from her face, leaving it ascetic and pure as a Byzantine icon. There wasn’t a way he’d seen her—not stark naked, not muffled head to foot—that she didn’t make him hungry for her. He took one look at her down the long stretch of the office and got stiff as a boy in his first brothel. Stupidest muscle in the body. Distracting as hell. He stopped, halfway down the room, and calculated costs of replacing rope on the Lively Dancer for a minute, till he’d put jack back in the box.
Coming closer, he could see she’d left the cups stacked up beside the brass samovar, cobalt blue, blood red, and canary yellow. On the shelves all around the room, the lines of ledgers showed gaps, like missing teeth. That was where the lads from the British Service had helped themselves to her account books.
She’d left her door a crack open and he could hear her talking. That was careless of her. Taking it slow, acting as if he belonged here, he came up close and stopped, still as a tree, and listened.
“I don’t even know what they’re looking for.” Jess sounded tired and subdued, not like herself. “They have enough proof to hang Papa three or four times over. They don’t need more.”
“Josiah’s a rich man. He’ll buy his way out. They won’t—”
“It’s not Papa they’re after.” When she lifted her head, her face looked fragile as blown glass. The bruise on her cheek stood out starkly. “It’s me. They want me to take the drop right next to Papa.”
“For God’s sake, Jessie.”
“It’s easier for them if I’m scared. They want me to panic and make mistakes.”
“I can have you offshore with the tide. You can wait this out in Amsterdam.”
“They aren’t going to let me go. They got men following me, making sure I don’t wriggle out of the net.” He saw the shrug, a quick rise and drop of her shoulders. Her voice dropped so low he could barely hear her. “Doesn’t matter anyway. I can’t leave Papa. They should know that. Funny, in a way. I never thought the English would be so hungry to hang a woman.”
That was nonsense. He’d put a stop to her thinking like that.
“Nobody’s going to hang,” Pitney said. “Not you. Not Josiah. I swear it, Jess.”
“Maybe. Look at this.” She held her hand out, palm down, showing it to Pitney. “Shaking like an aspen. If Hawkhurst wants to break my nerve, he’s about done it. That’s the worst of having an old friend as an enemy. He knows me down to the hinges on my soul.”
“Northern Lass is still in the Thames, waiting for the tide. I’ll take you out the back way. Don’t pack. Don’t go back to the hotel. I’ll—”
“They say it doesn’t hurt much, if it’s done right.” She shook abruptly, like a cat touched by a drop of water. “I need the names of the ships that sailed yesterday, and everything that sails today and tomorrow. Everything, down to the coastal scows and the fishing boats. Get me a list.”
“I’ll send some boys out. Jess, we can’t find one ship out of—”
“We can. We have to.” Her voice was steady, her face grave and grimly intent. Even if he hadn’t seen proof after proof last night, he’d know she was hunting Cinq. “Did Northern Sun bring reports from France?”
“Two new ones. You’re in no shape to read them.”
He agreed with Pitney. She shouldn’t be working. She shouldn’t be out of bed. There was nothing holding her together but spit and stubbornness.
“I’m fine. Maybe Leveque pinned down the—” Then, between one second and the next, she knew he was there. Her chin lifted. Their eyes met through the glass. “Or maybe the Captain’ll join us instead of skulking around the doorsill. ”
Caught. He pushed the door open the rest of the way. “The Service isn’t trying to hang you.”
“I guess you’d know. How long have you been a jackal for the British Service, Captain?” Anger straightened her spine and ratcheted her voice tight.
“A few years. The Service knows me pretty well. If they were trying to hurt you, you wouldn’t be in my house. I don’t let anyone touch the people in my house.”
Pitney stomped over to put himself in front of Jess, legs braced. The tense, open right hand, held low, said he had a knife, probably in his boot top. It should have been ridiculous, a man that age squaring off against him. But it wasn’t. Anyone who came at Jess would have to kill that old man to get to her.
He wouldn’t like to face Pitney in a fight. “We need to talk, Jess. Call him off.”
She considered him levelly, then murmured to Pitney.
“I’ll be outside.” The old man walked past, stiff-legged, and hitched himself up on a desk in the clerks’ room, guarding Jess through the plate glass. Ready to charge.
There was no reason to repeat Jess’s carelessness. He pulled the door tight. Jess’s bulldog didn’t get to listen in.
She was wary and angry. She didn’t like being caught off guard this way. He was walking on her territory uninvited, and she resented it. She knew he’d pillaged through her papers. They were both angry, and he was going to give her orders she didn’t want to hear.
He circled in toward her, slow and indirect, taking the tour of her office. They both needed a minute to calm down.
Old cargoes hung in the air, the smells of raw wool, Russian tea, and spices. Under it was something musky, probably the stink of the ferret they’d found. A ball of twine sat on the shelf, scissors still thrust into the middle. Red leather chairs were pulled up to the long worktable, cluttered with files and papers.
He’d spent five hours here last night, sitting at her desk or standing over this table, going through her papers. Adrian was right—Jess ran this company. Her accounting system was an amazing machine of numbers, wheels within wheels, intricate as a snowflake. She gave orders to a man like Pitney, and they were obeyed. This big, central office was hers, even though the Whitbys might only be in England one month out of the year. This wasn’t the dollhouse of some favored daughter. Merchants worked here. They opened bolts of cloth on that long table and sifted handfuls of loose tea. Men rolled up their sleeves in this room and ran a trading company. A dozen men and one woman.
“He’d purely like to take a swing at you.” Jess looked small behind the big desk. None of it showed. Not the brilliant mind. Not the courage. “Pitney, being protective. I wish he wouldn’t do that. At his age, he should know better. You’d take him to pieces.”
“I don’t fight old men.”
“Prefer a challenge, do you? You can argue with me, then.” She shuffled papers, scowling at them, shimmering with anger. She was so damned lovely doing it. She must ambush every merchant who comes in here. They don’t know how to deal with her.
I do. He didn’t make a sound, walking the last of the way toward her. The Isfahan carpet was soft as moss on a forest floor. “I was going to tell you about it this morning, what we did here, but you took off at the crack of dawn. I didn’t want you to see this without any warning.”
“A warning? Well, that would have made it all right then. A warning. When we were talking in the garden last night, you were planning to break in here.” She glanced up long
enough to see the answer in his face. “Must have been amusing as hell for you, sitting there, fooling me.”
“It wasn’t like—”
She slammed the drawer closed. “It was exactly like that. I see why you’re such a canny trader. You never said a word that wasn’t true, and all the time you were lying up a storm. You made me like you. That’s clever, doing that.”
He’d done more than make her like him, and they both knew it. He’d made her want him. He intended to keep doing that. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do, binding this woman to him.
He had other crimes to admit. He’d drag them all out and get it over with. “I was in your hotel in Bloomsbury yesterday. ”
She didn’t understand at once. The long, straight brows drew together.
“We went through every drawer, every book, paper, every box. Everything you own.” How did a man apologize for that? Especially since he’d do it again, if he had to. “I’m honestly sorry. I had to know if you were part of your father’s treason. I needed proof you were clean.”
“Then I hope you got it.” The letter she’d picked up crackled in her fist. “Good-bye, Captain Kennett. You can find the way out, I imagine.” When she looked up, he saw the fear underneath the anger. It was a deep, well-practiced fear that looked like she’d been working on it for a while.
He’d earned that anger. But he wouldn’t let her be scared of him. “I’m not your enemy.”
“Of course not. We’re cordial as a pair of nesting doves, you and me. My father’s an honored guest down at Meeks Street. Those are purely decorative iron bars all around him.” She got up slowly and leaned over her desk, her fists knuckle-down on the wood. “What do you want?”
“I want you to step back from what you’re doing. Your father’s guilty. You can’t help him. You’re risking your—”
“My father is innocent. I’d stake my life on it.”
With her, it was literally true. “You’re careless with your life, Jess.” I’m going to put a stop to that. The long wood table held files and the loose papers and the notes she’d pinned everywhere. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing here? Why don’t you light a keg of gunpowder?”
She didn’t meet his eyes. “Sometimes, everything’s dangerous. ”
He was going to put an end to this, to Jess playing ducks and drakes with her life. Last night, he’d gone through every paper on her worktable, getting angrier and angrier.
He picked up the nearest stack and pulled out a file. “Do you want me to tell you what you’re doing here? You’re following . . . who?” He read the name. “Right. He’s a rare son of a bitch.” He dropped that and took the next file down. “And this ugly bastard—I’m pretty sure he scuttled one of his own ships. Who else?” He flipped his way through. “A simple embezzler. He’s wandered into bad company, hasn’t he? Here’s a sterling citizen who started out as a wrecker down in Cornwall.”
“They’re not the choir at St. Paul’s.”
“They’re the scum of the docks. Including,” he slid the last file across the table, “this one. Sebastian Kennett. You must like him particularly. He’s the one you followed down to the docks.” He was furious all over again. She’d set her office clerks to trailing him. Asking questions. Poking into his business. They’d followed his family.
She looked back at him, stern as a carved statue. “One of those men is Cinq. I’m going to find him.”
“What you’re going to do is walk out of your warehouse and disappear without a splash. Shall I tell you what’s in all these files? Insurance fraud, shipping shortages, a taste for catamites, one act of piracy, and multiple cases of outright theft. Have I missed any little vices in that list? You have copies of their bank accounts. How the damn hell did you get hold of that?”
“Bribery, mostly. It’s a business expense, and we budget for it. Look, I don’t know about you, Captain, but I have work to do this morn—”
“No wonder you were attacked on Katherine Lane.” He dropped the papers back on the long table. “They must be standing in line to knock you over the head.”
“I’m not—”
“You’ve been risking your neck for weeks.” You could have been dead before I ever met you. He’d yell right in her face, since he didn’t seem to be making an impression. “I’ll ship you right out of London in a barrel, if I have to—”
A deadly ripple of fur shot out from under a bookcase.
“Hellfire! What?” He jerked back. Reflexes, honed by years of dodging exotic threats, kicked in. He went for the knife.
It was the ferret, out of its cage. Snarling jaws clamped to his boot, tearing into the leather. “Watch it, Jess! Get back. They bite.”
Before he could stop her, she was on the floor, pulling the claws and snarls loose from his boot, clutching the animal against her. “Bad ferret! No!”
Twenty inches of malevolent fur wriggled and cheeped and stretched to lick at her face. She choked out a laugh and settled, tailor-fashion, onto the floor, unselfconscious as a child. “Bad Kedger.”
He let his breath out. “Bloody piping peace.” He’d seen the thing in its cage last night, hissing and snarling. He’d wondered what a vicious beast like that was doing in her office. “It’s a pet. Your pet.”
She gave him a sideways glance and the edge of a grin. “This is me mate. Been with me a while, the Kedger. Kedger, meet the Captain.”
He tried not to be obvious, slipping his knife back into the sheath in his jacket. His heart was still banging in his ribs. He’d thought the beast was going to take her eye out. “Some women keep spaniels.”
“So I hear.” She pressed her face into the length of hostile, undulating animal and blew gently into its fur. “Quiet now. That’s the beautiful Kedger. Fine boy.”
That husky voice insinuated itself into his imagination. The silk of it twined through his body, pulling and stroking. He could almost feel Jess with her face pressed to him, blowing against his skin, murmuring.
He was going to bewitch this woman and intrigue her till she was sleepy-eyed and willing and their mouths got up to all kinds of mischief on each other’s bodies.
But not now.
He hardened up instantly, imagining that. This wasn’t the time or the place. Stop it. She’s so close to being frightened of me. Think about something else. Think damn hard.
It was impossible to think of anything but Jess. Out in the clerks’ room, the whole length of the room, the blinds were up, letting the morning light in. Sun glared off every desk and cabinet and streamed through to light Jess up from behind. Wisps of hair escaped around her head and glowed like Venetian glass. A gilded girl, in a halo of dazzle.
From under her coiled braid, a black button of a nose emerged, then a gray, pointed snout, then sneaky black eyes. Lips drew back, showing fangs, upper and lower. If it bit her, he’d strangle it. “It’s tearing holes in your dress, hanging on that way.”
“He’s excited. His life’s been replete with incident lately.” She spread her fingers and let the beady black nose explore between them. “It’s kind of unusual, the way he went for you. He doesn’t bite just anybody.”
“He doesn’t bite me either, if he knows what’s good for him. Why don’t you put that son of a . . . ferret where it won’t do any damage.”
Her smile widened. She’d enjoyed seeing him dance around, avoiding teeth. He didn’t begrudge her a little vengeance. The vermin sneered over the crook of her arm, clicking like a demented clock. She said, “He doesn’t fancy you, does he? They say animals always know.”
“That’s what they say.”
“Sees unplumbed depths of infamy in you, I expect.” One-handed, cuddling the ferret, she fumbled with the latch of the cage. The ferret ran down her arm, upended, and took a stand on a bit of rolled-up carpet, cursing, tail puffed out like an angry cat’s. “He seems nervous today. You would not believe how sensitive ferrets are.”
The door of the cage closed. Steel grated between ferret jaws as Jess’s
sweet, sensitive pet tried to gnaw its way out. Death threats whirled behind its beady eyes.
He thinned his own lips back. You can be a fur muff by sundown, chum. He met the glare with one of his own.
The black paws scrubbed together in quick, tiny jerks. Then the vermin turned its back and began grooming itself. He and the ferret understood each other precisely.
“I let him loose down on the main floor after business hours.” Jess fiddled with the water dish, poking her finger through the bars. “He spends the night running through the freight stacks, terrorizing the cats. Kedger’s always in a good mood after a night rollicking around the warehouse.”
She pushed a strand of hair back from her face with a quick circling of her forefinger. It flowed down the shy crevice behind the shell of her ear, unwinding like dribbled honey.
She knew he’d come up close behind her. She was buzzing with annoyance inside, but he felt—he could almost smell—her awareness of him. She wanted him. Jess was a woman, with a woman’s knowledge. The heat in her wove through the air between them, to him, and back to her, tying them together.
He’d had lovers, wise and skillful women who’d used every secret of the courtesan’s art to arouse him. Jess did that with her smallest gesture, not even trying. She stayed absolutely still, with her back to him and her hand resting on top of the big cage, pretending nothing was going on.
She was lovely, and she drew him like the tides. What the hell was he going to do about it?
Metal tick-ticked on metal. She was playing with the lock. “Pitney’s another one Kedger likes to bite. No telling, is there?” She was reminding him Pitney was twenty feet away, glaring through the glass, motionless as a gargoyle. All the time, he could feel the nervous energy radiating off her. Every inch of her skin was gathered up, anticipating, in case he touched her.
Not today. Not tonight. But soon, he’d touch her entirely and everywhere. He’d plunge into her and feel her come apart with pleasure. He didn’t plan to make any secret of what he had in mind. Let her anticipate that for a while.
“Jess.” Not startling her, he set his fingertips on her shoulder. She was no coward. She turned at once. Her lips were uncertain, full of that pull between them that she didn’t like at all. Her brown gold eyes were unflinching.
My Lord and Spymaster sl-2 Page 13
