My Lord and Spymaster sl-2

by Joanna Bourne

  It didn’t matter. She’d have that list out of his house tonight, while he was sleeping. That was the reason the good Lord put windows in houses. So thieves could go through them.

  She said, “Tomorrow, then.”

  Her lie was shorter, but it was a lie, just the same.

  “IT is always edifying,” Adrian said, “to watch a talented amateur at work. That will be the Military Intelligence list of missing documents. Jess wanted to get her hands on that list, so she asked Reams to bring it to her. Still the most remarkably straightforward mind of my acquaintance.”

  Sebastian didn’t take his eyes off her. She was remarkable. “She’s trading. Look at her.” A dozen feet away, with thirty men and women as spectators, Reams was trying to bully Jess into some concession. Whatever those two were negotiating, she wasn’t going to budge an inch.

  Adrian watched the two with steady attention, not even blinking. “The words ‘special license’ have been mentioned. I am filled with trepidation.”

  “She’s not going to trade herself for that list.”

  But he wasn’t sure of that. Jess, committed, was Jess committed heart and soul with no regard for common sense or her own safety. There was no telling what she’d consider reasonable. “If Reams gets his hands on the Whitby heiress, Whitby won’t live out the summer. She has to know that.”

  “No fool, my Jess.”

  She wasn’t Adrian’s Jess. She was his.

  Reams inched up closer to snarl in her face. He was short, broad, and heavy and she looked delicate beside him. That was deceptive. Jess was steel. That blustery wind Reams was raising would cut past her and around her and blow itself out. I wouldn’t like to negotiate against her, right now.

  Reams had retreated from his point, huffing and snarling. The paper, folded small, was shoved in Jess’s face. She nodded. The colonel put it away again in the uniform’s coat pocket.

  It was easy to see what Jess planned. “It’s too late to go back to the Horse Guards. He’ll bring the list home. She plans to go after him and steal it tonight.” Just exactly the kind of scheme she would come up with. Clever. A good chance of succeeding. Risking her neck as if it were nothing. “He probably lives on the top floor somewhere, three stories up.”

  “A pretty townhouse in South Audley Street, but the principle’s the same.” Adrian grinned. “Three floors. A rather steep roof. I have scouted it out.”

  “So we take it away from him now.”

  “Before she does. Yes. Excellent idea. Hold this, if you will.” Adrian handed over the punch cup, still full. “We shall foil her little plot with one of our own. The list is neatly back in the colonel’s pocket. We will now wander across this room, separately, and you will pour that punch down the front of his dress uniform.”

  “My pleasure.” Oh, yes. It would be. “I’ll wait for your nod. Are you coming up on the left side or the right?”

  “Left. If you can contrive to spill just a little on me as well . . .”

  “No problem at all.”

  CINQ held a cup and strolled from one chattering, yammering, silly group to another, dropping a word here, correcting some misapprehension there, being sociable and helpful. It was surprising how few of these so-called scholars knew what they were talking about.

  The merchant’s daughter flaunted herself through the room with a fortune in pearls hanging around her neck. Ridiculous opulence. The mushroom class betrayed itself every time.

  Money-swollen peasants. Pigs in silk. They were the worst enemies of the revolution. They worshipped nothing but money. The true defenders of the poor always arose from the ruling class.

  I have men on the streets to take her. A woman in this house to watch her. The ship’s ready. It will all fall into place, any day. It could happen any day. And she’ll be on her way to France.

  She was rude to Colonel Reams, snubbing a man twice her age, a decorated war hero. The chit might wear pearls and silk, but she didn’t belong among her betters. She never would. She’ll be small and humble-mouthed when I get her to France.

  When her father hangs, whoever controls Jess Whitby, controls the money. She will be my gift to the Great Cause.

  Sebastian tramped across the parlor, graceless and aggressive, pretending to be a captain at sea. A leader of men. And everyone believed it. Men perked up, turning his way as he passed, trying to pull him over to talk, asking his opinion. He ignored them all. Tonight he was cock of the walk, and he was scurrying to protect his guinea hen. Maybe he didn’t trust the chit with a man like the colonel.

  Sebastian had it all his way tonight. When Napoleon’s Grande Armée marched into London, the bastard would lose everything. Kennett House—no, call it by its proper name—Ashton House, would be the reward for long and faithful service.

  “I was going to steal this from under his pillow or something,” Jess said. She turned the list over. Names, dates . . . all the details. Hurst, giving her presents. He’d always found exactly what she wanted.

  “You stole it for me,” she said.

  “Sebastian helped,” Adrian said.

  She spent so much of her life dealing with people who were more larcenous than she was, she felt almost honest in comparison. “I had it all planned.”

  Sebastian glowered. There was a conversation in him, just bursting to get out.

  “If I may . . .” Adrian flicked the list out of her fingers. “This is rather a lot of secrets for you to be carrying around. I will take charge of it for the moment. And, yes, you will see it again any time you express the merest soupçon of an interest. It is yours, child. I bestow the secrets of Military Intelligence upon you. Use them wisely.”

  Sebastian said, “What will Reams do when he finds out it’s missing?”

  “Which he is doing at this very moment, perhaps. What a pleasant thought.”

  “Will he suspect Jess?”

  “Most certainly. He will suspect Jess, who is, accidentally, in this case, innocent. He will suspect me. Suspect you. Suspect his doltish and muscular bodyguard. Suspect Standish, who saw him firmly and disapprovingly to the door. What he will not do is make open accusations in any direction, since this piece of paper should never have existed. Existing, it should never have left the Horse Guards. In fact,” Adrian folded it into a long flat pleat, “within an hour or two, it will never have existed at all.”

  They both looked so pleased with themselves, like boys who’d done something clever. And they had. She was very glad she wouldn’t be headed over any roofs tonight in the dark.

  The hard part was still ahead.

  “Don’t think this makes me forgive you,” she said to Adrian.

  Twenty-one

  Spitalfields

  THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO GET TO LAZARUS. IF he hasn’t sent for you and you intended to reach him alive, you come alone and on foot. Jess knew as much as you could know about approaching Lazarus. This was the first time she’d come uninvited.

  She’d nipped out of the warehouse, quiet like, in an empty furniture crate, which saved a lot of discussion all round, and caught a hackney as far as Quaker Street. Then she got out and walked.

  Lazarus was in Spitalfields these days. Exactly where, she didn’t know. An apple seller and the first crossing sweeper she came to ignored the sign. When she stood in front of the blind beggar and told him, “I’m looking for the Dead Man,” and held her thumb and index finger in the shape of an L, he looked her over and said, “Bell Lane.”

  So Lazarus had set himself up near Artillery Passage. Not a long hike. She didn’t have anything more important to do this afternoon, did she?

  Spitalfields was full of pushcarts and pie sellers and shabby men lounging about the streets—Jews and Irish, a sprinkling of Germans and Italians, Lascar sailors and blacks. She blended into the polyglot crowd well enough. Her dress was dark cloth that could pass for ordinary. She wore no jewelry but her mother’s locket on a ribbon, and that looked like trumpery till you got close. Nobody’d guess she had a fortune in
rubies in her pocket.

  Scared the spit right out of her mouth, it did, going back to Lazarus. She might be doing something fairly unwise. But he was holding the last piece of the puzzle. No other way to get it but to go to him and ask.

  She strolled past a church and up the next street. There were trees in the churchyard. Maples or oaks or something like that. The leaves weren’t just one green. They were lots of different greens, like different dye lots of silk. The birds on the iron railings were sparrows, with little brown bibs on them.

  She kept walking, not thinking about where she was going. She’d just fool herself along, bit by bit.

  For years, Papa kept her out of England so Lazarus wouldn’t take her back. Even now, Papa paid blood money to Lazarus—she didn’t even know how much—to leave her be. Today, she was walking right back into Lazarus’s hands.

  She heard footsteps behind her. She was committed now. No turning back.

  “Whotcher want with the Dead Man?”

  Lazarus’s Runner was twelve or so, dressed in a miscellany of oversized clothing. He had the face of a choirboy and eyes devoid of humanity. She gave the sign again.

  “The Dead Man don’t see every trull what ask ’im,” the boy said with heavy sarcasm.

  She gave the second sign, the secret one, drawing her right finger on her left palm, crossing the lifeline. Then she showed him the cut on her thumb, the one shaped like an L.

  The old eyes in the unlined face weren’t impressed. “I don’t know you.”

  “Tell him Jess Whitby asks to see him.”

  “Cooey . . . Jess the Hand. A flash mort.” There was ancient evil in that grin. This one would enjoy tearing her to pieces if Lazarus pointed his finger in her direction.

  He left, running. She stopped worrying about the bauble. From here on, she was either under Lazarus’s protection, or she was his meat. Either way, it made her untouchable. Somebody would come soon to show her the padding ken. Lazarus wasn’t far now.

  She slowed to watch boys knocking a stone back and forth with sticks. She was almost sure Lazarus wouldn’t kill her. Almost.

  “This way.” It was the evil-eyed boy. She followed him down one street and up another. These big old houses had been rich once. They were cut into mean apartments now, with shabby folks sharing rooms. Everything here was makeshift and meager, a life of skimped meals, and patched clothes, and hanging on to respectability by a fingernail. Before she’d sold herself to Lazarus, she and Mama had lived like this.

  The padding crib was in a sizable brick house, the biggest house on this part of the street. A pair of bullyboys sat on the front steps, enjoying the sunshine, throwing dice against the wall. She recognized them from the old days. They were brutal animals, just intelligent enough to be surprised and speculative as she went by.

  Nothing had changed from when she’d lived in places like this. In the big front parlor Turkey carpets crisscrossed up and down the length of the floor. Lamps glowed through a haze of tobacco smoke. In untidy heaps of bedding in the corners, men, boys, and a few women slept in a litter of bottles and old cookshop meals.

  This was where Lazarus held court. On a long table, silver platters and candlesticks, watches, chains, furs, purses, and even jewels were piled up, awaiting division. This was spoil. This was a demonstration of his power, if anyone who reached this point needed one. The best plunder of London passed through the lair of Lazarus.

  There had been a Lazarus in London for three hundred years. When the old one died, a new one took his place. Lazarus was the Dead Man Risen, the Cunning Man, the King of Thieves. He was the master of the London underworld. When she was eight, he’d bought her soul.

  Lazarus knew the moment she came in, even if he was pretending he didn’t. He sat in his big chair, talking to a couple of men. He’d be over fifty now, but he didn’t look it. He dressed simple—a belcher neckcloth and leather vest. Workingman’s clothing. He had a broad, brown, steady, reliable face. He was the kind of man you’d hire as coachman, till he looked straight at you, and you saw his eyes.

  The Hand, nowadays, was a boy about ten, ragged, wiry, and keen. He sat, tailor-fashion, on the floor next to Lazarus, smoking a pipe. Back by the wall, a pregnant woman hunched on a sofa. Hair the color of cream fell down over her shoulders. Her arms hugged her swollen belly. Black John stood to one side, looking somber and scarred and intimidating as ever. His eyes were remote. At one time, she’d have counted him as a friend. No way to tell now.

  Her horrid young guide evaporated. She walked into the room alone. Lazarus didn’t look up.

  Well. What had she expected? She sighed and walked all the long way down the room to a spot a few feet from where Lazarus sat. Then, very simply, she knelt.

  SEBASTIAN sat on the arm of the red velvet sofa and wound his watch. It kept his hands busy so they didn’t slam into Mr. Horace Buchanan, clerk at Whitby’s, snitch for the British Service.

  “. . . that smelly animal rubbing itself all over the desk. I brought her the Morpeth papers to sign and she snapped at me. Told me to get out.” Buchanan lounged in his chair, expansive and at ease. “Well, I did, of course. But not before I saw she’d just finished writing a letter. And . . .” he paused significantly, “it was something she didn’t want me to see.”

  “Did you manage to read any of it?” Adrian was politely attentive.

  “I didn’t then, since she practically pushed me out of there. And naturally, I had to chase over half the warehouse to find MacLeish, since he’s never in his office when you want him, so I . . .”

  Buchanan was a slender man in his thirties, with a well-starched cravat and gentlemanly hands. He’d paid for the expensive coat he wore by selling Whitby’s secrets.

  Sebastian didn’t trust clerks who dressed better than he did.

  “. . . supposed to do with the Morpeth contract since our esteemed proprietress was too busy playing with her pet to give me approval on the final terms. It isn’t as if I have nothing better to do.”

  Adrian’s sober nod implied this was a world-shaking disclosure. Doyle, looking bovine and harmless, stood at the front window of the parlor, watching Meeks Street.

  “When I got back from that, Pitney was in her office, helping himself to a cup of tea. He’s one of the favored few who stroll into her office anytime they want. They were talking cozy as turtledoves, the two of them. Then all hell broke loose. Old Pitney’s pounding the table, snarling like a dog, and little Miss Jessamyn’s laying down the law like a fishwife.” Buchanan pursed his lips. “Fine doings in a business office. Pitney kept telling her Josiah would forbid it. That’s all I could hear. He said Josiah would absolutely forbid it.”

  “What was that, I wonder,” Adrian said.

  “I don’t know. MacLeish came over and sent me back to my desk.” Buchanan brushed the sleeve of his coat. “But I do know Pitney got overruled. After a while he toddled off to open the safe, looking unhappy. It’s no work for a man, taking orders from a woman. I don’t know how Pitney and MacLeish stomach it.”

  Sebastian put his watch away. Someday soon he’d find an hour to beat Buchanan to a pulp.

  The clerk gave a wide-lipped smile. “Pitney came creeping back like a whipped dog. He brought her something—a little wrapped-up packet. Something from the safe.”

  “What do you think Pitney brought her?” Adrian said amiably. “That little package. Did you see what it was?”

  Doyle extracted an ivory toothpick from his pocket and began to pick his teeth.

  “Something valuable.” Buchanan pinched the knit fabric of his pantaloons between thumb and forefinger and adjusted the fit over his knee. “That is, I didn’t actually see what he brought, but I watched Pitney come creeping by with it, clutching it to his bosom. He might as well have been wearing a sign, ‘I am carrying something immensely important.’ ”

  “And then?” Adrian prompted.

  “Well, she left, don’t you know? Just took her hat off the peg and left, right in the middle of t
he day, without a word to anyone. I . . . ah . . . took the opportunity to drop a few small matters on her desk. Receipts and so on. There was nothing on her blotter except for . . .” He swished the tail of his coat aside and drew a small letter from his pocket. “. . . this.”

  Adrian held out his hand.

  “It was what she was writing earlier, obviously. The letter she didn’t want me to see. You can see it’s addressed to her father. Normally, she’d hand letters over to the messenger boy.” Buchanan’s pale blue eyes slid from one man to another. “But she left it there on her desk. I thought that had to be suspicious. Since I was coming here anyway to drop off a few papers for Mr. Whitby, it was quite natural to pick this up and bring it along.”

  Adrian kept his hand out. Buchanan held the letter tight, plucking at the corners.

  “She meant for it to be delivered, and it had Whitby’s name on it. It could have been that she just forgot to give it to the messenger. She left in a hurry.” Jerkily, he laid it in Adrian’s hand and stood up. “I’ll just go ask Mr. Whitby if he has commissions for me. I’m not . . . Mr. MacLeish may ask me why I was out of the office.”

  Adrian inspected the seal of the letter. “You opened it. That was not strictly necessary, Mr. Buchanan.”

  “I thought it best. If it had been quite innocent, I wouldn’t have bothered you with it.” Buchanan wiped his fingertips against the cloth of his jacket. “It pretends to be a polite note saying she’ll be late, but the name she mentions is not one of our customers. I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Thank you,” Adrian said. “We’ll study it carefully.”

  Doyle laid a huge, friendly hand on Buchanan and pushed him toward the door. “We’ll take care of it.”

  “If I could talk to Mr. Whitby—”

  “Not now. They’ll be wanting you back at work, I expect.”

  “I knew you’d want to see this at once. If there’s anything else you need from the files, I can—”