“Tell me why you went to see Lazarus.”
The brightness of her closed up, like a flower closing. Her mouth got obstinate. She was beautiful when she was soft, looking at flowers and smiling. He liked her like this, too. Mulish.
“What did you ask Lazarus for? You came all that way and you risked your neck. What was it?”
She didn’t want to say. At last, she shrugged. “Sailing dates. Lazarus keeps records of all that. Everybody who pays the pence gets writ down. It’s all there—names, ships, dates.”
Every ship, large and small, paid the pence to Lazarus, from the schooners anchored in the Pool of London to the coal barges in Stepney. “He keeps records?”
“Of course. He’d get stole blind otherwise. There’s just nobody honest.” She brooded on that. “I’m not saying he keeps banker’s records. Every couple of months they toss them in a back room. Some get lost. But he has accounts going back years.”
And that was the last, missing piece. Lazarus kept the records nobody else did, the listing of all the ships in London. Amazing. That was why she’d walked back into the padding ken and bargained with that monster. “Get word to Lazarus. Tell him to send them to the Admiralty tomorrow. You’ll find out for sure whether I’m Cinq, then.”
“Guess so.” Her eyes were gold, like old coins, when she looked at him.
“I wish you believed me today.”
“That’s the trouble. I do believe you.” An organ grinder a few streets away was endlessly repeating a short, discordant tune. Jess looked away and plucked at the fabric of her dress. “Feels like betraying Papa, when I trust you this much.” She still had a lapful of flowers, but it seemed she didn’t want them there any longer. She began picking them up and letting them fall, one by one, into the river. “I’ll know tomorrow, won’t I?”
They sat and watched the river about three barges’ worth, saying nothing. There was a coy, unreliable southwest wind winding past them and a high tide, just turning after the slack. Far downriver, near the Tower, amid a forest of tall masts, a square stern brig upped anchor and let the tide pick her up. They’d dropped the foresail to catch wind enough to maneuver. Without a glass it was too far away for him to read her name.
Jess broke the silence. “Lazarus would have found some way to keep me if you hadn’t come. I like to think he wouldn’t have, but . . .” She shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “He’s strong. And the old life tempts me. It wouldn’t have been easy to get away from him a second time. I owe you myself.”
“You wouldn’t have worked for him again, but you might have suffered for it. And I would have come to get you out. Jess, why did you sell yourself to Lazarus?”
“I wish I could figure out how your mind works. How did we start this?” She scrubbed a hand across her face, looking perplexed. “That was a long time ago. Let’s talk about something else.”
“You’re supposed to be grateful to me. Prove it. Tell me.”
She gave that little quirk upward at the side of her mouth. There wasn’t a more expressive face in London. “You’re doing it again, Sebastian . . . getting me to do things. Sometimes you sneak them out of me artful, and sometimes you just ask. I never know which it’s going to be.”
“This time it’s just asking. I’ll be artful later.”
“It’s all very sordid. You don’t want to hear about it.”
“If I didn’t want to hear, I wouldn’t ask.”
“Oh Lord, if you want to know . . .” Twenty feet away, a seagull swooped down and scooped up one of those violets floating out to sea. A second later it dropped the flower and flew off, looking disgruntled. Jess watched, while she mulled everything over and decided to tell him. “I was real young. Eight, I guess. My father went off to France and got himself arrested. We didn’t know that. We just knew he didn’t come back. I did my best, but the money ran out. My mother and I ended up . . . there.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, downriver, toward the worst of London’s slums. “There was a pimp who came to get my mother. I ended up killing him.”
This graceful girl in front of him, the reflective, intelligent face, the subtle, simple dress. He tried, but it was impossible to match her with any part of this—not with pimps, not with killing, not with Lazarus.
“You cannot imagine how much trouble I was in that night. He got the knife away from me and fell on the stupid thing, and I was covered with blood everywhere. He had about a million cousins. I was going to get me and Mama killed real, real bad.”
He could see her hands trembling where she had them fisted in her dress. “I knew Lazarus. Knew him face-to-face. I’d been picking pockets to feed us, and Lazarus made me pay the pence right into his hand. He does that with some of them he’s watching, though I didn’t know it then.” Her hands opened and closed again, clutching at the cotton of her skirt. “He was taking about everything I lifted, too, which isn’t like him. I don’t know what he thought we was living on.”
He snarled. He heard himself do it. She didn’t notice. She was a dozen years in the past.
“He wanted me to work for him. All the kids I knew dreamed about that—working for Lazarus. But I didn’t want any part of it. Every week, he kept talking about me being a Runner.” She sketched a motion in the air. “And I just danced away.”
Eight years old, and setting herself against Lazarus. She never had a chance.
“When I killed Lumpy—that was the pimp . . . Sebastian, do you know what it’s like when you look and look and the world has got so narrow there’s only one thing to do? I went to Lazarus for help. Only he wouldn’t let me just be a Runner. He said I had to take his shilling. He bought me. Bought my soul, he said.”
“You killed somebody for him?”
Unexpectedly, she grinned. “That was just him playing with you. He took Lumpy’s death. Made up some story and stuck a knife into the table, the way he does, and took the death as tribute. He never made me do things like that. Knew I was dead soft. Used to scold me for it.”
There was a scrap of orange peel on her skirt. She picked it off and flicked it over into the water. “I bought sausages with it. With the shilling he gave me. I was so bloody hungry.”
He thought about chopping Lazarus into fish bait. He’d use a dull knife.
“It was good with Lazarus, after I stopped fighting him.” Jess stared into the past. “That place behind Lazarus, where the boy was—that was mine. I was Hand. You don’t understand. That’s like being vizier or something. I could go anywhere. Do anything. It was wonderful.”
That, he could picture. Jess as a child, watchful and silent, sitting at the wall behind Lazarus, running his errands all over London. After she stopped fighting him, of course. What an absolute, bloody monster that man was.
“Hard for me at first,” she said. “Nobody’d ever run me before and I wasn’t used to it.”
Lazarus knew exactly how to control someone like Jess. He’d owned her soul, all right. “I can see it might be difficult.”
She looked at him then, really seeing him for the first time in a while. “It wasn’t like that—what you’re thinking. I was . . . special. He used to just laugh at me when I cheeked him. He’d do things for me, almost anything I asked. And when I fell, he kept them looking for me till they found me. And he came and got me out. Had ’em kidnap some nob doctor to set my arm. He sat up all night, talking to me, to keep me from knowing how much I hurt.”
The man had sent her scrambling across roofs. Lazarus should be divided into many, bloody pieces.
“I was with him three years. I would have died for him.”
It was a miracle she’d survived at all.
People strolled by along the river walk. Jess straightened her dress over her knees and kept her eyes down at the printed pattern in the cloth when she said the next thing. “I have a favor to ask, since we’re just sitting here and I’m already thirty foot deep in debt. I want to give you a shilling, in exchange for that one you gave Lazarus. I want to . . . buy myself back
from you. I know it sounds stupid.”
It made her uncomfortable, him owning her soul. Good.
She said, “It’s just passing a shilling piece from hand to hand. Call it superstition.”
When he didn’t say a word, she glanced up and bit her lip, wondering what he was thinking about, probably. And there she was, leaned back on the stone lion, her skirts rucked halfway up. Any other woman in London would have realized how accessible she looked.
“Do you think I own you because of that shilling?” He leaned forward. Very gently, he ran the back of one finger in a smooth line down from her neck, across her bodice. He slowed when he got to her breast, but he didn’t stop. “If I own you, I can do this.”
She got quiet. She looked down to where his hand was, not quite believing what he was doing. “For God’s sake, Sebastian. We’re in the bloody street here.”
“Somebody I own doesn’t get to object to anything I do. Remember all those years in the East. Lots of women for sale in the East.” He slipped along, headed for the crinkle of her nipple. It rose up under the fabric as he approached. He didn’t touch, just circled round, softly, with the tip of his finger. She was lovely. “Generally they cost more.”
It would be interesting to see what she did. There was a good chance she’d break his nose and heave him in the river. She could do that, if she wanted.
She batted his hand away. “Stop this. Will you stop this? There must be fifty people can see you.”
“Nobody’s looking.” He didn’t give a damn who was looking. She’d run herself snug up to that stone lion. No retreat in that direction, unless it got up and walked off.
“This isn’t Paris. Nobody in this town makes love in the open but pigeons.” Her voice was all beautiful and tense with what he was doing to her. She clutched at his arm. No. Not fighting. Getting closer.
It seemed a good time to kiss her. As always, she was an intriguing combination of ignorance and some theoretical knowledge and a high level of native skill. After the first shudder, she just held on to him, getting softer and more willing every minute. With Jess you knew when she was willing, because you didn’t get your teeth knocked out.
She pulled away and licked her lips. Lovely lips, fuller than usual, from the kissing. “This is going to be a report on Adrian’s desk in an hour.”
“Should be more interesting than what he generally reads. Are you letting me do this because I bought you for a shilling, Jess? Is that why?”
Dazed eyes. Unfocused. Vulnerable. She put her hand up on his cheek, feeling the texture of him there. It was all new to her. She had no practice with the way a man feels. Her angel-faced martyr boy probably hadn’t even shaved yet.
“Forget the damned shilling,” she whispered.
Triumph streaked through him, stronger even than the lust that was running amok in his blood. Mine. Not bought or stolen or taken. Just mine from the beginning of time. Mine even before I met her.
He kissed her deep, entering in slow as if he were going into her another way. She didn’t recognize that yet. There was so much for her to learn. She vibrated under his hand everywhere he touched her. “Owning’s for objects. I don’t make love to objects.”
Her mind was taking its merchandise inside and closing down the stall. Only a few thoughts left. Jess, thinking, with all the force and calculation of her damnably cunning mind, was a formidable opponent. Jess, twitching each time he caressed that sweet nubbins on her breast, was just a woman. He liked dealing with her as just a woman, once in a while. It gave both of them a rest.
This wasn’t Paris. It wasn’t so usual to see a couple locked together like this in London town. They got stares and giggles from people walking by. And the hell with them. He kissed her a while, and it just got better and better.
Then they stopped kissing and sat there breathing deep at each other, and she outlined his lips with her fingertips. It was as if she were worshipping the flesh and bone of him.
“You picked a silly place for this, Sebastian.” He could see in her eyes she was letting herself fall in love with him. She was about three-quarters deep so far and sinking fast. He wondered if she knew. Almost too late for her to stop. It had been too late for him for a long time.
“This is a fine place.” His hand was on her thigh. She picked out soft fabric for her dresses. Like so much about her, you couldn’t tell how good it was till you looked at it closely. You didn’t know even then, unless you were canny as hell, the way she was. “Beautiful view, for one thing.”
She looked him full in the face. “I like it.” There was no man alive who deserved what was in her eyes, least of all him. But he’d take it all. This was Jess. He could no more let her go than he could stop from breathing.
He cupped the back of her head, into that hair all gold and brown, and fitted her close to him and held her strong and comforting till her body stopped quivering. The whole noisy world stretched out on every side, and he had the most important part of it right in his hands.
“Who do you belong to, Jess?” he asked, real quiet.
“I belong to myself.”
“Good. That’s a start. Do you have a shilling on you?”
She looked up at him. “Yes.”
“Hand it over.”
She fumbled in a pocket among the farthings and pence and picked one out. Not as new and shiny as the one he’d given for her, but a perfectly workable shilling.
“There,” he said. “You’ve bought your soul back. Take better care of it next time.” He tucked the shilling away safe in his watch pocket.
She said, “Don’t spend it all on sausages.”
Twenty-six
Kennett House
FLORA’S BABY WAS FINE, BUT HE WAS STARTING to get hungry. They were getting a little goat’s milk down him in the kitchen, but Eunice wouldn’t let them get a wet nurse in. She just kept sending him back up to Flora, who left him in the cradle.
Flora wasn’t doing well at all. She’d been lying all day, staring, answering direct questions, but otherwise not saying much. She ignored the baby.
Eunice evidently thought Jess might help. Anyhow, she’d sent her up to sit with Flora as soon as she got home from the warehouse.
There was a chair by Flora’s bed. Jess sat there and put her feet up on the rung of the chair and looked out the window and tugged at a strand of hair. So many people were expecting her to find an answer tomorrow. Maybe she wouldn’t find anything. Maybe she wouldn’t like the answer she found. She closed her eyes, feeling hollow.
“You ran away from Lazarus. No one does that.” It was about the first thing Flora had said to anyone, just on her own.
“It’s complicated.” She went back to pulling hair through her fingers. She wasn’t feeling terribly talkative, herself, right then.
“I heard about you. From when you were Hand. Jess the Hand.”
She shrugged. The baby was making weak sounds in the cradle, like a kitten or something. They sounded like that the first couple weeks. “That was years back.”
“You tunneled into a bank once, and everybody almost drowned when it started to rain. They still laugh about that.”
“Always rains in this town. I’d go about it different if I was doing it now.” People had been patting the woman’s hand all day long and encouraging her to talk. Maybe a little quiet was what she needed.
Flora sat up in bed. She was older than Jess had thought. Twenty-six or twenty-eight. Eunice had put her in a huge white cotton nightgown that buttoned up the front with about sixty little buttons. Her hair was scraped hard back from her face, and she looked exhausted. But she was beautiful. Lazarus always picked pretty girls to play with.
“He was always telling Twist how you did everything better. He said you could plan a caper so it ran like a gold watch.”
“That’s just him talking. Me, he used to tell about this kid named Hawker. Before my time. Seemed Hawker could do anything but walk on water.”
Flora twisted her hands in the quilt
s. “They’re very kind here. But they don’t understand. I have done such things. You know the kind of things I had to do.”
“Nobody’ll know if you don’t tell them.”
“There are whole pieces of myself I can’t find anymore. I became . . . I cannot believe what I have become.”
“You get over some of it, I think. You don’t go back to what you were.”
“You understand, don’t you? The rest of them just say I can do whatever I want and not to worry. But you understand.” Flora lay down and looked at the ceiling again. “I can’t go home.”
“Up to you, really. You can be whatever you want to when you don’t have anything to lose.”
That made Flora look thoughtful. She wondered if she’d said the right thing, then decided in the long run it probably didn’t matter what she said. Flora would work it out for herself. Everybody did.
She sat beside Flora for a while, planning what she’d do tomorrow. She’d use the cargo manifests, if she had to. It depended how much information Sebastian had managed to find for her.
A maid pushed through the door, carrying a tray. It was fish stew. That meant it was time for her own lunch.
The baby was lying in the cradle, waving his hands around, looking fairly unhappy as she walked by. “Better make some arrangement for this one if you don’t want him. Another couple hours, and he’ll start getting scared, all alone, when it gets dark.” She thought that covered it.
Either that worked or something else did. Anyway, Flora fed the baby, and they fell asleep in bed together that night.
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