Beauty Like the Night

by Joanna Bourne

  Her madre had not been an admirable mother, perhaps, but she had been someone to come home to. Now there was no one.

  The pain of losing Mamá came less often now. Sometimes it still stabbed like a hot poker when she didn’t expect it. Like now. There was another sort of pain that was long and slow and sour in her whole body and came to her when she lay in bed, trying to sleep. That was guilt, because she did not feel the sorrow a daughter should.

  Two streets north, the crier raised his voice to say it was three of the clock on a clear, cold night.

  It was time to end the vigil for tonight. She needed the hours of sleep left in this night and some food. It would involve potatoes. In a different and better world MacDonald would be her father or her uncle and she would be a young MacDonald in training to become the next generation to serve de Cabrillacs and follow them around the world on adventures. She wouldn’t have to deal with Monsieur Deverney who had no use for her.

  She put her hands inside her coat between her unimpressive breasts and held the amulet through her shirt. It was cold and heavy and ancient and she did not care that she had no right to it. She would defy them all. She would take what she wanted, as Mamá did.

  She whispered, “Madre de dios, me ayude a hacer mi trabajo. Trae a mis enemigo a mí para que yo pueda ser su muerte.”

  Mother of God, bless my work. Bring my enemy to me so that I may be his death.

  Fourteen

  DAWN had not yet rattled its chariot into the streets of London when Doyle arrived at Meeks Street. Wellington was home and relatively safe, with a squad of dragoons posted around the neighborhood.

  Doyle had three hours’ sleep under his belt, which wasn’t nearly enough. But there was work to do and his Maggie wasn’t in bed with him, which made sleeping there less attractive than it might otherwise have been.

  Felicity came to open the door at Meeks Street, alert and irritable. The front parlor had been emptied of most of its furniture. It looked better that way, frankly. Since he was a senior officer of the British Service with years of experience, he could figure out what had happened to it.

  The lamps in the hall were turned high and bright. He could hear muted voices upstairs. It looked like nobody had slept.

  He walked to the Chinese dining room at the back of the house looking for a strong cup of tea, which he’d neglected to get at home for reasons involving his youngest children. There were plenty of lamps lit here too. The wallpaper showed ladies in kimonos carrying fans and parasols, crossing little half-moon bridges or standing decorously under fringed trees. A nice restful room if you didn’t know who met here and the sort of things they discussed.

  They’d built the fire high. The curtains were drawn back to let in the light when it chose to arrive. Coffee and tea and food were spread out on the sideboard. More food on the table. The rangy, ragged-eared house cat—named Cat—sat squarely on a copy of the Morning Herald, eyeing the sliced ham, biding his time.

  Hawker sat at the head of the table, his feet propped on one chair, evening coat and cravat thrown over another. His shirt was open at the collar, his cuffs rolled back, and his waistcoat unbuttoned. He drank French coffee from a small Étoilles cup. That was his drink of choice for late at night and the best clue that he hadn’t slept.

  Doyle counted empty cups and made an estimate of how many agents had been through here. Seven or eight, it looked like. He said, “Somebody’s stolen that couch from the front room. A couple of chairs too.”

  “I sent them out for an airing.”

  “Time somebody did.”

  “They’ll find their way home eventually,” Hawker said. “Hideous chickens always come home to roost.”

  Doyle had chosen a West Country accent this morning, overlaid with Cockney. One of his favorite voices. Speak as you dress, he told young agents. “The Great Man’s home and under guard. He’ll spend the day at Whitehall. Nobody can get to him there.”

  “Sufficient unto the day.”

  Not so indulgent of the cat as Hawker, Doyle displaced it from the table as he passed and went to wrap his hand around the teapot on the sideboard. Not piping hot, but still acceptably warm.

  A tray of bread and meat and a bowl of apples kept company with the tea service. On the long table, plates and cups alternated with copies of the morning papers. Stillwater’s evening gloves languished on the mantel. Somebody’s hat perched askew on the chiming clock. The agents themselves had scattered elsewhere.

  “You haven’t slept.” Doyle poured milk, added tea to it and two lumps of sugar. He wore leather and rough wool today, looking like a short-haul carter working the North Road or a publican near the docks. He took his first slurp of tea still standing, like an honest tradesman at a tea stall in the market.

  “Not yet,” Hawker said. “We dealt with Sévie’s office. All of us. The sad part is, she’ll return that furniture.”

  “I raised an honest daughter. I could do the first work on O’Grady.”

  “No need. I find myself wide awake and moderately annoyed. I’ll employ that usefully upon him.”

  Doyle nodded and drank tea. He held the delicate teacup in his great paw of a hand with a natural-looking awkwardness.

  “We’ll bring O’Grady down”—Hawker looked out the window—“soon. Felicity’s heating pokers. Nothing like a hot poker to encourage reasoned discourse, I always say.”

  “So you do.” Doyle selected sliced ham and cheese, folded bread around them, and ate standing at the sideboard. He’d sneaked out of the house without breakfast because Sévie, not to mention the rest of his pack of sharp-eared offspring, would have heard him in the kitchen and come down to keep him company. As it was, he’d had to send the youngest back to bed. “I’ve put two men at my own house. Bodyguards for the children.”

  “Good.”

  Doyle sat down, chewing. “What do we know about this Deverney?”

  That was another reason he hadn’t stayed to eat breakfast. He wasn’t ready to chat with Sévie about her choice of dancing partners.

  “The French embassy vouches for him.” Hawker pulled at his lower lip. “It’s a genuine title. Old aristocracy and full of military honors. Find a doomed charge in the history of France and it was led by a de Verney. Some of the embassy people know him by sight.”

  “Careless of him to let his wife get murdered, apart from losing a daughter. And his wife lived in England while he’s in France.” Doyle frowned. “Sévie’s been jaunting around the city with him.”

  “Problematic.”

  “Ain’t it, though?” Doyle finished his tea in a single long swallow. Small teacup. Large man. “When I pointed that out, she said to keep my nose out of her business, but more politely.”

  “That’s what a good upbringing does for you. Lets you tell somebody to go to hell politely. Why was he at the Carlingtons’?”

  “Good question.”

  “Why the devil did Sévie dance with a man who brings a knife to her bedroom? The world’s not overcrowded with men who do that.” Hawker put his cup in the saucer with a click. “Here’s our guest coming along.”

  O’Grady’s approach grew louder. The scuffle and bump on the staircase held curses twisting through it like snakes. Some of the curses were in Gaelic, which Doyle understood and Hawker could make an educated guess at.

  “We’ll see how talkative he becomes. I will attempt to be terrifying.” Hawker went to look out the window where it was not noticeably more bright than it had been half an hour ago. He began collecting dirty cups and plates. “Deverney does not appear to have served in any of the varieties of French Army. Perhaps he is a fainthearted and cowardly civilian.”

  “He climbs stone walls, apparently.”

  “So he does. I will point out that dealing with murderers and thieves was supposed to keep Sévie out of trouble. I distinctly remember discussing this with all and sundry b
ack when she set up in business.”

  “It seemed a good idea at the time.” Doyle went to make himself another roll of ham and cheese and refill his teacup.

  “‘Let her chase murderers,’ you said. ‘It’ll cheer her up. It’ll give her an interest in life now that she can’t spy on the French.’”

  “I did say something of the sort,” Doyle admitted.

  “‘A good steady profession’ you called it. ‘There will always be murderers,’ you said.”

  “I was right about that last one.”

  “It wasn’t enough.” Hawker balanced crockery across the room. Sometimes, on assignment, he’d played a waiter. He’d learned the work in the kitchen of British Service headquarters in Paris. “Murderers aren’t keeping her sufficiently busy. I watched her with Deverney. Tell me there’s nothing going on there. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “Can’t do that.”

  “I’ve waited five years for her to be stupid with somebody the way she was stupid with that Frenchman who went and got himself killed.”

  “I doubt he did it on purpose.”

  “She meets ten thousand Englishmen—street sweepers to royal dukes—and she has to take up with another questionable Frenchman.”

  “That sums it up.”

  “You’d think she did it on purpose.” Hawker clattered cups into the dumbwaiter. “At least she’s armed.”

  “A cogent summation of the women of my family.”

  Hawker took up pacing, quartering the room. The dining room wasn’t really large enough to pace in, which annoyed him, and Cat curled around his ankles, getting in his way. “I suppose he could be Police Secrète.”

  “Not that I know of.” Doyle knew most of the French spy service.

  “Stillwater says he left Carlington House singing obscene songs, leaning on a drunken secrétaire from their embassy. I admire the art of an exit like that.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Sévie won’t like it.”

  “I said, ‘Talk to him,’ not break his bones.”

  “Go ahead. I’m not that stupid, but maybe you are.” Doyle chewed and swallowed. “He says he’s a wine merchant.”

  “And I’m a seller of jellied eels.” Having collected the used china, Hawker started pacing again. “Sévie has to see he’s not what he says he is. He’s not harmless.”

  “I don’t think she’d be interested in somebody harmless.”

  “Why can’t she fall in love with a banker? Pax knows some splendid bankers.” Hawker picked an apple from the bowl and began tossing it and catching it. “Yes?”

  Felicity came through from the study into the dining room and closed the door behind her, shutting off a string of colorful complaints. “Are we going to start with O’Grady anytime soon? The pokers are hot.”

  Fifteen

  SÉVIE woke in her bedroom, knowing she was not alone.

  Somebody—two somebodies—had climbed into bed with her. She opened one eye. A gray object dangled in her line of sight, suspended by its long tail, swinging slightly. It had two ears, little paws, and whiskers. A mouse. A thoroughly dead mouse.

  “I took it away from Shadrack-the-Cat,” Anson said.

  Anna clambered up on her other side. “I did.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did.”

  Anson was five, Anna three. They could keep this up for hours.

  “And you brought it to me,” Sévie said. “How kind.”

  “Maman isn’t here,” Anna explained.

  For which Maman was no doubt grateful. A chilly castle in Scotland and Sylvie’s impending baby would be skittles and beer compared to the joys of home life.

  “She’s helping Sylvie have the baby,” Anson said.

  “It takes a long time.” Anna frowned. “Till Trinity Term. Then Maman comes home.”

  She grinned to think of Sylvie’s baby arriving promptly with the new school term in April. But that sounded about right. Three weeks till the baby was due. Maman would stay to help out. Then Maman and Justine would make the long trip home from the Highlands.

  A low growl came from under her bed. More company. She rolled over and looked down in time to see a gray paw snake out to bat at the bedding. Shadrack. The whole gang assembled.

  “Papa’s gone,” Anna said. “He left in the dark.” She began to bounce gently on the bed.

  “Before morning,” Anson said. “‘In the belly of the night,’ he called it.”

  “He was wearing his scar. He said it was time for rebskeletons to be in bed.”

  “He meant us,” Anson said.

  Rapscallions, she translated. “Did he now?”

  “Then Shadrack caught a mouse,” Anna said. “Behind the curtains in the front room.”

  “This one,” Anson said, showing her.

  “Shadrack was going to eat it. Do people eat mice? Are they good?” Anna wrinkled her forehead and considered this one.

  “Not unless you are very, very hungry.” She’d been that hungry when she was Anna’s age, in Paris, during the Revolution. Her brothers and sisters never would be.

  Anson had been found, newborn, in a gully near the Customs Wharf. Anna, barely toddling, in an alley in Wapping. They were the youngest of the family.

  Dawn was some little distance away, but it looked like her time allotted to sleep was ended. She’d take Anna and Anson, collect their aging monster of a dog, Muffin, and head for the kitchen. The kids would get under the feet of the kitchenmaids and she’d drink tea and eat toast and possibly decide what to do about Monsieur Deverney. She’d read the Morning Chronicle when it arrived.

  She did not like to wake up and immediately think about Monsieur Deverney. She didn’t like finding the man so firmly settled inside her head.

  She said, “Let’s give the mouse—it’s a very fine mouse—back to Shadrack and go find some breakfast.”

  “I’ll give it to him,” Anson said.

  “No. I will.”

  “Me.”

  “Both of us,” Anna compromised.

  They ducked under the bed with an offering of dead mouse. The bed shook for a bit and Shadrack, with mouse, sprinted from the room.

  “Now . . .” She pulled herself from under the covers and rose slowly from the mattress. “I am Shadrack the Mighty and you are my helpless victims. I will show you how I deal with little mousies.”

  Shrieks. She cornered them on the hearthrug and threw herself upon the pair of them, tickling.

  Sometimes she considered setting up housekeeping on her own. There’d be no one to poke into her business or ask awkward questions about who she danced with. It would be nice to sleep late once in a while.

  But then she wouldn’t come home in the evening to her noisy, welcoming pack of brothers and sisters. To Papa and a scattering of Service agents gathered at the dinner table, discussing cases. To Max, home from Cambridge, full of Greek philosophers and politics. To the ingenious mischief of the twins, Bart and Turner, twelve, and the terror of Eton’s schoolmasters. To this pair of demons who woke her at the crack of dawn with dead rodents. To Maman, who made them a family.

  There were many reasons she’d never marry. She’d never found a man she wanted to be that close to, not since Gaëtan. She’d never again fallen into that madness of desire and longing. She’d been spared that.

  Anson and Anna ran ahead of her down the stairs, making a wholly unnecessary clatter. Worrisome thoughts also accompanied her. It was time to admit to herself that Deverney disturbed her on some deep level. She desired him. She would admit that and push it away because it was not important. She would not be ruled by her body. Not by cold or hunger. Not by fear. Not by the pleasure a man offered. She found Deverney intriguing, but she would also not be lured by mystery.

  She shouldn’t feel anythi
ng for him. He might need arresting at some point.

  But beneath all the common sense, around it and behind it and under it, was the knowledge that she’d loved and destroyed one good man. That was enough for any lifetime. She wouldn’t take that risk again.

  She did not need a lover. She’d arranged her life exactly as she wanted it. He offered nothing she wanted. Nothing she should want.

  Sixteen

  IT was nearly dawn when Pilar crawled into bed. She wouldn’t get much sleep. In a few hours, MacDonald would climb the stairs from Famble’s rooms. He’d bang on the wood of the cupboard under the stair as he went by and mention the benefits of a good morning scrub at the pump. In return for that good advice MacDonald would expect two dozen buckets of water carried up from the pump outside to fill the cistern.

  The mattress underneath her was stuffed with straw. The rough ticking and scratchy woven blanket kept most of the straw from sticking into her flesh. The blanket on top of her was warm as anyone could wish, and clean. No warmth was to be despised, of course, but she did remember now and then that it had started life as a horse blanket.

  This triangular space under the attic stairs, dark and airless when the door was closed, lit by the stub of a candle, with space for nothing but the mat and a wood box, was the prize of a desperate gamble. She’d come to this after three weeks living in the frigid cold, sleeping in doorways and stairwells, starving, haunting this building. Three weeks, crouching in Turnwheel Lane. She’d watched the warehouse, rushing forward to hold horses or sweep the yard, and when a certain tolerance grew among the laborers, to run errands and fetch beer at dinnertime.

  Finally came the sleeting night Miss Séverine tossed over the reins of her horse and ran upstairs to gather up papers and a gun. It had been twenty long minutes, holding Miss Séverine’s horse, walking it conscientiously to keep the mare’s muscles limber, finding a bit of shelter for it in the entryway to the yard. When Miss came out and stepped into cupped hands to vault into the saddle, she’d said, “Go into the warehouse and sleep beside the stove. I’ve arranged it with the foreman.”