“You were a fool to go to Lazarus.”
“Thank you for pointing that out. There is complete accord between us.”
“If you wanted something from him you should have asked me. That’s why you hired me. For the expertise.”
“Which you provide in abundance.” Deverney took a silver rod from an inner pocket, extended it, and ran it around the sides of the drawer and underneath the stack of letters. He was, in himself, an advanced seminar in the art of the search. The world was full of tiny, spring-driven knives and poisoned needles.
He said, “Why am I not surprised you know Lazarus?”
“We have a long and complex relationship.”
“Really?” He seemed amused.
“I went to see him, which was foolish, but I was only eight. One of my friends didn’t come home from a mission in the Low Countries. He was dead, but nobody would tell me straight out. So I ran away and went to hire Lazarus to find out what had happened to him.”
“That must have been exciting for all concerned.” Deverney took papers from the desk drawer and leafed through them.
“I was with Lazarus three days,” she said. “There was a ransom involved. He fed me too many sweets and told me stories about Hawker when he was young. He let me help with a housebreaking. I didn’t wash the whole time I was there and I got fleas in my clothing. I still see Lazarus from time to time.”
“You live an eventful life, Séverine.”
“Everyone tells me that.”
At the bottom of the drawer was a pretty rosewood box, too large for keeping coins in, the wrong shape to hold a gun. Opened, it revealed a packet of letters. Deverney slipped the first one from the ribbon that held them.
She worked at the lock of the middle drawer and Deverney was silent for a while, opening letter after letter. At last he murmured, “Mr. Hayward, Mr. Hayward, you disappoint me. Having an affair, keeping the letters, hiding them so clumsily. Sanchia has behaved particularly badly, it seems. Disappointing on all fronts.” His voice was perfectly noncommittal.
He stuffed everything back into the box, closed it, and reached around to drop it to the side.
“You were right about Mr. Hayward,” he said. “He is unreliable. Did you know Lazarus is having you followed? That gang of street children I thought were trailing me is apparently for you. He won’t say who hired him.”
“Professional ethics.” This lock went faster. She extracted the middle drawer and handed it over to him. “He’s an honest King of Thieves.”
“Admirable.”
“He might be trailing me because you’ve taken an interest. He likes puzzles.”
“Maybe.”
She’d always worked alone. Yet here she was, comfortable as an orange pip in its orange, knee to knee with Deverney, splitting the work between them. There was a worrisome naturalness about it. Even the rustle Deverney made as he sorted papers was absurdly comforting. He was not merely a seducer of women and an ornament in the ballroom. He was as much an expert in the clandestine art of theft as British agents were in spying, all adepts in their specialized trades.
One becomes clumsy as passion creeps over the body. Distracted and clumsy and stupid. She sighed and set lockpicks into the lock of the top drawer. “You’re patient, waiting for me to get through these locks.”
He raised his eyes, briefly. “I’ve seen it done slower by men who called themselves professionals.”
“You’re tactful.”
“You’re modest.” The next letter got a long inspection before he put it aside with the rosewood box. “Lockpicking is an art I practice because it’s my profession. You’re a practical woman. If you wanted that desk open fast, you’d make it happen.”
“I’d waylay the clerk in an alleyway and bribe him to tell me where the second key is. There’ll be one somewhere in here. It seemed to me the clerk looked discontented with Mr. Hayward, so it probably wouldn’t cost much. Or if I were in a hurry I’d use my crowbar and pry the drawers out, though I’d hate to treat a nice piece of furniture like that.”
“What else would you do?” His eyes turned up at the corners. He was enjoying this.
She gave the matter some thought. “With the four of us here, I’d put the whole desk in that wagon and take it back to the office to rummage through at leisure. Then I’d sell the desk. Practical and thrifty.”
“Or you’d step outside and whistle up one of the street urchins following you. Send them to find somebody who picks locks.”
“Or I’d make you do it. I will ask you to open that safe over there. It would take me the rest of the night.” She frowned at her picks and chose one. The top drawer received more attention. “I wouldn’t pay the street rats. I’d just let them rob Hayward generally. It would cover my presence here and, again, it’s thrifty.”
“There. You see. No need to worry about picking slow or fast into the desk. You have a set of valuable and unique skills. Anyone can learn to pick locks.”
A last turn of the pick and the top drawer was open. It was a repository of clean note paper, pencils, a pair of reading glasses in a leather case, quills, stamps, a penknife, two ink bottles, and one silver flask of brandy. She passed that last over to Deverney.
He pulled the cork out of that, sniffed, and was dismissive. Probably he made and sold brandy too. They both had a set of valuable and unique skills when it came down to it.
Thirty-four
SHE studied her hands where they rested on her knees. They had old familiar marks on them, souvenirs of twenty-eight years of using them for many purposes. A scar on the side of her knuckle from the same fight that had left an unpretty slash on her ribs, a crescent-shaped burn mark from a gun barrel, a crack in her thumbnail from fighting with O’Grady. That hurt right now. A cut on her palm, almost healed, that she couldn’t account for.
She said, “Do you think I’m cold?”
Deverney put aside a stack of papers and sat back on his heels and considered her. “Cold that can be cured with mittens? Or cold that a man calls a woman who won’t go to bed with him?”
“You see too much.” She let some time pass, but he didn’t say anything. “Cold as a woman.”
It took only a little rearrangement for him to shift close and put his arms around her and wrap her up in him. He was matter-of-fact about it, though they hadn’t spent any time this close together. “I see that elegant bowl of porridge tracked you down. Robin Carlington.”
“Outside my office, as I was coming here.”
“A mistake on his part.”
“I didn’t hurt him. I didn’t even cut him to ribbons with my sarcastic tongue. I let him say his piece.”
“To find out if he knew anything about plots against Wellington, English politics, and other matters in which I do not interest myself. You shouldn’t listen to that fribble about anything. Here. Wait a minute.”
He took his jacket off and settled it around her shoulders. It was a comfort in many ways. Maybe she was chilly and hadn’t noticed until she became warmer. They arranged themselves to sitting side by side, and there was no clumsiness of elbows and arms and clothing pulling awkwardly. Easily as shadows merging, his shape matched hers or hers matched his.
“This is better.” Deverney set the back of one finger to her cheek where it rested, not doing anything.
“This means nothing, you know,” she said. “It’s just bodies finding something in common. Just pleasure. And we should finish burgling this place.”
“We will. We will be sober and conscientious because you have two men outside who will eventually attract the attention of the Watch. Not that your MacDonald can’t deal with all the minor public officials of London on his own.” But he slid slow, nuzzling lips down her cheek, over the line of her jaw, onto the column of her neck. She was aware, as she had never been before, how sensitive her skin was.
H
e murmured, “I am always so tempted to touch you.” His voice was another sort of stroking, like velvet all over her body. Across her breasts. Deep in her belly. She prickled with a dozen shocks of wanting.
“I see,” she said.
“By the way, you’re not in the least cold as a woman.”
He curled his hand at the nape of her neck, warm and casual about it. That was all. No more than that. But rackety, mad sensations grew and twisted inside her everywhere. Her breasts ached. Between her legs, her body had become demanding.
He breathed and it was warm in her hair and on the skin of her face. “I expected to find you angry with me. When did that stop?”
“When I was coming here in the wagon, about halfway along Shoemaker Lane. I was thinking, you see. I do that when I’m plodding along in a wagon.”
“Do you?”
“It’s because I used to drive a wagon for the guerrilleros, back in Spain. I was with a little band, delivering arms. I’d dress as an old woman and go into the mountains with a wagonload of cabbages or parsnips and ammunition and guns underneath. That was frightening. Coming home empty was the restful trip. I’d think about lots of things, driving home.”
He wrapped his arm around her more tightly, shifted position, and settled them comfortably together again. He was aroused, the size of him perfectly obvious if she cared to look. He neither hid it nor brought it to her attention. He was one of those men who managed to be magnificently unembarrassed about such things. She didn’t need to be told he had enjoyed and been enjoyed by his fair share of women.
“In any case . . .” She closed her eyes and enjoyed every feeling inside her and outside her. “In any case, I was in the wagon on Shoemaker Lane and I became philosophical. I reached several conclusions that made me less angry with you.”
“I’m pleased. You decided I shine by comparison with Carlington?”
“You do, but that’s not exactly why I stopped being angry.”
They rested softly, one body against the other. His utter concentration closed around her as if he were counting her breaths in and out. The one long, slow fascination of his finger on the side of her face continued and brought with it the dance between his appreciation and her response.
He didn’t plunder or cajole. He showed no expectation. No demand. As far as he was concerned they could have sat there in silence till tomorrow when Hayward and his clerks walked in, or till next week. She relaxed a little more.
She said, “Robin wanted to marry me.”
“The bastard.” Deverney was amused.
“He mentioned love.” When she shrugged, her body slid against him in so many ways she found enjoyable. She was so easily distracted.
“Not love,” Deverney said, being certain about it.
“Not love, but he thinks love is an excuse for just about anything. In any case, I sat in the wagon, clopping along the cobbles on my way here, and thought about Robin. He takes the smoothest path, you see, like a trickle of water. What happened, I think, is he decided it was time for him to be settled in life and he looked about for a likely heiress.”
“And saw you.”
“An aging spinster who’d be grateful for any attention.”
“You play that role with some skill,” Deverney said.
“Thank you. You see that. He wouldn’t. He ups and bestirs himself to pursue me, which he does very well because he is charming. Since I’m pretty enough, he decides that he desires me. It’s an easy, pleasant way to be a fortune hunter. He can think well of himself if he’s attracted.”
“More than attracted. I saw him in the Carlington ballroom and he had all the signs of a well-born fortune hunter about him. I know the breed. But he was also gazing at you with perfectly genuine lust. He wanted your money but he also wanted you.”
“I suppose that’s flattering.”
“And you terrified him right to the soles of his feet.”
“Did I?” Robin had very nearly admitted that. “I suppose maybe I did.”
Everything Robin had said that hurt her. Everything he’d done. His lies. His blunt, unflattering truths. The little pouf of a scandal he’d made. All that was suddenly ridiculous. She’d been a fool, and she frightened him. She leaned against Deverney and laughed out loud.
“You didn’t know?”
“I had no idea. I was stupid as buttered toast the whole time.” She was so warm, next to Deverney. Under her skin, little bubbles of excitement danced. “He did tell one truth. I never asked what he thought or wondered what he felt. If he’d mattered to me, I would have. He was harmless, you see.”
“A trait I share with him, though I do it better. Tell me why you stopped being angry at me. I may need to use that trick again someday.” He stroked her hair and with the caress turned her head so it rested on his shoulder. “Stay. I like feeling you breathe. Like that. Yes. You pull everything inside me along with you when you breathe.”
When she spoke she didn’t sound exactly like herself. “I stopped being angry because I know you want me. It isn’t a sensible desire, the way Robin was sensible, picking me out to fall in love with because I’m rich. You want me against your better judgment. You’d rather not, but you do it anyway. We talked about that once or twice.”
“Civilized of us.”
She didn’t turn in his arms and crush herself to him, kissing all the parts of him she could reach. She didn’t push him underneath her down to the carpet and fall on top. She didn’t say, “Let’s lie on the floor naked.” She only thought about it in a mature, reasoned way.
She said, “That’s what I decided when I was riding the wagon. To you I am a damned inconvenience. That night at the Carlingtons’—” She had to stop because a pang held her whole body, tight as a fist. She was easily enflamed by Deverney. “At the Carlingtons’, when we danced, you were annoyed at yourself. You’d come there to be inconspicuous and observe events. You didn’t scheme to dance with me. It just happened somehow. You did it knowing you were drawing the interest of the most dangerous men in London.”
He twitched his jacket to lie more comfortably across her shoulders. “I’ll let you deal with them.”
“Thank you. I think. But we’re not convenient for each other. Not profitable. You are not the battleground I’d pick, and I’m not your strategic highlands. I’m a complication to you and you’re a problem to me. We want each other in bed, but it’s a nuisance.”
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”
“A damned nuisance.”
“That’s closer. You’re saying you stopped being angry at me because we annoy each other.”
“You are exactly, precisely the opposite of Robin Carlington.”
“That’s a lovely compliment.” He rested his forehead against her hair. His lips touched her temple, not in a kiss, but more as if he breathed her in. As if he consumed the warmth of her skin.
When his hand suggested she turn her face toward him, she did. His lips came to find hers, and they kissed. A warm, dark, all-hell-breaking-loose kiss. Readiness crashed over her. She clenched her fists into the linen of his shirt to hold him.
“I don’t just want to kiss you,” he whispered. “I want to lie with you, here and now, offering nothing but a madness of passion and a hard floor. No worship at the shrine of Eros. No restraint, no feather bed, no silk and rose petals, no fine vintage of wine. I have prided myself on being a good lover. Today, I fall this low.”
In his trousers, hidden but perfectly obvious, his cock nudged toward her and argued silently in favor of shared pleasure.
“Well, then,” she said. “Let’s do that.”
Thirty-five
HIS hand covered hers, where she was holding on to him. Her skin was all fluttering desire inside, warm and cold at the same time. She wanted to close her eyes and sink into this feeling. “We have not chosen a wise place to be foolish in, monsie
ur.”
“I’m not a wise person.”
“A little wise, a little foolish. Like me. You make fine wine, which is not an easy thing to do. Stealing jewels is also difficult. They are both arts. To do anything at all in this world is to yoke the ox of wisdom to the ass of foolishness. If you will bring your greatcoat over here and spread it down upon this rug, we’ll do well enough. This is not the season for rose petals.”
“I’d find something. I’m ingenious.”
“I know you are. I’ve never made love in a feather bed, as it happens.”
“I can give you that, at the very least. Tomorrow maybe.”
She still held his clothing tight in her hands. The dry, warm linen of his shirt. The slick, rich, heavy brocade of his waistcoat. Masculine clothing. As much as she wanted to kiss his skin, she wanted to feel and taste and smell his clothing too. It took a force of will not to rub her face against him like a cat.
She was not seduced. Throw that word away altogether. She acted on the hunger coiled inside her. Desire that had been waiting and growing since she’d first seen him. “I don’t want to wait till tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to wait, either,” he said.
The calmness of her voice was a sort of small miracle. “I’d like to be romantical. I wish I had time to say ‘No’ and ‘Yes’ and ‘Maybe’ and slowly succumb to the complex joys you are skilled in. But—” She let her fingers speak of the papers scattered around them. “This is a dangerous enterprise and it may also be urgent. We do not have time for the pleasure of lengthy seductions.”
“You are the most pessimistic woman. Let me kiss the tip of your nose.” He proceeded to do that. “And see if that will lighten the mood.” He kissed the thin, vulnerable skin of her eyelids, left and right. “I’d planned to take a while getting to know your body. I was going to explore the palm of your hand for an hour or two, suck on the inside of your wrist, kiss your earlobes.”
When he said that, in every hidden place she ached for him. A silver ache that chimed through her like bells.
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