Beauty Like the Night

by Joanna Bourne

  Beauty wouldn’t bring him to his knees, as this woman so undoubtedly did. In the salons of Paris, Madrid, Vienna, beautiful women were common as meadow flowers and just as delightful. He’d written poems to their bright eyes, taken joy in their company, and, he hoped, brought them joy in return.

  One did not, he suspected, write poems to Séverine’s eyebrows. One slew dragons for her, or stood slightly to the left, holding her spare lance and buckler, while she did the slaying. If he was lucky enough to win her, he foresaw a future of saving the dregs of London from a well-deserved ending on the gallows.

  “None of us hurt.” She gave the sort of sigh a good housewife gives when the last of the cakes was plucked safe out of the oven. He heard, even if he didn’t see, the wry smile in her voice. “Except you.”

  “A nothing of a nothing.” Eventually he’d have to lie down so he’d stop seeing black at the edges of his vision. But that could wait. “I’ll recover, if that surgeon you’ve called doesn’t kill me.”

  “He’s the best in London. I send all my gunshot wounds to him.” Her dark beautiful eyes were worried. She didn’t have to worry about him.

  It might be time to get back to seducing her. Dizziness and pain tried to distract him, but she was still bright at the center of his thoughts. He didn’t have one square inch of innocence in his head when he was touching Séverine.

  He said, “Let’s take up where we left off,” and he kissed her.

  Forty-one

  SHE shouldn’t be kissing an injured man. If she’d possessed a list of activities to avoid when a man had bullet holes in him, passionate kissing would be on it. But he wanted her so much a moderate amount of pain didn’t discourage him. If he wanted kisses, kisses he would get. He would . . .

  She lost her place in her thoughts. Being kissed by Raoul Deverney was an activity that took all her attention, because he gave it all of his. It was, in its way, like drinking an absolutely excellent wine. You didn’t hurry the tasting of it. You didn’t let yourself be distracted.

  There was no point in discussing the wisdom of this. She wasn’t listening.

  He kissed her, slowly, appreciatively, sometimes stopping to take deep breaths when he was battling pain out of the way.

  Before she heard the first soft sound in the hall, Raoul pulled away and looked toward the door. He continued holding her though. Challenge and declaration from Raoul to whoever was coming.

  Hawker walked in. He’d given no warning he was out there, an impoliteness that showed he was annoyed about something. Raoul, doubtless. He crossed the office with a raised eyebrow and a grim line to his mouth. She glared back to say she didn’t want comments on this subject. Much as she loved Hawker, she had no intention of listening to his eyebrows.

  He carried one of the crates from the wagon in his arms and took it over to the table under the window. Good enough place, as far as she was concerned. He strolled toward her, settling his cuffs straight in his sleeves as he came, looking amiable. He said, “Sévie.” He waited some seconds before he added, “Comte.” He could infuse significance into the length of his pauses.

  She tried to imagine how Hawker looked to Raoul Deverney. To her, Hawk was the oldest of old good friends. He’d braided her hair when she was too young to do it neatly and he’d tied the sash of her apron behind her when she was in the kitchen learning to peel carrots and bake bread. When she was seven or eight Hawker had started taking her to the docks and tenements of London. Whitechapel, where he was born. Seven Dials. Southwark, across the river. He’d taught her to beg and pick pockets. In return, she’d helped him with the fine points of his French accent.

  He was the only person she’d told before she ran away to Spain. She’d never had any doubt he’d trade his life for hers any rainy morning of the year. That was what she saw.

  Raoul would look at Hawker and see one of the most powerful men in England, Head of the British Service, a man ruthless in several distinct and unpleasant ways. Raoul wouldn’t be fooled by any genial expression Hawk put on.

  Hawk said, “I see you’ve collected dead people on your doorstep again, Sévie. I suppose you expect me to clear them away.”

  “I’d take it as a kindness.” She was sure he was already emptying the wagon to use it for moving corpses. The livery stable would not be pleased if he got blood all over it. “You’re prompt.”

  “I was coming back from Newgate when I met your boy running across Braddy Square. I decided to collect everything you wanted at one time. I brought Luke with me.”

  But Hawker was looking at Raoul as he spoke. “You’re the Comodin,” he said. Hawker had apparently decided they’d skip several of the usual steps of getting acquainted.

  “That seems to be common knowledge.” Raoul slowly and deliberately leaned back on the sofa, his good arm still around her. He had an expression of polite disinterest on his face that matched Hawker’s.

  “According to MacDonald, you’re the man responsible for the corpses,” Hawk said politely.

  “All but one.”

  “Still, a good collection. And they say the Comodin doesn’t kill.”

  “One of the disadvantages of depending on rumor. It so often lies.”

  The two men studied each other, probably not learning anything in the process.

  She’d already figured out where Raoul had learned to kill. Maybe she’d been a fool not to see it from the beginning. Maybe Raoul distracted her till she couldn’t think when she was around him. But it was obvious to her now. Hawker might be slower coming to the same conclusion because he didn’t have her years in Spain.

  Hawker said, “I noticed—”

  There was a scuffing on the stair, heavy steps and lighter steps, accompanied by voices. She sorted that out as Luke Gentry—the surgeon who treated the agents of Meeks Street—MacDonald, and one of the street rats.

  The street rat, a girl, came first, carrying another of the crates. She took her time walking across the room to set it down, her eyes prying, her smooth pretty face innocent while she assessed the pawn value of every object in the room. MacDonald brought two crates, one stacked on the other.

  Luke was in his usual mood. Grumpy.

  “You’re not hurt.” He gave her a quick glance up and down. “Good.” Without waiting for an answer he stalked past, taking off his coat, criticizing the accommodations for surgery. He pointed out that everybody downstairs was dead as Caesar so he was no use to them. Asked, could they drop the bodies at the hospital for dissection? They didn’t usually get corpses this fresh, he informed them. Then he told her to get those bandages off so he could see what some idiot had done to some other idiot. He’d work on the desk as usual. If everybody stopped wasting time he might get back to his bed while it was still warm.

  She unwound the bandage and unstuck the pad stopping the bleeding. Bullet holes were never beautiful, but this one looked better than most.

  “We seem to have avoided the brachial artery and thus you are still alive. It’s shallow.” Luke took Raoul’s arm with that surprising gentleness, his big ugly hands practiced and mild. “Two holes from one bullet. Don’t see that often. I get most of my bullet-hole work from you people, and you shoot better than this.”

  “We like to think so.” Hawker came to look.

  Raoul took the bandage from her and covered the bleeding again, assessing Luke under half-closed lids.

  Luke walked over to drop his bag on her desk. “Clear this clutter off.” Hawker came to do that. “One bullet. No belly wounds, no broken bones, no stabbing and exotic poisons. You didn’t have to roust me out of a warm bed for this. Any dolt with a needle and thread could sew the man up.”

  But, he said, as long as he was there he’d do the job. Get some hot water. Bandages, here. “And I need some damned light.”

  Hawker swept quills and papers into the top drawer. Leaned the blotter against the bookcase.
MacDonald brought small tables and extra lamps from the other rooms. Peter ran down to the pump for water.

  “Opium?” she asked. “We have some.”

  Beside her, Raoul shook his head.

  “Then we won’t bother with it. Where did I put . . . ?” Luke poked through his medical bag. “Ah. Here it is.” He clattered the tools of his trade along the side of the desk. “Don’t need it anyway. I’m doing six stitches, for God’s sake, not cutting for the stone.”

  MacDonald handed tea around to everybody, even Lazarus’s street rat, who was keeping tactfully to one side.

  “No tea for him,” Luke said, meaning Raoul. “I don’t want him throwing it up on me.” He threaded his curved needles with black silk and poked them, one by one, into a pincushion. “You there—George, John, Maurice, whatever—”

  “Deverney.”

  “Can you get yourself over here or are you going to faint like a maiden aunt?”

  “My own maiden aunt”—grimly, Raoul stood up—“would have stitched herself up, one-handed.”

  “Would she?”

  “And bit the threads off.” Ten stiff-legged steps across the room and Raoul leaned against the desk. “She would have told you to comb your hair neatly, even at three in the morning, and rapped your knuckles for impertinence.” He clenched his teeth, loosed his clutch on the wound, and laid his hand flat on the table.

  Hawker closed in from the side, sleek and silent as if he were attacking, but actually putting himself within catching distance if Raoul fainted.

  Luke finished another needle. “Then she wouldn’t have called me out of bed with my wife at three in the morning, would she?”

  “No.” Muscles flexed under Raoul’s skin. In a single smooth effort, one-handed, he lifted himself up onto the desk, turning as he went. Let himself drop down to sitting.

  Raoul was strong. The first time she’d seen him he’d just climbed a sheer stone wall, pulling himself up with his fingers and his boots toed into niches in the mortar. She’d watched him leave the inn chamber by the window, casually swinging himself over the sill on the support of curled fingertips.

  He’d just killed five men, one after another, in near-total darkness. He was strong, clever, and deadly. Hers.

  She went to him, across the room, to where he waited stoically. While Luke finished his full complement of threaded curved needles and set them ready and Hawker folded his arms and prepared to observe matters; while Peter sent the too-observant street girl off to shift more crates upstairs; while MacDonald swirled old tea leaves out into a slop bucket and started a fresh pot, she went to claim Raoul. She got up onto the desk behind him and wrapped herself around his back, kneeling so her thigh supported the arm that would be stitched.

  Luke said, “Let go of that so I can see,” to Raoul and sponged blood away from the wound, peering at it, muttering, “Clean. And this one is clean. No threads in there. Nothing like getting shot through good material.” Red water sluiced down Raoul’s arm onto the rug.

  Luke took forceps and picked up the first needle. To her he said, “Hold that for me.” And she set the edges of Raoul’s flesh together and straight while Luke worked.

  “Six stitches. That’s one.” Luke tied off the first knot. “This is a fairly small bullet. Not army issue.” A half minute later. “That’s two.”

  Raoul was unmoving as a rock. Silent as one. His expression was distant, almost uninterested, as if he’d done this many times before.

  Maybe he had. He was a man of many scars.

  She had become rather more acquainted with Raoul tonight. Now she knew what he was. Everything about him told her he’d been a guerrillero, a partisan, fighting for Spain against the French.

  That was why he didn’t flinch. His scars had been collected where there were no surgeons. No opium. No water to wash the wound. No way to stitch him up as he and the others retreated. Or he’d been alone, with no one to help him at all. He’d be used to pressing a hand over his worst cut and staggering back to some hiding place in the hills. She had spent her own time with the guerrilleros, and she knew.

  After a while Luke said, “Six. That’s the last one. I’m finished with you. Keep it clean. Keep it dry. Don’t poke at it. And it still wasn’t worth getting out of bed for.”

  “Next time, maybe he won’t get shot,” Hawker murmured. “Or he’ll do it more efficiently and save us the trouble of—”

  MacDonald said, “He got shot pushing Sévie out of the way of a bullet. More tea?”

  Hawker offered his cup. “I do believe I will.”

  She held a clean pad in place while Luke rolled bandage around the arm. Raoul held his arm out and said nothing. So, along with everything else, Raoul had saved her life and not thought to mention the fact. She had not yet come to the end of Raoul Deverney’s craftiness, obviously.

  Hawker said, “The sofa, I think. Mr. MacDonald?”

  “He’d be more comfortable in Miss Sévie’s bed.”

  “The choice of wounded men everywhere. Nonetheless, we shall put him on the Little Ease of sofas where we can keep an eye on him.”

  An assenting grunt from MacDonald, a shrug from Luke who was repacking his bag, and they didn’t consult Raoul.

  Really, this was no one’s business but her own. She said, “I’ll take him into the bedroom.” She picked up the blankets. “I don’t need anyone’s comment or opinion on this.”

  Hawker and MacDonald, wisely, said nothing.

  Forty-two

  HOURS later, Raoul sat in one of the red chairs at her desk, a pair of clothbound ledgers in front of him and a dozen more to his left, within reach. He’d been quiet for a while, going through them. She hoped he wouldn’t be tempted to start carrying boxes around the room. Men had no sense at all, even the best of them. She signaled Peter to bring him cups of tea from time to time so he wouldn’t go bounding about the room after tea, either.

  Peter had fetched clothes from the expensive hotel Raoul favored, a well-cut suit and a gray-and-silver brocade waistcoat. A clean bandage was wrapped tight around his arm under his sleeve. The bleeding had stopped. There was some mention of being good as new, but this was not true. It was all very well to be manly and kill a few people, but somebody with bullet holes in him should be in bed.

  She didn’t cross the room and settle a blanket over his shoulders or scold him and put him into bed and bring him thin soup and advise him to sleep. She had the very smallest tendency to care for the people she loved by telling them what to do. She resisted this.

  “I’m being robbed,” Raoul said mildly. He went from one ledger to the other, comparing entries.

  “Ironic,” Hawker said, “considering your profession.”

  “Isn’t it?” Raoul agreed. “So much violent crime in the world and I am the victim of a sniveling embezzlement.”

  “Inferior to the craft of jewel robbery, at which you excel.” Hawk lounged at his side of the table with all the noncommittal menace of one of the better breeds of cat.

  “Very much so.”

  Papa sat on his haunches to rummage through a mixed box of spoils. “You found your embezzlement quickly.”

  “It’s poorly done. Money passes from my London business”—Raoul laid his hand flat on the ledger on his right—“through Hayward’s books”—that was the ledger on the left—“into Sanchia’s accounts.” He touched the thin black book in the middle. “The voyage makes everything clear.”

  Hawker gave the barest nod. That might have been approval for the fraud, or for finding it, or just acknowledgment.

  Raoul picked up Sanchia’s account book. “She went through a great deal of money. More than I sent.”

  Hawker said, “You were generous.” Looked like he’d done his own investigation of the books while she’d been in the bedroom, washing herself and cleaning blood from Raoul’s skin.

  �
��Not much spent on Pilar.” Raoul’s lips pressed to a long hard line. “Not even what was earmarked for her.”

  From the other side of the room, Papa said, “There are those who’d say you did more than your duty.”

  “But you don’t say that.” Raoul looked as if he’d bitten into something unpleasant. “I never came to look at the accounts. Or the child. What Sanchia did is on my shoulders.”

  Papa didn’t agree or disagree, though there might have been a different quality to his air of placidity. He went back to leaning over the box on the floor, methodically sorting through the bits and bobs gathered up from Sanchia’s appartement—quills, pocket handkerchiefs, seals, scissors, a paper bag of scented pastilles . . . and jewelry. Lots and lots of jewelry. An honest man of business would have turned the jewelry over to Sanchia’s husband at some point. Hayward hadn’t bothered.

  Papa brought a double handful of sparklies, all small pieces, brooches and rings and little hair ornaments, over to Raoul.

  Who barely glanced at them. “Sanchia’s gambling stakes. Rubbish.”

  There was a sort of woman who wore such cheap things—flawed stones, gilt, colored glass—when she gambled at private tables. She could take off a ring or brooch and fling it on the pile instead of banknotes. There were always men foolish enough to accept them.

  “Yours now, I suppose,” Papa said.

  Raoul just shook his head. Papa dumped the glitter on a side table as comment and decoration. A valediction of sorts. Nobody went to look at it except Peter.

  After a while leafing through the black book of Sanchia’s accounts, Raoul said, “I shouldn’t have left her free in London to wreak havoc. I assumed she’d whore and gamble and take opium, following the custom of her kind. I wasn’t expecting blackmail and espionage.”

  “I’m a spy myself,” Hawker said. “Did you know that?”