“I would like that.”
His arm came around her waist. He did not merely hold her. He lifted her to sit sideways upon him, leaning against his chest. It would have been entirely innocent, except that he began immediately to stroke her breast, taking pleasure in it, making a deep sound in his throat. “This silk thing doesn’t just look like a flower. It feels like one. Like stroking a petal, with you inside it.”
It was a comfort beyond description to be held with such care and knowledge. To be caressed by a man who delighted in the textures of her body. To relax into the strength and the old familiarity. Shoulder, ribs, along her thigh, he drew her in to him again and again, closer.
The coach ground and rumbled forward at a walking pace, swaying, and the street was filled with the sound of carts and wagons. She lay her cheek on his jacket and closed her eyes and enjoyed this moment. In all of her life, there had been so few times she could rest from wariness.
“You are not a restful person, Adrian Hawkhurst. I have never understood why I feel at peace with you, sometimes, at moments like these.”
“One of life’s mysteries.” He ran his fingers over her nipple and lanced a shock through her body, downward, deep inside, like a star falling from the sky. Her nipples crinkled up, feeling his hand through silk, through the linen shift she wore beneath the silk.
“That’s nice,” he said, speaking of the shudder she made. He was a man entirely too perceptive.
He kissed her forehead. Little shivers began at the edges of her, everywhere. Her skin, wanting. Her nerves, anticipating.
She said, “This is good. I like you touching me.”
“I could do it for the next decade or two. Have you given any thought to marrying me? It’s probably slipped your mind, what with so much going on, but I did ask.”
“It has not, as you put it, slipped my mind. I have decided to leave things as they are.”
“Good reasons for that, I suppose.” He did not seem dismayed. He kissed across her forehead and down her face to her ear. She heard his breath there. Warmth. Whispers. Chouette. Mignonne. His breath and murmured love words filled her. Mon adorée. Ti amo.
The coach that moved through the streets of London was their universe, a little world where they were alone. There was no reason to refrain from this indulgence. No need to hold back. No cautions to lay upon the surface of her mind. She could give herself wholly to the moment and to him. He held her in his lap, and she felt every impact of the horse’s hooves, every irregularity that jolted the wheels, through him. Through his body.
She put her hand upon his shoulder and turned to him to take his mouth. She kissed him deeply and inventively.
She said, “We are idiots to tease ourselves this way. We should stop.”
“You’re right about that, luv.” He slid his hand between her legs to begin sparks and persuasion there. The road vibrated beneath them steadily, and her desire for him was almost unbearable.
When she moved in his lap, he closed his eyes and groaned.
“We will be at Meeks Street soon,” she said.
His hand upon her, stroking, went still. When he took his touch away, the pulses of pleasure inside her did not stop. They breathed into each other’s faces, deep, almost in unison. Ten breaths. Twenty.
He said, “You feel this, don’t you?”
“Desire? It is fire and madness in me. I want you very much.”
He shook his head impatiently. “I don’t mean that.”
Abruptly, he brought his hands up into her hair. His long, clever, lock-picking fingers held her face as if she were infinitely precious. He kissed, once, just upon the threshold of her mouth. “We got a rare amount of wanting between us. That’s fine. That’s good. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in this world.”
She would have looked away if she had not been held so closely. When a man so hard and secret opens his heart, there is no way to reply except with honesty. “I have never wanted anyone else.”
“But it’s never been just wanting, has it? Not even the first time.” He shook his head impatiently. “It’s the rest of it. You and me, we belong together. We always have.” The carriage jolted over the road, turning a corner. His hold didn’t waver. “Marry me.”
Years lie between us. Years when I made dark and difficult choices. “I am not the woman I was at twenty.”
“I’m not that man. But there’s never been anybody else for either of us. It’s not going to change if we wait a dozen more years.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know you like skin knows an itch. All that time in Italy and Austria, everywhere, working against each other, we could always figure out what the other one was going to do. We might as well have been sitting like this the whole time, we were so close.” The nape of her neck, the bare skin of her shoulders, her back beneath the silk . . . he ran his hand over her. “There is not an inch of you, inside or outside, that I don’t know.”
“There is no reason—”
Fingers crossed her lips, stealing the words. His breath was warm on her face. He whispered, “Dammit. I love you.”
“I am not an easy woman,” she said.
“I’m a bloody difficult man.”
She had no words for what she needed to say. She had thought they were not in her. Then, somehow, they were.
She said, “It has always been you.”
His fingers sank into her shoulders. “Marry me.”
She said, “Yes.”
It was not enough for him. Dark and intent, he demanded, “Why? Why are we getting married, Owl?”
She said what he needed to hear. She said, “I love you.”
Fifty
HAWKER DIDN’T LOOK UP WHEN FELICITY CAME IN.
He stood in the middle of the study at Meeks Street, holding the knife, waiting for the play to start. This was the knife that had been sent after Owl. The poison was still on it, filmed across the working edge of the blade. Owl’s blood was dried on it too.
Felicity said, “He didn’t come alone. He brought that lick-spittle dog with him. Reams.” She scowled at the teacups sitting on every bare surface in the study. “I suppose you expect me to clean up in here.”
“That would be nice.”
“It’s not like people couldn’t walk over here and put away their own dishes.” She clattered cups together and thumped through to the dining room to tumble them into the dumbwaiter. “Not as if they have something more important to do, like standing around in the middle of the room staring at the wallpaper.”
He said, “Did you know, there are waiters across London who could remove every cup in the room so silent and swift you’d never see them.”
“How very adroit of them.”
“I didn’t think that would work. You are the most annoying chit. Where did you leave Cummings and his dog? In my office?”
“Front parlor.”
“A wise and moderate choice.” The big desk was clear except for a two-inch pile of papers and a black leather book. He set the knife beside the book, blade facing him, the engraved initials upward. “I need Justine. Find her.”
“I suppose I can.”
“She is not in the Outer Hebrides. Try the library. Get Doyle and Pax too. And Fletcher. He’s downstairs in the workroom. And find Sévie. Tell them it’s time.”
Felicity shrugged, deposited a few more cups into the dumbwaiter, and left, slamming the door behind her.
The desk in the study carried expensive and formidable locks. He’d picked them a dozen times, back in the old days. Now he was the man with the key. Times change.
He took an envelope out of the top drawer and tapped the broken knife tip out onto his palm. A tiny triangle of shiny silver metal, A lesson not to use fine knives for prying into wood boxes. He put the tip on the envelope, centered on the desk. Almost ready.
These papers should go somewhere artistic and obvious. Stage-setting. A show of power. So. Half on the table beside the sofa—yes—stacked up a
s if somebody’d just finished reading them. A few left on the desk chair. Another pile on the windowsill. He was satisfied when he’d finished. This was a picture of men called away in the middle of a consultation. Felicity had missed a few coffee cups, adding to the fine, heedless air of haste.
And the black book. He was deciding whether to leave it on the desk or put it up on the mantelpiece when Owl walked in.
“You are looking pensive,” she said. “I dislike it when you are introspective. Matters always become enigmatic. Is it time?”
“Cummings is here. I’m wondering where to put this.” He let the pages fall open. If it had been Jane Cardiff’s journal, it would have been symbols across the page. Since it was one of Sévie’s old copybooks, it was line after line of ordinary script. “I want him to see it but not lay hands on it.”
“The far side of the desk.” Owl took the book from him and arranged it herself. “Good. It lies there, slanted just so, obviously important. I have never seen a book hold such an aspect of importance.”
“I could add bookmarks hanging out everywhere.”
“We will not ice the cake. We will be simple. You will try to keep the very direct Colonel Reams from tossing it into the fire. Séverine will be annoyed if it is damaged.” She frowned at the knife that had almost killed her. “Will you reconsider this plan? I am not easy in my mind with the chance you will take. That knife is dangerous.”
“I’m more dangerous.” There was a comfortable patch of wall over to the side. He backed her up there so she’d have something to lean on. “We have a minute. Use it to kiss me.”
“Doyle may walk in at any instant. Paxton may—”
“Let’s not make a list of everybody who’s going to walk in on us.”
A brief kiss. Lips touching once, friendly-like. A petit dejeuner of a kiss. A roll and coffee in the morning of a kiss. Not the main course, but he gave it his entire expertise.
Owl said, “That was nice.”
“That’s why husbands and wives kiss a lot. Because it’s nice. It’ll take some practice, but we’ll eventually get it right.”
“I am not yet used to the idea of becoming a wife. I have no idea what kind of kisses to expect in that state.”
“We’ll find out. We’re going to fall into the ravening maw of respectability, you and I.” He kissed her. It tasted significant, as if everything they did, every word they said, meant more now. It wasn’t just pleasure between them, though God knew there was a mort of that. It wasn’t friendship.
This was his lady. This would be his wife.
He pulled her to him, using the amount of persuasion he thought he could get away with, feeling her answer back with the next kiss, warm and willing.
They did that for a while.
“We have no time for this.” She shoved him away. “I am in no mood to fool with you. I am hungry for vengeance. You, I will indulge myself with later.”
Wonderful Owl. “I’m feeling peckish for some vengeance myself.”
Doyle came in, looking grim and angry from a morning spent handing a corpse over to the coroner. Pax was with him, Fletcher a few steps behind. The rustle coming downstairs was Sévie.
Nobody needed to say much. Doyle took in the stage setting. Eyes lingered on the knife. “We have Cummings?”
“Waiting in the front parlor.”
A brusque nod from Doyle. Sévie, dignified as a judge, sat in the big chair, the one next to the fire, and folded her hands in her lap. She’d done most of the work on Jane Cardiff’s book, since she could decode as fast as write. Pax, Fletcher, and Doyle took the corners of the room and stood like guards. They wouldn’t interfere with what was going to happen.
The door opened. Cummings came in, trailed by a belligerent-looking Reams. “What the devil do you mean by this, Hawkhurst? That was a damned peremptory note you sent.”
“This won’t take long.”
His lordship glanced around and assessed his audience. His voice became a shade more conciliatory. “I have better things to do than run across town at your beck and call.”
Cummings was shaved pink, his hair clipped and polished, his clothes without a speck of dust on them. He was tightly decorous. A little overdressed for the informality of Meeks Street. He’d dropped his hat and coat somewhere, but he carried his cane.
Good. As good as could be.
Reams came up behind Cummings and whispered into his ear. “. . . knives . . . Bow Street . . .” There was more, but Cummings ignored him. Because Cummings had spotted the black book sitting enticingly on the desk.
He put himself between Cummings and the desk and turned to Owl. “Lord Cummings and Colonel Reams came to ask after your health when you were stabbed. How long ago was it, mademoiselle? Five days?”
“It has been longer than that. A week, I think. I lose track of time, we have been so very busy.” She came toward him, strolling across the landscape of the study, running her hand from chair to chair, taking every eye with her. “It has been day after day, talking to people, discovering secrets. I have barely had time to draw my breath.”
She paused by the sofa and touched two fingers to the papers he’d piled there. “Then there is this. It is tedious work, the making of copies from old French codes into the vernacular.” She tilted her head and considered the words written on the top sheet. “And now we have finished. Many people will be fascinated by that little book. It is instructive reading.”
Cummings whipped his attention from the papers she touched to the book on the desk and back again.
Reams, edging along at Cummings’s side, hadn’t stopped muttering. “. . . sneaking bastards. They got into Bow Street somehow. We can prove it. That knife on the desk has to be—”
“Not now, Colonel.” Cummings brushed his shoulder. “Hawkhurst, I’m not here to play games. What’s this about?”
“Treason. Greed. Murder. Trifles like that. A woman’s body was found in Percy Street, at dawn. But you already know that.”
Cummings knew. His face was closed, barred, and shuttered, but the smugness showed.
Owl said, “It was a particularly cowardly murder. She was killed by someone she knew. Someone looked into her eyes while he killed her.”
The cane swung in Cummings’s hand, being arrogant. “All very affecting, of course, but not the province of the British Service. Unless you stumbled on the body, Hawkhurst. Really, Bow Street is going to wonder why women keep getting stabbed when you’re around.”
He gave Cummings time to realize what he’d let slip. “Did I say she was stabbed?”
Sévie and the three men standing at the wall didn’t change expression. They were silent and impassive witnesses. Even Reams was a witness.
Cummings clenched his teeth. “A guess. Maybe she died of the pox or fell under a carriage. It’s nothing to me how some whore died.”
“I didn’t say she was a whore, either.” Time to lean against the desk and get comfortable, like a man settled down for a long talk. “Her apartment was ransacked. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such a clumsy job.”
“I can’t share your familiarity with the ransacking of a whore’s living quarters.”
Reams had got into the pile of papers at the end of the sofa. He shoveled through them like a pig, rooting. “What’s this?” He squinted at the top page. “‘R.T. will do what he is told. He is snared. Le Maître is very pleased with me.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sévie answered him. “That is the transcript of a book kept by a woman of the demimonde.” She sounded like she was discussing something ordinary. Vegetables, maybe. “For many years she blackmailed the men she slept with. She did not ask for money. She demanded political favors. Votes. Influence. Le Maître—the Master—was her patron. He gave the orders.”
He watched Cummings’s face. The house of cards was falling, and Cummings would fall with it. “A few dozen men were blackmailed. We know some of the names. We’ll figure out the rest in the next couple days. It’s all in the
book.”
“It was not merely blackmail,” Sévie said. “She killed men when Le Maître gave the order. We know those names as well.”
Reams wasn’t paying attention to that. He shuffled through sheet after sheet, reading them and crumpling them in his fist, throwing the pages away. “‘He lay down naked. I began rubbing the ointment on his—’ By God, man. It says, ‘on his genitals!’ This is obscenity. What kind of a book do you have here? This is some of that French muck.”
Owl, cool as marble, turned slowly to consider Reams. “It is a journal. Did you not know hired women often write of their lives? It is a passion with some of them. Every small detail of what they do, they set down in writing.” She smiled and looked very French indeed. “It is one of several reasons a wise man does not share his secrets with harlots.”
Reams tore a page in half. Listen to this. “‘. . . with the smaller cane there will be fewer marks. I do not wish to be bruised for the visit of G.R. I must entice him to yet another betrayal of his Foreign Office, and he has developed a conscience of late. I will use—’ This is vile. This is filth.” Reams swept the pile of paper across the table onto the floor.
Sévie said, “It is filth that will splash upon many people. G.R. is George Reynolds. Later, she explains how she killed him.”
He wanted Cummings’s attention on him. Wanted the man close. “We’ll find everything in here.” When he took the black book from the desk, he handled it as if it were genuine. “The man who killed her didn’t find this.”
Cummings took a step closer. “Say what you have to say and be done with it.”
“I’ll do better than that. Look for yourself.” He tossed the book at Cummings. The pages flapped and rippled like bird’s wings. Cummings dropped his cane and grabbed for the book.
He snapped the cane from the air as it left Cummings’s hand. The head unscrewed in a single twist. The fancy hilt, hexagonal with embossed gold points, separated from the shaft.
Everybody at Meeks Street knew that cane. Cummings had swaggered around with it for years. But this was the first time they’d seen the dagger inside. It was thin, six inches long, and missing the tip.
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