My Lord and Spymaster

Nineteen

IT WAS EARLY YET, BUT VOICES BUBBLED UP from the salon downstairs like oatmeal boiling in a pot. Historians talked a lot, apparently. Every candle in the house was lit. The front hall smelled like baking and beeswax and perfume. She walked down the curving stairs, checking the fiddly clasp on her necklace one last time. The crystals in the chandelier sparkled like a waterfall in sunlight.

They’d stationed suits of armor around the walls in the black and white entry hall, eight of them, at neat intervals, like footmen, but armed with sharp points. She’d attended scientific meetings in Paris and Vienna—Papa loved that kind of thing—but she’d never ventured among historians who took an interest in pikes and poniards. There was Colonel Reams to lie to. Later on, she’d sneak out and visit his house. A busy night. She should probably be more nervous than she was.

The Captain was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. He followed her with his eyes the whole way down.

Evening dress looked good on him. His breeches were the color of the desert in North Africa. His coat like night over that same desert, rich and black. He tied his cravat plain, the way they did in Paris. He’d put himself exactly where she’d have to walk right to him. A man who seized his opportunity, the Captain.

“Miss Whitby.” He was being polite. Of course, he would be polite in the open hall of his own house, with these scholarly nobs milling about. He had a different set of behavior at, say, four in the morning in the upstairs hall, or in her warehouse. Or on his ship, for that matter.

“Captain.” She stopped a step up from the bottom of the stairs to see if Sebastian Kennett looked less formidable when she met him level and eye-to-eye. Turned out it didn’t make any difference at all. “Eerie, all these blokes standing around in steel plate. I’ll be just as glad when they leave.”

“They’ll pack up and take off tomorrow morning. That dress is from Paris, isn’t it?”

“Madame Claudette, on the Rue de Rivoli.”

“I would have hated to go through life without seeing you in that particular dress. I don’t suppose there’s a stitch on you that isn’t smuggled.”

“The dress fabric’s from Lyon. Illegal as hell in England. I’m not going to talk about the rest of it, sparing your modesty and all.” Impossible to be distant and cool to the man. She never seemed to manage it past the first couple words. She touched the pearls. “You’ll be interested in this, since you trade in baubles.”

The Captain knew what he was looking at. She could tell from the way he slid his fingers under the pearls, reverent. But then, he’d seen them before. “Mushajjar. The veil of sunrise, pierced by the ivory.”

“They’re a lyrical people, down on the Gulf.”

“I’ve seen pearls like this, once, at a reception in the palace of the doge in Venice.” He drew his fingers down the line of pearls, touching them above and her skin below, caressing both. “Not this fine. I admired these when I searched your bedroom yesterday.”

There he was, at it again, rolling the conversational wagon off a cliff.

“I like the way you have your hair up in those braids, all swirled together like that. It looks simple. Then you study it, and it gets more and more complex. Like you. Every time I think I have you sorted out, I pick up another line of complication. ”

He was the devious one. She was a pat of plain butter compared to him. “I admire a man who knows what these beads are and still has something nice to say about my hair. I was expecting to get your trading instinct roused up with the bauble, you dealing in decorative rarities and all.”

“Not rarities like that. Beyond my touch.”

“Mine, too, if we’re being candid about it. Every time I fasten them on, I think about the unholy amount of capital tied up and shudder. Anyway, you make your money on loose stones more than decorative pieces. Thirty percent net profit. I admire that.” She’d pulled that out of the ledgers at Eaton’s. Not that she’d gone looking for his profits, but she couldn’t help seeing. “Lightning-fast turnover, too.”

“Thank you. Jess, has it crossed your mind it’s not tactful to remind me you’ve been going through my ledgers?” But he was laughing at her. He did it entirely in his eyes, not twitching his lips at all.

“Roight you are, guv’nor. A flapping gob’s been the downfall of many a foine prig and ruffler.”

“And you will refrain from shocking my aunt’s guests with your mastery of the vernacular. Lean a little closer. Yes. Just there.” He traced the course of a braid around her head, following the path of it with his index finger.

“Am I coming apart? I have about a million pins in. Will you just stop playing with my hair? Crikey, what if someone comes by?”

“They’ll be shocked witless. Let’s draw you in a mite closer and we’ll truly astound them.” He nudged her down the last step, and she was looking up at him again. Inevitable, wasn’t it? He said, “I’m trying to figure out how it all works.” She felt his breath on her forehead. His finger brushed her earlobe.

“It’s magic. You’re not supposed to look too close.” I like it too much when he touches me. I’m getting used to it. Pretty soon, I won’t be able to do without it.

She set her hand in the center of his chest, but she didn’t get to the pushing-him-away part. She just stood with her fingers mixed up in his cravat, acting like they were standing on the edge of some cliffs in a desert with nobody to see but the camels. The house was crawling with historians and Sebastian’s family and there was a maid—the woman with the murderous pimp, actually—holding a tray and peering at them from a corner. The Captain didn’t let go.

Well, to be fair about it, neither did she. She was being stupid. He was probably being clever. Life was odd like that.

She looked past Sebastian’s shoulder. Colonel Reams had arrived. She could see him reflected in the black glass of the parlor windows. His regimentals made a broad, blurry-red pillar in the middle of the dark coats and pale dresses. Pretty soon she’d go tell lies to him. “It’s time I went off to snag myself a couple pastries.” Eunice had cakes and tarts laid out on the table in the dining room, next to a display of iron cod-pieces. “If I leave it too late there’ll be nothing left but liver and turnip.”

“I recommend the apricot ones.” He ran his fingers along the shoals and reefs of her elbow, and there was nothing else in the world she could think about. Perverse on his part, and a revelation to her of why her governesses said to keep a goodly distance away from men.

I don’t have time for this. I have to go cheat the colonel. She couldn’t think of a time she’d bargained in bad faith, but she was doing it with Reams. It didn’t make it any better that Reams was a pig and planned to cheat her, up, down, and sideways, the minute she signed a marriage contract.

Three men and a tiny, white-haired woman strolled out of the front parlor and across the hall, headed for the food, arguing about Greeks. And Claudia appeared out of nowhere.

“There you are, Sebastian.” Claudia must have been scouting along from column to column like a Mohawk slipping through the primeval forest. “You’re needed. They’ve mixed up the topknots on the suits and Coyning-Marsh is having fits. Eunice requires oil on the troubled waters.”

“I don’t know anything about plate armor.”

“You’re an expert on troubled waters. I want to talk to Jess. You’re in the way.”

He just grinned. In a good mood tonight, the Captain. “All right. Keep it above the belt. And you . . .” Right in front of Claudia, not caring what anybody thought, he reached out and trailed his index finger from her temple to where she’d been bruised on the cheek. “Behave yourself. I’ll find you later. Try not to draw blood with that tongue of yours.” Then he walked off, leaving her to Claudia’s tender mercies.

Claudia said, “My cousin can afford to make a spectacle of himself. You can’t. I advise you to be discreet in public.” She had to look up and up to Claudia. All these Ashtons managed to make her feel like a small dab of paint.

“Now you see . . . I agree with you. We probably have lots in common once we get to talking.”

“My brother tells me you were in the hall last night, outside Sebastian’s door. That was unwise.”

“That’s another thing we agree about. Look, why don’t we go snabble a few of those pastries before this crowd goes through them like a flock of locusts. Somehow or other I missed dinner. It’s been a trying day and the number of sharp objects lying about just fills me with trepidation. I’ll just—”

“You’re out of your depth in this household, Miss Whitby, however clever you may be in the shop. I would tell you to leave, but I doubt you’d listen. You’re filled with the scrambling self-confidence of the parvenu class. It is sadly misplaced. ”

That was one of those veiled threats, very probably. Claudia was the kind to issue veiled threats. “I won’t say no to any of that. Especially not the part about being out of my depth. I feel like a shallow water craft tonight.”

Another pack of historians wandered by. A shabby man with a German accent and frayed cuffs limped along between a pair of dandies right out of Upper Brook Street. They were talking about disemboweling. Not in favor of it, as far as she could tell. Just talking.

Daunting, she’d call this lot. And she still had to deal with Claudia.

“Your pearls are a bit showy.” Claudia just went right on being critical. “They’re . . . yellow. Do you have a dozen sets, dyed to match your dresses? So very clever.”

Had to be on your toes with Claudia, didn’t you? “More pink than yellow, but I see your point. I do it the other way round, though. I buy the dress to match the pearls, being thrifty. This,” she pinched up a bit of her skirt, “is couleur d’aube from DeMile Frères in Lyon. We keep a few bolts of their silk in the warehouse in Broad Street, under the counter, for special customers.” She was letting herself get carried away, but nobody with ebony-black hair should wear the shade of blue Claudia had on. “You might go by and see. Give my name and tell them to show you the bronze lustring.”

“Always the shopkeeper,” Claudia said. “That’s admirable in its way.”

“It is when I’m picking out silk.”

The front door opened and closed while she was talking to Claudia. More historians. Three women, very stern-looking. And a man who came in alone. Sometime, as he was walking across the foyer, she realized who he was.

Then he was in front of her. Unwillingly, Claudia stepped aside. “Sebastian is in the front room. I’ll take you to him.” When he didn’t move, “I suppose I should introduce you to—”

He said, “Hello, Jess.”

Claudia said, “Do you know Miss Whitby? I suppose you meet all kinds of people—”

“Go away,” Adrian Hawkhurst said.

The rudeness silenced Claudia. Neither of them really noticed when she turned on her heel and flounced off.

He was Hurst, her old friend. Even now, knowing everything he’d done, half of her leapt up, thinking, He’s going to make everything right.

He looked at her steady, waiting till she decided what to say. He was dressed . . . She didn’t know how to put it. Not more prosperously. He’d always worn beautiful clothing. But . . . fashionably. That was it. He dressed like a nob, now.

“Hurst.” She held on to the newel post at the bottom of the stairs.

“I’m calling myself Adrian Hawkhurst these days.” He took his hat off and held it, all stiff and grave. How strange to see him with a high-crowned beaver hat. All that time in St. Petersburg, she’d never seen him with a proper hat, only that furry sable thing with earflaps. For years she’d thought that was proper attire for a butler.

“Did you get the letters I wrote? I always wondered.”

He said, “I got them. I kept in touch with Josiah, but I thought it was better to leave you alone.”

He still acted like he was Papa’s friend. He’d sent his dogs to pull Papa out of the warehouse in his shirtsleeves. He’d locked Papa up at Meeks Street and he was talking to her like they were friends. There’d be all kinds of plausible excuses. None of them worth the spit it took to say. If she’d been a woman given to crying, she would have taken the time to do some, right then. She sat down abruptly on the stairs and wrapped her arms tight around her.

Hurst came and sat down next to her. The two of them, side by side. It was all so familiar. Her stomach hurt like she had an animal trapped inside, clawing at her. She could have doubled over and moaned with the pain of it.

After a long time, she put her hands into her lap. “Remember the way we used to sit like this, in the house in St. Petersburg? That big marble staircase. The Russians were so fond of all that cold marble, but it about froze my arse off.”

“I remember.” He put his hat on his knee and watched it.

“You used to scold me for talking like that. Said it wasn’t ladylike. I wouldn’t have done it half as much if you hadn’t scolded.”

“I know.”

“I was almost grown up by that time. Twelve, maybe.”

“Thereabouts.”

“Papa would leave for a party with one of his mistresses, and we’d sit on the stairs and talk about the party and the mistress, and then we’d go down to the kitchen and the babushka would fix me little pancakes. I haven’t had one of those in years. Blini with honey.”

“There’s a place in Soho you can get them.”

“Is there?” She turned her hands over and looked at the crescent-shaped marks where her nails had bit in. “We’d sit in the kitchen and eat pancakes and drink cups of tea from those painted cups Papa had made for me. And play chess. You taught me to play chess. Papa never had the patience.”

“I thought you should learn to play one game you couldn’t cheat at.”

Hurst always talked like that. He’d understood how hard it was for her, being so very respectable all the time. She’d been able to say anything at all to Hurst. She’d felt safe with him. Even when Papa traveled all up and down Russia, she never minded because Hurst was there.

“Did you always let me win, right to the end? Or did I really get so I could beat you?”

“I let you win.”

The feeling of doubleness overwhelmed her, a sense of one man fitting over another. Hurst, the butler, who was her old friend. Adrian Hawkhurst, the spy. She would have trusted Hurst with her life, and he’d never even existed.

She said, “Remember the time you caught me sneaking brandy in Papa’s study? You took the bottle up to your sitting room and let me drink the rest of it, and I sat in your lap and told you I was in love with you. And then I got so bloody sick all over you.”

“I remember that.” He turned his hat so that it faced the other way on his knee. “Do you know, you are absolutely the only woman who has ever said she loved me.”

“Was it true what you said that night about loving a Frenchwoman? Or was that lies, too?” When someone is composed entirely of lies, it made no sense asking him questions, did it?

“That was the truth, Jess. Every word of it. You are one of three people in the world who know that.”

For what it was worth, she believed him. Even now, Hurst could lie to her and make her believe it. He was very, very good at lying. “I still can’t drink brandy. I like it. I can judge it and buy it, but I never did get a head for drinking the stuff.” Her voice flaked off in pieces around the edge.

“I know.”

“I guess there’s nothing you don’t know about me, is there?” The inside of her head ached with not crying. “Papa never came out and told me you worked for the British. Not till the end. I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out.”

“You were very young, devochka, and you didn’t want to know about it. I ran the entire British Service operation for Russia out of your kitchen. Every so often your father’s spies and mine would bump into each other in the hall. You have something in your eye, I think.” He handed her a handkerchief.

It was the kind he’d always had. He bought them in Jermyn Street—cambric, dead simple, fine sewing, and the hem deeper than usual. She pressed it to her eyes so she wouldn’t cry. When she was twelve she’d have blown her nose in it. She’d acquired all sorts of airs and graces, hadn’t she?

He said, “That last day . . . Josiah wasn’t supposed to get shot. None of that was supposed to happen.”

“Did, though.” She folded the handkerchief up in a square, neat like. “Papa tells a story about the time he was in a storm off Majorca. Every penny he had in the world was tied up in cargo. They were going onto the rocks, so he threw the whole lot overboard, down to the last box and bale. He said it was a sacrifice to the God of Luck. When you call on the God of Luck, you have to scrape down and give up everything, or you don’t get his attention.”

She looked him straight in the eye. “My life’s like that. I keep having to throw everything overboard. Push. Splash. And there goes Hurst the butler. When did the Foreign Office decide they need our depots in the East? About last year, wasn’t it? They’re the ones who sent you after Papa.”

“Jessie—”

“Must have been a year ago they decided to destroy Papa. That’s when the garbage starts showing up in the account books.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t make a sound.

“It’s too bad you turned out to be a spy instead of a butler. You can’t be much of a spy if it took you a whole year to bring down my father. But you were an excellent butler.” She stood up and threw the handkerchief in his face. “Bugger you anyway,” and headed back to hide in the dining room.

Saying all that didn’t make her feel any better. She hadn’t thought it would.