Joanna Bourne - My Lord and Spymaster

Twenty feet farther along the street, the Whitby small wagon was pulled to the side of the road, the horse and driver dozing. A man sat huddled up in his coat on the back, waiting.

It was Pitney. She’d known he would be here. If anyone had asked, he’d say he was here to pick up the Whitby books. But he was here to see her.

“Stop. Over there.” It was the first thing she’d said to Sebastian. “I need to talk to him.”

She opened the door of the hackney and put a knee down on the floor and leaned out. “Pitney . . . I’m finished in there.”

Pitney saw everything in her face. Had to see it.

“I found . . .” It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. Her throat closed tight as a fist. “I traced everything . . . to the Whitby ships. I know . . .” Breathe in. Breathe out. It cut like knives. “I’ll see Papa tomorrow. I can’t face him tonight.”

“Jess . . .”

“I can’t . . .” She’d run out of words. Pitney looked flat and unreal, like he could tear into strips and blow away. “I have to get out of here. Are you going to be all right?”

He shook his head. There was nothing to say. Nothing to say. He’d been Papa’s friend for thirty years. “Jess—”

“Leave her be.” Sebastian pulled her roughly back to the seat and reached past her to pull the door closed. The coach started.

It was Whitby ships. The secrets crossed the Channel with smuggled goods, carried by crewmen under orders, who didn’t even know what they passed along. Whitby ships. It was in the records, again and again and again.

The design on the leather walls of the carriage was fleurs-de-lis, imprinted in worn gold leaf, one about every four inches. Sometimes the pattern made diamonds, sometimes squares, sometimes long, slanted rows. It depended on how she looked at it. The horses clattered through St. James Park and into the silent streets of Mayfair. Nobody was out at this hour. The wide, dark spaces between the streetlamps were empty. Once, a cat darted across the road in front of them.

At some point Sebastian put his arm around her and pulled her against him, and she started crying, noisy and wet, gasping into his jacket like she was choking on something. If he hadn’t been holding her, she would have broken into three or four pieces.

They pulled up in front of his house. After they’d waited there a while, she wiped her nose on her sleeve and drew herself up stiff and held her breath. A couple more sobs got out. It was hard to stop.

“I’m . . .” It scraped the inside of her throat. “I’m sorry. I’ll be out of your house tomorrow.”

“You’ll stay. You have nowhere else to go. Jess, we have to talk about this.”

“I don’t want to talk. Let me go inside, Sebastian. I’m so tired I’m shaking with it.” Of all the useless emotions of her whole life, being in love with this man was the most hopeless and useless of the lot.

“Listen to me. Your father—”

“I’m about to start crying again. Will you please, please, let me go do it someplace that’s not in front of you.”

“Fine. We’ll talk when you’re not exhausted. Go to bed.”

She let him climb out and lift her down from the coach. Someone was waiting in the lighted doorway. Eunice. How did she always know?

She was crying again even before she got up the stairs. Eunice didn’t say a word. Just held her.

Kennett House, Mayfair

IT WAS EASIER AFTER SHE’D SLEPT A WHILE. Nothing changed, but events got separated somehow. She went to sleep and woke up and everything had happened yesterday instead of today.

She wouldn’t think about yesterday.

She lay in bed looking at the slanted ceiling. She could get a man out of England. No problem with that. A Whitby escape route was always laid out in every city where Whitby men worked. The London route would be in just quivering readiness. Pitney’d made sure of that himself. The Swedish sloop, Ilsa Lindgren, with no ties to Whitby, lay anchored in the Thames. A dory was tied up at the Asker Street docks, manned day and night, ready to row somebody out to her.

She’d help him escape. She didn’t forgive—no one could forgive what he’d done—but she wouldn’t let him die. She didn’t have the iron heart and metal guts for that kind of justice. She’d get him away safe. She’d make sure she never saw him again.

She didn’t want to think about any of that.

The night outside her window was thin and gray at the edges, with light as weak as seawater. It was so early the women hadn’t started bringing milk around. No hubbub of voices. No clanking pails. It was the private time of night when no one was up but thieves and women with light morals. She was both of those. No wonder she was awake.

When she stole Cinq from the gallows, it made her guilty, too, didn’t it? That’s how Sebastian would see it. He was a man who had a good call on vengeance and the steel innards to enforce it. He wouldn’t pardon what she’d done, when he found out.

And that was another thing she didn’t want to think about. There wasn’t space enough to turn around in her head, she was avoiding so many subjects.

She’d leave England soon. Nothing left for her here anyway.

Outside, one bird woke up to sing ten or twenty notes and then rolled over and went back to sleep. Still early.

This was another long, hard day in front of her. There were going to be some good parts to it, though. She’d best get started.

She padded down the stairs barefoot and opened the door of his room a crack.

“It’s me,” she said softly. “Don’t throw a knife at me or anything when I come in. All right?”

His voice came from the bed. “I’m fairly careful about that.”

He slept nude. She’d been right about that. It was a nice warm night for it. Warm dawn, actually. She pulled her nightgown off and dropped it next to the bed and climbed in with him.

Naked slid on naked. It was startling, touching her whole skin against him this way. Like jumping into a warm sea with every nerve surprised at once. She hoped he’d give her a few minutes to get used to this.

He might not. He was very interested in her. On the other hand, he was also laughing. A complex person, Sebastian.

He leaned up on one elbow and ran the tips of his fingers down her side, reassuring like. “Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

There was just enough light to see him. The hair on his chest gathered into a line and grew right down across his stomach. It got thick down between his legs. She didn’t quite look there, feeling shy. That was something else she didn’t expect. Feeling shy. “What I thought was, I’d get in bed with you and let you decide what to do about it.”

“Well.” He sat up and started undoing her braids. Either he liked her hair or he was giving himself time to think. “So here you are.”

“You keep talking about how much we both want this. Turning into gold, you said. I’d like to try that.”

“I did say that, didn’t I.” He unwound her braid, pulling the strands out between his fingers.

She was going to put Cinq beyond his reach forever. She was going to steal his vengeance. This morning, before she betrayed him, was her only chance. “If you could forget who I am for a while—”

His fingers were on her lips. She wasn’t used to how quick he moved sometimes. He was just one place and then another without any time in between. “It’s not that. Jess, let me tell you what we—”

She didn’t try to match his speed, but she covered his mouth with her hand. “Don’t. Please. If we talk about it, I’m going to cry again, or we’ll fight. That’s not what I want to do right now. Please.”

He kissed her hand, where it was pressed against his lips. “Then we’ll talk later.”

There isn’t any later. That was part of what she wasn’t going to think about. She put her mind on how fingers felt when a man was kissing them. She didn’t want to miss any of this, because she only had the one time. “Have you decided?”

“Jess, I’m still trying to wake up. Can we go at this a little slower? Decided what?”

“Whether you’re going to make love to me or not.”

He took up where he’d left off, kissing the palm of her hand. “I decided that long ago.”

SEBASTIAN listened to a horse and cart clatter through the square. When they passed, it was quiet again. Jess lay beside him in the dawn, wearing a pale, silk ribbon around her neck and the locket on it and not a blessed thing more. Pretty soon he’d lay her down underneath him and take her.

Nothing could have been more natural. It was as if they’d been married a dozen years and she’d come back from checking up on the kids. She let her nightgown slip down around her feet and took the empty spot in the bed. In all creation there was no woman so right for him. She was his.

She loved him. It was written in her eyes for him to read, her loving him and hurting about it and planning something hazardous to her safety fairly soon. She’d try to break into Meeks Street or storm Parliament. He’d talk to her and put a stop to it. Adrian was sure he could get Whitby transported to Australia, not hanged. He’d explain that, and some of the desperation would go away.

Right now, she didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. She was hurting and afraid, and she’d come to him to hide for a while.

Lovemaking is a good place to hide. “What we will do,” he said, “is take a little trip.”

He kissed her fingers, one by one. She was watching him, interested. This was the very beginning. Soon, she wouldn’t watch him do anything at all. She’d feel it. He said, “Look over the edge.”

Perplexed, she looked where he pointed, over the edge of the bed.

“Rug sharks.” He shook his head sadly.

“Rug sharks?”

“Lots of them. Hungry looking, too. Can’t get out that way.” He crawled across the bed to the window, motioning her to follow. It was only just first light. “See that?” he pointed to the garden in the middle of the square.

“Yes . . .”

“That’s the island. I imagine we’ll drift up against it sometime or other. Probably in a day or two. Till then . . .” He put his hands on her shoulders. That was a good place to start, the shoulders. “We’re stuck here. On the raft.”

She smiled, tentative. “It’s a nice raft, though.”

“A fine raft.” She had lean, elegant muscles, tense as carriage springs. He kneaded up and down her neck, loosening them up. “There’s just the raft. No past. No future. Only the ocean around us. Nowhere to go and nothing to do but make love to each other.”

He watched her let go of them—past and future. “I’d like that,” she said.

“Lie down then. No. On your stomach.”

She lay down, willing, but puzzled. When he got on top, straddling her thighs, her skin startled. Little ripples of shock spread out.

So this was new. Her first lover, that boy, had taken care with her. Been gentle. But he hadn’t known much. There’d be lots of surprises for her this morning.

He patted her rump, Hello, rump. Aren’t you a pretty thing, and introduced himself to the muscles up and down her back . . . fingering his way along . . . stroking them the way they liked . . . getting them on his side . . . telling them they were safe with him. He knew what he was doing. It was a beautiful, beautiful body she had.

She had her head to one side, looking around his room, glancing back to see what he was about. “Shouldn’t we be doing something?”

“Can’t do anything. All those rug sharks. We just have to stay here and amuse ourselves.”

“I meant, amusing ourselves. I’ve done this before. I know there’s more to it.”

“Indeed there is. But we’re not in any hurry. Got a couple of days to fill up before we get to the island.”

After he’d been working a bit, she forgot to worry. Her eyes closed. A little while onward, she whispered, “This is what it feels like afterwards. Like I’m melted.”

So that was enough on those back muscles. She’d loosened up nicely. When he got off and rolled her over, she almost flopped.

He started in on her hand. Many bones and muscles to make friends with there. Then up her arms to her shoulders. Her eyes were half-closed when he went down to get acquainted with her feet. Jess could relax and enjoy herself. It just took a while.

“That feels good. I didn’t know.” She spun the words out of a soft breath. “Didn’t know.” Her eyes closed. “Are you sure there isn’t something I should be doing? It doesn’t seem fair.”