My Lord and Spymaster (18 page)
Read My Lord and Spymaster Online
Authors: Joanna Bourne
The Captain thought the scum of the dock were dangerous. Did he want her dealing with Colonel Reams? That was the other choice. Reams slicked his way in and out of her office, promising to help Papa, promising to give her that list of dates the secrets walked out of the War Office. If she married him.
“I can deal with Reams,” she told Kedger. “If it comes to that. I have a plan.” But it was chancy. She didn’t like to take risks.
And Reams was a woodland violet compared with what she’d have to face after that. “Always a challenge, innit?”
It was a fine day for burglary. The sky was blue, with clouds piled up way off to the west, looking thwarted. She could see a slice of the Thames from here, raw gold, bright as a mirror. South-facing windows flashed squares of light back to the sun.
Everybody thought burgling was done at night. A fair amount was, of course, but folks are particularly unwary in the daytime. They leave the world unlocked and simplify matters for thieves.
“Time to get going. Those clouds aren’t going to hold off forever.”
The black bag she had slung under her arm gave a squirm and a wiggle. Kedger’s nose peeked out. A ferret at work, sniffing the air. Silent though. He knew to keep quiet when she was on a job.
“If Kennett’s Cinq, the money’s going to show up in his books.” She skritched the top of Kedger’s head. “And I’ll find it. I am England’s expert on skullduggery in accounting.”
Right
. Kedger nodded.
. Kedger nodded.
“I don’t think he’s Cinq. I wouldn’t feel like this, if he was Cinq.”
She stretched, loosening up her muscles. That was enough to startle a shirring of sparrows into the sky. The soffits and railings were always full of sparrows, hopping back and forth, changing places for no reason. The dozen“asoa s she’d roused took off and headed for the river. Higher up, another sort of bird was whooping around in the sky. Martins? Maybe those were Martins. No telling why Martins and Robins had a human name and the rest of the birds didn’t. The air could be full of Georges and Clarences and Prunellas if they gave birds proper names.
Whatever birds they were, the five of them were making free with the air, dancing on the wind, practicing their art. Grabbed her breath away, it did, they were so beautiful.
It’d been a good few years since she made a jump like that. “I can do this. I used to do it all the time.”
A squeak from the bag at her side. Kedger agreed. Not being a toady. Really meaning it.
She should have spent more time watching birds. Cheerful little buggers, birds. They enjoyed themselves when they flew. They loved it.
She paced off her running space. Four strides. Left, right, left, right. Easy enough. She kicked an old pigeon nest away and watched it fall, end over end. A long way down.
The last time she’d been on a roof, she’d been headed home, working her way down a line of old warehouses, when the slates broke. She slid down into an old airshaft and it collapsed in on top of her. It took them two days to find her. The rats found her first.
Don’t think about that.
A clear and beautiful day over the roofs. Almost no wind at all. Couldn’t be nicer weather.
Kedger was getting impatient. Not a ferret who took the long view, Kedger. She closed him in and slung the bag to the center of her back, where he’d be safe. She tightened straps here and there. Nothing flapped in the breeze. She looked across the alley. No hurry. No hurry at all.
It hurts when you fall. Hurts like the end of the world. She’d been alone, except for the rats. And the Dark. Toward the end, the Dark started talking to her.
Don’t think about it.
Papa never let her climb roofs after she went to live with him, not even for fun. She used to sneak out sometimes. She admitted it afterwards, of course, and he about yelled her ear off. Probably fathers were always strict with their daughters. She should have left him a letter in case she . . .
It was bad luck, leaving that kind of letter.
There’s only the sky and the wind and where to put your feet. Nothing else.
Lazarus used to say, if you don’t enjoy burgling, you should give it up. No reason to do it if it wasn’t fun.
I’m going to enjoy breaking into your books, Captain. Oh, yes. Show you what it feels like
.
I’m going to enjoy breaking into your books, Captain. Oh, yes. Show you what it feels like
.
She felt light, at times like this. Felt like she was floating inside, clean and empty, and the sky was made of crystal. This was what the birds had.
She gathered herself together and set her eyes on the other“es the side. She rocked, like a cat getting ready to spring. The moment snapped into place. She uncoiled.
One. Two. Three. Four. Her last step struck square and hard on the overhang of the cornice. She threw herself.
And slammed into cold slate on the other side. A narrow, black instant of pain split the sunlight. The slate trembled and beat beneath her. She held on to the slant of the roof.
With a cold, terrifying ripple, she slid.
And stopped. Her bare toes caught and held.
Her skin sucked into the crevices of the roof.
Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.
The roof was promontories of slate, valleys of shingle. She grew like moss. She was part of the roof. The wind swept past her with a cold whistle.
Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.
The roof was promontories of slate, valleys of shingle. She grew like moss. She was part of the roof. The wind swept past her with a cold whistle.
Don’t think.
Pigeons flapped inches above her head and she didn’t blink.
Pigeons flapped inches above her head and she didn’t blink.
She held on to the roof with her breath and the curve of her cheek. Inching slow as a snail. Slow as the crawl of the sun. No hurry. All the time in the world.
All the time in the world. All the time . . . And at the end she stretched and cupped her fingers over the lip of the fine, sturdy, ornamental pediment of Eaton Expediters and turned her grip to iron.
Got it!
A handhold. Give her one solid handhold and she could climb Buckingham Palace.
A handhold. Give her one solid handhold and she could climb Buckingham Palace.
Time started again. She dragged herself up and over the parapet and dropped onto the damp leaves that collected in the angle of the roof. Safe now. She put her forehead on her knees and hugged herself together. She’d just sit for a while.
I am out of practice
.
I am out of practice
.
“Cut that one close, didin I?” she whispered. “Lazarus would’ve boxed my ears.”
The sack at her back grumbled and shifted, calling itself to her attention. The Kedger was miffed at her. Got miffed easy, Kedger did.
“All rug now. Sorry for the rough ride.” She jerked the knot on the drawstring. “Off you go, chum. Enjoy yerself.” Kedger was an arc of scuttling gray, up and over the roof peak, galloping down the other side. When they got inside Eaton’s, he’d tell her what rooms were empty and which ones had somebody behind the door. He’d warn her if anyone was coming. No surprises when she had Kedger for a lookout.
She crawled to the edge to look over. Four stories down, hats and bonnets meandered along the pavement. No one looked up. They never did. Thieving was all about being in plain sight where folks never looked.
“Most jobs have a bad patch in them.” She said it soft, to the scratching of distant claws. “That was our bad patch. The rest’ll be easy.”
No answer, but she was sure the Kedger agreed.
Eaton’s roof was a lengthy business of up and down, up and down, over a row of dormers. Good British workmanship everywhere, with an Italian influence in the molding.
“If I get the Captain crossed off my list, I’ll clear out of his house.” There were lots of fancy handholds here. A fair treat to crawl across. “Before I wind up in his bed. I feel myself slipping in that direction. I’m not between the sheets yet, but I’m thinking about it more than I should be.”
Kedger trailed behind her, just out of sight.
Being righteously angry at the Captain didn’t make as much difference as you’d think.
She avoided some guttering. Nobody secured guttering the way they should.
The Kedger’s head popped up over the roofline. He poured toward her, carrying something in his mouth. She accepted a button. A little spit and a quick polish on her sleeve revealed it was brass. Amazing what Kedger came up with, even on a roof.
“You’re going to make us rich if you keep this up.” To please him, she dropped it in the sack. He sniffed after it a minute, then climbed up her arm to investigate her braids. Sniff . . . nibble . . . tug . . . tug.
“Anything in there I should know about?”
The Kedger responded with a comment on women who bounced ferrets around in burlap sacks.
“Sorry, mate. I’ll be more careful next time.”
He chirruped, still grumpy.
“Are you going to pull all my braids out, or just that one?”
He’d made his point. He took his place on her shoulder and dug his claws in, stretched up tall, and pointed his nose to the wind.
South,
he ordered.
South,
he ordered.
“Fine with me. Let’s go visit Captain Kennett’s account books.”
Two floors down, Eaton’s clerks were emptying out of the main room, going to the tavern for lunch. She’d enter through the attic and slide right through an empty building. Lord, but she loved burgling.
Fifteen
Meeks Street
IT WAS RAINING IN A SULKY, ENGLISH WAY WHEN she paid off the hackney driver. It wasn’t night yet, but windows glowed up and down Meeks Street. There’d be warm fires and bright lamps in all these big, comfortable houses and folks sitting over cups of tea. Cheery.
Meeks Street was a complacent row of stucco houses. They built walls around the gardens to keep the grass and trees from wandering. More trees, with small round leaves, grew in a thin line of garden that ran up the middle of the street. The air smelled wet and green.
Here she was. British Service Headquarters.
As soon as she turned in the gate, the dog started barking inside, deep as a bronze gong. No sneaking up on Number Seven.
It was a dry pain, knotted in her belly, how much she needed to be with Papa. When he was through yelling at her, they’d sit together and talk about Russian sable and brandy and the price of indigo and pretend to each other that everything was going to turn out fine.
The brass plate beside the door read “The Penumbral Walking Club.” The British Service, having their little joke.
Yanking the bellpull was one of those pro forma actions. They knew she was here. She could feel somebody watching her from the windows upstairs, from behind the curtains. They’d send Trevor to open the fool door when they felt so inclined.
She waited. The rain settled down to the task of making her miserable. She had time to renew her acquaintance with the green-painted front door and the bars on the windows. There were bars on every window in the house, upstairs and down. The old man who did the cooking in the kitchen downstairs kept a shotgun propped near the window where she could just see it. You’d have to get by him before you even tried for the windows. Then there was the dog. This had to be the least crackable house in London. Not an amazement, considering.
Papa was going to ask about her recent activities. If she didn’t tell him, he’d just ask Pitney. Peach on her in a minute, Pitney would.
The lock scraped and the door opened. But it wasn’t Trevor who’d come to let her in. It was the Captain. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”
Some days it doesn’t shower luck down on you. She’d counted on having a little more time before she had to face him. “Good afternoon to you, too, Captain. Mucky weather we’re having.”
“You were on the bloody
roof.
Have you lost your mind?”
roof.
Have you lost your mind?”
“There’s a school of thought that holds that opinion.” Somebody from Eaton had trotted over and told him his books had gone missing. He’d figured out she’d been on the roof. Canny as a parliament of owls, the Captain.
“It’s fifty goddamned feet up. One slip, and they’d have scraped you off the pavement into a bucket.”
“That’s a vivid bit of description. I put your books back before I left. Did they tell you?” When it started raining, she’d nipped back inside and dropped the ledgers off in a corner office, stacked on the desk in a neat tower. “Look, am I going to stand out in the rain till I get old and gray or what?”
He pulled her over the doorsill like he was taking in lobster pots. “You think this is funny? You think I’m not going to lock you up.”
“I don’t have any idea, actually. I’m disenchanted with locks, lately. Everybody ignores them.”
The front parlor at Meeks Street was formal and ugly and damp and stone cold, about as unwelcoming as it was humanly possible to make it. They did it on purpose. She pulled off her cloak. At least it wasn’t raining on her in here. They’d do that, too, if they could figure out how.
“Sit. Over. There.” The Captain clenched his teeth. If she was his cabin boy, she’d find h›y, heerself something to do at the other end of the ship, right smart.
“I’m here to see my father, not you.”
“Do what I say and you’ll see him a lot quicker.”
The Captain was going to be a stone wall when it came to reasoned argument, so she went over and sat, tame and polite, in the chair he’d picked out for her and let him take her wet cloak and bonnet and throw them over the arm of the sofa.
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