My Lord and Spymaster (40 page)

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Authors: Joanna Bourne

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Her father’s life would be his wedding gift to Jess. He’d set aside his vengeance. Josiah Whitby, damn his soul, was right. That was the only way he could have a life with Jess.
He said, “Marry me, Jess.”
For an instant, she stopped. She laid her forehead to the wood of the door. “Sebastian . . .” She didn’t look at him. “Ask me tomorrow.” Then she fumbled with the doorknob, those clever hands of hers clumsy as paws.

 

Thirty-two
HER Nž€…AME WAS BRIDGET AND SHE CAME FROM County Mayo in the west of Ireland. She was a whore, a good one, and as shrewd and grasping as a magpie. Even respectably dressed, she looked like three pence against the nearest wall or ten pence upstairs in a bed.
She drank ale from a large pewter tankard and wiped her mouth. “She’s gone. Girl slipped out at first light and left those lumbering fools behind.”
“Alone, then.” The Irishman set his elbows on the sticky table. “Was she carrying a bag?”
“You think I pranced up and asked her? Jaysus.” She drank again. “And you bastards owe me a pound, even.”
“Later.”
Next to him on the bench, the other man said, “If she’s leaving England, we know where she’ll be.” He shoved to his feet. “Let’s go. Out the back way.”
“You could pay for me drink,” the woman muttered. “Pigs.”
PITNEY wasn’t at his house. His housekeeper, all flustered, said he’d come in late last night and packed a bag and left. He wasn’t at the warehouse either. When Jess checked the safe, the ready money was missing, so he’d been there and gone. But he wouldn’t have been fast enough to sail out on last night’s tide. He was still in London.
She took a hackney to Commercial Road, which was as far as the jarvey wanted to venture into these waters. A sensible man. She counted coins for him while her bodyguard assembled at a discreet distance.
She’d dodged Sebastian’s men, but not the Service. That was the next item on her agenda. Cutting loose the Service.
She slipped around the corner and down the alley, listening to heavy boots hurrying after her. At the end of Goose Lane she climbed a rain barrel and went over the palings into the narrow, crooked pathways nobody ever got around to naming. They were in her part of town now.
CLAUDIA sat in the ugly front parlor at Meeks Street, red-eyed, clutching her reticule in her lap.
“. . . his clothing gone from his room. All his things. The door to your study was open.” She swallowed and went on. “The drawers of your desk have been pried out. The miniatures are missing from the upstairs hallway, and some of the other paintings. My jewel case . . .” She kept her face averted from them while she talked. Her eyes stayed fixed on some knob or curlicue on the hideous sideboard to the left of the door. “My jewel case was extracted from my room last night, while I slept. I found it in your office, on the floor, broken open and emptied. Eunice’s jewels were—”
“He’s run for it.” Sebastian stopped her. There was no need to make her count through the whole wretched list of what was stolen. He felt sick. “It was Quentin all along. Quentin and Whitby. It adds up.”
“Quentin.” Adrian was doing some adding of his own. “But not Josiah.”
Doyle didn’t move from his position near the window. “It’s Pitney.” Doyle met his eye, soberly. “Your cousin knows Pitney, not Josiah Whitby. It’s Pitney who carries p£€ who caraperwork to the Board of Trade.”
“A conspiracy of small fishes,” Adrian said. “That’s why we missed it. Sebastian, I’m sorry.”
Service agents were silent at the edges of the room, watching.
Adrian said, “Your cousin had access to secrets. Pitney could use Whitby company ships any way he wanted. Josiah wouldn’t question him.”
Quentin had done treason. Quentin lived in his house. He’d sat beside him, eating dinner every night. He’d offered sympathy, damp-eyed, when the
Neptune Dancer
went down. His cousin had been playing a part for years. “Quentin is in charge. His ideas. He needed a man with access to ships, so he pulled Pitney into it somehow.”
Adrian was up, pacing off the room. “Jess knows it’s Pitney. ” After a minute. “She knew it when she left last night. She warned him.”
“Pitney was waiting at the gate when we left the Admiralty. ” He remembered what Jess had said. He remembered their faces—Jess resolute and frozen, Pitney gray as death. “She told him right under my nose. I watched her do it.”
“Mr. Pitney.” Claudia’s voice was tight. Her hands twitched in her lap. “From the Whitby company. When he came, they’d leave the house and walk along the street, to talk. Quentin made certain they wouldn’t be overheard. I knew something was wrong. I saw Quentin, once, hand money to him.”
She had the attention of every man in the room.
“I have known, for some time, that Quentin was engaged in something shameful. I had hoped it was . . . an unimportant corruption. My father committed numberless depravities without becoming a traitor.” Her face was proud. Impassive. “My brother has not succeeded in even that.”
“Claudia . . .” This was his fault. He should have seen what was happening in his own home. He’d ignored Quentin because he disliked him. What could he say? She’d never wanted friendship or comfort from him before. He didn’t know how to offer it now. “Where has he gone?”
“To Hades, I devoutly pray.” Claudia rose and shook her skirts out. “It’s as well the Ashton name will die in this generation. The bastard shoot is the best we’ve produced. Have a care to your Jessamyn, Sebastian. I’ve seen how Quentin looks at something he plans to steal. He watched your Persian miniatures that way. That’s the way he looks at Jess.” She smoothed her glove. “And he likes to hurt things.”
Jess was headed to Pitney, wherever he was hiding. To Pitney. And to Quentin.
FROM the outside, all rookeries look the same, but some are more dangerous than others.
Ludmill Street was peaceable in its rough way. Safe enough, if you knew what you were doing. When a pair of Irishmen approached, making monetary offers, she snapped back, sharp, in Italian. They left her alone, thinking she belonged to the Italians. There were lots of hot-tempered Italians in this section who didn’t like even their whores approached by Irishmen. A few hundred yards farther on, she sent an Italian boy on his way with a Gaelic curse. Lots of hot£€e. Lots -tempered Irishmen in this quarter, too.
When she got to the Limehouse, to Asker Street, it would be considerably more dangerous. She’d be unwise to visit alone.
The Reverend’s soup kitchen was open, and the door to his office unlocked. Guess he felt the same way she did about locks. An invitation to thievery, locks were. Being the Reverend, though, he probably came to the same conclusion in a more roundabout way.
When he walked in a few minutes later, she had his communion chalice down. “I should get you something better than this,” she said. “Something that’s real silver, at least.”
“I don’t own anything worth stealing, Jess.” Which was more or less what he said to her the first time they met, when she was eight and planning to lift that particular cup.
She set it back on the shelf. “Reverend, you would not believe the trouble I’m in.” Which was exactly what she said to him on another memorable occasion, a couple hours before she sold herself to Lazarus.
WHEN Sebastian came into the study, Josiah Whitby was staring into the fire. The old man didn’t look up. Not making a point, just not much interested. Some rumor from last night had reached him. He knew it’d been Whitby ships.
Sebastian collapsed into the chair. “I’ll take that port you didn’t offer me yesterday.”
That got Whitby’s attention. A cool, shrewd look, and Whitby read everything he was saying. Confirmation of his innocence. The
amende honorable
. Apology.
Whitby responded with his own set of messages. He brought the bottle and two glasses to the desk and poured for them both. “Looks like you could use it.”
“Why the hell didn’t you get Jess out of England the day you were arrested? Anybody but an iron-plated bastard like you would have kept her out of this.”
Whitby saluted with his glass and drank. “You’ll find, Kennett, that there’s a fine art to giving Jess orders.”
Time to tell him and pray the man knew something that could help. “An hour ago your daughter ran into the Whitechapel rookery as if all the Hounds of Hell were after her.” He waited for that to sink in. “Unless you can think of some way to get her back, she’ll be in a brothel by tomorrow morning. Learn to take orders there, I should imagine.
Salut.
”
The old man’s eyes turned to brown rock. This was the Josiah Whitby who’d faced down the mob in Izmir and plucked a crew of men back from hanging. This was the king smuggler who ran his gang of cutthroats under the noses of the customs. “The Hounds of Hell being yourself, I take it.”
“Being the British Service.” He didn’t try to hide the anger that filled him. “She gave the slip to men who were supposed to protect her. Fast as a greyhound, your Jess. Comes from all those years doing your dangerous errands. And Lazarus’s. She must be used to running scared.”
Whitby slapped his drink down, rattling. “No games,
Kennett. I don’t need to be rooked into helping Jess. Why’d she run from you?”
“We would have stopped her going to Pitney.”
There was not the smallest change in Whitby’s eyes. “Pitney.”
“The part of Cinq that used your company to commit treason.”
A minute passed. Whitby gave a nod. “I wasn’t sure myself, till they told me it was Whitby ships. Then I knew.” He wiped at the spilled drops of port with the side of his hand. “I wish it hadn’t been Jess who found this out. She’ll take it as her fault somehow.”
“He has a dangerous partner—the man who was behind this all. If Jess shows up, Pitney won’t be able to protect her. I have to get to her. Where are they?”
“What happens to Pitney?”
He didn’t answer. They both knew there’d be no amnesty for Pitney.
Whitby sat back in his chair and stared out the window, past the bars. Three sparrows were on the windowsill, tucking into crumbs of bread. It’d be Whitby who set that out for them.
“I’ve known Pitney for thirty years.” Whitby drank and set the glass down. “Jess is headed for the docks. There’s a warehouse. The old Belkey warehouse on Asker Street. That’s the conduit out of England.”
Asker Street. Jess had lost her bodyguard near Commercial Road. That was a long, treacherous walk for a woman. He stood up. “I’ll find her.”
A sleek gray muzzle poked out from behind the curtain. The beady nose sniffed in his direction and slithered toward him. Jess’s vermin.
He said, “Touch my boots and you die.”
There was no fear in the ferret. It was like Jess, that way. It stood on its hindquarters to snuffle up his leg to the thigh. Then it set a clawed foot on him, for balance, and started sniffing across his hand.
“He smells Jess on thee,” Whitby said.
“If it bites, I’m going to wring its neck.”
“I’ve thought of fricassee ferret, myself, from time t’ time.”
“She can’t walk through Limehouse alone. Who will she go to?” The ferret made an odd half scramble, still sniffing, following him to the door.
“It’s been too long, Kennett. Her old friends have gone. Everything’s changed. She doesn’t belong there anymore.”
“Then she should damn well stay out of there.”
The study door wasn’t locked. That was Adrian’s acknowledgment of Whitby’s innocence. The ferret, damn its furry soul, scuttled along at his bootside like a pointy-toothed dog.
“Take him. There£€ake him.’s a carrying cage in the hall.” Whitby stood to watch him go, his hands on the desk, balled into fists. “Take him along for luck, Kennett. He won’t get in the way. And if you get close to Jess, let him out, and he’ll find her for you.”
It was easier to bring the vermin than argue.
“She’ll get to Pitney, wherever he is,” Whitby said. “Whatever he’s done, she’ll get him out of England, and safe. Loyal to the death, my Jess. That’s another reason you have to be careful, giving her orders. If you belong to her, she’ll move the foundations of the earth for you.”
PITNEY dropped the seabag at his feet. It was the same one he’d carried thirty years ago when he signed on with Josiah. Nothing in it but some handfuls of money and a few changes of clothes. Not much to show for a lifetime. He was old now and a pariah and he’d sold his soul for a mass of pottage. It’d be hard to start over in some seaport in the East.
He said, “I left a letter.”
“Inevitably,” the smooth, cold voice beside him said. “The tool turns against its master. Napoleon himself was betrayed by Barras.”
“I named Buchanan. I told them he planted the false evidence and where and how. I named the Frenchmen. And you. I’ve left more than enough proof to hang us all. Josiah’s going to walk free before this day is out and he’ll come looking for vengeance. He won’t come after me, because we were friends, once. But I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”
“I’ve arranged my own protection against Whitby. He won’t touch me.”
“Maybe not.” It didn’t matter. There wasn’t much that mattered to a man after he’d betrayed his friends. He couldn’t even say why he’d done it. The company felt like his own, after all these years. The warehouse and the ships. It hadn’t seemed wrong to do some smuggling on the side and keep it off the books.
It had fallen apart. He’d done treason. He still didn’t know how he’d come to it.
The voice behind him just wouldn’t stop. “The Republic doesn’t forget its heroes. There’s a place prepared for me. I go into honorable exile, and only for a time. When the emperor rides in triumph down Pall Mall, I’ll be one of the men behind him. They’ll need Englishmen to lead the new government. I have experience.”
Pitney heard the cocking of a gun. He allowed himself one final look at the brown water of the Thames and the clean blue sky above it. He turned.
He didn’t want to be shot in the back.
LIMEHOUSE was full of sailors and stevedores of every country and race known to man, most of them rolling drunk, even in the middle of the day. It was a gauntlet she wouldn’t have wanted to run alone.
Belkey’s warehouse was a quarter mile farther on, in Asker Street, in a row of falling-down waterfront warehouses, slated for destruction. Most were empty now or holding bulk storage.
The Reverend kept beside her. His black jacket and white collar cleared a path for them t£€ath for hrough the sailors and whores. Men respected his cloth or wanted to avoid the sermons men of religion passed out in this part of town. The locals recognized him and knew he was under Lazarus’s protection.
Asker Street, by the docks, was mostly deserted. The Belkey warehouse, halfway along, had been closed up for a year. Grass grew in the spaces between the cobbles of the loading yard. The windows were broken, even up on the third and fourth story. Must have taken weeks for the local lads to throw rocks that high and break out every blessed pane. Nothing like a challenge.
No sign of life. Nobody had made himself at home in that rubble on the far side of the yard or in some cozy corner of the fence. That alone meant somebody stayed here regular to rout the squatters out. Dogs had set up housekeeping, though. There were a dozen of them, mean and hardy and wise, crouching behind the broken boards of the fence. They watched strangers cross the open space, staying safe in the shadows. The boys in this district taught dogs to be wary of humans.
The river smell was strong. Just the other side of the warehouse wall lay the stinking mud of the Thames. Cold, damp air blew off that water, leaving a bad taste in the mouth. At the wharves, just out of sight, ships creaked and snapped and banged. Chain rattled and there was a sudden loud pop, like a distant gun. It was never quiet down at the docks.
Pitney might still be here, waiting, out of sight, or he might have come and gone. Either way, there’d be a man inside the warehouse, alert and capable, with a boat ready any hour of the day or night. Papa always had a back door out of any city they lived in. Nobody more careful than Papa.
The door in the side of the warehouse was an inch open.
“This is unlocked,” the Reverend said.
“I expect the locks got pulled off some time ago.”
At first, when she walked in, the place looked empty. Gutted. The storage racks had been pulled down and the wood stolen for fuel. Bars of sun slanted through the broken windows.
Somebody was living here. She smelled beer and piss and charcoal and stale food. There’d be rats. There were always rats. “You better stay outside, Reverend, till I see what’s what.”
“I won’t leave you alone. I’ve seen worse, Jess.”
On the far side of the open floor, below the windows, a bedstead was shoved up against the brick wall. Beside that was a charcoal stove with a kettle on it. Good signs. Whitby’s man would show up soon enough.
She led the way inward, past dark, empty arches where they used to store cargo, toward that patch of domesticity. She didn’t see what stepped out behind her and looped a cord around her throat. The world was gone, sudden as snuffing out a candle.
"IT’S the Reverend,” Adrian said.
Sebastian rolled him over. The man groaned and his eyelids fluttered. There was blood on his forehead where he’d hit the floor.
size="3">Jess had been here. The ferret chittered in its cage, lashing its body back and forth.
“He was hit from behind. Here.” Sebastian’s hand came away bloody. “This just happened. A friend of Jess’s?”
“Friend of all the world. Jess must have gone to him. Smart, smart girl.”
“Two men . . .” the Reverend’s eyes opened, “took her.”
“Don’t move. Trevor, stay with him. When he can walk, get him to my aunt.” Sebastian laid the man gently back on the floor. “Pitney didn’t order this. Quentin has her.”
She could be anywhere on the docks. On any ship.
“I need to see Lazarus. I need men to search the docks.”
Adrian stood up. “When’s the next tide?”
“Three hours.” They didn’t have much time. Maybe no time at all.
Doyle’s face was grim. “The Reverend’s under Lazarus’s protection. So’s Jess. He’s going to kill somebody for this.”
Good.
“Let’s get moving.”
DARKNESS brightened first at the center. Not with light. With pain. That’s how she knew she was alive. Being alive hurt.
She was wrapped in sailcloth, being carried like a bundle over somebody’s shoulder. He sang. He crooned to himself. She thought it might be Gaelic. Her head flopped again and again against his back. Through a gap at the end of the smothering folds she could see the black wood planks of the dock and blinding sunlight glinting off the river. She was being taken to a ship.
She fought to wake up, sick and terrified. If they got her on board, she’d drop out of sight like a stone in the ocean. Maybe exactly like a stone in an ocean.
One chance.
She worked her hand up to her throat and snagged the ribbon at her neck. Got it off over her head and pushed her hand out of the cloth . . . and she let her mother’s locket go. She let it fall on the dock.
Find somebody. For God’s sake find somebody and tell them where I am.
It might work. Folks didn’t leave gold lying in the dirt.
She set to making herself conspicuous, yelling and flopping and trying to kick the cloth off. It didn’t make any difference, as far as she could tell. The bloke carrying her didn’t speed up. Nobody stopped him to ask why his bundle was making a fuss. It wasn’t three minutes later she felt the change in his steps that said he was going up a gangplank. The slosh and clank said ship, and she was carried aboard. Ship smell surrounded her. Nobody would find her now.
She was tossed down and spun out of the wrapping. She landed with a thud that knocked the breath out of her. Shock stole her sight.
Her eyes cleared. She lay on her back, on deck, faced up to the sky. Above her was dazzling blue sky with a mast in it. She let her head roll to the side and saw Blodgett. Captain Blodgett. So she knew where she was. £€here sheThis was the
Northern Lark.
Lark
was old and lumbering and always in need of repair—a poor excuse for a ship, but she stayed just barely profitable.
Lark
carried dirty cargo she didn’t want fouling better vessels—horse hides and dried fish and such.
Strange how it didn’t come as a shock to see Quentin here, his back to her, arguing with Blodgett. It was like her brain had kept working and calculating, and it’d already come up with Quentin’s name and was just now getting around to telling her about it.
Quentin and Pitney. Quentin was the schemer. Pitney would never have come up with this on his own.
Lark
’s crew was aboard. She could feel their footsteps on the deck boards. Fine weather for sailing, and it sounded like they were getting ready to do it.
“Jess . . .”
She turned her head. Light on the water blinded her. Then the shapes sorted out. It wasn’t a pile of dirty cloth next to the rail. It was a man, tossed down and twisted unnatural.
“Jessie . . .”
She rolled to her belly and crawled to him.
Pitney had been shot. Blood pooled on the deck under him. He had red at the corner of his mouth. It was blood with bubbles in it, and that meant he’d been hit in the lungs. Men didn’t live when they were hit in the lungs. “Pitney.”
“Jessie girl. I didn’t . . .”
His mouth was full of blood. He couldn’t finish the words. She could. “You didn’t mean this. None of it. You wouldn’t hurt me. Wouldn’t hurt Papa. I know that. I never thought anything else, not for a minute.”
She managed to sit and pull him up, into her lap, so his head lay against her. His clothes were sticky wet. So much blood in a man. The tears coming down her cheeks fell on his face.
His breath sucked and bubbled. “. . . just letters, Jess. Letters to France. I didn’t know . . .”
“You didn’t know they were treason.”
Easy to see how he’d been tricked into this. Just letters. That’s how it started. He’d taken a coin or two to send packets of letters, secret, to France. “To my sister.” “To my business in Lyon.” All those years smuggling lace and brandy and tea in good faith, he wouldn’t think about treason. Not till he was in too deep to stop.

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