The Bloodline Feud (Merchant Princes Omnibus 1) (45 page)

‘Hmm.’ Burgeson picked the box up, chewing his lower lip. ‘Excuse me.’ He whipped out a magnifying lens and examined them minutely. ‘I’ll need to test
them,’ he murmured, ‘but if these are real pearls, they’re worth a pretty penny. Where did you get them?’

‘That is for me to know and you to guess.’ She tensed.

‘Hah.’ He grinned at her cadaverously. ‘You’d better have a good story next time you try to sell them. I’m not sticking my neck in a noose for your mistress if she
decides to send the thief-takers after you.’

‘Hmm. What makes you think I’m a light-fingered servant?’ she asked.

‘Well.’ He looked down his nose at her. ‘Your clothes are not what a woman of fashion, or even of her own means, would wear – ’

‘Fresh off the boat,’ Miriam observed.

‘And earrings are among the most magnetic of baubles to those of a jackdaw disposition,’ he added.

‘And wanting a suit of clothes that does
not
mark me out as a stranger,’ Miriam commented.

‘Besides which,’ he added with some severity, ‘
Scotland
has not existed for a hundred and seventy years. It’s all part of Grande Bretaigne.’

‘Oh.’ Miriam covered her mouth.
Shit!
‘Well then.’ She mustered up a sickly smile. ‘How about this?’

The quarter-kilogram bar of solid gold was about an inch wide, two inches long, and half an inch thick. She set it down on the display case like an intrusion from another world, shimmering with
the promise of wealth and power and riches.

‘Well now,’ breathed Burgeson, ‘if
that
is what ladies of means pay their bills with in Scotland, maybe it’s not such an unbelievable fiction after
all.’

Miriam nodded.
It had better cover the bills,
she thought,
the damn thing set me back nearly three thousand dollars.
‘It all depends how honest you aren’t,’
she said briskly. ‘There are more where this one comes from. I’m looking to buy several things, including but not limited to money. I need to fit in. I don’t care if you’re
fiddling your taxes or lying to the government, all I care about is whether you’re honest with your customers. You don’t know me, and if you don’t want to, you’ll never see
me again. On the other hand, if you say “yes” – ’ she met his eyes – ‘this need not be our last transaction. Not by a very long way.’

‘Hmm.’ Burgeson stared right back at her. ‘Are you in French employ?’ he asked.

‘Huh?’

Miriam’s fleeting look of puzzlement seemed to reassure him. ‘Well
that’s
good,’ he said genially. ‘Excuse me while I fetch the aqua regia: If this is pure
I can advance you, oh, ten pounds immediately and another, ahum – ’ he picked up the gold bar and placed it on the balance behind him – ‘sixty-two and eight shillings by
noon tomorrow.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Miriam shook her head. ‘I’ll take ten today, and sixty tomorrow – plus five full pounds’ credit in your shop, here and now, for
goods you hold.’ She’d been eyeing the price tags. The shilling, a twentieth of a pound, seemed to occupy the same role as the dollar back home, except that they went further. Pounds
were
big
currency.

‘Ridiculous.’ He stared at her. ‘Three pounds.’

‘Four.’

‘Done,’ he said, unnervingly rapidly. Miriam had a feeling that she’d been had, somehow, but nodded. He strode over to the door and flipped the sign in the window pane to
CLOSED. ‘Let me test out this bar. I’ll just take a sample with this scalpel, mind . . .’ He hurried into the back room. A minute later he re-emerged, bearing a glass measuring
cylinder full of water into which he dropped the gold bar. Scribbled measurements followed. Finally he nodded. ‘Oh, most satisfying,’ he muttered to himself before looking at her.
‘Your sample is indeed of acceptable purity,’ he said, looking almost surprised. Reaching into an inner pocket he produced a battered wallet, from which he plucked improbably large
banknotes. ‘Nine one-pound notes, milady, the balance in silver and a few coppers. I hope these are to your satisfaction; the bank across the street will happily exchange them, I assure
you.’ Next he produced a fountain pen and a ledger, and a wax brick and a candle and a metal die. ‘I shall just make out this promissory note for sixty pounds to you. If you would like
to select from my wares, I can work while you equip yourself.’

‘Do you have a measuring tape?’ she asked.

‘Indeed.’ He pulled one down from a hook behind the counter. ‘If you need any alterations making, Missus Borisovitch across the way is a most excellent seamstress, works while
you wait. And her daughter is a fine milliner, too.’

Over the next hour, Miriam ransacked the pawnbroker’s shop. The range of clothing hanging in mothballs from rails all the way up to the ceiling, a dizzying twenty feet up, was huge and
strange, but she knew what she wanted – anything that wouldn’t look too alien while she realized her liquid assets and found a real dressmaker to equip her for the sort of business she
intended to conduct. Which would almost certainly require formal business wear, as high finance and legal work usually did back home. For a miracle, Miriam discovered a matching jacket, blouse, and
skirt that was in good condition and close enough to her size to fit. She changed in Burgeson’s cramped, damp-smelling cellar while he reopened the shop. The outfit took some getting used to,
but in his dusty mirror she saw someone not unlike the women she’d passed on her way into town.

‘Ah.’ Burgeson nodded to her. ‘That is a good choice. It will, however, cost you one pound fourteen and sixpence.’

‘Sure.’ Miriam nodded. ‘Next, I want a history book.’

‘A history book.’ He looked at her oddly. ‘Any particular title?’

She smiled thinly. ‘One covering the past three hundred years, in detail.’

‘Hmm.’ Burgeson ducked back into the back of the shop. While he was gone, Miriam located a pair of kidskin gloves and a good topcoat. The hats all looked grotesque to her eye, but in
the end she settled on something broad-brimmed and floppy, with not too much fur. He returned and dumped a hardbound volume on the glass display case. ‘You could do worse than start with
this.
Alfred’s Annals of the New British.
’

‘I could.’ She stared at it. ‘Anything else?’

‘Or.’ He pulled another book up – bound in brown paper, utterly anonymous, thinner and lighter. ‘This.’ He turned it to face her, open at the fly-leaf.

‘
The Hanoverian Exodus Reconsidered
– ’ she bit her lip when she saw the author. ‘Karl Marx. Hmm. Keep this on the bottom shelf, do you?’

‘It’s only prudent,’ he said, apologetically closing it and sliding it under the first book. ‘I’d strongly recommend it, though,’ he added. ‘Marx pulls
no punches.’

‘Right. How much for both of them?’

‘Six shillings for the Alfred, a pound for the Marx – you
do
realize that simply being caught with a copy of it can land you a flogging, if not five years’ exile in
Canadia?’

‘I didn’t.’ She suppressed a shudder. ‘I’ll take them both. And the hat, gloves, and coat.’

‘It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, madam,’ he said fervently. ‘When shall I see you again?’

‘Hmm.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘No need for the money tomorrow. I will not be back for at least five days. But if you want another of those pieces – ’

‘How many can you supply?’ he asked, slipping the question in almost casually.

‘As many as you can shift,’ she replied. ‘But on the next visit, no more than two.’

‘Well then.’ He chewed his lower lip. ‘For two, assuming this one tests out correctly and the next do likewise, I will pay the sum of two hundred pounds.’ He glanced over
his shoulder. ‘But not all at once. It’s too dangerous.’

‘Can you pay in services other than money?’ she asked.

‘It depends.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t deal in spying, sedition, or popery.’

‘I’m not in any of those businesses,’ she said, thinking
Popery
? ‘But I’m really, truly, from a long way away. I need to establish a toehold here that
allows me to set up an import/export business. That will mean . . . hmm. Do you need identity papers to move about? Passports? Or to open a bank account, create a company, hire a lawyer to
represent me?’

He shook his head. ‘From
too
far away,’ he muttered. ‘God help me, yes to all of those.’

‘Well, then.’ She looked at him. ‘I’ll need papers.
Good
papers, preferably real ones from real people who don’t need them anymore – not killed, just
the usual, a birth certificate from a babe who died before their first birthday,’ she added hastily.

‘You warm the cockles of my heart.’ He stared at her thoughtfully. ‘I’m glad to see you appear to have scruples. Are you sure you don’t want to tell me where you
come from?’

She raised a finger to her lips. ‘Not yet. Maybe when I trust you.’

‘Ah, well.’ He bowed. ‘Before you leave, may I offer you a glass of port? Just a little drink to our future business relationship.’

‘Indeed you may.’ She surreptitiously pushed back her glove to check her watch. ‘I believe I have half an hour to spare before I must depart. My carriage turns back into a
pumpkin at midnight.’

PART SEVEN

HISTORY LESSON

‘You are telling me that you
don’t know
where she is?’ The man standing by the glass display case radiated disbelief.

Normally the contents of the case – precious relics of the Clan, valuable beyond belief – would have fascinated him, but right now his attention was focused on the bearer of bad
news.

‘I told you she’d be difficult.’ The duke’s secretary was unapologetic. He didn’t sneer, but his expression was one of thinly veiled impatience. ‘You are
dealing with a woman who was born and raised on the other side; she was clearly going to be a handful right from the start. I told you that the best way to deal with her would be to co-opt her and
move her in a direction she was already going in, but you wouldn’t listen. And after that business with the hired killer – ’

‘That
hired killer
was my own blood, I’ll thank you to remember.’ Esau’s tone of voice was ominously low.

‘I don’t care whether he was the prince-magistrate of Xian-Ju province, it was dumb! Now you’ve told Angbard’s men that someone outside the Clan is trying to kill her,
and you’ve driven her underground,
and
you’ve ruined her usefulness to me. I had it all taken care of until you attacked her. And then, to go after her but kill the wrong woman
by mistake when I had everything in hand . . . !’

‘You didn’t tell us she was traveling in company. Or hiding in the Lady Olga’s rooms. Nor did we expect Olga’s lady-in-waiting to get nosy and take someone else’s
bait. We’re not the only ones to have problems. You said you had her as good as under control?’ Esau turned to stare at Matthias. Today the secretary wore the riding-out garb of a minor
nobleman of the barbarian east: brocade jacket over long woolen leggings, a hat with a plume of peacock feathers, and riding boots. ‘You think forging the old man’s will takes care of
anything at all? Are you losing your grip?’

‘No.’ Matthias rested his hand lightly on his sword’s hilt. ‘Has it occurred to you that as Angbard’s heir she would have been more open to suggestions, rather than
less? Wealth doesn’t necessarily translate into safety, you know, and she was clearly aware of her own isolation. I was trying to get her under control, or at least frightened into
cooperating, by lining up the lesser families against her and positioning myself as her protector. You spooked her instead, before I could complete the groundwork. You exposed her to too much too
soon, and the result is our shared loss. All the more so, since
someone
– whoever – tried to rub her out with Lady Olga.’

‘And whose fault is it that she got away?’ Esau demanded. ‘Whose little tripwire failed?’

‘Mine, I’ll admit.’ Matthias shrugged again. ‘But I’m not the one who’s blundering around in the dark around here. I really wanted to enlist her in our cause.
Willingly or unwillingly, it doesn’t matter. With a recognized heir in our pocket, we could have enough votes that when we get rid of Angbard . . . well. If that failed, we’d be no
worse off with her dead, but it was hardly a desirable goal. It’s a good thing for you that I’ve got some contingency plans in hand.’

‘If the balance of power in the Clan tips too far toward the Lofstrom–Thorold–Hjorth axis, we risk losing what leverage we’ve got,’ said Esau. ‘Never mind the
old bat’s power play. What did she think she was up to, anyway? If the council suspected . . .’ He shook his head. ‘You have to get this back under control. Find her and
neutralize her, or we likely lose all the ground we have made in the past two years.’

‘I risk losing a lot more than that,’ Matthias reminded him pointedly. ‘Why did your people try to kill her? She was a natural dissident. More use to us alive than
dead.’

‘It’s not for the likes of you to question our goals.’

Matthias tightened his grip on his sword and turned slowly aside, keeping his eyes on Esau the whole time. ‘Retract that,’ he said flatly.

‘I – ’ Esau caught his eye. A momentary nod. ‘I apologize.’

‘We are partners in this,’ Matthias said quietly, ‘to the extent that both our necks are forfeit if our venture comes to light. That being the case, it is essential that I know
not only what your organization’s intended actions are, but what goals you hope to achieve – so that I can avoid conflicts of interest. Do you understand?’

Esau nodded again. ‘I told you there might be preexisting orders. There was indeed such an order,’ he said reluctantly. ‘It took time to come to light, that’s
all.’

‘What? You mean the order for – gods below, you’re still trying to kill the mother and her
infant
? After what, a third of a century?’

It was Esau’s turn to shrug. ‘Our sanctified elder never rescinded the command, and it is not for us to question his word. Once they learned of the child’s continued existence,
my cousins were honor-bound to attempt to carry out the orders.’