I wish you could. I wish I had you at my back, holding the ropes, keeping me safe. “I don’t know why you’d help me.”
“That’s something else for you to think about.” He turned and took a long step to pound on the door, telling Trevor to come open it and let her into the rest of the house. “You’re going to trust me, Jess. You’re halfway to it now.” His voice rumbled and buzzed in her bones, clinging to her senses like toffee. The very last of her anger leached away. What topped up the foam on the beer was how much she wanted to do just that. Trust him.
The key turned in the lock. Trevor hadn’t been far away.
“When you talk to your father, tell him to get you out of England. You’re not safe here. And stay next to the fire so you don’t freeze to death.”
PAPA stomped around the study they’d given him, expressing himself. He’d been at it a while. Seemed like it was her day for getting yelled at by angry men.
“Does tha ask me? Does tha? Am I in the Bay of Bengal that tha’ can’t send word?”
“I—”
“What use is it to me or to anyone, thee dying in thy blood on Eaton’s doorstep? Eh? Where am I then, when tha breaks thy neck like a chicken?”
“I was careful.”
The windows held a streaky view of rain at sunset, seen through iron bars. Pretty soon, they’d draw the curtains and keep the night out.
“Careful? I swear by God, if I hear tha’s been skiperting across the roofs again, I’ll put thee on the next ship out of England. I won’t have it.”
“Yes, Papa.” He’d about finished yelling at her, which was a relief to both of them and likely everyone else in the house.
“Pitney don’t need another idiot to look after, him having the whole London office for that purpose and half the fools at Customs and the Board of Trade.” She was sitting on the low stool by the fire. Papa put his hand on her head, as if she was still a child. “Tha’s to stop taking daft risks.”
He was worrying about her. Papa was locked up, and any hour of any day they could take him off to Newgate Prison and lay charges against him. He wasted his time worrying about her. “I’m careful.”
“Oh, that’s a reet comfort, that is. My Jess says she’s careful. Where’s thy common sense, lass? If tha’ need must break into Eaton’s, hire a man. There’s sneak thieves on every street corner. It’s not like we don’t have the brass.”
Might as well shout her business from the rooftops as hire a thief. Not a one of them honest. “Yes, Papa.”
“Or bribery. There’s a mort of trouble saved in this world by simple bribery. Happen that’s how someone got his fingers into our books to plant the poison. It’ll turn out to be one of the clerks and a little bribery.”
“Happen you’re right.”
He set his knuckle on her cheekbone, telling her all the things he wasn’t going to put into words. “Tha’s a gradely bruise forming here. Very fetching.”
“I’ve been avoiding mirrors. But it’s not important.”
“Not important to tell thy father tha’d been hurt? I must hear it from Pitney. He comes and tells me and looks ashamed the whole time. Tha’s put him between two loyalties, Jessie. It wasn’t well done of thee.”
That was another of the demons clawing at her. She had to see Pitney get grayer and more haggard every day he walked into the office. Pitney worried about her. “I’m safe enough. Did you know I have bodyguards trailing after me? I swagger around town like that Roman emperor everyone was aiming knives at. Caesar.”
“That’ll be some of that expensive education I bought thee.”
“So it is. I’m hoping for a lull in folks attacking me, what with these vigorous men following me everywhere. And I moved out of the hotel. I’ve gone into hiding, like.” She didn’t mention she was hiding in the Captain’s house and that he might be Cinq. A delicate omission, her governess used to call that sort of thing. “You wouldn’t believe how cautious I’m being.”
She’d made him smile. “Tha hasna taken care since the day tha was’t born.” Papa squeezed her shoulder and let go and walked across to close the curtains. “The Foreign Office came by again.”
“Ah.”
The Foreign Office had got worried about the Whitby holdings in the East, afraid Jess Whitby might absentmindedly marry some Frenchman or Russian. It was all nods and winks and nobody saying anything right out, but the bottom line was, if she married some reliable Englishman they picked out and gave him half the company, Papa walked free. How long he’d live after that was anyone’s guess. Nobody more ruthless than diplomats.
Except the military. Colonel Reams didn’t wink and hint. The colonel made his proposal right to her face, all hoarse and threatening and spitting a little when he got excited about the whole business. He was another one promising to set Papa free, the minute the ink was dry on a marriage license.
They must all think she was a right idiot. “Colonel Reams dropped by the warehouse.”
“Ah.” Papa settled the curtains, one against the other, closing off the draft, making it snug. “Bidding, then.”
“Bidding.” On her. The Military and the Foreign Office were watching each other, and both of them watching her.
Papa said, “Don’t be alone with Reams. Keep Pitney by.” A wise man, Papa.
They’d been in less comfortable prisons. This was a good strong fire at her back. The Times lay open on the desk. An old pewter chocolate pot was set by the hearthback to keep warm. Papa’s clay pipe had its rack on the mantel. The Service took care of Papa, if you ignored the bars on the window and the fact they were about to hang him.
She wouldn’t tell him she planned to burgle Kennett’s study tonight. They could find other things to talk about.
“I took Kedger with me today, when I visited Eaton.” Good. Her voice was steady as a rock. “He had a grand time, just like the old days. He must have brought me every quill in Eaton’s, one after the other. A right muck he made of it, too. Got himself spotted like a leopard. Ink everywhere.”
SEBASTIAN found Adrian in the stuffy little room the Service used as a listening post, leaning on the wall, tilting a black-bound notebook to the lantern light. “We need to talk.”
“Don’t snarl at me, Bastian. I don’t send her crawling around on roofs.”
“You didn’t stop her.”
“I am not, all evidence to the contrary, omniscient. I had no idea she planned that particular idiocy.” Adrian put a finger in the notebook to mark his place. “If you keep your voice down, the Whitbys will not hear us and be distracted from what is doubtless an illuminating conversation.”
In the room next door, Jess was catching hell from her father. The walls vibrated with a bass voice, bellowing. Then came an interval of quiet that might be Jess, answering softly. Then Josiah, yelling again. Fine. Let the entire Coldstream Guards harangue her if it would keep her off the roofs.
Trevor, square, serious, and young, was taking notes. He hunched at the table to the side, his ear pressed to a brass ear trumpet that curled up out from the wall. His pencil cast a twitching shadow in the white oblong of light that came from the open side of the dark lantern.
There wasn’t space for three men in this cubbyhole. Sebastian flattened himself against a rack of pistols. “I’m going to stuff her in a damned crate and ship her to China.”
“Will you?” Adrian gave him the same meditative consideration he’d been using on the book. “Welcome to the select band of men who want to ship Jess somewhere distant and inaccessible.”
“She’s going to break her neck trying to save that old hyena. Or somebody will break it for her.” There were a dozen ways for Jess to kill herself. She seemed to be trying them out, one after another.
Trevor kept writing. He had a smirk on his face, as if he enjoyed eavesdropping on Jess.
“Enough.” He slapped his hand on Trevor’s notes. “This stops.”