“I took at look at you yesterday, through the peep, when you were talking to your father. There’s a listening post, off to the side of the study.”
“I know about it. They watch us. There’s actors at Drury Lane who attract less of an audience.”
More laborers passed, carrying rice. “Let’s walk. I’m making MacLeish nervous, standing here watching his loading.”
One of the advantages of being so much taller than Jess was she couldn’t get ahead of him without actually breaking into a run. They covered half the length of her transient storage before that occurred to her. She pulled up beside a consignment lot of fifty wood boxes stenciled Pezzi Meccanici . . . Thessaloniki all over the sides. Machine parts for Thessalonica. That probably meant they were guns being smuggled into north Italy. God alone knew what the customs clerks made of the Whitby shipping documents.
“We had a little cobra bite one of the boys once.” She lifted a hanging slate.
You’re afraid I might just be like that cobra. He didn’t like to see her haunted and unsure. It didn’t suit her.
She picked at a splinter on the corner of the closest Thessalonica crate. “He lived—the boy who got bit—but he lost his foot. MacLeish trained him as a clerk. He’s in Sweden now. I know about the spy holes at Meeks Street. Why are you telling me this?”
Because she was his. Nothing and no one would keep her from him, not even the hurt he’d done her. “So we know where we stand. I don’t want lies between us.”
“Bit late for that.” She’d found another jagged piece of wood and started niggling away at it.
“I won’t spy on you again.”
“Forthright as a sunny day, that’s you.” She gave him a quick, searching, worried glance, then looked away.
“What did you find in my study?” Tell me, Jess. Stop brooding about it and tell me. “I went through it this morning, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t have shown you if you’d asked. Not a thing.” He let a minute pass with her not answering. “If I were Cinq and I thought you’d found something important, you wouldn’t have made it to work this morning, alive and free.” He watched her pull more splinters out of that crate. “You’re not good at being prudent. There’s no point in trying to start now. What did you find?”
“I’d have to be frothing mad to talk to you about it.” Belatedly, she tried some caution. “If I’d found anything at all, which I’m not saying I did. If it’s all the same with you, I’d rather get back to work. I’m busy this morning.”
She pulled away and took off, her long strides kicking her skirts in front of her. They turned corners at random, surprising men busy at inventory or restacking cargo. They passed a neat stack of boxes, huddled together, marked Fragile in five languages and slabs of white Carrara marble, stored at a slant, separated by blocks of pine. She saw none of it. She’d withdrawn wholly into herself, her face set and resolute, her eyes distant.
They ended up in the far corner where the staircase led to the upper floors. She stopped with her hand on the wood railing, muttering, “... if he lets me go. No guarantees of that.”
She was steeling herself for the next stupidity on her list. She’d probably thought of something more dangerous than crawling across the roofs to Eaton’s. Trevor was right. She should be locked up someplace.
It was easy to block the stairway. It always surprised him, that he was so much larger than her. “You’ll work with me. You need my help. You don’t have to trust me to make use of me.”
“You’re eloquent, Captain. I can’t tell you how much I distrust eloquent. I’m just sure to my toes that Cinq is eloquent as hell.”
It was time to tell her. She had to know what lay between them. “My ship, the Neptune Dancer.”
He watched pain stab though her. Every merchant and shipper had friends who’d never come home. She was remembering Whitby ships, lost, and the men on them. Maybe she was remembering that boy, Ned, who didn’t come back to her.
She said, “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”
“That’s why I’m not Cinq. Why I couldn’t be.”
Her eyes were shadowed. “The world is so damned full of things that just happen. Maybe you could even be the spy and sink your own ship by accident. I don’t know. But my father isn’t guilty.”
“Then find out who is. Find Cinq, and I’ll destroy him.”
“I’m trying.” The rest of it hit her then. “You think my father killed your friend and your men. Every time you look at me, you think about that. I’m surprised you can touch me at all.”
“When I look at you I see nothing but Jess. It’s a cosmic joke that you’re related to him. You’re not your father. You’re nothing of his.”
The straight, slashed eyebrows pulled together. The gold eyes hardened. “I’m Josiah Whitby’s daughter, blood and bone.”
“Jess—”
“He’s the most honorable man I’ve ever known. He’d die before he’d betray England.”
When he tried to put his hand on her shoulder, she chopped his wrist. “Don’t.” She hit hard enough to let him know she meant it. “You don’t touch me. Not at the warehouse.”
“I don’t?” He kept his voice mild.
“Look around, Captain. There must be a dozen men who can see us right now. Up there, to the right. See that? That’s the clerks’ office behind that window. You want to bet there’s six or eight of them watching us this minute?”
He glanced up. She was right.
“I can work in this warehouse and run this business because I got a hundred chaperones. I’m not a scandal because I’m always in plain sight, morning to midnight. A dozen men can swear I’m behaving myself proper. I can give orders here because I’m Whitby Trading to these men. They don’t think of me as a woman.”
Which showed even smart women could be fools. There wasn’t one of these laborers or clerks who hadn’t imagined pulling her skirts up and laying her back on one of these bales of cloth and having her. They were men, not capons. She was so protected by her father and Pitney and her warehouse managers that she didn’t even know.
So wise a Jess. So practical and clever, and so naïve. Fairly soon, he was going to seduce her.
She turned and walked up the stairs. Saffron today. He smelled it on her as she pushed past. That would be smuggled goods from the south of France. It sneaked up on him every time he got close to her, this knowledge he had of her, this intimacy he felt. He knew how she ran her business. How she estimated demurrage on contract goods. How much sugar she took in her tea.
He knew what she looked like with her clothes off. He knew that.
She shook herself, as if some of his hunger had brushed across her. “I need a cup of tea. Come up to my office, and I’ll fix you some of the black we bring in through Kyakhta, into Russia. I might even find a sweet bun for you. Must be my morning for being hospitable to the British Service. And I figger we’re about finished with the mauling-Jess-Whitby part of the day.”
I doubt that extremely. He followed her. “Jess.”
Impatiently, she waited at the landing for him to catch up.
He was level with her now. “You can do it, can’t you? When we have the list of secrets stolen, you can match it to the ships moving in the Channel.”
“Yes.” She didn’t move, but deep in her eyes, a part of her went distant from him, into some abstract place he couldn’t follow. That unique, ingenious mind of hers was plucking away at the problem. “I could do it with thirty dates. I could sort through every tub that floats in the Thames. Twenty dates would work if they’re stupid or have only the one ship.”
“You’ll find Cinq.”
“I have to, don’t I?” She looked haunted. She turned her back on him and started climbing again.
“I’ll help. You’ll trust me to help you.” At the change in his voice, she turned around, right into his arms. Nobody could see them here at the turn in the stairwell. “Think of this as one of my arguments.”