Joanna Bourne - My Lord and Spymaster

The Captain’s face was stony cold. She stopped, abrupt like, having caught on to what Lazarus was up to. This wasn’t about the necklace.

Lazarus whispered, “I took infinite pains with her, Kennett. One of my most valuable possessions. I never found another like her.”

That made her sound like a pocket watch. But it wasn’t like that. Hours, they used to spend talking, in the old days. He’d taught her everything. How to pick locks. How to rope her way down a building. How to plan a caper. That last time, when she’d fallen so bad and got herself trapped in the dark in the old warehouse, it had been Lazarus who came in for her. He’d crawled in the whole way and pulled her out, with the building collapsing around their ears and bricks and timbers hitting them. He’d risked his neck. She hadn’t been a bloody pocket watch. He was goading the Captain, pure and simple.

The Captain and Lazarus stayed, eyes locked, not making any sudden moves. It was like they were two men on a tightrope, neither of them shaking the rope.

Then Sebastian leaned forward. “I’ve taken her to bed. She’s my possession now.”

Oh, bloody hell. The Captain expected her to lie to Lazarus. She couldn’t do it. Lazarus could read her like a newspaper.

“Jess?” Lazarus poked her.

The Captain swung round and ran his eyes up and down her, looking like a man who’d tumbled her, maybe a couple dozen different ways, and enjoyed all of them. She remembered lying beside him in his bunk on board ship with the rain hitting the deck above—him dark and strong as a black angel, smelling of salt and sweat. She’d wanted to bite into him, like bread. She’d wanted to open her legs and tell him to touch her there . . .

Damned if she didn’t blush like a schoolgirl.

“I see. Oh, yes, I see. She has grown up, hasn’t she?” Lazarus laughed, a great bass rumble that came up from his belly. “Makes ’em just about useless.” He gestured impatiently. The Hand jumped up and Lazarus coiled the Medici Necklace down into the boy’s cupped palms. “Take that and put it away someplace. ”

“Sir.” The boy gave a cheeky grin, stuffed fifty carats of rubies in his breeches, and sauntered out.

Lazarus watched him. “You can’t get good help. On her worst day, Jess was worth thirty of that one. She doesn’t strut when she carries valuables. That astonishing object in her pocket, and even I didn’t know she had it on her till she tossed it to me.” Without changing tone he said, “She thinks you’re the spy, Kennett. The whole time she’s warming your bed, she’s fingering you for the drop. Interesting bedsport, even by my standards.”

“I enjoy it.” Sebastian just kept on lying to Lazarus. Nobody lied to Lazarus.

Lazarus took a last swallow of wine and held the empty glass out. Fluffy scrambled to take it from him just before he let it drop. “Josiah Whitby can rot in hell. And I leave spies to Adrian Hawkhurst. But Cinq came into my streets and hired Irishmen to kidnap one of my people. That I don’t allow. Where were you when Cinq almost grabbed her?”

“Protecting her.”

“You’re doing a damn poor job of it, you and Josiah. My Jess walks in here, covered with bruises. She’s so scared she came to me for help. Why should I let her go? At least I protect what’s mine.”

“By keeping her . . . here?” With a flick of his fingers, the Captain said what he thought of the padding ken. “She’s not twelve years old anymore. Let her go before you have to hurt her.”

They did more of that staring and talking back and forth without saying anything.

The Captain laid out another line of words, like hard pebbles. “If you don’t kill me, I’ll come back for her. If you kill me, you can’t hold on to Jess. Look at her.”

They both did. What was she supposed to do with her face? Flummoxed her.

“Come here, Jess,” Lazarus said. That was when she noticed she’d been edging over toward the Captain all this time.

So she went over and stood square in front of Lazarus, not trying to talk. He hadn’t changed much in the years between then and now. There were more lines in his face.

“You should have told me you were coming,” he said at last. “Weren’t you paying attention all those years? You tell me when you’re going to pull one of your damfool stunts. What am I supposed to do with you, anyway?”

“I don’t know, Sir.”

“Since you’re mine, I should probably keep you here and do try to make something of you.”

It was quiet, for the padding crib. She couldn’t hear anything but the blood pounding in her head. She didn’t say anything. Couldn’t.

“Ten years ago, I tried to get you back from Josiah. Did you know that? He got you out of England too fast for me. I sent men after you a few times when you were still young.”

“In Athens. And Oslo. And again in St. Petersburg. You almost got me in Athens.”

“You were remarkably hard to kidnap.”

“I tried to be, Sir.”

“And you’re still not scared of me. You’re so clever in every other way, but you were never scared of me.” Lazarus turned to the Captain. “It has a certain attraction. It’s like owning that bloody necklace—the finest thing of its kind in the world. If her father hadn’t taken her away, I’d have made her the best thief in Europe.” He brooded on it a bit more and added, “I still could, but I’d have to train her all over again. When I think of the trouble she was last time . . .”

“You have the power to keep her. Or you can let her go. That’s absolute power, if you want it.”

“Don’t push me, Kennett. An hour ago I didn’t expect to ever see her again. And bedamned if I’ll give her back to Josiah. Where does that leave me?”

More silence. She didn’t even try to think.

“Sell her to me.” Kennett said it so calm and reasonable she couldn’t believe she’d heard right. “We can settle on a price.”

The unreality of this was so dense she could have gone floating in it.

“Sell her? Sell Jess Whitby?” After a long minute, Lazarus began to chuckle. “Oh, that’s a sweet thought. That is a beauty of a thought.” Lazarus was on his feet, tromping around the room, looking at her, looking at Sebastian.

Sebastian stood up, too, ignoring everything but Lazarus. She’d swear they were both blazing amused. She didn’t see anything funny, herself.

Lazarus murmured, “Sell Josiah’s daughter to a sea captain. That’ll make the old bastard mad enough to spit nails. That is a beauty of an idea, that is. Damn. I could get ten thousand pounds for her.”

“Easily.”

“Or double that. I could get his damned warehouse. We just need to agree on an appropriate amount, don’t we? Does there happen to be a shilling on you, Captain Kennett?”

Sebastian was already fishing in his pocket. He held up a shiny new Dundee shilling between thumb and forefinger. Tossed it. She watched it flip through the air, spinning silver.

Lazarus caught it. “Done. She’s yours. And may God help you. Jess!”

“Sir?”

“Who do you belong to, Jess?”

“I belong to . . . I . . .”

“Exactly. You’re not mine. Don’t call me ‘Sir’ again. Get her out of here, Kennett.”

Sebastian gripped her arm, applying somewhat more than necessary force, pulling her along.

She dug her heels in. There was one thing she had to say. “Lazarus.” She’d been eight, the last time she called him Lazarus. The people who belonged to him called him “Sir.” “I didn’t just leave. Not willingly.” It’d been the week after she fell so bad. Papa hired men who just picked her up and walked off with her, right out of the padding ken. She’d been knocked out with opium for the broken arm. Broken couple of things. Her ribs, too. “I didn’t even wake up till we were two days out at sea. That first year . . . I tried to get back to you.”

“But not later.”

“No. Not later.”

He considered her from under heavy, sleepy-looking eyelids. “You’d better get her out of here before I change my mind, Kennett. The challenge of it alone. If holding on to her wasn’t so damned complex . . .”

The Captain gave her a fine, hearty shove in the direction of the door.

“One more thing,” Lazarus said.

The Captain was carrying a knife somewhere on him. That featherlight change of balance was him thinking about pulling it and using it. “Yes?”

“Take that girl with you. The one you’ve been pretending not to notice. Fluffy. Give her to that interfering aunt of yours. I’m tired of looking at her.”

LOTS OF PEOPLE SOBBED DOWN THE FRONT OF Eunice’s dress. Fluffy—Flora, her name was—started doing it the minute she saw her. How did they know?

The Captain fumed the whole way back in the hackney. The minute Flora disappeared upstairs, with a maid helping her on one side and Eunice on the other, Sebastian shoved Jess out of the black and white foyer, into the library. Nice and private, the library, but Lord, it was cluttered. Old books lay everywhere and broken pots wherever there weren’t books. She hadn’t bothered to look for secret papers in here, it being what looked like a lifetime career sorting through that, not to mention nobody would keep his secrets where Standish puttered around all day.

Sebastian pulled her inside, and found the only piece of bare wall in the place, and backed her into it, and began kissing her.

“Captain . . .”

“Be quiet.”

It was glorious. He was a lot better at kissing than Ned had been. Realms better. Guess he’d had about ten thousand times more practice. With Ned, kissing had mostly been bumping teeth, all clumsy and not quite fitting together. Kennett knew what he was about. He kissed her for a while, showing her a whole new way of doing it. There were depths and complexities she hadn’t known about. There was this business of doing things with your tongue, for instance.