Joanna Bourne - My Lord and Spymaster

“I should put in time at the warehouse, actually. There’s still a business to run. The Northern Star’s sailing tomorrow. Naval supplies to Lisbon.”

“The tide doesn’t stop because you’re not sweeping at it. Relax. You have good men in charge. Pitney knows who to bribe. But the Northern Star isn’t naval supplies. That’s contraband into Brittany, isn’t it? Tea?”

“Indigo and tea. It’s brandy coming out. Once they transfer that, the Star’ll go on to Lisbon. We might even move some naval supplies. Who knows?” Crikey. Once, just once, she’d like to have an ordinary conversation with this man. About the weather. Or horses. Something terribly, terribly British. “I should be there.”

Looking up past Sebastian, she could see the sky was full of clouds scudding along from left to right. Almost, it felt like the sky was standing still and the earth was moving, carrying them with it. Made her dizzy, thinking things like that.

Sebastian began stroking her forehead with the tips of his fingers. He made it feel wonderful. She should tell him to stop, since anyone could look out the window and see them, and this wasn’t exactly proper.

She said, “You planning to do all that stuff to me out here in the open? Kissing and so on. It’s another silly place to get started on that sort of thing.”

He said softly,

“Whoever loves—if he does not propose love’s right and proper end, he’s one that goes to sea for nothing but to make him sick.”

It didn’t rhyme much that she could tell, but there wasn’t very much of it. “That’s poetry?”

“That’s John Donne.”

“Never read much poetry. I always meant to, but I never got it done somehow. What you’re saying is you’ve got more ambitious thoughts in mind than just kissing. Right?”

“Exactly right, Jess.”

“Might as well just say so.” She yawned into his face, not commenting on the poetry, just tired. She’d drink some tea before she started sieving all those records tonight.

“Remember when I was looking in your study the other night?” That was a polite way of saying picking three locks and sneaking around in the dark. “You remember?”

“I remember.” He wasn’t annoyed. Good.

“I found a letter. Giovanni Reggio. You know the one I mean?”

It took him a minute. “Maps of Florence and plans for some fortifications in Tuscany. They’re almost certainly fifteenth century, but whether they’re by DaVinci is anyone’s guess. I passed them along to a dealer in Paris. Jess, why are we talking about maps of Florence when I want to be making love to your eyebrows?”

“Because your damn letter didn’t say maps in 1550 or plans of what. It just gave a whalloping great price for them. In francs. You have to watch that.”

He laughed at her. A pirate, burned all brown with the sun, laughing at her. “You’ve decided I’m not Cinq?”

“Dunnoh who is, yet. I know you’re not.”

“Good then.”

He started stroking along her eyebrows, using the side of his thumb.

“I have funny eyebrows. They don’t curve. Makes me look angry all the time.”

“They’re fine.” Sebastian just kept on finding her amusing. “You worry too much.”

What black eyes he had. Hungry, keen, obsidian eyes.

He paid attention to her eyebrows some more. His fingers were getting in the way of seeing things, weaving back and forth between her and the light of the sky. So she closed her eyes. He drew lines on her forehead, back and forth. She should tell him to stop. Felt nice, though.

Hours later, when Sebastian woke her up, it was to tell her it was time to go to the Admiralty. She knew he’d been beside her all afternoon, watching her while she slept.

“THE FIRST LEAK WE KNOW ABOUT WAS MARCH, five years ago.” Adrian stood in front of the long bank of windows, facing her. “The most recent was two weeks back. Where do we start?”

Jess didn’t know who’d been ejected from his office at the Admiralty. Somebody important. This was a huge room with a commanding view over the parade ground and a globe the size of a wheelbarrow in one corner.

A pair of armed marines stood outside the door, looking tough and alert, guarding things.

She unrolled the first of her charts. These were tides, weather conditions, winds, and the phases of the moon for every month, every year. Give her a ship, and she’d tell you how far it could travel on any given day, all up and down the Channel. It had taken a while to put this together. “We’ll start with the oldest and go on from there.”

“I knew you were going to say that.” Sebastian started restacking books. He had Kennett ledgers and Whitby ledgers. Some from other shipping companies. To his right was what looked like the shipping books from Lloyds. She wasn’t going to ask how he’d come by those.

The Service had torn London apart, giving her all this. Spread out on the tables was an amazing collection of ship manifests and paper from the Customs, Board of Trade clearances, naval logs. There must be two hundred pounds of government paper that didn’t have any right to be here. There was a fine selection of British Service agents to help her sieve it. They stood at the long table, twenty of them, each commanding a small kingdom of paper, waiting for orders. Trevor’d put himself beside her, behind a stack of clean paper, ready to make notes.

“It’s your show, Jess,” Sebastian said. Adrian brought her the big, red leather chair from behind the desk. She was in the center of the long table. Best seat in the house.

The pompous young man from the Admiralty hovered protectively over his own stacks of records. “May I say it’s an honor to meet you, Miss Whitby. I’ve been working with Captain Kennett on the Whitby ledgers since they were brought in. I’m thoroughly familiar with the Whitby system. I’ll explain anything you don’t understand. Your father’s accounting methods . . . even under these circumstances, I have to say they’re tremendously exciting. I only wish I were half the accountant he is.”

“If you’re half the accountant my father is, God help us all.” If he started explaining the mysteries of bookkeeping, she’d scrag him. “Can we send one of those monkeys at the door to bring us tea?”

The men from the British Service were watching her. The room got quiet.

This was going to work. She’d make it work.

She rested her fingers on the tabletop and looked from man to man, up and down the room. “March twenty-fifth. A memorandum on troop movements slipped out of the War Office. It surfaced in Boulogne on April third. Let’s see who sailed.”

A tall man, thin as a scarecrow, unsmiling, was already deep in the files Lazarus had sent over. Trevor picked up the pen and took ink.

A man to her left said, “The Pretty Henrietta, owned by George Van Diehl, sailed on March twenty-sixth. Bound for Bristol.”

Another voice, “The Parrot. March thirtieth. But that’s just a coastal lugger.”

She said, “Put her down.”

Sebastian angled a Whitby ledger out of his pile and slid it in her direction.

From the end of the table—“The Nancy Lee, seventy tons, bound for Bristol. March twenty-sixth. No cargo listed here. Owner is . . . I can’t read it.”

She knew that one. “Michael Sands, owner and captain.” It was time to add the Whitby ships. She leafed to March. “Northern Spirit, for Lisbon. She didn’t weigh anchor till April first. That’s cutting it close, but put her in. Northern Destiny sailed March twenty-seventh.”

“Island Dancer on March twenty-sixth, bound to Cagliari,” Sebastian was started on his own ships, “which would put her well past the coast of France before April. I suppose she could have hove to in a bay somewhere and waited a week. The Belle Dancer didn’t sail till April seventh.” He closed the Kennett books and picked up another ledger.

“Red Tempest from the Red Star Line, bound for Boston, April first,” someone said. Trevor wrote it down.

“Cross Northern Spirit off. She put into the Isle of Thanet on April second and set two sailors ashore. Measles. Didn’t leave there till the fifth.”

“The Manatee, owned by Gregory and Fitch, April first for Boston. Likewise the Haughty Girl, registered at Plymouth.”

She could eliminate some of these. The Van Diehl books were down the table. She headed that way and leaned over a shoulder to check an entry. And here it was. A fine bit of memory on her part. “It’s not Pretty Henrietta.” She’d had her hands on these books for about an hour, three weeks ago. “Hunt bought a crate of Sheffield knives, in Bristol, on April fifth. Had to be off the Henrietta. Here it is.” She watched Trevor strike out the name.

“The Crystal Jane, out of Bristol. She left . . . No . . . didn’t leave March twenty-eighth.” A rustle of papers. “She sailed April first, instead. Delayed for refitting.”

“Cross that one off, too.” Sebastian said it before she could. “That’s Pettibone. They went out of business the next year.”

Mr. Admiralty was still playing bump on the log. She fixed her attention on him. “You need help with those naval vessels?”

“I am perfectly capable of addressing the naval vessels.” Admiralty was talking around that wad of annoyance he was keeping in his mouth. “The ships of His Majesty’s Navy, unlike merchant vessels, weigh anchor on time. They go exactly where they are told, and they stay there. They most definitely do not carry illicit memoranda, and they do not—”