Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

“The indulgence of choice for young spies. Or old ones, like us. Come. I will ply you with sweetmeats and we will discuss serious matters.”

She might come to like Pax, as well as Devoir.

“The first of which . . .” He pushed the door of Gunter’s open and stood aside to let her walk in before him. “Is Mr. Smith.”

The flowered ice cream cups stood empty at the side of the table, the spoons sitting in them like upright flags. Pistachio ice for him. Bergamot water ice for her. Gunter’s was open and airy, the windows full of light. Waiters in white aprons lingered at the tables to flatter old women and be indulgent to the children who kicked the chair legs and whined and were arrogant with their nursemaids.

Cami watched steam gather on the surface of her teacup and wondered what to do. It was an unusual sensation, this being uncertain. She didn’t care for it.

Pax had left his tea untouched. His hair fell across his temple to his cheek, straight and emphatic. She wanted to lift that pale line and stroke it back, behind his ear. It was very distracting.

“You aren’t drinking,” she said. The tea was excellent. Everything at Gunter’s was excellent.

“I don’t want to leave you to go piss. You might decide to not be here when I get back.”

“How well you know me.” Since she wasn’t going to arise and flee, she drank some tea. “Are you quite certain this is the Merchant? There was universal rejoicing when he died. There was no doubt.”

“Now there’s no doubt he’s alive,” Pax said. “I saw him.”

“He didn’t show himself to Cachés. None of us knew what he looked like.”

“I do.”

Such coldness when he said that. It was as if shadows flew in thin ripples between her and the sunlight. She was left with no doubt Pax knew the Merchant very well indeed.

At a table nearby, under the benevolent eye of a governess, two beautifully dressed little girls giggled together, licking ice cream from their spoons, innocent and greedy as young goats. Beyond them, a boy of thirteen or fourteen sat alone, reading Latin, giving his ice cream and the book equal attention. That could have been Pax, when she first knew him, if the scholarly boy had been white haired and starved thin and knew fifty different ways to kill somebody.

Revolution and war seemed a long way away.

Pax watched her without seeming to do so. “I don’t know why the Merchant is in England, but he’s going to kill people. Will you tell me when and where you’re meeting him?”

She sighed. “When I was walking from Brodemere to London, I made extensive plans to deal with a blackmailer and I felt very clever.”

“That sounds like you.”

“I had intended to hire four men with guns and conduct a simple ambush. It would seem I underestimated Mr. Smith’s ruthlessness and his resources by several orders of magnitude. I am now very afraid.”

She stirred her tea. They fell silent while a waiter came to remove the empty ice cream cups.

Pax watched the street outside, the waiters, the long counter where men and women entered the shop to buy pastries and carry them away. He’d be able to sketch any of those people if someone asked him to.

The British had acquired a good spy when they’d been infiltrated by Pax, though it was possible they didn’t see it that way.

“Whatever he has of yours,” Pax said. “Whatever you want from him, it’s not worth your life. Walk away.”

Which was good advice and, like most good advice, difficult to follow.

She blew out a long breath and watched it ripple on the surface of her tea. “I wish it were that easy. I wish I could stand up and walk out of here straight to the docks and take the first ship leaving England. I’d go somewhere very far from here.”

“And never look back.”

She’d been talking to her teacup, because she wasn’t going to see anything useful on his face anyway. Now she turned to the harsh, ascetic profile. “Remember the night we planned to run away to a tropical island? We were all going to break out of the Coach House and steal a ship on the Seine and sail away.”

“We were going to become pirates.”

She remembered a long, cold night in January with everyone huddled together, sharing blankets, whispering back and forth in the dark. “That was one of the days they decided not to feed us. They’d whipped . . . it was Guerrier. We had him in the middle of us, still shaking.”

“He’d made some mistake in his English.”

“The Tuteurs were in a bad mood. I told Guerrier about the island we’d find, far away from everywhere. It’d be warm and we’d dine upon pineapples and oranges every night and keep a monkey for a pet. I’d just read Robinson Crusoe.”

“I would have eaten the monkey if I’d got my hands on one.” Pax’s bony wrists rested on the edge of the table. His hands were half-curled, as if he held something carefully. There were ink stains in three or four places. It plucked at her breath, seeing something so familiar. Devoir, with ink staining his hands. Pax with the same ink marking him.

She said, “They bite, you know. Monkeys do. At least, the squire’s aunt had one with a bite like a bulldog.”

“Then I won’t buy one.”

“Just as well. I can’t picture you with a monkey.” She smiled at the thought. “There are no more desert islands in my dreams. If I walked away from here right now, I’d go to New Orleans or Baltimore, or Kingston and set up a shop to make hats for dowdy colonial matrons. Or maybe I’d become a jewel thief. I’m temperamentally suited to be a jewel thief.”

“Now, there’s a practical plan.”

“If I were practical, I’d—” I’d let Camille Besançon die. The Fluffy Aunts would never know. She buried the thought. She unthought it. It had never been in her mind. “I’d be in Barbados, selling hats. I wouldn’t be here, feasting on ices, getting more and more afraid.”

“You should be afraid. You stand between the Merchant and something he wants.”

“And he is deadly.”

“Perhaps the most ruthless man you will ever meet. Mad in a way. When you face him, you won’t see death coming. Most men give some sign before they kill. He doesn’t.” Pax’s fist twitched on the table next to his cup. “Don’t make me step across your dead body on the way to killing him.”

Across the room, a small crisis took place with raspberry syrup and a pink dress. Napkins all in a flurry. Three waiters and the promise of sugar cookies.

Innocent people leading harmless lives. Lucky children who knew nothing about the world that existed beyond their safe garden walls.

The Merchant killed innocents like these.

Pax followed her glance. “You won’t leave the Merchant loose in London. When and where are you meeting him?”

“You complicate my life.”

“Good. You complicate mine. Infinitely.” His smile flickered by so fast she might have missed it. “You can’t do this alone. I can help you. I understand how he thinks. When and where, Cami?”

She tilted her teacup and looked at the pattern. Bone china. The light showed through. It was fragile, delicate, beautiful. Easily broken. The Leylands’ niece could be just as easily destroyed by men who hunted the Merchant at all cost.

She set it down. “My family—my birth family, not the Leylands—have a saying, ‘In the history of every disaster, there is a moment when someone says, “I trust you.”’ We’ve arrived at that moment.” She spread a hand palm up, fingers wide, to show the ineffable perversity of life. “I think I’m about to trust you.”

“You already do.” Pax’s eyes found hers and didn’t waver. “You didn’t come to me because I made threats.”

“I disregarded them.”

He reached to her hand where it rested on the table and ran his index finger over her knuckles. “You came to me because of this. You feel it between us.”

She twitched away from that little scrap of contact.

“And because I kissed you,” he said.

“Lots of men have kissed me.”

“Lucky men.” He kept the touch between them. One tiny hot island of heat there on the back of her hand. “I want to kiss you here, across your knuckles. I want to bite a little here, here, here.” He applied his nail, lightly, up and down the cusps and valleys of her knuckles. “I’ve never done that to anyone. I want to do it to you.”

Heat exploded inside her. Shocking. Unexpected. Breath devouring. She was half-blind with it.

“That’s why you came to meet me,” he said. “Not because it was sensible or because I made threats. Not so we could concoct a plan to deal with that murdering bastard. You’re here because when I kissed you, you kissed back and everything changed. We didn’t expect any of that.”

“I didn’t anyway,” she said.

“A shock to both of us.” He turned her hand over and touched the center of her palm, holding all her thought, all her intention and awareness, right there, in that spot.

She closed her hand around the sensitivity, around the little fireball of excitement. Her voice was rock steady. “I don’t have time to want you.”

“It won’t take more time than we have. We’ll plot the death and downfall of the Merchant during the day. Give me the nights.”

She looked away when she made her decision. “As long as you understand I’m not doing this because you seduced me into it.”

“I didn’t let you go from the bookshop because you seduced me.”

“I didn’t—” She hissed impatiently and batted at the words. “Forget it. We’re both making mistakes. Points about even.”