Joanna Bourne - The Black Hawk

She found the texture of his lips. “You are unbearable enticement and temptation.”

“I try. In my modest way, I try.” He played with one strand of her hair, tugging it so slightly she could barely feel the tiny pulse. Waiting for her. He had the cunning of a mathematics text and the patience of a tree growing.

Desire for him clenched inside her. Grabbed her breath. Streaked in lines of heat between her legs. Folded around her like lightning. Overcame her.

She muttered, “We are stupid, stupid, stupid . . .” She rolled and straddled him. He pulled her dress aside so it would not be between them. She kissed his mouth altogether thoroughly.

She heard him say, “I have to have you,” in a voice naked as clear glass.

His need made him clumsy, so she pushed his hand aside and undid the buttons of his trousers herself, fumbling her way from button to button. It took her a while to get them all loose. He didn’t seem to mind.

IN THE NIGHT, THE VAST GARDEN AT THE HEART OF the Palais Royale was empty. The shops under the arcades were closed. The last patrons of the opera had eaten their toast and paté at a restaurant and wandered home. On the upper floor, behind closed doors, men gambled and whored, but only a shadow of sound spilled into the night.

The man who still thought of himself as Thomas Paxton stood alone in the middle of the garden, looking up. The moon rode over Paris. Over London too, and Bonn, and the cities of the New World. Lots of world out there. Dozens of places he could hide.

He stretched his arm full length and measured the angle of moon above the horizon against the width of his hand, a rough sextant. Two and a half hours to moonset, which made this about three in morning. Hawker would be staying in the café till morning, giving him a good long head start.

It was August, but the nights had been chilly lately. There was no warmth in moonlight.

He’d have been outside tonight anyway. The meteor showers in the constellation Perseus were at their peak. Only happened once a year.

There. That was one. A streak of white on the sky. He held his breath to the end of it. It seemed worthwhile to tilt his head back and tell the sky, “The abyss of endless time swallows it all.” Marcus Aurelius said that.

In the morning, he’d take Hawk with him when he went to Carruthers.

He didn’t have a decision to make. If you were Service and you blotted your copybook, you reported to the Head of Section for judgment. He was Service. He’d made his choice a good long time ago.

SHE WOKE. LIGHT CAME THROUGH THE WINDOWS OF the café. What woke her, though, was the scritch of broom on pavement and the clatter of pails. The sweepers were out, raking up the fallen leaves, making the Palais Royale fit for another day.

Happiness rested in the small of her stomach, like coals in a hand warmer. I have been unwise again. With Hawker.

It felt very good. When she woke up after having been with him, she felt clean. She felt as if he had touched every part of her and burned it clean with fire.

Sometime in the night Hawker had raised himself to sitting and eased her head into his lap. She had slept so deeply she had not noticed. Or if she woke momentarily, it was with the knowledge she was safe and she let herself slip into sleep again.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. They had not undressed altogether last night, but Hawker was half naked. She had kissed his chest again and again, following the lines of his muscles.

He slept sitting up, his head leaned against the wall, his eyes closed. His right arm was lax at his side. His left arm lay across her and held her.

He had a face like those carved on ancient Greek coins, with straight nose and strong, full lips. His skin was dark with sun, brown even on his chest. In Milan he had passed himself off as a fisherman and worked on the boats, wearing few unnecessary clothes. His beard had grown diligently in the night, as it did. This was not the first time she had awakened beside him.

He could not be of English blood, not with that face. Pole, Gypsy, Lascar, Jew, Greek, Italian, or some joining of nations. He disappeared into a crowd in the Milanese market like a sparrow into a flock of sparrows. His mother had been a whore, he said. His father might be anyone. Hawker might be half French and his father a man from Marseille or Nîmes.

“I’m awake.” He did not open his eyes.

“I know that.” She followed that lie with a truth, just to keep him guessing. “I was admiring you.” She told him the truth fairly often. Not from principle or calculation, just for the simplicity of it.

With that he smiled down at her. “I’m like a porcupine.” He stroked the stubble. It was a wholly masculine gesture, that. Men never really stopped being proud of the ability to grow a beard.

She took his forearm and used it to pull herself up to sitting. Then she held his hand in her lap. She could have read his palm, if she’d been a Gypsy.

The thought of Gypsies and fortune-telling had come to her in the night and stayed with her, past waking. She must talk to him about that, later. “What time do you think it is?”

“Before six.”

Footsteps shuffled. Voices gradually filled the arcade outside. She could not make out the words, but the tone was comfortable, unexcited, discussing small, ordinary things. Men and boys and some women too were on their way to work in the cafés and shops of the Palais Royale. The creak and clank of a pushcart was fruits and vegetables being delivered to the cafés and restaurants. Outside, at the door of the café, came a faint thump. That would be the earliest newspapers of the day, dropped at the door.

She had slept solidly for two hours, but it left her only a little rested. Her brain was full of the smell and taste of Hawker until she had very little room to think. She wished they could make love again, now, in the daylight.

I have tried and tried to make myself a woman who is not ruled by her emotions. I have failed, somewhat.

“The owners of this café will arrive soon. They must clean or restock or squeeze lemons or some such thing. I will admit I have not the least idea what one does in a café when the doors are closed.”

“Water the wine. Cut the bread thin. Chop up cats for the paté.”

He’d taken his hand from hers to hold her forearm, so they were linked, arm to arm. She had seen this on old vases taken out from under the earth in Italy. It was the way antique warriors greeted comrades.

She said, “We do not eat paté of cats in Paris, whatever may be the custom of London.”

“London. Cat-eating capital of Europe.”

It was natural as sunlight to wake up and talk to Hawker this way. She was warm through her whole body because their hands were wrapped upon one another’s arms. Neither of them wanted to be the first to let go.

It was always left to the woman to be wise. She opened her hand and drew away from him. She untangled her knees from the complexity of skirts and squirmed herself off the benches. They were separate now.

She said, “I must find water and wash and become civilized.”

“Me too.” His eyes had become like the points of knives. “I have an unpleasant interview to get through.”

He had spent some of the night while she slept, planning. He would not turn Paxton over to his superiors without a fight.

Hawker rose and angled his way across the room, around the end of the counter, and into the storage room behind. With each step, under her eye, he transformed into a man surrounded by an aura of cold. Adrian the spy. The Black Hawk.

“The owners of this café,” she raised her voice, “will hope to find me gone, without trace, when they arrive later this morning. No one wishes to see the Police Secrète cluttering their place of business.”

He replied from the storeroom, “Try being a thief. Now, that’s a profession that makes you unwelcome.”

She located her stockings, which had gone their stocking way along the floor last night. Her garters had accompanied them, companionably, and could also be found. She sat to draw them on.

Metallic clatter came and the sound of water pouring from the cistern and trickling into a pan.

“I have had a thought.” She said this loudly, so Hawker could hear. “It is clever, but it confuses the issue. You must tell me what you think of it.”

A soft tap from the storeroom. “Let me shave first. I can’t think when I’m doing this.” A pause followed, for the space it would take a man to finish a stroke, shaving. “I put the kettle to heat. Ten minutes and you can wash.”

“While you shave yourself in cold water. I am touched.”

There are great heroisms in the world. Hawker had saved her life once or twice, performing them. There are also small heroic acts that pass unnoticed. He was full of such attentions.

She had loosened the this and that of her clothing last night, to be comfortable. To be . . . accessible. But what she wore, she could button and tie and lace herself into, unaided. She returned herself to order. She toed into her shoes, and she was dressed and ready. The morning had most thoroughly arrived.

Yesterday’s newspapers lay in a rough pile on the counter. She took one back to the table and spread it out where she had left her gun and her kit for reloading. She always carried what she needed to reload. So many problems cannot be solved with a single bullet. She opened the little box with its powder and brushes, set her gun on the newspaper, and began.