Joanna Bourne - The Forbidden Rose

He wiped his feet on the hearth rug. No point tracking ashes all over the house. Lazarus had drawn him a map of the rooms. Guesses mostly. Galba’s office was in the back corner. Galba was Head of the whole damn British Service. If there was papers about Lazarus making deals with the French, they’d be in Galba’s desk.

Find the papers. Get back up the chimney. Leg it out of here. He wasn’t supposed to kill nobody.

Not his fault Galba walked in on him.

Claudine’s sabots clicked to the bottom of the stairs. The courtyard down below was empty. He went out the window. A tight fit around the shoulders. He was putting on muscle.

He balanced on the windowsill with all that flat and hard waiting down below, hanging to the cracks in the stone with his fingertips. Holding on and reaching up to the roof, both at the same time. All a little tricky, that bit. Then he pulled himself up and over the edge of the roof. It was his roof now.

Good job. If he didn’t say a word of praise to himself, who was going to?

There was nobody outside to take any notice of him. He crawled along till he could hear Doyle talking in one of the rooms below. Doyle and that woman Carruthers. Let’s go see what they have to say.

Knowing things was like picking up diamonds and rubies off the street. Made him feel rich. It might even keep him alive long enough to see fourteen.

The drainpipe that ran down the inner corner of the building, into the courtyard, turned out to be sturdy enough to hold him. He let himself down a dozen feet, bracing against the corner wall, leaving some skin behind. His left knee was giving him trouble again. He didn’t take any account of it.

Then he could hear.

“. . . rabid little weasel. I’ll wring his neck myself if you’re too squeamish.”

The Old Trout thought she was going to kill him. Not likely.

He couldn’t pick all the words out when Doyle answered. “. . . falling into bad habits.” Too bad he couldn’t hear who was falling into what bad habits. Everybody, probably. “. . . we need . . .”

The woman was talking again. “You see only the English side of it. There were seven in the last six months in Austria. Two of them at the Theresian Military Academy. Not into their twenties. The top of their class.” He could hear the chink of china on china. They were sipping tea. “It’s obscene.”

The Service was worried about Austrians. Seemed like de Fleurignac made himself a couple of lists. Not just the one for England.

He missed Doyle’s answer. Then the old woman was talking. “. . . resources. We’re keeping low to the ground while the French guillotine each other. But, certainly I can assign men to watch the de Fleurignac woman.”

“. . . reporting to me. I want them in place today. They follow her every time she puts a foot outside the house. I need . . .”

Easy enough to know what Doyle needed. And wasn’t that a pocketful of irony? A man like Doyle could reach out and take anything he wanted. He didn’t let himself take that woman.

They talked too low for him to hear. Doyle mentioned the counterfeit in the baskets, saying it was a relief to get it off his hands. Then Carruthers said, “It is not my first priority, but it will give me great pleasure to strangle the life out of that poisonous reptile you’ve brought among us.”

That was him. A rabid weasel and a reptile, too. He was a man of parts, wasn’t he?

A long rumble from Doyle. “. . . take more than that to kill Galba . . . recovered except he can’t play that damned violin of his and . . .” More words he couldn’t hear, and finally, “. . . is mine. Ask first. I have plans for him.”

It was time to hike off. He felt the itch of it. Any thief who didn’t get that feeling didn’t live long. Lazarus said his instincts were good. They told him to shove off.

He could climb up, back to that room. Or he could head down, to the courtyard, and over the wall into Paris.

That was what Doyle would call a foregone conclusion.

He slipped, hand over hand, to the ground. He was flat to the wall by the privy, well hid, when Doyle stuck his head out the window and looked around. Not bad, Mister Doyle. You are one of the best I’ve ever seen.

But I’m better.

This house had more holes than a sieve. He was out of it and on the Rue de la Verrerie in three minutes. He walked off, whistling one of the songs he’d heard today. The song was about killing people.

Hell of a city, Paris.

“I don’t see him.” Doyle let the curtain loose. “But he’s out there behind the shed. You owe me that louis.”

Carruthers grimaced. “Crawled down the wall like a lizard. Nasty little monster. I’ll admit I heard nothing.”

“You can check his room if you want. He won’t be there.” He thumbed a roll open and stuffed hard cheese inside. Held it while he gulped down his tea.

“He can’t be trusted, just because he was handed over to you. You know that.”

“He wasn’t handed over. I won him in a card game.”

“He’s planning to slit your throat one night, while you’re sleeping.”

“Then he’ll do it. He hasn’t tried yet.” He scooped sugar lumps out of the dish on the tray and tucked them into the pocket in his breeches. “Right now, I think he’s going to lead me to the man who brought the de Fleurignac list to London. He’s out looking for something at any rate. I have to go. Who runs La Flèche? Do we know?”

Carruthers raised an eyebrow. “The Paris side is run by a botanist at the Jardin des Plantes. Jean-Paul Béclard. In Normandy, it’s a woman. The Finch.”

“Then Marguerite de Fleurignac is the Finch. I watched her hand out orders to all and sundry across the countryside. I’ll tell you about it when I get back.”

“In detail.” Carruthers collected every secret that walked through France. Including his. “A woman of the old Normandy aristocracy. It makes sense. Yes. The de Fleurignacs have always done precisely as they pleased.”

“Helen, I need to know she’s safe. This isn’t just the job.”

He got a searching look. “I’ll keep her safe.”

Four words. From Carruthers, that was all he needed. “I’ll leave that to you. I want Pax with me.”

“He’s yours. I’ve already told him.”

His hat was on the table by the door. A glance out the window said Pax was in the courtyard, waiting, with the door to the street open. “If my rat comes back alone, don’t kill him.”

“If he comes back.”

“Always that chance.”

“Do you honestly think you can make something of that evil little animal? It’s unwise to adopt baby scorpions. They grow to be venomous.”

“He’s going to be one of the great ones, Helen. One of us. Either that, or I’ll kill him myself.”

“THE AGENT WILLIAM DOYLE GAVE ME THE SLIP in the market at Les Halles. With donkeys. He went through the stable yard of an inn and I lost sight of two donkeys among the pack animals. I am a donkey myself, Madame, and I am ashamed.” Justine hung her head.

Madame laughed at her. Oh, not with her mouth. She was too kind to do that. She laughed with her eyes. “He is very good.”

“I am very good as well. My heart is broken. I would have sworn there was no man I could not follow through my Paris. And now I am defeated by an Englishman.” There was worse. “The boy also disappeared sometime after they left Hôtel de Fleurignac. I was not exactly following him, you understand, but it is a mortification to add upon the other one that I am not entirely certain where he went or when. I have the brains of a pineapple.”

She was in the salon, which was the prettiest of several fine rooms in the brothel. All was effortlessly elegant here; the pale, cream-colored walls, the blue curtains with gold swags, the delicate mahogany furniture. No part existed by accident or failed to harmonize with the whole. Someday, she would create rooms like this.

Madame made her a cup of chocolate, made it with her own hands from hot milk Babette brought up from the kitchen. Madame had taken her own silk shawl from the arm of the sofa and pulled it over the dust and dirt of the servant dress so that Justine would not feel shabby in this beautiful room.

“When I admitted to myself that I had lost this offensive Monsieur Doyle of England—and that was not soon for I am very stubborn—and lost also two entire donkeys, I came home to confess.”

Madame did not interrupt her or hurry her.

She drank chocolate and delayed one more minute. She must admit straightforwardly what she had done. “I have deserted my post. You set me to watch the hôtel and report on any who came to Victor de Fleurignac. Instead, I followed the Englishman. I judged you would want me to.”

“Exactly well. You did exactly well. I can set any of a dozen girls to watch front doors and make reports. You are one who will know when to abandon your post to follow an order that has not been given.”

“I am abashed that I lost him in the confusion of the market. I will try to do better.”

Madame had set a white dish heaped with raisins upon the table. Now she nudged it forward. They were not so sweet, these raisins, but they were perfumed like dreams. They were made from the grapes of Burgundy. Burgundy had been home once.

She rescued me from hell. When I make this failure before her, she comforts me with a tiny gift from my old home. Madame made nothing of her stupidity but only smiled and tipped more chocolate from the flowered pot into the cup.

“You shall take these raisins with you and share with your sister. She will enjoy them. Now. Consider this with me. We discover that the admirable William Doyle travels in the company of the daughter of Citoyen de Fleurignac.”