Joanna Bourne: The Black Hawk

His Lordship twitched his cuffs smooth under the coat sleeves with brisk little motions. Upright, distinguished, disdainful, he was all an important gentleman should be. You’d never guess he’d lost the skirmish in front of Liverpool. Reams was significantly absent.

Cummings was headed this way. Looked like he wanted to exchange a few words. But then, Cummings was an old campaigner. Maybe he took the setback philosophically.

“I must congratulate you.” Cummings said it the same way he’d say, “I must flay the flesh off your still-twitching bones.”

“Thank you.”

“You switched the knives at Bow Street.”

“That would be clever of me.”

Cummings developed a tight, white line around his mouth. He gripped his cane like they’d had an argument and it wanted to leave. “We both know what happened.”

“Truth is so elastic. Within an hour, the polite world will talk of nothing but the Bonapartist plot.” He allowed himself to become very French, and shrug. It maddened Cummings when he acted French. “Who can contradict what the world knows so thoroughly?”

“Don’t challenge me, Hawkhurst. You don’t want me for an enemy.” He turned and swept away, his cane swinging angrily, his heels clicking the marble floor toward Castlereagh who stopped and exchange a few words.

“There is a long tradition,” a voice said from behind his shoulder, “that senior intelligence agents should hate one another.”

Owl draped her lace shawl at her back, arm to arm. She looked like one of the great ladies of the ton. Dignified and aristocratic. Prettier than any of the others, though.

He said, “I’ve heard that.”

“It is a matter of testing their competence. If they cannot emerge victorious among their colleagues, how can they outfox their enemies? I believe a similar method is used in training gamecocks.”

“We had an encounter just a few minutes ago and I am now the chief gamecock on this particular hill. Are you tired? Doyle can take you home if you’re getting tired.”

“I am weary, of course. It is embarrassing to walk about, rudely staring at women, comparing their faces with my memory of a young girl. I have only one glimpse of an assassin in the rain and a tiny figure seen through glasses many years ago. I do not know if I would recognize her again. And she will have changed. It is sad, sometimes, to see what life makes of pretty young girls.”

“I liked you as a pretty young girl.” He let men and women brush past on either side of him and only looked at her. “I like the woman you became better than the girl you were. I like the story you’ve written on your face.”

“I will not say you speak flattery. I will only point out that you say most exactly what I want to hear.”

“Truth, then. You want to hear truth.” He couldn’t touch Owl, except with his eyes, so he let his imagination slide across her, planning where he’d kiss her later on tonight. He liked kissing beauty and he’d done a certain amount of that over the years. With Owl, he’d start with beauty and go on to kissing ruthlessness and ideals in the lines at the corners of her eyes. Passion and practicality sitting around her mouth. Not a comfortable woman, his Owl. Not ordinary.

She wrapped her hand on that bandage she was wearing under the sleeve of that silk dress. “The next party is bigger than this and noisier. More people.”

“I am not fragile.”

“I have never been an admirer of fragile. I think we have to do this tonight, before she hears we’re looking for her.”

“I think so too.” Owl was faced the right way. She spotted Fletcher and gave a little tilt of her head toward him.

Fletcher came, ducking through a line of young girls, so carefully groomed they were almost indistinguishable one from the other. He brought a bright-eyed maid with him.

“This is Mary, maid to Lady McLean.” Fletcher handed her the Caché drawing he’d been showing around the kitchen and stables. “Tell them.”

“I have seen this woman.” She unrolled it to look at one last time. To hold out and show. Her English was careful, with Scots underneath. “Twice. Once outside a shop on Oxford Street. Once in Portman Square, watching a street player.”

The West End. Still a big place to search. “Do you remember anything else? Was she with somebody? How she was dressed?”

“On her own, both times. Not a maid in sight. It was by that I noticed her, because a woman dressed as she was should have her maid about her.” She tapped the paper with the back of her hand. “She was wearing Madame Elise.”

Owl slipped in, “The dressmaker.”

“It was a walking dress in Pomona poplin, the first time. Satin trim and a perline cape, long, with scallops.” She made shapes in the air. “The second time, she was in Portman Square. That was a carriage dress in spotted silk. And a very pretty color it was. Amber. Lined with sarcenet.”

Owl leaned close to his ear. “This may be the one. I have thought it would be a woman who recognized her.”

“We’ll try the dressmaker. You and Doyle come with me. I’ll send the rest off to the next party.”

“The dressmaker will live near her shop. With luck, there may even be someone working this late. Give me three minutes more and I will come.” Owl touched the maid’s arm and drew her a little aside, into a quiet space beside the stairs. “Tell me more about the dresses. Satin and braid on the Pomona one? What color was the braid?”

When he they left Cummings was walking out too. He watched their carriage drive away, looking grim.

IT HAD TAKEN MORE THAN THREE HOURS TO TRACK down the dressmaker, Elise, who was in a bed not her own. A nicely calculated mixture of bribery and threat was required to cajole this address from her. It was almost dawn when they came to Percy Street.

Jane Cardiff, a woman of the demimonde, lived above a neat milliner’s shop. It was, Justine thought, exactly the sort of place she had chosen for herself when she retired from spying. Here was a quiet street and neighbors busy enough with their own affairs that they would not meddle with hers.

The bow window of the shop held five hats, tilted attractively on their posts like flower heads on stalks. The windows of that apartment upstairs were silent and dark, as they should be at this hour. To the right of the shop was the door that led upward. She allowed Hawker to do the business of opening it.

Monsieur Doyle had already circled to the back, looking into the state of the alley and the garden of the shop, prepared to deal with anyone who fled in that direction. She watched the street, the other shops and houses, and all the windows.

Jane Cardiff had shown a tendency to shoot people from windows. This should not be encouraged by inattention.

The breath of the waking city surrounded her, a grumble compounded of sleepy tradesmen opening shutters, sparrows chittering, the drivers of delivery wagons being emphatic to one another, and milk carts rumbling over cobblestones. This was the best hour for breaking into houses. Suspicion was at a low ebb this time of the day. There is something respectable about dawn.

When Hawker leaned close to the lock to work his skill upon it, his white shirt was hidden. His black coat and her own dark gray cloak were almost invisible against the door. They would not be apparent unless someone looked carefully.

Hawker set his first pick in the keyhole. Wriggled it. Frowned and tried the knob. The door opened. “It’s not locked.”

“We break into the only house in London that is not locked. How fortuitous.”

“I wouldn’t want to calculate the odds.”

“It is almost certainly a trap. We will be lured to the top of the stairs and shot and lie there in a slowly widening pool of blood while Mademoiselle Jane Cardiff steps over our corpses and escapes. Or possibly, even as we stand here, she is in a window, aiming a rifle at us.”