Joanna Bourne: The Black Hawk

These papers should go somewhere artistic and obvious. Stage-setting. A show of power. So. Half on the table beside the sofa—yes—stacked up as if somebody’d just finished reading them. A few left on the desk chair. Another pile on the windowsill. He was satisfied when he’d finished. This was a picture of men called away in the middle of a consultation. Felicity had missed a few coffee cups, adding to the fine, heedless air of haste.

And the black book. He was deciding whether to leave it on the desk or put it up on the mantelpiece when Owl walked in.

“You are looking pensive,” she said. “I dislike it when you are introspective. Matters always become enigmatic. Is it time?”

“Cummings is here. I’m wondering where to put this.” He let the pages fall open. If it had been Jane Cardiff’s journal, it would have been symbols across the page. Since it was one of Sévie’s old copybooks, it was line after line of ordinary script. “I want him to see it but not lay hands on it.”

“The far side of the desk.” Owl took the book from him and arranged it herself. “Good. It lies there, slanted just so, obviously important. I have never seen a book hold such an aspect of importance.”

“I could add bookmarks hanging out everywhere.”

“We will not ice the cake. We will be simple. You will try to keep the very direct Colonel Reams from tossing it into the fire. Séverine will be annoyed if it is damaged.” She frowned at the knife that had almost killed her. “Will you reconsider this plan? I am not easy in my mind with the chance you will take. That knife is dangerous.”

“I’m more dangerous.” There was a comfortable patch of wall over to the side. He backed her up there so she’d have something to lean on. “We have a minute. Use it to kiss me.”

“Doyle may walk in at any instant. Paxton may—”

“Let’s not make a list of everybody who’s going to walk in on us.”

A brief kiss. Lips touching once, friendly-like. A petit dejeuner of a kiss. A roll and coffee in the morning of a kiss. Not the main course, but he gave it his entire expertise.

Owl said, “That was nice.”

“That’s why husbands and wives kiss a lot. Because it’s nice. It’ll take some practice, but we’ll eventually get it right.”

“I am not yet used to the idea of becoming a wife. I have no idea what kind of kisses to expect in that state.”

“We’ll find out. We’re going to fall into the ravening maw of respectability, you and I.” He kissed her. It tasted significant, as if everything they did, every word they said, meant more now. It wasn’t just pleasure between them, though God knew there was a mort of that. It wasn’t friendship.

This was his lady. This would be his wife.

He pulled her to him, using the amount of persuasion he thought he could get away with, feeling her answer back with the next kiss, warm and willing.

They did that for a while.

“We have no time for this.” She shoved him away. “I am in no mood to fool with you. I am hungry for vengeance. You, I will indulge myself with later.”

Wonderful Owl. “I’m feeling peckish for some vengeance myself.”

Doyle came in, looking grim and angry from a morning spent handing a corpse over to the coroner. Pax was with him, Fletcher a few steps behind. The rustle coming downstairs was Sévie.

Nobody needed to say much. Doyle took in the stage setting. Eyes lingered on the knife. “We have Cummings?”

“Waiting in the front parlor.”

A brusque nod from Doyle. Sévie, dignified as a judge, sat in the big chair, the one next to the fire, and folded her hands in her lap. She’d done most of the work on Jane Cardiff’s book, since she could decode as fast as write. Pax, Fletcher, and Doyle took the corners of the room and stood like guards. They wouldn’t interfere with what was going to happen.

The door opened. Cummings came in, trailed by a belligerent-looking Reams. “What the devil do you mean by this, Hawkhurst? That was a damned peremptory note you sent.”

“This won’t take long.”

His lordship glanced around and assessed his audience. His voice became a shade more conciliatory. “I have better things to do than run across town at your beck and call.”

Cummings was shaved pink, his hair clipped and polished, his clothes without a speck of dust on them. He was tightly decorous. A little overdressed for the informality of Meeks Street. He’d dropped his hat and coat somewhere, but he carried his cane.

Good. As good as could be.

Reams came up behind Cummings and whispered into his ear. “. . . knives . . . Bow Street . . .” There was more, but Cummings ignored him. Because Cummings had spotted the black book sitting enticingly on the desk.

He put himself between Cummings and the desk and turned to Owl. “Lord Cummings and Colonel Reams came to ask after your health when you were stabbed. How long ago was it, mademoiselle? Five days?”

“It has been longer than that. A week, I think. I lose track of time, we have been so very busy.” She came toward him, strolling across the landscape of the study, running her hand from chair to chair, taking every eye with her. “It has been day after day, talking to people, discovering secrets. I have barely had time to draw my breath.”

She paused by the sofa and touched two fingers to the papers he’d piled there. “Then there is this. It is tedious work, the making of copies from old French codes into the vernacular.” She tilted her head and considered the words written on the top sheet. “And now we have finished. Many people will be fascinated by that little book. It is instructive reading.”

Cummings whipped his attention from the papers she touched to the book on the desk and back again.

Reams, edging along at Cummings’s side, hadn’t stopped muttering. “. . . sneaking bastards. They got into Bow Street somehow. We can prove it. That knife on the desk has to be—”

“Not now, Colonel.” Cummings brushed his shoulder. “Hawkhurst, I’m not here to play games. What’s this about?”

“Treason. Greed. Murder. Trifles like that. A woman’s body was found in Percy Street, at dawn. But you already know that.”

Cummings knew. His face was closed, barred, and shuttered, but the smugness showed.

Owl said, “It was a particularly cowardly murder. She was killed by someone she knew. Someone looked into her eyes while he killed her.”

The cane swung in Cummings’s hand, being arrogant. “All very affecting, of course, but not the province of the British Service. Unless you stumbled on the body, Hawkhurst. Really, Bow Street is going to wonder why women keep getting stabbed when you’re around.”

He gave Cummings time to realize what he’d let slip. “Did I say she was stabbed?”

Sévie and the three men standing at the wall didn’t change expression. They were silent and impassive witnesses. Even Reams was a witness.

Cummings clenched his teeth. “A guess. Maybe she died of the pox or fell under a carriage. It’s nothing to me how some whore died.”

“I didn’t say she was a whore, either.” Time to lean against the desk and get comfortable, like a man settled down for a long talk. “Her apartment was ransacked. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such a clumsy job.”

“I can’t share your familiarity with the ransacking of a whore’s living quarters.”

Reams had got into the pile of papers at the end of the sofa. He shoveled through them like a pig, rooting. “What’s this?” He squinted at the top page. “‘R.T. will do what he is told. He is snared. Le Maître is very pleased with me.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sévie answered him. “That is the transcript of a book kept by a woman of the demimonde.” She sounded like she was discussing something ordinary. Vegetables, maybe. “For many years she blackmailed the men she slept with. She did not ask for money. She demanded political favors. Votes. Influence. Le Maître—the Master—was her patron. He gave the orders.”