Joanna Bourne: My Lord and Spymaster

Jess had never taken the time to have a good look at grass. Always been too busy. Now that she investigated, she found it wasn’t just grass. It was a whole town down there, like London, full of every kind of inhabitant. Clover. Ants. Bugs. Made you wonder what you were stepping on when you walked around.

She’d come out here to be alone to think. Hadn’t been alone yet. But then, did she really want to think? Probably not.

She picked out one of the plants that was velvety and tough at the same time and had blue flowers on it like bells. Flowers smaller than her fingernail. When she crushed the leaves, they smelled like mint.

A deep voice behind her said, “That’s horehound.” It was Sebastian.

“You have something to do on a ship someplace. I’m almost sure of it.” She didn’t look up.

“They make a cough mixture out of it.” He sat down beside her on the blanket.

She twirled the little plant in her fingers. The stem felt bumpy.

“It’s square. Look.” He took it from her and pinched off the end of the stem and showed her. “I remember Standish showing me this when I first came to live with him. I was seven or eight.”

A plant with a square stem. Why would you have a plant with a square stem? So you could pack them more closely?

“You can eat it if you like,” Sebastian said.

She rolled over on her back and looked up at the sky, biting the stem. It tasted like the red-and-white sweets they sold in shops. Sebastian came closer till he was above her, lean and intent, smiling down on her. His eyes held the knowledge of all that kissing they’d done and what she’d felt about it. He knew he could do it again to her, whenever he wanted to. Made it hard to meet his eyes.

She’d spent some of last night, when she wasn’t sleeping, wondering whether Sebastian might take it into his head to climb up those stairs and make love with her. He didn’t though.

It wouldn’t take a clever man like Sebastian more than two minutes to get her out of a nightgown. He’d slide it away and do some of those things he was so good at. It set off an odd, hot excitement in the pit of her stomach, looking up at him and thinking about him that way. She wanted to make love to him. No moral backbone at all, that was her problem. Came of all those years thieving.

“I finally tracked you down,” he said. “Too bad we’re not out at sea somewhere. One of the good things about a ship is you always know where to find people.”

“One of the advantages.”

The Captain had pulled off his neckcloth—it was over there on the railing—and opened his collar, showing some brown skin. His face was like those bluffs in the desert in Egypt where the wind scoured away till there was nothing left that wasn’t strong. Every jut and hollow was harsh. He hadn’t had an easy life, to have a face like desert rocks. Sometimes when she looked at him she wanted to kiss those edges and hollows, just to show him there was some gentleness in the world.

Silly thoughts to have about a man like this. She shivered. A warm sort of shiver.

“You look tired,” he said. “Why don’t you go up to your room and take a nap. It’s hours before Adrian will be ready for us.”

“I should put in time at the warehouse, actually. There’s still a business to run. The Northern Star ’s sailing tomorrow. Naval supplies to Lisbon.”

“The tide doesn’t stop because you’re not sweeping at it. Relax. You have good men in charge. Pitney knows who to bribe. But the Northern Star isn’t naval supplies. That’s contraband into Brittany, isn’t it? Tea?”

“Indigo and tea. It’s brandy coming out. Once they transfer that, the Star ’ll go on to Lisbon. We might even move some naval supplies. Who knows?” Crikey. Once, just once, she’d like to have an ordinary conversation with this man. About the weather. Or horses. Something terribly, terribly British. “I should be there.”

Looking up past Sebastian, she could see the sky was full of clouds scudding along from left to right. Almost, it felt like the sky was standing still and the earth was moving, carrying them with it. Made her dizzy, thinking things like that.

Sebastian began stroking her forehead with the tips of his fingers. He made it feel wonderful. She should tell him to stop, since anyone could look out the window and see them, and this wasn’t exactly proper.

She said, “You planning to do all that stuff to me out here in the open? Kissing and so on. It’s another silly place to get started on that sort of thing.”

He said softly,

“Whoever loves—if he does not propose love’s right and proper end, he’s one that goes to sea for nothing but to make him sick.”

It didn’t rhyme much that she could tell, but there wasn’t very much of it. “That’s poetry?”

“That’s John Donne.”

“Never read much poetry. I always meant to, but I never got it done somehow. What you’re saying is you’ve got more ambitious thoughts in mind than just kissing. Right?”

“Exactly right, Jess.”

“Might as well just say so.” She yawned into his face, not commenting on the poetry, just tired. She’d drink some tea before she started sieving all those records tonight.

“Remember when I was looking in your study the other night?” That was a polite way of saying picking three locks and sneaking around in the dark. “You remember?”

“I remember.” He wasn’t annoyed. Good.

“I found a letter. Giovanni Reggio. You know the one I mean?”

It took him a minute. “Maps of Florence and plans for some fortifications in Tuscany. They’re almost certainly fifteenth century, but whether they’re by DaVinci is anyone’s guess. I passed them along to a dealer in Paris. Jess, why are we talking about maps of Florence when I want to be making love to your eyebrows?”

“Because your damn letter didn’t say maps in 1550 or plans of what. It just gave a whalloping great price for them. In francs. You have to watch that.”

He laughed at her. A pirate, burned all brown with the sun, laughing at her. “You’ve decided I’m not Cinq?”

“Dunnoh who is, yet. I know you’re not.”

“Good then.”

He started stroking along her eyebrows, using the side of his thumb.

“I have funny eyebrows. They don’t curve. Makes me look angry all the time.”

“They’re fine.” Sebastian just kept on finding her amusing. “You worry too much.”

What black eyes he had. Hungry, keen, obsidian eyes.

He paid attention to her eyebrows some more. His fingers were getting in the way of seeing things, weaving back and forth between her and the light of the sky. So she closed her eyes. He drew lines on her forehead, back and forth. She should tell him to stop. Felt nice, though.

Hours later, when Sebastian woke her up, it was to tell her it was time to go to the Admiralty. She knew he’d been beside her all afternoon, watching her while she slept.

“THE FIRST LEAK WE KNOW ABOUT WAS MARCH, five years ago.” Adrian stood in front of the long bank of windows, facing her. “The most recent was two weeks back. Where do we start?”

Jess didn’t know who’d been ejected from his office at the Admiralty. Somebody important. This was a huge room with a commanding view over the parade ground and a globe the size of a wheelbarrow in one corner.

A pair of armed marines stood outside the door, looking tough and alert, guarding things.

She unrolled the first of her charts. These were tides, weather conditions, winds, and the phases of the moon for every month, every year. Give her a ship, and she’d tell you how far it could travel on any given day, all up and down the Channel. It had taken a while to put this together. “We’ll start with the oldest and go on from there.”