Joanna Bourne: My Lord and Spymaster

“Jess . . .”

“I can’t . . .” She’d run out of words. Pitney looked flat and unreal, like he could tear into strips and blow away. “I have to get out of here. Are you going to be all right?”

He shook his head. There was nothing to say. Nothing to say. He’d been Papa’s friend for thirty years. “Jess—”

“Leave her be.” Sebastian pulled her roughly back to the seat and reached past her to pull the door closed. The coach started.

It was Whitby ships. The secrets crossed the Channel with smuggled goods, carried by crewmen under orders, who didn’t even know what they passed along. Whitby ships. It was in the records, again and again and again.

The design on the leather walls of the carriage was fleurs-de-lis, imprinted in worn gold leaf, one about every four inches. Sometimes the pattern made diamonds, sometimes squares, sometimes long, slanted rows. It depended on how she looked at it. The horses clattered through St. James Park and into the silent streets of Mayfair. Nobody was out at this hour. The wide, dark spaces between the streetlamps were empty. Once, a cat darted across the road in front of them.

At some point Sebastian put his arm around her and pulled her against him, and she started crying, noisy and wet, gasping into his jacket like she was choking on something. If he hadn’t been holding her, she would have broken into three or four pieces.

They pulled up in front of his house. After they’d waited there a while, she wiped her nose on her sleeve and drew herself up stiff and held her breath. A couple more sobs got out. It was hard to stop.

“I’m . . .” It scraped the inside of her throat. “I’m sorry. I’ll be out of your house tomorrow.”

“You’ll stay. You have nowhere else to go. Jess, we have to talk about this.”

“I don’t want to talk. Let me go inside, Sebastian. I’m so tired I’m shaking with it.” Of all the useless emotions of her whole life, being in love with this man was the most hopeless and useless of the lot.

“Listen to me. Your father—”

“I’m about to start crying again. Will you please, please, let me go do it someplace that’s not in front of you.”

“Fine. We’ll talk when you’re not exhausted. Go to bed.”

She let him climb out and lift her down from the coach. Someone was waiting in the lighted doorway. Eunice. How did she always know?

She was crying again even before she got up the stairs. Eunice didn’t say a word. Just held her.

IT WAS EASIER AFTER SHE’D SLEPT A WHILE. Nothing changed, but events got separated somehow. She went to sleep and woke up and everything had happened yesterday instead of today.

She wouldn’t think about yesterday.

She lay in bed looking at the slanted ceiling. She could get a man out of England. No problem with that. A Whitby escape route was always laid out in every city where Whitby men worked. The London route would be in just quivering readiness. Pitney’d made sure of that himself. The Swedish sloop, Ilsa Lindgren , with no ties to Whitby, lay anchored in the Thames. A dory was tied up at the Asker Street docks, manned day and night, ready to row somebody out to her.

She’d help him escape. She didn’t forgive—no one could forgive what he’d done—but she wouldn’t let him die. She didn’t have the iron heart and metal guts for that kind of justice. She’d get him away safe. She’d make sure she never saw him again.

She didn’t want to think about any of that.

The night outside her window was thin and gray at the edges, with light as weak as seawater. It was so early the women hadn’t started bringing milk around. No hubbub of voices. No clanking pails. It was the private time of night when no one was up but thieves and women with light morals. She was both of those. No wonder she was awake.

When she stole Cinq from the gallows, it made her guilty, too, didn’t it? That’s how Sebastian would see it. He was a man who had a good call on vengeance and the steel innards to enforce it. He wouldn’t pardon what she’d done, when he found out.

And that was another thing she didn’t want to think about. There wasn’t space enough to turn around in her head, she was avoiding so many subjects.

She’d leave England soon. Nothing left for her here anyway.

Outside, one bird woke up to sing ten or twenty notes and then rolled over and went back to sleep. Still early.

This was another long, hard day in front of her. There were going to be some good parts to it, though. She’d best get started.

She padded down the stairs barefoot and opened the door of his room a crack.

“It’s me,” she said softly. “Don’t throw a knife at me or anything when I come in. All right?”

His voice came from the bed. “I’m fairly careful about that.”

He slept nude. She’d been right about that. It was a nice warm night for it. Warm dawn, actually. She pulled her nightgown off and dropped it next to the bed and climbed in with him.

Naked slid on naked. It was startling, touching her whole skin against him this way. Like jumping into a warm sea with every nerve surprised at once. She hoped he’d give her a few minutes to get used to this.

He might not. He was very interested in her. On the other hand, he was also laughing. A complex person, Sebastian.

He leaned up on one elbow and ran the tips of his fingers down her side, reassuring like. “Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

There was just enough light to see him. The hair on his chest gathered into a line and grew right down across his stomach. It got thick down between his legs. She didn’t quite look there, feeling shy. That was something else she didn’t expect. Feeling shy. “What I thought was, I’d get in bed with you and let you decide what to do about it.”

“Well.” He sat up and started undoing her braids. Either he liked her hair or he was giving himself time to think. “So here you are.”

“You keep talking about how much we both want this. Turning into gold, you said. I’d like to try that.”

“I did say that, didn’t I.” He unwound her braid, pulling the strands out between his fingers.

She was going to put Cinq beyond his reach forever. She was going to steal his vengeance. This morning, before she betrayed him, was her only chance. “If you could forget who I am for a while—”

His fingers were on her lips. She wasn’t used to how quick he moved sometimes. He was just one place and then another without any time in between. “It’s not that. Jess, let me tell you what we—”

She didn’t try to match his speed, but she covered his mouth with her hand. “Don’t. Please. If we talk about it, I’m going to cry again, or we’ll fight. That’s not what I want to do right now. Please.”

He kissed her hand, where it was pressed against his lips. “Then we’ll talk later.”

There isn’t any later. That was part of what she wasn’t going to think about. She put her mind on how fingers felt when a man was kissing them. She didn’t want to miss any of this, because she only had the one time. “Have you decided?”

“Jess, I’m still trying to wake up. Can we go at this a little slower? Decided what?”

“Whether you’re going to make love to me or not.”

He took up where he’d left off, kissing the palm of her hand. “I decided that long ago.”

SEBASTIAN listened to a horse and cart clatter through the square. When they passed, it was quiet again. Jess lay beside him in the dawn, wearing a pale, silk ribbon around her neck and the locket on it and not a blessed thing more. Pretty soon he’d lay her down underneath him and take her.