Rook (10 page)

She heard LeBlanc giving Tom an overly polite, very Parisian welcome. She must have left blood on the ground. Or something had been seen. But surely LeBlanc could not think her brother capable of climbing up through that window? The rope, the height, and the scent moving west, all of it should have exonerated Tom. Unless LeBlanc thought Tom’s bad leg a ruse? One of the few things about the Bellamys that wasn’t!

“Sophie?” It was Spear’s voice, whispering from behind her chair. He had a hand on her shoulder. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

Sophia lifted her eyes to LeBlanc, his face smug as he gazed languidly at her chatting brother. How careful they had been all day, planning every detail to give her an alibi, to protect her from René’s dangerous knowledge, and all the while doing nothing for Tom because they’d thought it was done already. Sophia set her mouth. She was at peace with paying for the crimes of the Red Rook with her life, but she would never allow them to be paid for with Tom’s. LeBlanc was just going to have to think again about the identity of the Rook.

“… my young cousin?”

Sophia’s gaze jumped up, Spear straightening just behind her. She had lost the thread of the conversation.

“Oh,” said Tom. “I believe Monsieur Hasard is …” He looked to Sophia.

“Sick,” Sophia finished for him. “Not feeling well at all. Such a … tiring day, and he was looking so—” She struggled for a word that wasn’t “knackered.” “—so overcome, I convinced him to stay in bed. I was concerned he might have …”

She paused, eyes darting to the door. Fast footsteps were coming down the corridor.

“… that he might have … caught something …”

Someone was running down the hall, the clack of shoes distinct against the multicolored floor tiles. She sensed Spear’s sword hand move. He must have a knife somewhere in his clothes. Then the door to the waiting room burst open, the resulting space filled with a green coat, complete with silver buttons.

“Ah! Here you all are!”

Sophia held her face still, hoping at least she hadn’t made LeBlanc’s mistake of showing her shock. René Hasard stood in the doorway, unshaven, unpowdered hair pulled back into a hasty tail, but with the heavy Parisian voice and smooth manners in full force, brimming with that oblivious cheerfulness she found so annoying. But it didn’t matter now if René vexed every nerve she had. Not anymore. Not when the game was over. No time to discover how he might be bribed, no way to bring him to their side. The Bellamys had just lost. Utterly and completely.

“Tell me I am not late?” he said.

Sophia let the realization settle. Maybe this was for the best. This way it would be her neck bared for the Razor, not Tom’s. And any proof LeBlanc needed was standing in rather handsome dishevelment in the waiting hall doorway, and bleeding just a bit into the bandage beneath her corset. Why could René Hasard never, ever be where he was supposed to be? Sophia threw her shoulders back. Despair made her angry.

“I was just telling your cousin I thought you were sick,” she said to René. “Why, exactly, aren’t you sick?” He must have the constitution of an ox; he should have been sleeping until the middlemoon. Tom cleared his throat, but Sophia just narrowed her eyes at René, daring him to answer. A grin quirked at the corner of his mouth.

“Such a darling,” René said to the room. “And so considerate of my health. You’d have me abed all day, wouldn’t you, my love?”

The discomfort this statement left behind had everyone frowning except Bellamy, who was still trying to work it out, and Sophia, who had been obliged to press her mouth tight against an unreasonable urge to laugh. What a parting shot.

“Always,” she replied slowly, “my love.” Though the look she sent clearly added her preference that he be in an unconscious or perhaps a non-breathing state. It made his grin leap onto both sides of his mouth. She saw Tom’s scowl deepen, felt Spear’s resentment in the air behind her. Then LeBlanc laughed, a sound like snakes slithering across a carpet.

“Well, isn’t that nice,” said Bellamy finally, fidgeting with his coattails. “Young people, so nice …”

Nancy, the cook, appeared in the doorway. “Your dinner is on the table, Miss Bellamy,” she said.

Sophia jumped to her feet, as if she had nothing on her that could hurt, ignoring all the things that did. “Thank you so much, Nancy.” She faced their little party. “Shall we all go through?”

The dining room was Sophia’s favorite in Bellamy House, and she pointed out all its details with minute attention, since it was likely to be the last time she ever saw it. The ceiling and one wall were made entirely of metal and triangular panes of glass, very old—though it did not have the telltale lack of bubbles to make it truly Ancient—the pattern of triangles spreading up and out like a fan, curving to create the ceiling. At some point a singularly uninspired Bellamy had built more of the house right over and around the glass wall, ruining the room with darkness. But her mother had had lights installed into the empty spaces behind the glass, with sconces and hooks for oil lamps, so that on nights like tonight, points of light glittered from every direction, reflecting again and again through the triangular panes.

“Please find a seat, everyone,” Sophia told them. They arranged themselves, Bellamy on one end of the rectangular table, Sophia on the other. René and Spear to her immediate right and left, LeBlanc beside Spear and Tom beside René. Lovely.

She shook out her napkin, then reached over her plate and passed a heavy platter of sea bass and potatoes to Spear, a move that hurt her side intensely. She gave the pain none of her attention. René Hasard had her well and truly on a hook, but she was in no mood to let him watch her wriggle.

“Monsieur Hasard,” she said. “I am so curious about how you’re feeling, and how you spent your time today. No more teasing now. Please tell us all about it.”

“Yes, tell us, Hasard,” said Spear in the resulting pause. “I’d like to know that myself.” Sophia thrust a bowl of carrots at Spear. He was like St. Just at her heels, always the faithful friend. Only this time he had no idea what she was trying to do. If he had, he definitely would not be helping.

“But the answer is so dull, my love,” René replied, as if Spear had not spoken. “Did you not think the night before so much more … stimulating?”

So, Sophia thought, he was getting straight to the point: her whereabouts last night. It was just as well, because she was tiring of the games. She glanced at Tom for the first time and met his startled eyes. This was going to hurt him, but better this pain than the Razor. She gave her gaze back to René.

“Tell them,” she said.

“Sophie …” Spear reached for her arm but she put it under the table.

“Go on,” she encouraged, holding her back straight against the throbbing in her head and side. “Tell your cousin what I was doing last night. He will be so interested.”

There was a soft clank as LeBlanc set down his fork. Again she exchanged a glance with Tom, and there was an expression on his face that she’d never had occasion to see. Her heart slammed rhythmically in her chest, so hard she feared that it was breaking. That look on Tom’s face made her sure that it was. She turned again to René. “Well?”

René’s smile had gone, his lips opening slowly to speak below two very blue, very inscrutable eyes. She didn’t look away this time.

“Well, do tell, Mr. Hasard,” said Bellamy. “A father should never be the last to know.” He chuckled to himself in the silence.

“Miss Bellamy was out of her room last night …,” René began.

A sharp twinge shot through Sophia’s head, but she met René’s gaze without flinching.

“She was out of her room because …”

That corner of his mouth was quirking. How odd that she could be sitting in the Bellamy dining room, her life crumbling into ruins at her feet, wishing just a bit that the person doing the ruining had kissed her after all.

René broke into a sudden smile. “Sophia was out of her room all night … because she was with me.”

Sophia blinked. René ate a carrot. She looked to Tom, who seemed to have deflated in his chair, while Bellamy, having paid attention to the conversation for once, set down his wineglass, distinctly miffed. Spear had not moved a chiseled muscle.

“Oh,” René said, bringing a napkin to his mouth. “Oh, I beg your pardon!” He was playing Parisian magazine René now, minus the hair powder. “But, please, do not misunderstand!” He leaned over his plate to look down the table at Sophia’s father. “Monsieur Bellamy, I would never wish to stain the reputation of my betrothed. Sophia and I were up all night …” His face turned back to hers. “… playing chess.”

“Chess?” Spear repeated.

“Why, yes,” Sophia replied. “Chess.” She offered Spear a bowl. “Creamed peas?”

Spear took the bowl, visibly confused, though not nearly as confused as she was. René was very deliberately removing her from the hook, and she could not fathom why. But by pulling her off, he was also sticking another straight through the chest of her brother. LeBlanc had lost interest in their conversation, his pale eyes watching every bite that went into Tom’s mouth.

“Yes,” Sophia said again, addressing René and the whole table at once. “You have caught me out, I’m afraid. I couldn’t wait to tell them. It must have been humiliating to be beaten so many times. And so thoroughly.”

René smiled. “Except for that once.”

“Yes,” she agreed, meeting the blue fire of his eyes, “except for that once. Isn’t that right, Tom?” Her brother looked up from his plate, where he had been deep in thought. “Tom was acting as chaperone, poor man.”

“He has always been an excellent son,” said Bellamy.

“Thank you, Father,” Tom said.

“Did you ever get any sleep, Tom?” Sophia continued. “There was that one game, it must have been just before nethermoon?”

“Just after, I think,” Tom replied. He looked from Sophia to LeBlanc, who had stopped eating his own creamed peas and was now intent on the conversation. Tom’s brows came down, and Sophia knew he had just seen his danger.

“Yes, just after nethermoon,” Sophia agreed. “Tell them about it, René.”

René launched into an explanation of a game that Sophia recognized to be the only one they had ever actually played, after dinner in the sitting room. This speech was so boring in its precise description of every piece and move, and at the same time such a perfect homage to René’s own cleverness, that Sophia had to admit the whole thing was a stroke of genius. She watched Spear’s face go from incredulous to blank, saw LeBlanc cutting his potatoes into painstaking fourths, her father yawning behind his napkin. She wasn’t sure anyone even remembered what they’d been talking about.

Sophia pushed the food around her plate, trying to pretend she had eaten some of it. The pain in her skull was increasing, the smell of the fish making her ill. And she had no idea what was happening.

“That is all so very instructive, René,” LeBlanc interrupted suddenly, dabbing at his mouth. “But as a member of your family, I think I must point out to you the bad manners of bragging, especially at the expense of your fiancée. You would be sorry, I’m sure, if I had to speak to your mother about it.”

It was the first time Sophia had ever known Spear and LeBlanc to be in agreement. But when she turned to René, she was surprised to see that this mild threat had actually carried weight. René’s smile had tightened, like the grip on his fork.

“My apologies, Cousin,” he said quietly, “and Miss Bellamy.”

His gaze ran once over hers. He looked away again, but not before she had noticed his look linger pointedly for just a moment on her side, the side closest to him. Sophia wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were chilly, squirming her fingers around until she felt a wet patch. Blood. Not much, but it was soaking through. She wiped her fingers discreetly on her napkin and folded it inward, smiling at them all, her head full of words she could not politely utter.

“Though I am glad you brought the particular subject to mind, Cousin,” LeBlanc was saying. “Because I wished to ask—”

“Monsieur Hammond,” René interrupted. Spear looked up, scowling. “Would you find a shawl for Miss Bellamy? She is coming all out in …” He turned to her. “What is the word, my love? Swan skin?”

“Gooseflesh, I believe he means,” Sophia explained. “I’m afraid I didn’t dress warmly enough.” She ignored the instant glances this statement caused to be directed at her bosom; she was too busy trying and failing to understand why René was shielding her. A shawl would cover the spreading bloodstain at her side.

“I have always thought my daughter should dress more warmly,” Bellamy muttered.

René was still talking to Spear. “Perhaps the woman Nancy, or …”

Sophia supplied the name. “Orla. Would you mind finding Orla, Spear? She’ll know which shawl to send.”

“Of course,” Spear said, looking much less thunderous now that Sophia was the one asking. He left the room in a fast, booted stomp.

“I was saying,” LeBlanc continued, taking in every moment of their little drama, “that I would also like to discuss last night.” He took a sip of wine, his signet ring with the seal of the city flashing in the light. “I would like to discuss the person who was in my room.”

The clink of plate and glass stopped. Tom spoke first. “But I thought you weren’t interested in that, Monsieur LeBlanc. You called off the hunt.”

“So I did,” he replied. “But that is because we were hunting the wrong man.”

“How so?”

“Because the man I am looking for is wounded, Monsieur, and there was no blood trail to go with the scent.”

“Wounded?” said René incredulously. “Really, Cousin.”

“And what makes you say this man was hurt?” Tom asked.

LeBlanc’s grin curled. “Because there was blood on the dead man’s sword. And I do not think this man stabbed his own sword into his own lung, do you, Monsieur Bellamy?”

“I don’t like such conversation,” Sophia’s father said, frowning. “Especially at dinner …”

Sophia watched Tom set down his glass, a little smile playing over his face. Of course he had already thought of this. And of course there was blood on the man’s sword. Her blood. The blood that was seeping through her dress at that very moment. She should’ve taken care of the sword at the time. Would have, had she been in a fit state. But she had not been in a fit state. Blimey, she was tired. Her head was pounding to a beat of its own.