Rook (24 page)

“An excellent woman,” he said. Then he coughed.

Sophia walked quickly around the dead man to René’s washstand, poured water from the ewer into the bowl, and wet a cloth. She wrung it out and went back to René, who was now sitting on the edge of the bed. She knelt down. “Show me your neck.”

“There is no …”

“Just show me your neck.”

He raised his chin. There was a red mark circling his skin, a burn almost, tiny pinpricks of blood where the rope had pulled hardest, already purpling along the edges. She sponged at it carefully, the little pulse at the base of his throat beating strong. She imagined what his throat would look like without that pulse, and struggled with a hot burst of fury. “Tell me what happened,” she said.

“Are you shaking?”

She paused, holding the wet cloth against the mark. “I’m angry. That’s all.”

“At who?”

She stared at him, incredulous. “At LeBlanc, of course!” René leapt up from the bed and began to pace.

“I do not think he was trying to kill me.”

“But you’re standing between him and a fortune!”

“No, no! I mean him.” He coughed again, waving a hand at the dead man on the floor. “He was not even trying! He is here, waiting, as soon as I climb through the window, he has me unawares, he knows not to get his feet knocked out from under him …”

“He did get his feet knocked out from under him!”

René turned, his smile wry. “You are the variable in every equation, Mademoiselle. But I am saying he knew how to keep his feet back so that I could not knock them out, and that he had the advantage of weight. And yet this man cannot throttle me properly? He lets us thrash about the room with my hand beneath the rope? No, no, no.”

He went to the pitcher and poured himself a glass of water, drinking slowly and apparently painfully. Sophia sat on her heels, cloth still in hand. “What do you mean you were climbing through the window?”

He set down the glass. “I mean that I have been on the roof, watching Sophia Bellamy come sneaking back into this house.”

She opened her mouth once, then closed it.

“You have spent much time on the roof these past days. Do you think no one notices when you are gone?”

“I went to see my …”

René threw up a hand, the perfect impression of a red rope across his palm. “I know where you went!” Now she saw where all that restless energy was coming from. She was not the only one angry. He was furious. With her. “You know there is someone …” His eyes darted to the body on the floor. “… you agree there will be no more climbing out of windows, and yet you go anyway, alone, without saying … That is madness. Reckless!”

Sophia bit her lip, still kneeling on the floor, breathing hard against her own temper. Then before she could react, René came across the room, sat again on the edge of the bed, and caught her head in his hands.

“Look at me. Do you trust me?”

She looked at him. He was angry and wild-headed and unshaven and beautiful. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

There was the hint of an irate smile around his mouth. “Then prove it. Prove that you trust me and tell me your plans.”

“You know all our plans.”

“Stop lying to me! Do you think I do not see all the things you choose not to tell us, how you have placed the others and how you have so exactly placed yourself? Do you really think I am what I pretend to be?”

The room had gone still. And just as suddenly as he had in Spear’s kitchen, René dropped his hands. “I am sorry,” he said, and got up to go stand in front of the window, arms behind his head. She could see him struggling for control, deep breaths that were straining the linen of his shirt. She missed the warmth of his palms.

“Tell me your plans, Mademoiselle,” he said, in the calm voice that was not, though this time the sound was full of gravel. “Tell me what the firelighter is for.”

“To blow up the Tombs,” she said. Just like that. How odd to hear those words coming from her mouth; it made her heart slam repeatedly in her chest. “I’m going to empty the prison holes, blow them up, and take down LeBlanc. If I can.”

René had gone absolutely still in front of the window. She counted several more breaths before he said, “This is why you wanted both the ships. Not as a decoy. You are going to fill them with prisoners.”

She didn’t need to answer.

“And, like tonight, you go on your own, you say nothing …”

“I … didn’t want to worry them,” she whispered.

“What you did not want, Mademoiselle, was to be prevented. Tell me I am wrong.”

She couldn’t. And then he spun around.

“You do not expect to come out. That is why you do not say.”

“I don’t know what will happen.” She jumped as he kicked a stray buckled shoe, making it bounce against the far wall, near the dead man.

“And Hammond does not know this, of course.”

“No.” Sophia got up, her temper back in control. “But this is not what we should be discussing.” She ignored the way René threw up his hands, as well as the word he’d said softly in Parisian. “We need to know who our enemies are, or we might not get to the Sunken City to do anything at all. Was the hotelier LeBlanc’s man?”

“I think he would have been anyone’s man who paid him.” René was pacing. “But you should consider that someone on this coast has been talking to LeBlanc. And for quite some time.”

“Do you think it was him?”

The hands went up to his head again. “I do not know.”

“And you think he wasn’t trying to kill you, but … what? Incapacitate you? Dissuade you from traveling to the city tomorrow? Who doesn’t want you in the city, and how did they find out where you are?”

He looked up. “It makes no sense. But I will say this to you, Mademoiselle. If this is LeBlanc’s doing, if I am the only thing standing between him and the Hasard fortune, then the person I should be worrying for most is Maman.”

LeBlanc twisted the signet ring with the seal of the Sunken City around and around his finger, light that was just past highmoon slanting in through the stone window. “I have finished waiting, Madame. Do we have an understanding?”

The woman nodded, flaming red hair still vivid beneath the prison dirt.

“One should never deny Fate, Madame.” LeBlanc’s smile came slow as he slid the pen and ink pot across his desk.

S
ophia
pushed out her breath, trying to endure Orla’s tightening of her clothing. Only Orla could arrange one’s traveling costume and bury a body in the same night, and with equal efficiency. It was still practically nethermoon. But they would need to leave soon to make the dawn ferry.

“You will … you’ll take care of Father for me?” Sophia said. She knew Orla would, she just wanted to hear her say it.

“I’ll be looking after Mr. Bellamy.”

“And St. Just?”

“As if I wouldn’t.”

“And yourself?”

“Well, really!” said Orla. “You’d think you weren’t coming back in just a day or three.”

Sophia grimaced as the last string of her corset was pulled, but she also smiled. She wasn’t positive she was coming back, of course. She never had been. She never was. But it seemed much more certain now, ever since René Hasard had pulled her out her bedroom window.

The others had been off dealing with the hotelier when the knock came on the glass; she’d nearly jumped from her skin. But when she threw open the window, René had merely stuck out a hand, offering to help her up onto the roof.

“What are you doing?” she whispered, once she’d gotten onto the thatch.

“I am on watch, remember?” he said quietly, his voice rough. “And I am guessing that you do not mind having a conversation on a roof, Mademoiselle.” She’d pulled up her knees, hugging them from both cold and nervousness while he settled himself, careful not to be too close. He had a mug of hot tea, though how he’d managed to climb a roof with it she wasn’t sure. He offered her a sip. Willow bark. For pain. Probably for his throat. Then he’d said, “I want you to tell me how you are going to blow up the Tombs.”

“Is this where you try to prevent me?”

But he’d only shaken his head. “Tell me your plans, Mademoiselle.”

And so she’d told him, about the Bellamy fire that should already be inside a cell, and the free landovers Allemande was providing for La Toussaint, taking the people of the Lower City to the Upper, and out the gates to the cemeteries. And René had listened, first with elbows on knees, and when his tea was gone, on his back beneath the stars, flipping his weighted coin while the highmoon made the lane a luminescent ribbon, twisting through the trees along the sea cliff. There was a darker circle on the skin around his neck.

And when she was done he took her plan and expanded it, adding detail, changing the timeline. They’d argued over it, and it had taken him some time to convince her. But in the end, René was to go back and set the firelighter when the prison yard was clear, after she’d gotten everyone away, including herself, eliminating her need to stay and play cat and mouse with LeBlanc.

“After all, Mademoiselle,” René had commented, “you are no good to your family dead. Can we at least agree on that?”

And that had started her thinking. If she could rescue Madame Hasard, if she could take down LeBlanc, if she came back in one piece, what would stand in the way of a marriage fee, then? Unless René had completely decided against her. If. If. If. But at least there were possibilities.

Orla tied down her last lace, and Sophia turned and gave her one brief, ferocious hug. Orla kissed her cheek—which with Orla was not a particularly tender gesture—then pushed her away with a tiny smack.

“Now then. Don’t you have a boat to catch?”

They left for the ferry in the dark, Cartier at the reins of the landover, driving around the ruts in the lantern light, and on the way, they passed Mr. Halflife’s landover in the lane. Sophia peeked through the curtain of the back window, watching the sleek vehicle rattle away in its own sphere of yellow light. He was going to Spear’s. In the dark before dawn. Poor Mr. Halflife. It would be a long time before there was a place wide enough for his driver to turn around, and by that time he would have no way of knowing which direction they’d gone. She let the curtain fall, and turned back to the Bellamy landover’s slightly worn interior. None of them even mentioned it.

It was odd to see everyone in their finery after nearly two weeks of linen shirts and breeches at the farm. Even Benoit was in his more formal servant’s attire. Sophia was wearing a navy dress Orla had altered for her, demure in color but with a cut that was a little more daring, the white underskirt—firelighter sewn in—underneath. The revival of Ancient voluminous skirts had made Sophia happy for very different reasons than other girls in the Commonwealth. They’d decided on natural, ringleted curls, and a small amount of paint around the eyes, all of it engineered to evoke a Commonwealth girl trying to assimilate into Upper City society, where being ostentatious was not in fashion. Unless, evidently, you were René Hasard.

He was back in the gold jacket, like at their Banns, and now that she could look at him without such trepidation, she could see what his gaggle of women had. If Spear Hammond was a marble statue precisely carved, then René Hasard was an Ancient painting out of
Wesson’s
, foreign and yet so striking it was hard to look away. Or maybe, Sophia thought, it was because she knew there was a russet-headed daughter stealer underneath the hair powder.

And he made a scene at the Canterbury dock. From the moment she stepped down from the landover, they were
engaged
. He introduced her to the captain, whom he did not know, explaining his fiancée’s specific need for a journey without many waves, chided Benoit about the baggage, was loud with his opinions about the cleanliness of the boat and overzealous in the arrangement of her cushions until the steward was exasperated. There was no one on the ferry who was not aware of their presence, and a man in the corner of the windowed cabin appeared to be scribbling down notes. It was very well done. When they finally settled on one of the bench seats, René pulled her close, arm around her waist, cheeks nearly touching, turning her to him as if they were in a constant state of whispering.

“I think the man behind us wonders if you are a victim of kidnapping, my love,” he said, voice low and still gruff in her ear. “So you may want to act as if you are enjoying this.”

She would have been offended if she had not heard the tease in his voice. She’d been trying hard not to show just how much she was enjoying it, this feeling of being held while they rode the waves, the smell of the soap he’d used to shave, the sun rising just beyond René’s shoulder, making the salt spray sparkle on the glass. She lifted her hands to the white cravat around his neck and began to adjust it, so the edge of his bruising did not show. She was also enjoying the fact that he was not dead on Spear Hammond’s floor. She made long, slow work of the cravat.

“Ah,” he said, the breath on her cheek almost a sigh. “Now my uncle Émile will not have to be ashamed of me.”

“And why would your uncle Émile be ashamed?” she asked.

“To have not taught me better, of course. This is his, how should I say … his area of expertise. You will meet Uncle Émile soon, when we get to the city.” The arm around her tightened, voice a gritty whisper. “I have some advice for you, my love. Never sit next to my uncle Émile.”

She laughed, and she could see the edge of his cheek crinkling above his jaw. She decided to be bold and stroked it once with the back of her fingers, a move she was sure made them look like happy lovers. His face was almost smooth this time.

“Oh, no,” he said, twirling one of the ringlets. “Benoit is doing his best at distraction, but I think Hammond may murder me in my bed tonight. And you should arrange your skirts, my love, your firelighter is showing. I would do it, but …”

She was sorry to see the coast. She knew he was playing his part, doing exactly as they’d planned, but she wondered whether it would feel different when he was being the real René. Or if the two could ever be one and the same.

The dock at Berck was more of an arrival and departure point than a town, and it was thronged with people trying to make their way out of the Sunken City and off the Parisian coast. Animals, bags, carts, men shouting about their tickets and muddy streets all mixed with landovers coming and going. Somewhere in that crowd there would be another man from the newspapers lurking, and if nothing of their arrival was printed, it would not be René Hasard’s fault.

Again he chided Benoit unmercifully about the baggage, took personal offense to a stranger’s innocent glance at Sophia, and now was loudly insisting to the porter that planks should be laid from the pier to the landover, so that his wife-to-be’s slippers would not be discolored by the dirt. Sophia held her skirt just above the mud, helping the underskirt take the weight of the firelighter, looking on adoringly while René explained that he was René Hasard (cousin to the Ministre of Security, but say nothing of that), that his fiancée’s brother had just been condemned (he is the Red Rook, but please do not tell anyone, Monsieur), and that dirty shoes could be the final blow to the emotional well-being of his betrothed. It was difficult not to laugh. René did not possess the first ounce of shame, and he was loving every moment of it—when you knew to look. But she was also very afraid that Spear might hit him.

Sophia reached up and unpinned her navy hat as Benoit finally drove the hired landover lurching and rattling down the pitted road that would take them to the Sunken City. René adjusted the blanket over their laps and her dress—it was chilly, clouds rolling in across the sun—and again he pulled her close to him on the seat.

“I think that is unnecessary,” said Spear from the opposite side, his features tightly controlled. He had not spoken since they got off the boat.

“I am not being impertinent, Hammond.” René’s lower, less Parisian voice was a shock after the one he’d been using on the dock. “I am keeping our heads safe. You would be surprised, I think, to know how many eyescopes are between here and the city.”

Spear looked René full in the face. “Close the curtains, then.”

“In which case we will not be seen at all. As we wish to be, or otherwise. You would rather our plan did not work?”

“Really, Spear,” Sophia said, “it’s nothing. And you know he’s right.”

René was right, but it certainly wasn’t nothing. That aching pull she’d been feeling had been soothed all day; she wanted to be soothed again. Spear crossed his arms, leaned back his head, and closed his eyes, which, Sophia thought, was probably as good an escape as he was likely to get.

She scooted in to René, his arm still around her waist, squirming about until she said, “Corsets are of the devil.”

“Sophia,” said Spear, in the corrective tone of her father, once upon a time.

“Spear,” she said, in the exact same tone. She’d felt guilty before; now she was irritated. “It’s an item of clothing. An item of clothing that happens to be worn under a woman’s clothes and happens to be of the devil. If you had one on, you’d say the same.”

“Turn this way,” René said. She could hear the amusement. And so, probably, could Spear. René guided her around until her back was to him, doing the same until his own was in the corner of the seat. She adjusted the firelighter beneath the dress and the blanket on her lap. She could feel René’s chest behind her, his chin somewhere near her ear.

“Better?” he asked.

She nodded, staring out the window where the farms of The Désolation were passing, a few vineyards yet unharvested, purple grapes hanging under the clouded sky. She was aware of his breathing, in and out against her back, of the arm around her middle, holding her in. René’s cheek settled against her curls. He was probably getting hair powder on her, but she didn’t care. Then his other arm moved very gently beneath the blanket.

She darted a glance at Spear, but he was still head back, eyes closed, swaying with the motion of the wheels. René slid his arm around her from the other direction, his fingers lacing together over her middle, the warmth of him seeping through her dress. She breathed deep. There was no risk in this. This was safety. And nothing even resembling the feeling of being trapped. Did this sort of thing go on all the time when you loved someone? She felt René’s breath slow behind her.

And then she opened her eyes. René was asleep; she could feel the relaxed stillness around her. She was pleasantly pinned inside it, and the light in the landover had changed. Slanting now, on its way to dusk. Spear was awake, looking at nothing somewhere near the floor, and she wondered how long he had been sitting there, watching the two of them sleep. Guilt snaked inside her; Spear hadn’t deserved that. He didn’t deserve any of this, really. She tried to imagine the situation reversed. Spear’s arms around her middle, Spear’s breath in her hair. She couldn’t. She looked out the window, trying to understand where they were, and only then did she comprehend what was passing by them.