But Jess . . . He was damned uneasy. Jess was up to something.
She never could fool him. To give her credit, she didn’t try—not till now when he was caged up and couldn’t stop her. She brought him apples and sat talking about indigo and porcelains, and then she went out hunting spies. She had her nose to the ground, like that ferret of hers, chasing the biggest rat in London.
Unless he missed his guess, that was what Adrian Hawkhurst had been planning all along.
Six
SHE WANTED TO STAY IN THE DREAM. THERE was nothing but pain out there, past the borders of the dream. In the dream, she was safe and warm.
The Captain lay beside her in the ship’s cabin. He had enchantment in his hands, the Captain did.
He said, “You’re worrying. I told you to stop that.” He stroked her hair and down her neck, down to the blanket. It was a Greek blanket, from Valletta.
There was something she should do. Something important . . . “I’m not thinking very well.”
“That’s the brandy. Almost guaranteed to stop you thinking sooner or later.”
Her thoughts swirled away under those patient, skilled hands. She let him flow over her like a river.
There was something she had to do . . .
The Captain’s fingertips slid light, light across her skin and the thought slipped away. It was raining, up on deck. Water falling from the sky, across the ship, into the sea. She was flowing downhill, becoming water.
His hair hung down, straight and black and heavy. Under the blanket, he stroked her back, up and down, where she was naked. He was being careful with her. He was like fire, being careful with her. He said, “Are you warm enough? I have more blankets.”
“Be warm in a snowdrift with you doing that to me.” It didn’t frighten her, the hard, masculine fortress of his chest. Made her feel safe. She’d have been afraid, otherwise, with everything whirling the way it did and nothing familiar around her.
Ned had been solid, like this man. But thinner. Younger. And Ned had been golden, every hair on him. Ned stroked her and made her feel this same way, until he . . .
“What’s the matter?” The Captain set the tip of his finger to her forehead. “You thought of something. What was it?”
She didn’t want to remember Ned. Ned was gone, eaten up by the sea, and it hurt to think about him.
Wind blew rain against the glass in the cabin windows, chill and dark. It brought memories. She was dizzy with them. Circling and circling. She remembered Ned beside her in the straw, both of them naked, and the door of the barn open with the moon hanging in it.
She said, “He was warm everywhere I touched him.”
“Tonight, I’ll keep you warm. You’re safe with me, Jess.”
A sailor would know about being safe. Getting back to harbor.
The Captain breathed in her hair. It set music plucking on her nerves. That funny thing in Russia. A balalaika. That’s what they called it.
She seemed to have edged over some point of no return without even noticing it. “Maybe I’ll go to sleep.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
Milk pails clattered outside, and a dog barked.
Jess opened her eyes and woke up in an attic, feeling bereft. The dark streamers of the dream released and dissolved.
It was a nice enough attic with a slanted roof and whitewash on the plaster walls. The mahogany washstand was Chippendale and held a bowl and pitcher from the factory in Staffordshire. Whitby’s shipped that pattern, the one with the peacock on it, all over the Baltic. The Swedes loved fancy china.
Dream images and knowledges slipped away. This was morning. God alone knew where she was.
The sun in her eyes told her it was early. Her ears told her she was in London. When you hear someone in the street crying, “Milk-O. Fresh milk,” in that accent, you’re in London. She was in bed, between fresh linen sheets, wearing an old cotton nightgown that buttoned up to her chin and her mother’s locket. It wasn’t obvious how she’d got here.
She crawled out from the covers, being careful of her head, and padded over to the window. It was open to the morning. The curtains were the sort of pretty chintz that sells for six shillings a yard. When she stuck her head out and looked left, she saw the back of the house, all grass and untidy garden and a kitchen yard with dish towels hanging to dry on a string. Somebody in this house got up early indeed to wash out her dish towels, or else they’d been left in the air overnight. When she looked right, to the front of this big house, she could see a slice of street. Beyond that was a garden with iron railings. She could hear birds out there, having fits of singing. Working that out—and she unraveled harder knots every day—she was in the West End. Mayfair.
Her head ached. She felt like she’d been in strange dreams and been jerked out of them, sudden. She hurt, everywhere. When she lifted the nightgown and took inventory, there were bruises everywhere she could see easy. She had a long cut on her arm.
That’s from the fight. I was in a fight. I was on Katherine Lane poking my nose in Sebastian Kennett’s affairs, and . . .
He wasn’t Captain Sebastian. He was Sebastian Kennett.
Kennett was at the center of that huge knot of dark and pain and fear that she couldn’t untie. She was with him in the fog and the rain. Then she was in his bunk, wearing only her skin, listening to him explain why that was sensible as bread and cheese. Kennett was a man who could talk fish into a bucket. She’d fallen asleep beside him at some point.
There must have been just a whole wandering tribe of incidents after that, because now she woke up here, wherever here was, tucked into this chaste, narrow, reassuring bed. No telling how she ended up wearing a nightgown.
Somebody’d put clothes for her, folded neat on the chair, and her shoes, cleaned and set side by side. That was a piece of delicate reassurance. Whatever she got involved in this morning, she wouldn’t have to face it in her nightclothes.
The dog took up barking again, somewhere down the street, being enthusiastic about it. The sound carried crisp in the cool morning air. Made her head hurt in a couple different ways.
Sebastian Kennett had a house in Mayfair. She knew that from the thick file she had on her desk, all about Captain Kennett. Maybe this was his house. She had to wonder what his family thought about him bringing her home.
The comb by the washstand and the hairpins were meant for her, obviously, so she stood in front of the mirror and went to work braiding her hair soft and loose and brought it over her shoulder, the way she would if she was staying home, just her and Papa, and they didn’t expect to see anybody.
Kennett had been gentle when he dried out her hair. Like a cat washing a kitten. Could she think this way about that big, rough man? It seemed to fit.
Cinq would have tipped her overboard just to hear the splash.
Or maybe not. Maybe Cinq was laying deep plots. She wasn’t a good judge of villains, having spent her youth being one. She lacked that sensitive moral barometer.
I have to get to Papa. He’ll worry about me if I don’t come.
When she tried the door, it was unlocked. A locked door wouldn’t have kept her in, of course, but it was heartening not to start the morning picking locks. The attic corridor made a turn on one side. The wall held a diamond-shaped window.