She only knew that it had not happened to her before, and if she turned away now, it might never happen again. That was why she came to Berkeley Square. Not because she was foolish or because she calculated a use for Mr. Paxton of the British Service. She came because she was Baldoni.
Berkeley Square was a huge green space, surrounded by the great houses of the very rich, full of trees and benches and children playing with hoops or balls. A peaceful, pretty place. She’d come within sight of Gunter’s Tea Shop an hour early to sniff out traps and ambushes, but she was not surprised to find Pax there before her. They’d been trained by the same men, after all.
He must have been aware of her the moment she entered the square, but he gave no sign. He sat on his bench, sketching in a small book. He wore a coat, as drab as yesterday’s, and the same slouched and vaguely disreputable hat. His hair was drawn back neatly. His hat cast a crisp slice of darkness across his face. One did not see the jutting, emphatic bones of his face that hinted he was not English, exotic in this London square.
He’d made himself prosaic enough, with his legs stretched out before him into the path, holding the sketchbook in his left hand and a pencil angled in his right. He presented the appearance of one absorbed in his task. Anyone looking saw a thin, brown scholar, just on the edge of being shabby. A schoolteacher or young cleric. A man of intellect rather than action, ordinary and harmless.
What she saw was a canny, lean predator, at rest merely because this was not the moment to strike.
If she’d fallen into a British Service trap, it was already too late for her to escape. So she walked toward him and sat down by his side, touching almost. That was a good distance for exchanging confidences. Also, she would not mind touching him.
He tucked his sketchbook into the pocket of his coat and settled back, putting his arm around her shoulders, along the back of the bench. He did it as if they always sat together side by side in this intimate and easy way. Once, they had.
“I’m being followed.” She started in the middle of the conversation, without the preliminary social niceties. She’d been thinking about him so much in the last dozen hours it was almost as if they hadn’t been apart. “I point this out because you’ll notice and worry and possibly injure someone if I don’t.”
“Even now, I don’t kill people without a good reason.” He was gravely polite or deeply satiric. One could take a choice.
“Observe the boy over there, pretending to be fascinated by that carriage horse. Brown hair and blue smock. Do you see him?”
“I see he’s keeping an eye on you. Not making a secret of it, is he?”
“He is one of Nature’s open and honest souls. Did you hurt yourself badly last night, being chivalrous and letting me escape?”
“As you see.” He lifted the arm that rested behind her back and turned it, demonstrating a lack of pain. She would have believed this from another man, perhaps.
“You should let me do any further stabbing of your person. I’ll be more careful than you are.”
“I’ll bear that in mind. Your boy’s been joined by another. There, coming up on the other side.” A minute nudge to her arm. “See?”
“There are three of them, taking turns.” They were her best assurance of safety this morning. Those who had business with Lazarus were sacrosanct till he finished with them. The King of Thieves didn’t tolerate men interfering in his criminal livelihood. Lesser thieves and killers would keep their hands from any prey Lazarus had marked as his own. “They send children, who are thus assumed to be harmless.”
“You weren’t a harmless child.”
“Nor were you,” she said softly.
“There’s the third. I almost didn’t spot her.”
“They are not without a certain naïve competence. Right now, they want me to see them.”
Pax’s hand closed firmly on her shoulder. His voice, by contrast, was entirely calm. “You’ve aroused the interest of someone powerful. You’re not frightened, so you know who it is.”
She shrugged. How much to tell him?
“There are only a few men and a few reasons you’d let attention fall on you. I don’t like any of the guesses I’m making.” He released his hold. “Let’s walk. I’m not comfortable sitting here. I don’t like all this empty space at my back.”
“No one’s going to attack us in broad daylight.”
“Once upon a time, on a day very much like this, I killed a man twenty feet away from Braddy Square at three in the afternoon.” He stood and turned and offered a hand.
“I imagine he deserved it.”
“One of the Tuteurs. Jean-Emile Cambert.”
“Ah. Many of us would have enjoyed ending that life.” She let him pull her to her feet and he drew her arm through his. The wool of his sleeve was rough under her fingertips. He smelled like pepper and snuff and, in some way, himself.
That had been the smell of him last night. That was what she’d tasted on his skin and breathed in his mouth when he’d kissed her and she had kissed him back. The scent that snuck past her defenses and struck wanting into her flesh.
In the daylight, on this open path, in the midst of children rolling hoops and pigeons chasing bugs through the grass, madly and stupidly and immodestly, with great exactness and specificity, she wanted him. Her body was not wise.
“I don’t think the Service is setting street kids on you,” he said. “Doyle might, I suppose. You remember Doyle.”
The air had become transparent as glass after last night’s rain. Shade lay on the path, patched with irregular sunlight. The fabric of his coat, where she held his arm lightly, showed hard use. There were fine pulls of thread and tiny worn spots. Under this disguise, Pax seemed likewise worn. Seen close, by someone who knew him, he didn’t look vague and amiable. He looked like a panther on a long hunt. Weary and wary.
She wanted to stop, right in the path, and kiss the corners of his mouth and the line between his eyes. She’d have to stand on tiptoe to reach his forehead or he’d have to lean down to her. Then she’d kiss the lobes of his ears.
Apparently she was going to lead a lively and interesting life in her imagination.
She said, “I’m not likely to forget William Doyle. He came from London with questions and scared me to death. Twice, in fact. The first time when I was shaking with fever and they’d barely washed the seaweed out of my hair. He was suspicious of me because I was such an unexpected addition to the Leyland household. But I looked woebegone and afflicted and very young and I fooled him handily.”
“It’s what we were trained for.”
She watched her shoes and the gravel path. “I was lucky to get away with it. After that, for all those years, when the Leylands visited London I avoided Meeks Street like the plague. If I hadn’t I would have run into you sometime or other, which would have been awkward for both of us.”
Pax said nothing, which was tactful of him.
They strolled toward Gunter’s, matching steps. She let herself enjoy the little pleasures she could distill from this brief time. Small dogs ran in circles and barked. Grass grew docilely between the pathways. Sun warmed her face. Ardency and heat glowed between her legs. It was also simple enjoyment to keep pace with deadly, masculine grace that stalked beside her, pretending to be a scholar. It was his joke on the world. Her joke that she could see through it.
Desiring him awakened every sense, made the sun brighter and the grass a deeper green. She could feel his attention on her, in that same way, with that same awareness. If they’d been friends, they could have spoken of it and laughed together.
Coaches lined up along the pavement across from Gunter’s Tea Shop in the shade of the big plane trees of Berkeley Square. Waiters hurried in and out, carrying trays to barouches and landaus so My Lady This and Her Grace of That need not deign to enter the shop and mingle with the populace. The Fluffy Aunts always made tart comments about that, trading aphorisms in Greek and Latin, over their macaroons and tea cakes. They were such radicals.