“You should be afraid. You stand between the Merchant and something he wants.”
“And he is deadly.”
“Perhaps the most ruthless man you will ever meet. Mad in a way. When you face him, you won’t see death coming. Most men give some sign before they kill. He doesn’t.” Pax’s fist twitched on the table next to his cup. “Don’t make me step across your dead body on the way to killing him.”
Across the room, a small crisis took place with raspberry syrup and a pink dress. Napkins all in a flurry. Three waiters and the promise of sugar cookies.
Innocent people leading harmless lives. Lucky children who knew nothing about the world that existed beyond their safe garden walls.
The Merchant killed innocents like these.
Pax followed her glance. “You won’t leave the Merchant loose in London. When and where are you meeting him?”
“You complicate my life.”
“Good. You complicate mine. Infinitely.” His smile flickered by so fast she might have missed it. “You can’t do this alone. I can help you. I understand how he thinks. When and where, Cami?”
She tilted her teacup and looked at the pattern. Bone china. The light showed through. It was fragile, delicate, beautiful. Easily broken. The Leylands’ niece could be just as easily destroyed by men who hunted the Merchant at all cost.
She set it down. “My family—my birth family, not the Leylands—have a saying, ‘In the history of every disaster, there is a moment when someone says, “I trust you.”’ We’ve arrived at that moment.” She spread a hand palm up, fingers wide, to show the ineffable perversity of life. “I think I’m about to trust you.”
“You already do.” Pax’s eyes found hers and didn’t waver. “You didn’t come to me because I made threats.”
“I disregarded them.”
He reached to her hand where it rested on the table and ran his index finger over her knuckles. “You came to me because of this. You feel it between us.”
She twitched away from that little scrap of contact.
“And because I kissed you,” he said.
“Lots of men have kissed me.”
“Lucky men.” He kept the touch between them. One tiny hot island of heat there on the back of her hand. “I want to kiss you here, across your knuckles. I want to bite a little here, here, here.” He applied his nail, lightly, up and down the cusps and valleys of her knuckles. “I’ve never done that to anyone. I want to do it to you.”
Heat exploded inside her. Shocking. Unexpected. Breath devouring. She was half-blind with it.
“That’s why you came to meet me,” he said. “Not because it was sensible or because I made threats. Not so we could concoct a plan to deal with that murdering bastard. You’re here because when I kissed you, you kissed back and everything changed. We didn’t expect any of that.”
“I didn’t anyway,” she said.
“A shock to both of us.” He turned her hand over and touched the center of her palm, holding all her thought, all her intention and awareness, right there, in that spot.
She closed her hand around the sensitivity, around the little fireball of excitement. Her voice was rock steady. “I don’t have time to want you.”
“It won’t take more time than we have. We’ll plot the death and downfall of the Merchant during the day. Give me the nights.”
She looked away when she made her decision. “As long as you understand I’m not doing this because you seduced me into it.”
“I didn’t let you go from the bookshop because you seduced me.”
“I didn’t—” She hissed impatiently and batted at the words. “Forget it. We’re both making mistakes. Points about even.”
And she told him about Camille Besançon.
“Cami.” He interrupted after only a dozen words. “There’s no chance that little girl survived.”
“I saw her. I think she’s genuine. And genuine or not, she’s going to die if I don’t get her away from the Merchant. The Besançons died so I could be placed with the Leylands. I won’t have another death on my conscience.”
He didn’t argue. Maybe that said everything she needed to know about the deaths that had placed him in the British Service.
“We rescue the woman,” she said.
“If it doesn’t get you killed and doesn’t let the Merchant escape.”
She shook her head. “The Leylands are as close to being Service as makes no difference. Get their niece out of the line of fire.”
“No promises.”
She hadn’t expected any. “Then there’s the aunts. The Merchant will go after them next.” Her mouth felt dry. She drank tea. “The Leylands must be protected.”
“Done. The Service will take care of them.”
“And finally, if I hand you the Merchant, if I play bait in your trap, will the Service give me a head start before they come after me? One week.”
“I’ll ask.”
Every one of those answers was the truth. He dealt honestly with her.
She closed her eyes. Opened them. “Semple Street, Number Fifty-six. Monday, eleven in the morning. I have to walk out and show myself before he’ll come.”
“That’s not much time. Do you—” He broke off.
He was looking at the door of Gunter’s.
She saw nothing there. Nothing happening. But Pax did. She quivered alert, every sense open, but saw nothing unusual. A big man in simple, respectable clothes had just walked in. Somebody’s coachman, large, square, reliable looking. The clerks behind the counter sprang to take his order, so he must work for some important family.
Pax, beside her, became invisible.
It had always been one of his skills, this trick of becoming part of the background. He acquired the stillness of an animal in the forest. But it was more than that. In some way, he simply wasn’t there. If she hadn’t seen it many times before, she would have been disconcerted.
Very quietly, he said, “Keep your hands on the table.”
She did. The shop continued its calm, well-ordered clockwork. The cheerful buzz of conversation didn’t waver. Waiters simpered and glided under their trays. The nearest people, two women eating tea cakes, talked about Scotland and the best soil for growing roses.
The coachman wanted a package prepared. Everything to be settled deep in shaved ice. This ice cream and that one and that. For a young girl on her sickbed, who had no appetite and was in pain. The man made payment in pound notes, peeled off a large roll.
The countermen conferred deferentially. “This will take a few minutes. Would you take a seat? Tea? Coffee?”
“No.” It wasn’t even arrogance. It was beyond that—an indifference that reduced this shop and the men who worked here to nothing at all. The coachman’s eyes skipped past fashionable women, past elegant men, and came to Cami. “I’ll find a seat.”
Pax murmured, “So. That’s who had you followed. I thought it might be.”
The man crossed the room and stopped at their table, in front of her. “You sent me a message.” He sat, without invitation.
This was someone senior in London’s hierarchy of criminals. Close up, he had the cold eyes of a banker.
“Please join us,” she said, feeling no temptation to sarcasm. “A cup of tea or coffee?”
“I can’t stay long.” He considered Pax. “Mr. Paxton. Always a pleasure.”
Pax didn’t answer and never took his eyes off the man.
“And you”—the man ran his eyes over her, weighed her up, measured, assessed—“claim to be a Baldoni. Explain to me why they’ve never heard of you.”
Twenty-five
We’re all just labyrinths of deception.
“Six men headed for Soho,” Hawker said, “armed with a copy of this.” He shoved aside an unlit lantern, three letters, and a pair of driving gloves to unroll the sketch on the hall table. “The Merchant, looking ordinary.”
“Many deadly men look ordinary.” Galba was already dressed for the street, meticulous in overcoat and hat. He frowned at the face that looked up at them from the table.