“It is likely someone will try to stab you with it soon.”
“I will hold that happy thought in mind.”
“He did not find what he sought in that box.” In this spare, childish room, there was nowhere else. “I think it is above this table. Whatever it is, when she wants it she climbs the table and steps upon that box and reaches up.”
She moved the chair from the window. When she stepped up on the table, it was obvious what section of the molding had been touched again and again. She pressed, and the spring released. The panel slid away easily.
She took a small black leather book out. Hawker’s hands around her waist lifted her down and set her upon her feet on the floor.
THEY did not stay in that stark room. The light was better on the terrace, but that was not why they went to stand there.
“In code . . .” She turned the pages.
Hawker read over her shoulder. “French. And old. I think that’s the first of your codes I ever learned. I can probably read it better than you.”
“Almost certainly. You are good with codes. It was expunged many years ago. If she had been working with the Police Secrète, she would have changed to a more recent one.” She flipped through the pages. “Everything is undated, but see how the ink has gone pale at the beginning of the book. This is years of writing.”
“Let’s see the last pages.” He opened the book near the end. A minute passed. “She’s not just using the old symbols. She’s added new stuff. And it’s in English.” He frowned. “It says, ‘I have failed in my . . .’ There’s something I can’t read here. ‘In my mission once again. The rifle was inaccurate. Le Maître will not be pleased.’ Owl, we’re going to find it all. It’s in here.”
“Her mission. Her Master. She was working for someone.”
“She says, ‘I have been seen. I must wait until their suspicions are—’”
She heard a whistle below, from the garden. A snatch of song.
She would have ignored it. A boy in the lane on an errand.
Hawker leaned over the railing of the balcony and watched the man who had entered the garden. Watched hand signs. Made one of his own and then another.
“Outside,” he said. He headed for the front door of the apartment, hurrying.
She did not make complications when important matters went forward. But she also did not follow blindly. “What is happening? Give me ten words.”
“There’s a body on the street out back. A woman. I think we know what became of Jane Cardiff.”
They went downstairs and circled the house to go look at the body.
Forty-nine
JUSTINE PULLED THE SHADES OF THE WINDOWS OF the coach. She did not think anyone was observing Jane Cardiff’s house, but there was no reason to advertise their presence here, where a murder had so recently happened.
She was not stunned by the death she had confronted. She had seen many men die, and women too. But it had seemed Jane Cardiff’s blank eyes stared at her accusingly before Doyle had reached his big hand to close them.
She sat beside Hawker in the coach. The dead woman and Doyle, who must deal with the grim formalities of death, receded behind them. She said what she had been thinking for a time. “She was what I might have become.”
“You’re not Jane Cardiff,” Hawker said. “You’re not anything like her.”
“If things had gone differently—”
“Never.”
“We cannot know.”
“I know,” Hawker said. “You’d have woke up one fine morning and stabbed the bastard. Nothing more certain.”
“I hope so.”
“We’ll deal with him now, you and me.” He shifted on the seat so he held her against the motion of the coach as they turned the corner, not letting it jostle her arm. Always, at every instant, he was careful of her. “I know how I’m going to do it. Just a matter of settling some of the details.”
“Always, it is the small details that trip one up.”
“I’ve never wanted to kill anyone as much as I want to kill the man who sent a knife after you.”
Adrian Hawkhurst sprawled beside her on the seat of the coach and constructed the scheme that would end in a man’s death. She imagined she could see the plan stretching through his mind, weaving itself in strong simplicity, like the threads of a snare.
They were still dressed for the evening party at the Pickerings. He, in black coat and starched neckcloth. She, in lilac silk.
Last night, she had watched Sir Adrian Hawkhurst weave his way among the charming, flirtatious women of the ton. They had followed him with their eyes, admiring and speculative. Not one had seen beneath the deceptive surface of him.
“You’re thinking,” he said. “Tell me.”
“I am thinking of what we have become over the years, you and I. Where we ended up.”
“The head of an obscure government department. A shopkeeper. Ordinary folk.” He spread his fingers over the silk of her sleeve, appreciating it. She saw the smile in his eyes before it showed up on his lips. “Let me hold you, shopkeeper.”
“I would like that.”
His arm came around her waist. He did not merely hold her. He lifted her to sit sideways upon him, leaning against his chest. It would have been entirely innocent, except that he began immediately to stroke her breast, taking pleasure in it, making a deep sound in his throat. “This silk thing doesn’t just look like a flower. It feels like one. Like stroking a petal, with you inside it.”
It was a comfort beyond description to be held with such care and knowledge. To be caressed by a man who delighted in the textures of her body. To relax into the strength and the old familiarity. Shoulder, ribs, along her thigh, he drew her in to him again and again, closer.
The coach ground and rumbled forward at a walking pace, swaying, and the street was filled with the sound of carts and wagons. She lay her cheek on his jacket and closed her eyes and enjoyed this moment. In all of her life, there had been so few times she could rest from wariness.
“You are not a restful person, Adrian Hawkhurst. I have never understood why I feel at peace with you, sometimes, at moments like these.”
“One of life’s mysteries.” He ran his fingers over her nipple and lanced a shock through her body, downward, deep inside, like a star falling from the sky. Her nipples crinkled up, feeling his hand through silk, through the linen shift she wore beneath the silk.
“That’s nice,” he said, speaking of the shudder she made. He was a man entirely too perceptive.
He kissed her forehead. Little shivers began at the edges of her, everywhere. Her skin, wanting. Her nerves, anticipating.
She said, “This is good. I like you touching me.”
“I could do it for the next decade or two. Have you given any thought to marrying me? It’s probably slipped your mind, what with so much going on, but I did ask.”
“It has not, as you put it, slipped my mind. I have decided to leave things as they are.”
“Good reasons for that, I suppose.” He did not seem dismayed. He kissed across her forehead and down her face to her ear. She heard his breath there. Warmth. Whispers. Chouette. Mignonne. His breath and murmured love words filled her. Mon adorée. Ti amo.
The coach that moved through the streets of London was their universe, a little world where they were alone. There was no reason to refrain from this indulgence. No need to hold back. No cautions to lay upon the surface of her mind. She could give herself wholly to the moment and to him. He held her in his lap, and she felt every impact of the horse’s hooves, every irregularity that jolted the wheels, through him. Through his body.
She put her hand upon his shoulder and turned to him to take his mouth. She kissed him deeply and inventively.
She said, “We are idiots to tease ourselves this way. We should stop.”
“You’re right about that, luv.” He slid his hand between her legs to begin sparks and persuasion there. The road vibrated beneath them steadily, and her desire for him was almost unbearable.