He swirls the cup beneath his nose. I fold my arms across my chest and give him a curious look and a half-snort of a laugh.
“What?” he says, perplexed by my reaction.
“Were you a sommelier in a past life? Isn’t the whole point of the replicator to produce the same quality and taste in every single barrel?”
“The replicator makes the same wine every time. But, once produced, it’s as vulnerable to degradation as any other wine. Oxygen is the biggest enemy.” He gestures broadly toward the ceiling and the walls of the room as though we might, at any moment, catch errant puffs of oxygen targeting the wine like phantom missiles. “If air gets into the casks, we only have about three days before the drink starts to oxidize and turn to vinegar. We need to pull random samples, daily, to see if the wine is starting to turn.”
“Who do you think will have time to babysit the booze?”
“I’d assign our dear lieutenant to that detail, but it’d be just our luck she’d get smashed and start blabbing to anyone who would listen about time travel or, worse yet, talk about robbing the English king. Let’s avoid that if we can. I’ll pop down here and take the samples.” Nico bends down to inspect the fit of the seal around the barrel’s spigot to ensure as little air as possible finds its way inside.
I consider the outcomes of both scenarios, weighing which one would be worse: Becca’s tales of traveling through time might earn her an exorcism or land her in London’s Bethlem Asylum, the oldest known hospital for the mentally ill. It would be problematic to return home without her, but it wouldn’t put the mission in irredeemable jeopardy unless she gave one of the monarchs a private tour of our Timeship.
The outcome of the second scenario, Becca spouting off about robbing the King would be disastrous. At the very least, our operation would be blown wide open and we’d be forced to abort. While the threat of what the Benefactors would do to Fagin and me for failing to complete the mission was more than a little problematic, I reckoned we could shift the blame to Trevor.
The worst that could happen is that Becca’s mouth could land all of us in prison and end with each of us swinging at the end of a hangman’s noose. A shiver runs up my spine. The Benefactors don’t risk exposure by rescuing mercenaries. It’s a rule.
“Let’s avoid that. You know what they say about loose lips and ships. We can’t give Trevor room to sink us.” Realizing that I haven’t seen her all day, anxiety gnaws at me. The thought of an unsupervised Becca is unnerving. “Now that you mention it. Where is Trevor?”
“She’s on the ship replicating the last batch of wine for today.”
“Really?” I say, unable to keep from sounding surprised. “Didn’t we just talk about this?”
Nico halts his barrel inspection and straightens up to his full height. “Relax. All she has to do is push a button to start the replication process, push it again to stop it, then move the hose I rigged up from the full barrel to the next empty one, and...” his voice trails off. “You’re right, we should get back.”
“We should talk to Fagin about managing Trevor on gala night. We don’t need her traipsing into our carefully laid plans, unannounced, and wrecking months of work.” I cringe at the mental movie running through my head of a tipsy Trevor spilling every bean we’ve got to the whole assembly.
“Got a plan for that, too,” he grins wickedly. “I’ll ask her to perform a critical quality control check of the last bottle of Madeira, then slip an undetectable sedative into her glass. The only damage control we’ll have is her hangover the next morning.”
“You’re sexy when you’re sly,” I say, kissing him deeply in appreciation for his cleverness. “Think we should tell Fagin?”
“Definitely not. The less she knows, the more plausible deniability she has.
Nico grabs his coat from a chair shoved up against one wall—a knee-length, onyx-colored number embroidered with intricate gold fleur-de-lis designs. After years of missions where the clothing can be as adventurous as the job at hand, I’ve adjusted to wearing everything from linen togas to miniskirts. For Nico, accustomed to the easy fit of civilian attire, adjusting to the restrictive fit, elaborate styling, and the weight of costume drama clothing, proves to be more challenging than calculating how much wine we need for the banquet.
He gets one arm into the coat, but the other coat sleeve hangs up on the sword he wears on his left hip. The result is Nico chasing his errant sleeve in small, backward-stumbling circles of flailing arms and flapping fabric.
He shoots me a pleading look. I stop his Whirling Dervish spin and free the garment from its entrapment between the scabbard and the hilt of the sword. He gives me a grateful nod as I hold the coat’s collar so he can slip his arm inside.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I smooth a bit of his puckering collar that refuses to lie flat. “We lost our ticket to England when Anne de Pisseleu canceled her invitation to the French court. We don’t have guaranteed introductions to anyone attending the gala, let alone the royals. Our options to get to England are fading fast.”
“After all this time together, you still doubt me,” he teases, wagging a finger. He ambles toward a stack of boxes tucked into one corner, tapping the portable scanner’s data pad a few times before slipping it into a hidden pocket in his clothes.
He cuts a striking figure as he moves. His pantaloons and doublet are cut from black velvet cloth. In contrast to his pants, the upper garment is close fitting, showing off his strong shoulders
