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.
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.
She went down the steps, keeping one hand on the wall, feeling a little dizzy, off and on. The attic flight was bare, clean wood. The next was covered with cheap green runner. Kennett must have carried her up all this way last night, up three flights, and put her to bed. It had been an evening chock-full of activity for him.
The main upper floor was lush as a peach. She walked through, on soft blue carpeting, heading for the front of the house. These doors were bedrooms. She could have sorted them out by smell—clean linen and flowers and expensive perfume—and known which ones to sack if she was making this little peregrination at night and feeling larcenous. Between the doors they’d hung groups of Persian miniatures, framed in carved ivory. At the far end of the hall was a big, wide, open window with the curtains pulled back.
Even now, she couldn’t walk through a house like this without picking out what she’d steal. It wasn’t like she laid hands on anything, after all. She was just looking.
She came to the iron railing and looked down the curve of the staircase to the entry hall. The floor was black and white squares of marble, Carrara marble and Dinan, like a chessboard. The house she and Papa owned in St. Petersburg had a checkered floor like this and columns around the sides.
Whitby’s shipped Carrara marble out of Livorno when the port was open and nobody was shooting at passing ships. Fine profit to be made on marble, but it was a three-legged sow to stow.
The crystal chandelier must be six feet tall. Beautiful thing. She held her head high and floated down the staircase, running her finger along the banister, letting herself pretend she was making an entrance to some grand party. You couldn’t help doing that with a staircase this fine. It spoiled the mood a bit to have somebody pounding away at the front door the whole time.
Likely they wanted to get in, whoever it was. There seemed to be a total dearth of servants in the house. Anyway, nobody come to dub the jigger, as she would have put it in her misspent youth. That was a reliable clue it might be a bad idea to do so and, anyhow, this was none of her business. Surprising how much trouble you stayed out of if you minded your own business. Lazarus used to mention that to her from time to time. Papa did, too.
Could be bailiffs or savages from Borneo or jealous husbands on the other side of that door. No doubt a matter best left alone.
But she’d got curious. When she opened the door, there was a skinny cove in a rumpled suit, three laborers, and five great wood crates with rope handles, all crowded onto the porch. Not bailiffs, at least.
The skinny cove marched right across the threshold. “Tell Standish I’m here.” He passed over his hat. “I need tea. Dustcloths. Footmen with crowbars. And Standish.” When she stood there, holding his hat, he added, “Shoo. Shoo,” and made brisk sweeping motions. “Tell him I’ve brought the collared-rim urn and the grooved ware. Don’t stand there like a goose.” He set about haranguing the laborers, who looked bored.
He didn’t seem to be dangerous, even if he was about to fill the front hall with large crates. Likely, worse things were happening somewhere in London this morning.
She left them to it and dropped the hat on one of the tables they had handy, probably for that purpose, and followed the corridor to the back of the house.
Standish was the name of Kennett’s uncle, so now she knew for sure.
This time of day, she could follow the smell of breakfast and have a good chance of finding somebody. The door was closed.
There were clay pots everywhere. A big, glass-fronted case filled half the room, full of dark brown pots, mud-colored pots, pots with designs scraped on the sides, old Greek pots with people, pots in three-legged stands, and pots lolling on their side showing their bellies, pots stacked up four and five high. Regular armies of pots, with the auxiliaries called up.
An old man and old woman sat at an oval table in front of the window with the light spilling all over them. They were ordinary people. The man was untidy in his brown wool jacket and limp neckcloth. He had a craggy face and wild black hair, getting gray at the temples. The woman was neatly dressed. Nothing fashionable about her. Behind them, the window showed a vivid, bright garden, overgrown with green. The Sheridan sideboard next to the wall held silver dishes, covered, keeping breakfast warm.
The man laid down a book. The woman looked up from a newspaper.
This had to be Kennett’s uncle and aunt, Standish and Eunice Ashton. It was all in the files on her desk back in the warehouse. They’d raised Kennett when his father didn’t show any inclination to do it. Word was, the old earl wasn’t best pleased to have his little mistake brought up in plain sight by his brother and his sister-in-law. Word was, Eunice Ashton never gave tuppence what the earl thought.
The old earl was dying, nastily and at length, in Italy. One of those just retributions, that particular disease.
Everyone in Whitechapel had heard of Eunice Ashton. She gave refuge to women in trouble. Any woman. Whores, too, and it didn’t matter who owned them. She’d face up to the devil himself, they said. Even Lazarus let her pass unmolested in his territory.
And here they were . . . decent folks, eating a civilized breakfast. If Sebastian Kennett was Cinq, she was going to smash this pretty, comfortable world into a thousand bits.
“Good heavens, child. You’re awake.” Eunice Ashton held out her hand. “Come in. Come in.” She was no carefully preserved beauty. Her face was wrinkles and deep lines, honestly old, like a countrywoman who’d been out in all weathers and never coddled herself. The steady eyes were bright as jewels. It was a warm hearth on a freezing day, the kindness in that woman’s face.
She didn’t want to talk to them. Didn’t want to be in this house at all. She groped behind her for the doorknob.
Eunice Ashton was already on her feet. “You must sit down. You don’t look at all steady. I’m sorry not to have been with you when you woke up. I looked in earlier and decided you’d sleep for a good long while yet. There now. Standish will pour tea.” The old woman was beside her, taking her hands, both of them, inside her own. “I don’t know if tea really helps when one feels precarious, but it does give one something warm to hold on to. A kitten would work just as well, but we don’t have one at the moment. They
Jess found herself guided into a chair. It was like when the pilot takes the wheel in some tricky port. All of a sudden the ship, even a big, wallowing three-master, goes smooth and easy and glides past the breakwater and the sand bars, through the rip currents, tame and docile, up to the dock. It was a magic pilots had. Maybe they signed an agreement with the ocean.
One minute she was at the door, trying to think of a way to leave without being rude. The next she was sitting at the table.
The old man looked at her over a beak of a nose—that was the same nose Kennett had—and smiled vaguely and found the teapot. He poured tea, and added milk and sugar, and stirred, all without looking at what he was
