smuggled goods from the south of France. It sneaked up on him every time he got close to her, this knowledge he had of her, this intimacy he felt. He knew how she ran her business. How she estimated demurrage on contract goods. How much sugar she took in her tea.

He knew what she looked like with her clothes off. He knew that.

She shook herself, as if some of his hunger had brushed across her. “I need a cup of tea. Come up to my office, and I’ll fix you some of the black we bring in through Kyakhta, into Russia. I might even find a sweet bun for you. Must be my morning for being hospitable to the British Service. And I figger we’re about finished with the mauling-Jess-Whitby part of the day.”

I doubt that extremely. He followed her. “Jess.”

Impatiently, she waited at the landing for him to catch up.

He was level with her now. “You can do it, can’t you? When we have the list of secrets stolen, you can match it to the ships moving in the Channel.”

“Yes.” She didn’t move, but deep in her eyes, a part of her went distant from him, into some abstract place he couldn’t follow. That unique, ingenious mind of hers was plucking away at the problem. “I could do it with thirty dates. I could sort through every tub that floats in the Thames. Twenty dates would work if they’re stupid or have only the one ship.”

“You’ll find Cinq.”

“I have to, don’t I?” She looked haunted. She turned her back on him and started climbing again.

“I’ll help. You’ll trust me to help you.” At the change in his voice, she turned around, right into his arms. Nobody could see them here at the turn in the stairwell. “Think of this as one of my arguments.”

She fitted neatly up against the curve of the staircase. Her mouth tasted of surprise and honey and black tea from the hills of China. She put up no fight after the first quick intake of breath. God, but that felt good—feeling her not fight. She was ignorant and shocked for the first second. Then she was ignorant and willing. The edges of stubbornness softened.

“This isn’t convincing me,” she muttered, when he let her mouth free for a second.

“Then I’m not doing it right.” He stroked up and down her back. “Let’s try again.”

Tension and urgency pulsed in his groin. Demand and hunger. Oh, but he had endless desire for this woman. No point trying to fool himself about that. Evil or virtuous, good or bad, whatever she’d done, he was going to have Jess. She’d figure that out pretty soon.

He’d had years of experience caring for women and loving them. He knew how to control his own need. He put that knowledge to use, tempting Jess.

“I wish you’d stop this.” But she was holding on to him. Deliberately, he used his mouth to seduce. He felt her trying to think. He breathed into her ear and murmured. Nipped at her earlobe. Took her with little bites, suckling and tonguing all over her face. All of it was to distract her, to chain her to this moment and what he was doing to her. She never had a chance.

When she quivered in his hands, when he knew he had her, he brushed her nipples through the fabric of her dress. One rasp. Another. Scratching with his thumbnail. Gently. Gently. Already there was no shock left in her, no defense, just that cry and thrash. And another thrash and another, till her legs were open and she rubbed herself against his thigh.

His beautiful Jess. He’d toss her into the sky and let her soar. He’d give her joy, again and again, with his body. This was her first taste of it.

So he kissed her for a while. It was a fascination, to feel the vibrating begin in her, like an echo of his own feeling. He could almost reach into her and touch the butterfly of heat that fluttered so unwillingly into life and then spread its wings inside her and beat rhythmically.

He wished he could take her the whole way to the end. That would be something—Jess turned into pure sensation and burning under his hand.

But this wasn’t the time or place for it. Not here, in the heart of her own citadel. He wouldn’t take away her pride like that. So he only warmed her a little, to remind her there were other things to life besides worrying and risking her life and trading spices. He stayed at her lips and her breasts and took her no further than kisses would take her. Well, maybe he made a few excursions. He set his mouth on her at the base of her throat and sucked against her skin and made marks, two or three of them, so the men working here would know he’d been there and keep their distance.

Then he stopped and just held her, and let her come down slow. He’d raised only a small heat in her, so it shouldn’t be too hard. “Later. There’s more, later.”

She rubbed her lips on his jacket, trying to hold on to what he’d been making her feel. Then she breathed out and put her head down and let it all go. Some of that tension she carried around went, too.

She was going to remember this when she was in her office with her paperwork, when she sat across from him at dinner, when she lay in bed. She wouldn’t be able to keep herself from thinking about it.

He propped her against the handrail. If he’d let go, she would have tumbled down the damn stairs.

“That was a mistake.” She lifted her head, looking stunned. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t just do that with you. Mistake. Mistake. Mistake.”

She combed through her hair with her fingers, bringing a lot of it down around her face. It was late to worry about what her men thought, if they saw her now.

It was too complicated to find the words, so he just reached out and stilled her hands. “Let me. And no, that wasn’t a mistake. That was damned deliberate.” He guided strands of hair over her ears and tucked them in at the nape of her neck.

He traded artwork halfway round the world—statues from Greece, Byzantine Madonnas, old carved figures from the deserts of Egypt. Not just for profit. It was for the joy of it. For the length of a voyage, he could hold beauty in his hand and marvel. Touching Jess was laying claim to that kind of beauty, but warm and alive. She took his breath away.

“I liked that,” he told her. “So did you.”

“Get out of my warehouse.” But she didn’t have her breath back yet, and she didn’t stop him when he coiled up loose hair and curled it away among the braids.

“We’ll continue this another time.”

“Not this side of hell.”

“Be home in time to change for this Historical Society meeting tonight, or I’ll come get you. Are you steady enough to walk the rest of the way? Those clerks of yours are going to start wondering.”

“Those clerks of mine have it figured out by now. They’re not fools.”

Grimly, she climbed ahead of him and swung around the iron ball that topped the staircase and stalked down the hall, snarling. A messenger boy took one look and hastily backed into the nearest doorway.

He watched her all the way into her office. When she strode down the center aisle of the clerks’ desks, every man was in place, quill raised, eyes on the paper in front of him, industrious.

Eighteen

Ludmill Street, Whitechapel

JESS KNEW A DOZEN PEOPLE WHO SPOKE ARABIC, but only two who could read it. One was Papa, and she could hardly bring this question to Meeks Street, could she?

The other was the Reverend. She wanted to see him anyway, so it all worked out tidy. Life did that sometimes.

Ludmill Street was a bad, ugly place. The lane was barely wide enough for a cart to get through. Cobbles sloped steeply to a gully in the center, stinking and clogged with garbage. Not even grass could grow here, only lots and lots of people. Laundry hung crazily from lines out of every window, crisscrossing above her, blocking what sun made it past the roofline. The tenement windows were blind, dark squares with no glass in them, just boarded shutters that kept out thieves. One door stood crazily ajar, showing men and blowsy women sprawled on the floor in piles of straw. The sign outside read, “Gin. Drunk for a penny. Dead drunk for three pence.”

The kids were out in force, filling the street, tumbling down the stairs, screaming. Mean, snapping mongrels

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