He just grinned. In a good mood tonight, the Captain. “All right. Keep it above the belt. And you . . .” Right in front of Claudia, not caring what anybody thought, he reached out and trailed his index finger from her temple to where she’d been bruised on the cheek. “Behave yourself. I’ll find you later. Try not to draw blood with that tongue of yours.” Then he walked off, leaving her to Claudia’s tender mercies.
Claudia said, “My cousin can afford to make a spectacle of himself. You can’t. I advise you to be discreet in public.” She had to look up and up to Claudia. All these Ashtons managed to make her feel like a small dab of paint.
“Now you see . . . I agree with you. We probably have lots in common once we get to talking.”
“My brother tells me you were in the hall last night, outside Sebastian’s door. That was unwise.”
“That’s another thing we agree about. Look, why don’t we go snabble a few of those pastries before this crowd goes through them like a flock of locusts. Somehow or other I missed dinner. It’s been a trying day and the number of sharp objects lying about just fills me with trepidation. I’ll just—”
“You’re out of your depth in this household, Miss Whitby, however clever you may be in the shop. I would tell you to leave, but I doubt you’d listen. You’re filled with the scrambling self-confidence of the parvenu class. It is sadly misplaced. ”
That was one of those veiled threats, very probably. Claudia was the kind to issue veiled threats. “I won’t say no to any of that. Especially not the part about being out of my depth. I feel like a shallow water craft tonight.”
Another pack of historians wandered by. A shabby man with a German accent and frayed cuffs limped along between a pair of dandies right out of Upper Brook Street. They were talking about disemboweling. Not in favor of it, as far as she could tell. Just talking.
Daunting, she’d call this lot. And she still had to deal with Claudia.
“Your pearls are a bit showy.” Claudia just went right on being critical. “They’re . . . yellow. Do you have a dozen sets, dyed to match your dresses? So very clever.”
Had to be on your toes with Claudia, didn’t you? “More pink than yellow, but I see your point. I do it the other way round, though. I buy the dress to match the pearls, being thrifty. This,” she pinched up a bit of her skirt, “is
“Always the shopkeeper,” Claudia said. “That’s admirable in its way.”
“It is when I’m picking out silk.”
The front door opened and closed while she was talking to Claudia. More historians. Three women, very stern-looking. And a man who came in alone. Sometime, as he was walking across the foyer, she realized who he was.
Then he was in front of her. Unwillingly, Claudia stepped aside. “Sebastian is in the front room. I’ll take you to him.” When he didn’t move, “I suppose I should introduce you to—”
He said, “Hello, Jess.”
Claudia said, “Do you know Miss Whitby? I suppose you meet all kinds of people—”
“Go away,” Adrian Hawkhurst said.
The rudeness silenced Claudia. Neither of them really noticed when she turned on her heel and flounced off.
He was Hurst, her old friend. Even now, knowing everything he’d done, half of her leapt up, thinking,
He looked at her steady, waiting till she decided what to say. He was dressed . . . She didn’t know how to put it. Not more prosperously. He’d always worn beautiful clothing. But . . . fashionably. That was it. He dressed like a nob, now.
“Hurst.” She held on to the newel post at the bottom of the stairs.
“I’m calling myself Adrian Hawkhurst these days.” He took his hat off and held it, all stiff and grave. How strange to see him with a high-crowned beaver hat. All that time in St. Petersburg, she’d never seen him with a proper hat, only that furry sable thing with earflaps. For years she’d thought that was proper attire for a butler.
“Did you get the letters I wrote? I always wondered.”
He said, “I got them. I kept in touch with Josiah, but I thought it was better to leave you alone.”
He still acted like he was Papa’s friend. He’d sent his dogs to pull Papa out of the warehouse in his shirtsleeves. He’d locked Papa up at Meeks Street and he was talking to her like they were friends. There’d be all kinds of plausible excuses. None of them worth the spit it took to say. If she’d been a woman given to crying, she would have taken the time to do some, right then. She sat down abruptly on the stairs and wrapped her arms tight around her.
Hurst came and sat down next to her. The two of them, side by side. It was all so familiar. Her stomach hurt like she had an animal trapped inside, clawing at her. She could have doubled over and moaned with the pain of it.
After a long time, she put her hands into her lap. “Remember the way we used to sit like this, in the house in St. Petersburg? That big marble staircase. The Russians were so fond of all that cold marble, but it about froze my arse off.”
“I remember.” He put his hat on his knee and watched it.
“You used to scold me for talking like that. Said it wasn’t ladylike. I wouldn’t have done it half as much if you hadn’t scolded.”
“I know.”
“I was almost grown up by that time. Twelve, maybe.”
“Thereabouts.”
“Papa would leave for a party with one of his mistresses, and we’d sit on the stairs and talk about the party and the mistress, and then we’d go down to the kitchen and the babushka would fix me little pancakes. I haven’t had one of those in years. Blini with honey.”
“There’s a place in Soho you can get them.”
“Is there?” She turned her hands over and looked at the crescent-shaped marks where her nails had bit in. “We’d sit in the kitchen and eat pancakes and drink cups of tea from those painted cups Papa had made for me. And play chess. You taught me to play chess. Papa never had the patience.”
“I thought you should learn to play one game you couldn’t cheat at.”
Hurst always talked like that. He’d understood how hard it was for her, being so very respectable all the time. She’d been able to say anything at all to Hurst. She’d felt safe with him. Even when Papa traveled all up and down Russia, she never minded because Hurst was there.
“Did you always let me win, right to the end? Or did I really get so I could beat you?”
“I let you win.”
The feeling of doubleness overwhelmed her, a sense of one man fitting over another. Hurst, the butler, who was her old friend. Adrian Hawkhurst, the spy. She would have trusted Hurst with her life, and he’d never even existed.
She said, “Remember the time you caught me sneaking brandy in Papa’s study? You took the bottle up to your sitting room and let me drink the rest of it, and I sat in your lap and told you I was in love with you. And then I got so bloody sick all over you.”
“I remember that.” He turned his hat so that it faced the other way on his knee. “Do you know, you are absolutely the only woman who has ever said she loved me.”
“Was it true what you said that night about loving a Frenchwoman? Or was that lies, too?” When someone is composed entirely of lies, it made no sense asking him questions, did it?
“That was the truth, Jess. Every word of it. You are one of three people in the world who know that.”
For what it was worth, she believed him. Even now, Hurst could lie to her and make her believe it. He was very, very good at lying. “I still can’t drink brandy. I like it. I can judge it and buy it, but I never did get a head for drinking the stuff.” Her voice flaked off in pieces around the edge.
“I know.”
“I guess there’s nothing you don’t know about me, is there?” The inside of her head ached with not crying.
