stolen. This was what she needed.
“Thank you.” One bit of truth in this soup made out of lies. She didn’t look him straight in the face because, given her luck lately, he’d read her intentions written on her forehead.
“You’ll get this tomorrow. My first present to you, when we’re man and wife.” And he was lying through his crooked, tobacco-stained teeth.
It didn’t matter. She’d have that list out of his house tonight, while he was sleeping. That was the reason the good Lord put windows in houses. So thieves could go through them.
She said, “Tomorrow, then.”
Her lie was shorter, but it was a lie, just the same.
“IT is always edifying,” Adrian said, “to watch a talented amateur at work. That will be the Military Intelligence list of missing documents. Jess wanted to get her hands on that list, so she asked Reams to bring it to her. Still the most remarkably straightforward mind of my acquaintance.”
Sebastian didn’t take his eyes off her. She was remarkable. “She’s trading. Look at her.” A dozen feet away, with thirty men and women as spectators, Reams was trying to bully Jess into some concession. Whatever those two were negotiating, she wasn’t going to budge an inch.
Adrian watched the two with steady attention, not even blinking. “The words ‘special license’ have been mentioned. I am filled with trepidation.”
“She’s not going to trade herself for that list.”
But he wasn’t sure of that. Jess, committed, was Jess committed heart and soul with no regard for common sense or her own safety. There was no telling what she’d consider reasonable. “If Reams gets his hands on the Whitby heiress, Whitby won’t live out the summer. She has to know that.”
“No fool, my Jess.”
She wasn’t Adrian’s Jess. She was his.
Reams inched up closer to snarl in her face. He was short, broad, and heavy and she looked delicate beside him. That was deceptive. Jess was steel. That blustery wind Reams was raising would cut past her and around her and blow itself out.
Reams had retreated from his point, huffing and snarling. The paper, folded small, was shoved in Jess’s face. She nodded. The colonel put it away again in the uniform’s coat pocket.
It was easy to see what Jess planned. “It’s too late to go back to the Horse Guards. He’ll bring the list home. She plans to go after him and steal it tonight.” Just exactly the kind of scheme she would come up with. Clever. A good chance of succeeding. Risking her neck as if it were nothing. “He probably lives on the top floor somewhere, three stories up.”
“A pretty townhouse in South Audley Street, but the principle’s the same.” Adrian grinned. “Three floors. A rather steep roof. I have scouted it out.”
“So we take it away from him now.”
“Before she does. Yes. Excellent idea. Hold this, if you will.” Adrian handed over the punch cup, still full. “We shall foil her little plot with one of our own. The list is neatly back in the colonel’s pocket. We will now wander across this room, separately, and you will pour that punch down the front of his dress uniform.”
“My pleasure.” Oh, yes. It would be. “I’ll wait for your nod. Are you coming up on the left side or the right?”
“Left. If you can contrive to spill just a little on me as well . . .”
“No problem at all.”
CINQ held a cup and strolled from one chattering, yammering, silly group to another, dropping a word here, correcting some misapprehension there, being sociable and helpful. It was surprising how few of these so-called scholars knew what they were talking about.
The merchant’s daughter flaunted herself through the room with a fortune in pearls hanging around her neck. Ridiculous opulence. The mushroom class betrayed itself every time.
Money-swollen peasants. Pigs in silk. They were the worst enemies of the revolution. They worshipped nothing but money. The true defenders of the poor always arose from the ruling class.
She was rude to Colonel Reams, snubbing a man twice her age, a decorated war hero. The chit might wear pearls and silk, but she didn’t belong among her betters. She never would.
Sebastian tramped across the parlor, graceless and aggressive, pretending to be a captain at sea. A leader of men. And everyone believed it. Men perked up, turning his way as he passed, trying to pull him over to talk, asking his opinion. He ignored them all. Tonight he was cock of the walk, and he was scurrying to protect his guinea hen. Maybe he didn’t trust the chit with a man like the colonel.
Sebastian had it all his way tonight. When Napoleon’s
“I was going to steal this from under his pillow or something,” Jess said. She turned the list over. Names, dates . . . all the details. Hurst, giving her presents. He’d always found exactly what she wanted.
“You stole it for me,” she said.
“Sebastian helped,” Adrian said.
She spent so much of her life dealing with people who were more larcenous than she was, she felt almost honest in comparison. “I had it all planned.”
Sebastian glowered. There was a conversation in him, just bursting to get out.
“If I may . . .” Adrian flicked the list out of her fingers. “This is rather a lot of secrets for you to be carrying around. I will take charge of it for the moment. And, yes, you will see it again any time you express the merest soupçon of an interest. It is yours, child. I bestow the secrets of Military Intelligence upon you. Use them wisely.”
Sebastian said, “What will Reams do when he finds out it’s missing?”
“Which he is doing at this very moment, perhaps. What a pleasant thought.”
“Will he suspect Jess?”
“Most certainly. He will suspect Jess, who is, accidentally, in this case, innocent. He will suspect me. Suspect you. Suspect his doltish and muscular bodyguard. Suspect Standish, who saw him firmly and disapprovingly to the door. What he will not do is make open accusations in any direction, since this piece of paper should never have existed. Existing, it should never have left the Horse Guards. In fact,” Adrian folded it into a long flat pleat, “within an hour or two, it will never have existed at all.”
They both looked so pleased with themselves, like boys who’d done something clever. And they had. She was very glad she wouldn’t be headed over any roofs tonight in the dark.
The hard part was still ahead.
“Don’t think this makes me forgive you,” she said to Adrian.
Twenty-one
THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO GET TO LAZARUS. IF he hasn’t sent for you and you intended to reach him alive, you come alone and on foot. Jess knew as much as you could know about approaching Lazarus. This was the first time she’d come uninvited.
She’d nipped out of the warehouse, quiet like, in an empty furniture crate, which saved a lot of discussion all round, and caught a hackney as far as Quaker Street. Then she got out and walked.
