Beauty and the Spy (27 page)

"Well, that
does
sound like Richard. He was fond of being clever. I wish I could provide some enlightenment with regard to that, sir, but I cannot. Perhaps James was protecting me from what he knew. Perhaps I should even now fear for my life, given what I
do
know. But I rather find I don't care much what becomes of me, these days, so it's all the same."

Kit didn't know what to say; he couldn't very well pat the man's hand, and he knew words were all but useless when it came to easing grief.

"We shall get justice for James, Mr. Avery-Finch, and for Richard and Anna. And I will do everything I can to see to your safety."

Mr. Avery-Finch's shoulder merely went up in a slight shrug.

It was certainly an extraordinary amount of information to take in all at once, for anyone. "Are you all right?" Kit asked Susannah.

For a time, she didn't answer. "It's very sad, isn't it?" she said finally. "I suppose I'm glad to know that even if James Makepeace didn't love me, he did love my father. They were lovers, weren't they? James Makepeace and Mr. Avery-Finch?"

He could only answer honestly. "Yes. I believe they were."

More silence. "I suppose I'm… I suppose I'm glad that someone loved him. My father. James Makepeace, that is. And that someone truly knew him. And misses him with his… his whole heart."

With his whole heart
. Every day he was discovering ways in which she was remarkable.

"So am I," Kit told her softly.

He held out his arm and she took it. He scanned the street with his grimly talented eyes, ready to duck, or dodge, as necessary. Their unmarked carriage was only a few feet away, but a few
fraught
feet, given that someone was trying to kill Susannah and his father would love to send him to Egypt should anyone sight him in London.

"Your mother and father loved you, Susannah." His voice was a little rough with the sentiment; he certainly didn't say such things easily. But he wanted her to believe that someone had once loved her with a whole heart, too.

She simply smiled a little, and her fingers went up to touch her chin again.

Which is when Kit saw a handsome, tall, very familiar figure approaching them.

"Mr. White," John Carr tipped his hat as he passed Kit on his way into Mr. Avery-Finch's shop.

"Mr. Carson," Kit said politely.

"Heard Egypt is quite fine this time of year," John said over his shoulder.

"You wouldn't
dare
."

John Carr merely laughed and continued past them.

"Mr. Carson?" Kit said sharply, suddenly.

John Carr stopped, turned an expectant face toward Kit, flicked a glance at Susannah that widened into deep appreciation, and then looked back at Kit, his eyes glinting a merry question.

Which Kit didn't answer. Instead he gestured with his chin to Mr. Avery-Finch's shop. "See to his safety, will you? Hire a runner?"

John Carr's face became somber, and he nodded shortly, then turned with soldier precision and continued toward the shop.

Susannah was gawking. "Who on earth—"

"Someone I shot once, long ago."

"Someone he
missed
once, long ago," came John's voice over his shoulder, as he vanished into Mr. Avery-Finch's shop, to pursue his own line of questioning.

Kit watched him with an inevitable and utterly unworthy sense of competition rising. "On to Miss Daisy Jones to inquire about the miniatures, then back to Barnstable," Kit said.

Susannah was still staring back at the shop doorway. "Was that John Carr? Your best friend?"

"Yes. Handsome, isn't he? Fine figure of a man."

"Was he? I hadn't noticed."

"You're a poor liar, Miss Makepeace."

She laughed, a sound that delighted him beyond reason.

When Kit and Susannah entered the White Lily Theater, Daisy Jones, Tom Shaughnessy, and the General were on stage arguing fiercely, three sets of hands gesticulating wildly. Daisy was perched on a swing dressed as a mermaid, and every time she made a point she flapped her tail vehemently. It was a magnificent tail, purple, and covered all over in some sort of sparkling net that was meant to look like scales, perhaps. A billowing red wig flowed from her head down over her… primary assets… and Kit saw the brilliance of the act: when she swung backward and forward, that red wig might just fly up and—

Good heavens. Kit rather hoped he'd be in London to see it.

The General finally flung both hands up in disgust, flounced off the stage, and stalked, muttering to himself, up the aisle. "
Mumble mumble
not bloody
Shakespeare
, for God's sake. Bloody
mumble mumble
thinks she's bloody Nell
Gwynn
."

He stopped abruptly when he saw Kit and Susannah. He bowed low, and pivoted back toward the stage. "
Madame
Jones," he drawled with exaggerated politeness. "Visitors."

Announcement made, he continued stalking and muttering toward the back of the theater. "Bloody fat spoiled
mermaid
," was the last thing Kit heard as he disappeared.

Tom Shaughnessy looked up from Daisy, whom he now appeared to be placating. "Ah, if it isn't Mr. White, and the charming and beautiful Mrs. White," he boomed. He swung gracefully off the stage. Today he was wearing fawn trousers and a bottle-green waistcoat, and his red-gold hair was a masterpiece of calculated messiness.

"Mr. White, if you'll give me a hand with our fair mermaid?"

Daisy hopped up off the swing and shimmied in her tail toward the edge of the stage, and Tom Shaughnessy and Kit each took an arm and swung her down. Her long red wig remained in place due, perhaps, to some cleverness of glue.

"We've just a quick question for you, Miss Jones, if you've a moment. We're terribly sorry to interrupt," Kit said.

"An interruption is what we needed, Mr. White," Tom Shaughnessy said smoothly. "I'll just gracefully retreat, shall I? To allow you to speak in private?" Mr. Shaughnessy bowed low, managing to make the simple gesture downright sultry, for Susannah's benefit, Kit was certain, and backed away. She dimpled, watching him go.

Kit cleared his throat, and she twitched her eyes away from Mr. Shaughnessy almost guiltily.

He turned toward the sparkly mermaid in front of him. "We've just one question, Miss Jones, and then we'll leave you to your rehearsal. Do you happen to know whether Anna Holt's other daughters—Susannah's sisters—had miniatures with them when James brought them to you?"

"Miniatures?" Miss Jones's red eyebrows met in a "V" of thought "Yes, of Anna, now that ye mention it. The girls each 'ad miniatures of Anna, and little bundles of clothes. I remember thinking 'ow lovely it was for them to 'ave miniatures of their mama… and 'ow dangerous it would be if anyone discovered them."

"Do you recall whether anything had been written on the back of the miniatures?"

"I only saw Sylvie's miniature, Mr. White, but I do believe it said… it said… 'To Sylvie 'Ope, of 'er mother, Anna.'"

"Sylvie Hope?" Kit wasn't sure whether this was significant, couldn't have said whether it was a clue yet, but he added it to his collection of information, to revisit later.

"Thank you, Miss Jones."

"Any time, as I said." Daisy swept Susannah into a mermaid hug, and then thrust out her hand for Kit to bow over, and swiveled in a very determined fashion back toward the stage.

"Tom! General!" she bellowed. "We are
not
finished 'ere. I need 'elp into me swing."

"Alert the bloody navy!" the General bellowed from somewhere in the back of the theater. "Tell them to bring a bloody
whale
net!"

It was the kind of establishment he hadn't visited in years, but astonishingly he wasn't entirely uncomfortable in it.

That
realization, however, succeeded in making him feel a little uncomfortable.

Dark, the sort of dark that simply defeats lamplight, Morley thought. The darkness came from the floors, stained with a century or so of spilled spirits, food, blood. From the ceilings, low and permeated with smoke. The air itself was thick and fetid with food and smoke and customers, none of whom appeared to have washed any time recently, and none of whom appeared to have all of their teeth. Morley was certain he knew a few of them personally. Had perhaps even run through the streets of St. Giles with a few of them.

Bob had chosen the meeting place. Had gotten a note to Caroline, somehow.

It was a dangerous place for a woman, but then, Caroline wasn't an ordinary woman. She had an instinct both for getting into trouble and getting out of it, like a cat. Had about the same quotient of defenses as a cat, too. He wasn't concerned, but again, he felt it: a tiny, not unpleasant clutch of anticipation in his chest.

She appeared from the shadows. "Hello, Thaddeus. You've been trying to kill me." She extended her hand.

"Hello, Caroline." He kissed the hand. "You've been trying to blackmail me. I'd rise, but the leg, you know."

She clucked in sympathy.

"Why don't you have a seat?" He pulled out a chair. She gazed down at it fastidiously, and then resignedly settled into it.

"I needed the money, Thaddeus."

It wasn't an apology. He almost smiled. "You could have simply
asked
me for the money."

"Really, Thaddeus? For some reason I didn't think I'd find you in a charitable mood." She said it ironically. "And I
really
needed the money."

She was right, of course. One didn't reward the sudden defection of a mistress by giving her money, unless one was stupidly sentimental or desperate. And he was neither.

"What became of the American merchant?" he asked her.

"Is this a trap?" she asked lightly instead of answering. "With your desirable self as the bait? Will your little man sneak up and stab me between the shoulder blades?"

He didn't respond to that. "Would you like something to drink, Caroline?"

"Here? I think not. Liable to catch all manner of diseases. Not up to your usual standards, Thaddeus."

"But private."

Dressed all in black, Caroline was nearly invisible, but for the striking luminosity of her skin. Her eyes had it, too, that luminosity; like water at midnight, mysterious, fathomless. Making love to her had been maddening: delicious, always elusive. Like making love to the moon.

If the moon had adventurous sexual tastes, that was.

He couldn't help himself, he needed to ask. "Why did you leave me?"

She shrugged.

And he supposed that was as accurate an answer as he could expect from her. He almost understood: her life had begun in turmoil and upheaval, it was her native state, the only state in which she felt comfortable.

Whereas Thaddeus, as he aged, was discovering a taste for consistency and peace. He resented the events of the past few weeks; this need to kill people made him weary.

"I simply cannot allow you to threaten me, Caroline."

"Well, I
know
that now," she said whimsically. "Your little man with the knife rather drove the message home. Why did you want to see me tonight, Thaddeus? To tell me simply that you 'cannot allow me to threaten you'?" She imitated his grand tones.

He couldn't help but smile a little. "I need your help, Caroline."

She laughed. "Well,
that
sounds rather more like you, now. I should have known you wouldn't beg to have me back." The tone was ironic.

But would you come back
? No, he would never beg. He wasn't even certain whether he wanted her back. Despite the fact that of all the people who had entered his life… perhaps she had understood him the best. There was both profound safety and profound danger in that.

"It's simple, really," he told her. "I need you to seduce Grantham and find out what he's doing with Makepeace's daughter. Find out whether it has anything at all to do with me. Then come back here and tell me all about it, so that I may decide what to do next."

"Grantham? Kit Whitelaw, you mean?" she was startled.

He nodded.

Her face was expressionless for a moment, frozen in pure surprise. "Kit," she repeated softly. Her eyes distant, face unreadable.

"What makes you think I can do it, Thaddeus?"

"He still hates me after all of these years, Caroline. And it's because of you."

This pleased her. She smiled, small white teeth shining in that dark pub. "Do you think so, truly? But he's a grown man now."

"Yes. A grown man with a weakness for women and who, no doubt, will find it difficult to keep away from you."

She simply nodded; this was true of most grown men, anyway. "He isn't married? Kit?"

"No."

"And who is Susannah Makepeace?"

"I think she's one of the daughters of Richard Lockwood and Anna Holt."

Caroline jerked back at those words. "With Kit?" she said softly. "She's with Kit? But why?"

"I don't
know
, Caroline," Morley explained, impatiently. "It's what I need you to discover. But he's a spy now. He's not a…" He searched for adequate words."… Soft man. Or an easy man. He is, in fact, a clever and dangerous man."