The Girl from Everywhere (The Girl from Everywhere #1)(49)

He winked at me. “The only thing that’s gone well so far. But no matter. The night is young.”

As we moved through the grand hall, I mapped the house in my head. From the outside, the house was a rectangle with the front of the house and the foyer we’d just entered facing east, to the sunrise. The grand hall behind the foyer was lined with three big mahogany doors to the south, one door to the north, and an open pair of wide double doors on the west wall, through which music and laughter rolled like a tide.

Which door hid our map—door number one? Door number three? But there was no telling from the outside, and I couldn’t linger in the hall.

We stepped outside through the open double doors, and I gaped at the display. We stood under a golden cloud of Chinese lanterns on a stone patio that lay like a stage before a lush lawn silvered by the moon. At one side of the patio, an impossibly long table groaned with dishes that looked decidedly Continental: white-flour biscuits, puffed pastries with a savory onion filling, tiny triangle sandwiches with pale slices of cucumber, fillets of fish in a lemon sauce, roasted chicken with blackened skin, flaky crab cakes, puddings studded with raisins. The only things vaguely local were the halved coconuts, floating like skiffs in a tureen of ice and filled with chunks of fragrant tropical fruit, and the platter of pea-green cuts of cane.

At the other side of the lawn, a string quartet played on a raised platform draped with garlands. Guests danced on the grass: proud men in fine black suits with waxed mustaches, graceful ladies in dresses like bakery confections. What would Bee think of these women and their dancing?

“Why are you smiling, amira?”

“Because it’s beautiful. Why are you smiling?”

“Because I want to dance.” He held out his hand and whirled me into a waltz.

The steps were familiar; I’d done my best to learn the basic patterns of the most popular social dances of the last few centuries, and the waltz had enjoyed a great deal of popularity over the years. But I was not a natural dancer, not like Kashmir. He guided me, gliding across the crowded lawn, sweeping me in wide, graceful circles as though we were the only two dancing, and he did it all while seeming to see nothing else but my eyes.

“You’re making me look better than I am,” I murmured to him.

“It’s not hard,” he whispered. I laughed as he spun me out, brought me back.

We’d left Slate standing on the edge of the crowd. He was still there, his arms crossed, scanning for familiar faces. I sighed. “Do you see Mr. D?”

“Not yet. But Slate can handle that on his own. I’m more interested in the map.”

I smiled tightly at him. “I didn’t see it in the hall—”

“You wouldn’t hang a map like a painting, amira. Especially not a map of unsavory locations, which you’d recently learned was very valuable. It would be tucked away somewhere.”

“In a safe?”

“No. People who have safes rarely open them.” He pursed his lips in thought as he moved us easily, absently, through the crowd. “Mr. D invited the captain to meet the members of the league, and to see the map. They will meet in a drawing room, or maybe a study. The map is likely kept there.”

“And if we go in now, before Mr. D arrives . . . what?”

Kashmir was shaking his head. “If you’d been a thief, you would have been hanged a long time ago. If you hadn’t starved first. If we go in now, and then Mr. D arrives—” He shrugged. “Best to wait till after.”

“Then, after their meeting, we sneak in?”

“We do not sneak. I sneak, and you distract. The young Mr. Hart may be watching you closely,” Kashmir said archly. “For more than one reason.”

“This is important, Kashmir!”

He pulled me close, crushing the flowers of my lei between us. “Exactly why you should trust me.” I felt the curve of his lips as he breathed into my ear. “Please, amira.”

“I do,” I breathed back. “But I’m nervous. I’ve never—”

“Nonsense,” he said, pulling back, his voice a touch louder. “The dress is lovely on you.”

“What?” Then I noticed that Kashmir wasn’t looking at me anymore, but over my shoulder.

“May I?”

Kashmir stepped back and bowed. “Aye, Captain.”

I slipped my fingers into my father’s palm. Slate danced almost as awkwardly as I did, but he closed his hand around mine tightly. “I’m glad to see you having fun. Kashmir’s right, the dress is lovely.”

“He practically designed it.”

“The kid has good taste.”

“You clean up nice too.”

He guided me gently around another couple who waltzed by in a whirl of blue silk and blond curls; Mrs. Hart was on the floor. Slate’s eyes were troubled. He took a deep breath, then let it out. “I’m sorry. About what I said about Kashmir.”

I stiffened in his arms. “Of course you are. Now that you need him.”

“It’s not that.” His expression was wistful. “I saw you dancing. You two are close.”

“We’re friends.”

“Oh? Good friends, then. It reminds me of . . .” He trailed off.

“Of who?” I asked, though I knew the answer. He met my eyes, then dropped his own to his feet.