The Sea Peoples(60)

“May I present my companion, Miss Thora Garwood, and our associate Mr. Godulfson?”

A woman companion and a bodyguard-secretary would make her respectable, if she remembered the mores correctly.

No need to tell him Thora and I are both preggers and looking for the man responsible, Pip thought. Though what a handy stick to beat John with, and won’t I use it, just?

She assumed they were more or less like Victorians here, which might be a mistake, but there wasn’t enough time to do anthropology and she’d have to rely on what she remembered from classes and books.

“Ah,” he said cautiously. “And this is my daughter, Miss Constance Hawberk.”

Then his eyes lit on Toa, apparently slightly surprised to see a gigantic tattooed Maori with a shovel over one shoulder and a box on the other.

“Teˉnaˉ koe,” the Englishman said.

Which meant a formal hello in Maori; specifically, the way you said it to a single other person.

Toa grunted in surprise and answered: “Teˉnaˉ koˉrua.”

Which was the same thing to two people.

“I have traveled in your part of the world too,” Hawberk said. “Both Australia and New Zealand. How may I help you? Do you have a matter of armorer’s work in which I might be of assistance?”

Deor had bent over the piece on the wooden brace that held it as a shoemaker’s lath did leather.

“This is fine work, Mr. Hawberk,” he said. “Double-coil on the mail, I see, then alternate rows closed with rivets. Very strong, but a bit less flexible. Even if it’s to be a display piece, I’m glad you’re not just using butted mail.”

Hawberk brightened, with that peculiar expression that someone who loved their work got when hearing it knowledgeably praised.

“Pleasant to meet a man who knows mail, Mr. Godulfson,” Hawberk said. “Very pleasant. It happens so seldom.”

What? But obsessive armor enthusiasts are ten a penny—Pip began to think, then realized: Ah, nobody wears mail for real here. Bullets. Like those lancers—there’s no point, when it can’t protect you. Though those bright uniforms are odd, then: you’d think they’d want something inconspicuous, the way scouts do in modern armies.

“And those are the arms of the Dukes of Burgundy, aren’t they, Miss Hawberk?” Pip said brightly, looking at the embroidery she’d set aside. “Though I couldn’t say which one.”

“Charles the Bold,” Constance said shyly.

“Or Charles the Foolhardy, Ms. Hawberk,” Pip said, and gave her a smile before turning to her father.

“Well, the real reason we dropped by, Mr. Hawberk, is that—it’s just a trifle embarrassing—we’re traveling in New York and trying to look someone up. And we just missed him here! I didn’t realize it was him until after he’d passed us by, for I’ve never met him, only seen a photograph. A Mr. Castaigne.”

Hawberk looked at her, then at Deor, as if surprised she was taking the lead in the conversation, then turned to Pip when Deor nodded towards her.

“Would that be Hildred, Miss, or his cousin Louis?” he said. “Louis is an officer in the 20th Dragoons.”

“Oh, Mr. Hildred Castaigne,” Pip said. “He mentioned your shop in one of his letters, and even said where it was located . . . but neglected to note his new address! This was a letter to my father, you understand, who traveled extensively in America and was acquainted with Mr. Castaigne’s father. He’s corresponded with us, but, ah, over the last six months his letters have gotten a bit . . . eccentric. My father did so wish us to drop by and make sure that everything was, as they say here, OK.”

“Eccentric since he was in the asy—” Constance began, then stopped as her father made a gesture.

Pip made herself look wise and discreet; her mother had given her lessons in that, disguised as amateur theatricals.

Never say too much, let the mark fill in the details themselves had been part of the teaching.

“I believe I can be of assistance,” he said. “Mr. Castaigne has been ill, and it will do him good to meet friends of the family. He does tend to be too much taken up with his books and his routine.”

He looked around, found a scrap of paper and wrote: 80 Washington Square East on it.

“This is the address of his rooms at the Benedick,” he said.

Pip gave him a glimpse of her dimples. “As in the bachelor in Much Ado About Nothing? A nest for those who consider themselves silver-tongued rogues immune to the darts of Cupid?”

He smiled, and so did his daughter; genuinely in her case, Pip thought.

“Yes, it’s an apartment for bachelor artists—there are studios on the upper floor.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Hawberk,” Pip said, and the others followed through with murmurs of gratitude.

Outside the building they paused, Toa helping to create a bubble of space on the crowded sidewalk. Deor regarded her with pawky amusement.

“I cry hail to you, Captain Pip,” he said, with the gesture his folk used as a salute. “I’m a musician, but you played those two like a lute. For one so young, you show much skill in dealing with an audience.”

Pip inclined her head, hiding a smile but feeling genuinely flattered. In her experience, men of Deor’s persuasion were often better at understanding women—not because they were more womanlike themselves, for they weren’t, but because they were less distracted and more able to see you as simply a person and not a set of animated signals for their mating drive. Provided they were smart to begin with, and Deor Godulfson was very sharp indeed.