Rook(11)

“I think Jennifer Bonnard might have recognized me last night. She … It’s very possible that she knows who I am.” The Bonnards were half a mile away, and LeBlanc had walked right into her house.

“Are they safe?” Orla asked.

“For tonight. Spear is making certain.”

“And where is LeBlanc?”

“He said he was going back to the city, I would guess on the ferry that leaves at highmoon. Tom was watching, and Cartier will follow. We should know where he goes, and when he leaves.” Sophia grimaced. “It’s all quite lovely, isn’t it? A dream come true. Perhaps René and I will send the children to spend their summers.”

Orla ignored the bitter tone. “Well, I suppose you’ve had a relative or two with a bad name, child, if you’re wanting to cast stones.”


“There haven’t been any thieves in the family for two hundred years, Orla.” Sophia rolled her eyes. Three centuries earlier, every Bellamy in the Commonwealth had been a pirate, before they stole enough to turn to more civilized trades. “Or not the bad sort of thief, anyway. So I hardly think that counts.”

“You know best,” said Orla, in a voice that meant the opposite.

Sophia shook her head. Orla really could be too practical. She put a finger beneath the edge of her dressing table and a drawer that had not been there before sprang out from the decorative carving. It disappeared again with a soft click, the ring from her forefinger and the silver key with it. The bodice finally fell away, and Sophia breathed deep.

“Now, then. I’ve left your newspapers on the table and your breeches on the bed,” Orla said. “And you can be shaking the sand out of them yourself this time, if you please. I plan to be in my bed when you come back. Where decent people ought to be by this time of night.”

Being excluded from Orla’s definition of “decent” made Sophia smile in spite of herself. “And what makes you think I’m going down to the beach tonight?”

Orla had a sharp face, a sharp nose, and now a voice to match. “Just what do you think I’ve been up to for the past eighteen years, child? Do you think I don’t know you at all?”



The highmoon was rising above the secluded cove, making a pale, undulating path across the surface of the sea. A dense growth of bushes and salt-stunted trees made the cliff edge hard to find, the narrow strip of sand below almost hidden by overhanging rock and jagged rows of tumbled stones. Over the rolling surf and spray came a faint clang on the wind, steel on steel, and a silver flash that was the glint of metal catching the light. Parry, thrust. Parry and thrust.

“She works on her parry, Benoit,” said René, his Parisian very quiet. He was flat on his stomach, surrounded by the thick branches, holding an eyescope trained on the beach below. Benoit sat beside him, a small man, nondescript, dressed as a servant, elbows balanced on knees. “The room was searched?” René asked.

Benoit nodded. “Very neatly done, nothing out of place. But the thread across the doorway has been broken.”

“The lock was picked?”

“No scratches.”

“Ah. And the hinges oiled before we arrived. That is excellent planning.” He passed the eyescope to Benoit. “Tell me what you think of the brother.”

“He trains her with the arms only, as he should,” Benoit said after a moment. “But the leg, it changes its stance some, I think?”

“Perhaps it pains him?”

“Or pains him not at all. Who can say?”

René took the eyescope and turned it back to the beach, where he watched Sophia expertly relieve her brother of his sword. He smiled.

“I think we should follow Cousin Albert’s advice, Benoit. This Miss Bellamy seems a much more interesting fiancée than I had first thought.”





Spear Hammond stepped down out of the landover, looking left and right, making certain there was no one else on the road. A slate-colored sky hung low over the trees, and the wind gusted, tearing at his long coat, air whipping past with the feel of a storm on it. He didn’t like this plan; it was risky, more so than usual. But he also didn’t have a better one. He left young Cartier in the driver’s seat of the landover, holding tight to the nervous horses, and hurried across the A5 lane, approaching a structure that had at one time been called a bungalow. Now it was a ramshackle tumble of stone and scavenged concrete, the roof caved in on one side.

The doorway of the ruin stood black and empty, but when Spear reached it, the tip of a sword appeared from one side of the darkness, just touching his chest. He paused and held out his hand, palm open, showing a single red-tipped feather. The sword lowered, and the face of Ministre Bonnard appeared in the opening, a frightened boy peeking out just behind him.

The Bonnard family was herded quickly into the landover, the door shut, the window curtains closed, and Cartier cracked his whip over the heads of the horses. Rooks cawed from the treetops, protesting the noise. Spear watched the wheels of the landover rattle fast down the lane, toward the turning to the Caledonian Road, where the buildings and fields of the Rathbone farm sprawled out along the banks of a wide river. He shook his head, promising himself again that this would be the last time. He knew he wouldn’t keep that promise. Sophia would only have to ask him again. When the road was empty, he walked away past the bungalow, taking long, fast strides down the A5.