Rook(126)

“Will they arrest him?” Jennifer asked.

“Not if they can’t find him.” Her meager plans, begun in her head during the landover ride, had not changed in light of her father’s death. Now, it was just Tom she was keeping out of prison, instead of her father. And she would see her brother back in a prison cell over her own dead body.

“I knew it was you,” Jennifer said, looking over at Sophia. “I recognized you that night, when you shook out your hair. You always did that when we were children. But I told them it was him. I suppose because I knew you so much better, and …” She ran a hand over her head, the hair grown out only a little from its ragged cut for the Razor. “I told Tom what I did, when we were in the Tombs, and he said I did the right thing. Why do you think he would say that?”

Because he is Tomas Bellamy, Sophia thought, though she didn’t know quite how to express that to Jennifer.

“I think it is because he is the best man in the world,” Jennifer said. “That’s why.”

Sophia looked again at Jennifer. They’d been little girls the last time they’d spent any real time together, Sophia having moved beyond dolls and quiet games beside a fire rather quickly. She’d never felt sorry about that, not until now. Now she was wondering just what sort of friend she might have missed.

She gave Jennifer one slightly ferocious hug, careful of her bandaged arms, picked up the lantern, and hurried out of the stable without another word, St. Just at her heels. The sharp air whipped past her face, stinging her cheeks as she made her way across the autumn dead grasses of the lawn. Someone’s foxes were barking in the distance, and St. Just barked back. She rounded the corner of Bellamy House and found émile waiting for her, his fading red hair pale in the highmoon light, arms crossed as he leaned against the house stones. He was in the fancy breeches and waistcoat of her engagement party, evidently preferring that to the stolen uniform of a city gendarme.

“I thought perhaps you were not coming, Miss Bellamy,” he said. “I was very sorry to hear of your father.”

“Thank you, émile.” She retrieved the key and unlocked the door to the sanctuary. “It just makes our meeting all the more urgent, I’m afraid.”

He followed her light down the winding stairs, the skitter of St. Just’s claws moving ahead of them. émile said, “I find Bellamy House fascinating, Mademoiselle. Pieces of the Time Before are everywhere. It is remarkable. And I have just discovered something else remarkable. My elder brother has confided his identity to you.”

“Yes. I was a bit peeved with your nephew for not telling me that himself.”

“Ah. I would never discourage you from being cross with René, Mademoiselle. It is good for him. But the fact that Benoit has told you is …”

He waited so long to complete his sentence that Sophia turned around on the stairs. émile was grinning at her. Oh, dear. Daughter stealer. “I am impressed,” he said, “that is all.”

“And why is that?”

“Because it is a mark of particular trust. Benoit considers you one of the family.”

She smiled as she continued down the stairs. “Your sister doesn’t agree.”

“Adèle will not give up her place easily.”

“Her place?”

“I am meaning her son, Mademoiselle.”

“Well. I am going to outplay her, émile. If I can.”

“And how will you do that?”

“By giving René the marriage fee, which he can then pay to me, and we can pay our debts and keep my brother from going to prison.” She glanced back over her shoulder again. “She has already signed.”

émile was grinning from both sides of his mouth now. “So she has. Forgive me, Miss Bellamy, but if the fee is even more than your father’s debt, how do you propose to raise such a sum on short notice, when you could not do so before?”

They entered the sanctuary, and émile’s eyes widened. “That is why I wanted to meet with you. I’m beginning to wonder what the Bellamy family has that might have been previously … undervalued. So, as an honorary member of your family, Uncle émile …” Sophia crossed the patched floor to Tom’s display shelf. “What sort of price do you think these things could fetch?”





Sophia sank down into the warm bath in front of her bedroom fire, aching inside and out, but incredibly grateful for the hot water she’d discovered. And the cinnamon in her soap. Orla was a heroine.

There had been very little time during the day, but she’d taken some of it to be with Orla. Orla had only ever once been moved to tears in Sophia’s memory, and that had been when she was very small, when they lost her mother. And now they had lost her father. And Spear. Seeing Orla cry had made her do the same again, but when she’d tried to explain to her about René, the woman had only waved a hand. “There’s no great surprise in wanting to marry your own fiancé, child,” Orla said, wiping her eyes, sending her off to bed with a light smack. What had come as a surprise was who she hadn’t found when she got there. Jennifer Bonnard had disappeared, and Sophia would have gambled a marriage fee that there was another horse missing from their stables, and an extra one stabled at the Hammond farm. Not that she had a fee to gamble.