Rook(27)

But all of that had changed the first time she crawled into the Tombs. Being the Red Rook hadn’t been about adventure then. Suddenly it was about blood and disease and death and the children who watched their parents’ heads being tossed into coffins. It was about injustice and a city possessed. It was about stealing from Allemande and cheating the Razor. And knowing that, in her opinion, only made her actions all the more reprehensible.

What sort of person went to the lengths she did to dam a flood of evil, and then lay awake at night dreading when there would be no more evil behind the dam? Without the Red Rook, she would be nothing but the girl she was before and the girl she would become: a wife, doing just as her mother and grandmother had, doomed to managing a house and dinners with Mrs. Rathbone until the end of her days.

The truth was that Sophia Bellamy went to the Sunken City because she didn’t know who she’d be anymore if she didn’t. If she was caught, she wouldn’t be sorry. She would only be sorry that the people she loved most would bear the pain of it.

“Tonight,” Tom said, “let’s go on with this dinner as planned. Can you do it?”

Sophia nodded. She had to.

“Hasard will be sick, and we’ll send Benoit for Dr. Winnow just before dinner begins.”

She nodded again. Winnow lived fifteen miles away and was nearly deaf.

“Then, after dinner, we can go to the sanctuary and deal with your fiancé.” Tom sighed. “A shame, really. He seemed so harmless at first.”

He was not harmless now. Sophia stared at the finely woven fibers of Tom’s linen sheets. Either the motion of her head or Tom’s words were making her ill.

“Blimey, Sophie,” Tom said suddenly. “Don’t look like that. I wasn’t planning on murdering the man. I definitely prefer to bribe him. What do you think he wants?”

Sophia let out her breath. What did René Hasard want? She remembered the way his words had moved the curls near her ear. Had he wanted her to turn her head? That the thought had even crossed her mind seemed like treachery; that she was thinking it yet again was a capital offense. She’d never kissed anyone before. Had never wanted to. And the peck she’d given Spear Hammond when she was six definitely did not count. She felt her face flushing and blinked long, in case Tom could see her thoughts. She said, “I have no idea what René Hasard wants.”

“Then that’s what we have to find out tonight. What will be enough to get him to betray his cousin and his city? And to drop this marriage contract.”

Sophia looked up sharply. “What about Father?”

“Father may just have to face up to it, Sophie. I wish we could’ve kept things going until I could prove for the inheritance, though God knows how I was going to do it …” Tom glanced once at his leg. “And this fee is mental, anyway. It’s supposed to keep us from marrying outside the Commonwealth, when really it just makes certain that every strapped-for-cash father on the island gets in a ruddy boat to go find a son-in-law.”

Sophia shut her eyes, heart aching like her head. If René was working with LeBlanc, then maybe there would have never been a marriage fee in the first place. But the letter had said he might go through with it. She thought about Bellamy House, every beloved and cobwebbed inch of it, and the money she would have given Tom, for a business. What price would she have paid for those things? “Tom …”

“Please, Sophie. It’s one thing for Father to sell you off to a prat. It’s another to sell you off to spend your holidays with the likes of LeBlanc. All in all,” Tom said, “if it’s between the land and my sister, I’d much rather keep my sister.”

She didn’t know what she wanted anymore. “And so Father will go to prison.”

Tom played with the head of his walking stick. “For five years he did little, and for three years he’s done nothing. I know he’s lost without Mother, but … they’re his mistakes, Sophie. Not mine, and not yours.”

Sophia sighed. Then her fiancé would just have to be bribed. But if she pulled out those scales again, weighing the things René Hasard might wish for against what she and Tom could give, she was very afraid that the Bellamys were going to come up wanting.

They were going to come up wanting no matter what.



The waiting hall outside the Bellamy dining room was small but formal, awash with soft, mirrored light that did not show the shabbiness of the upholstery. They only used this room when important guests came to dinner, and when Sophia entered, that guest was already there.

Albert LeBlanc was again in his blue jacket, a white shirt and meticulously arranged necktie beneath it. Sophia smiled brilliantly over his offered hand. All of her was brilliant; she and Orla had made sure of that.

It had been tedious and exhausting to get all the mud and blood off her skin and hair, especially without soaking her still-oozing cut. She’d spent a good part of the day in bed. But she was back in the dark hair now, black paint around her eyes and plenty of powder to cover paleness and shadowed circles. Her dress was a rich burgundy, a color originally chosen to set off her skin, tonight chosen to not immediately show a bloodstain. She’d never been more grateful for a tightly tied corset, though there was nothing she could do about the terrible ache in her head.

“Good dusk, Miss Bellamy,” said LeBlanc.

“You look quite pretty tonight, Sophia,” said her father. He seemed sad about it, and a little surprised, as if he’d just remembered that she was not a child, and that he was marrying her off to a stranger. Sophia kept her manufactured smile in place, raised her eyes, and saw that Spear stood just beyond Bellamy, filling one corner of the waiting room like a blond and marble statue.