Rook(32)

“Who are you?” Sophia demanded.

The man scrambled to his feet. “Je ne vous souhaite pas de mal, Mademoiselle …”

“Dites-moi votre nom!” she said again. Then she realized she was in some sort of nightgown and snatched up the covers. “Allez-vous en tout de suite!” They both turned at a voice from the door.

“I thought you must speak my language, Miss Bellamy. Let me congratulate you on a very passable accent.”

René leaned on the doorjamb, hair down and a little wild, arms crossed over the shirt he’d worn the night before, now untucked. Sophia scooted back until she was fully upright, breath coming fast. She considered giving him a dose of her Lower City accent, though she doubted he would congratulate her on that.

“This is Benoit, by the way.” René turned his head to observe the man making his escape through the open door. “I think you have frightened him.” He peeled himself from the wood casing and strode into the room.

“Where is Tom?” she asked. “And Spear?”

“Hammond is out.”

“And where is Orla?”

“With your father.”

“And why am I in your room?”

“Because not knowing exactly who my dear cousin Albert wished to drop into a prison hole next, it seemed best to put you where you shouldn’t be instead of where you should. And where someone could keep an eye on you. Are you always this irritable when you wake, Mademoiselle?”

“When I wake in your bed with no idea how I got there? Yes. And I don’t believe you. Orla would not have left me here.”

René sat almost exactly as Benoit had, boots on the coverlet, chair leaning back against the wall on only two of its legs. Daughter stealer. “Your Orla is an excellent woman. We have had a very useful talk.” He stretched his arms up behind his head. “I think that irritation becomes you, Mademoiselle. It puts the pink in your pretty skin.”

Sophia gripped the blanket harder, feeling whatever pink might have been in her cheeks heat up to scarlet.

“I told you yesterday you had some concussion,” he continued. “Why did you not tell the others when you got back into the house?”

She shook her head, a movement that, to her relief, caused very little pain. “They may have been distracted by my bleeding.”

“Ah. I would have explained to them myself, but I was detained.”

“Yes …” She was waking up enough to remember caution. “And why exactly were you late to dinner again? You never said …”

“Oh, no.” He shook his head, the late light streaming through the window glass, making the red in his hair gleam. “No more, Mademoiselle. I know a sword wound when I see one, and I know better than to drink anything that comes from the hand of the Red Rook. I thought perhaps you were trying to drug me, and so you were. Thank you for doing away with my doubts.”

She blinked slowly, taking this in. “And you got out of the sanctuary how?”

“Benoit, of course. Eventually. If there was one place he knew I wasn’t, Miss Bellamy, it was in your rooms.” A grin crept into the corner of his mouth. “But, please, let me congratulate you on your climbing skills. I have been going out the windows since I arrived, and yet never did it occur to me that windows might be your favorite way to come and go as well. How pleasant to find that we have things in common. Perhaps when we are married, we will not need doors. It was most unfortunate that I climbed out yesterday without my picklocks. But it did give me the opportunity to finish exploring …”

Sophia moved, snatching up the sword from the floor and pulling it from its sheath before René could get his boots off the bed. She straightened, barefoot on the oak planks, and held the blade out in front of her, relieved that it wasn’t too heavy. René stood slowly, guarded, his smile gone as she circled her way around the foot of the bed, toward the open door, sword pointed at his chest. He took a step closer, then back as her blade made a flat arc through the air not far from the buttons of his shirt. He raised his hands. It was only a few more steps to the door, but René’s legs were much longer.

“Let me go,” she said.

“Not yet, Mademoiselle. We have things to discuss.”

“There is no discussion.”

René had inched forward, but he leapt back again as the metal swished past his middle. He grabbed the chair he’d been sitting on, putting it in front of him like a shield.

“When I go back to the Sunken City, it will be by my own choice,” she said. She dodged to one side and René stepped with her. “All I want is to leave this room, and for you to leave my family …”

He threw the chair at her head. Sophia ducked and the chair collided with the wall behind her, smashing the water ewer, and while she was avoiding a second concussion, René darted to the bedchamber door and kicked it shut. He stood in front of it, arms open wide.

“Run me through. I give you my permission.”

Sophia raised the sword, wary.

“But if you do, you will never hear what I have to say.” He paused. “Just think of the curiosity you will suffer.”

Sophia opened her mouth, unable to form a reply, when René tossed up both hands in frustration.

“You! Why must you ruin all of my shirts!”