Rook(47)

“Now, Mademoiselle,” René said, adjusting the angle of her body carefully as they stood in front of the sitting-room fire, the slanting rays of nethersun glowing through the filmy windows. He was in his linen shirtsleeves, the plain jacket tossed onto a chair, hair tied. “Hit with an open palm, and aim for here.”

He put her fingers against the lower edge of his cheek. She’d wondered what that would feel like. It prickled.

“Do not hold back,” he instructed. “There must be no doubt that we are having a fight of passion. That will be essential. Unless you are pulling on your wound?”


She shook her head. She was going to slap him with her right and her cut was on the left, but overall she thought this situation particularly unjust. What she wouldn’t have given to do this one week ago, and René was ruining it with sheer willingness.

“Hit him hard, Sophie,” Spear said, chuckling as he watched from the couch. Even Benoit had come to see, a man-shaped outline easy to overlook in the corner.

René waited, almost daring her, while she was trying to ignore the little pulse beating at the base of his throat. It was beating rather fast. She took a deep breath, pulled her arm back, and slapped. Her skin on his made a solid, but faint, smack.

“Oh, no,” René said, shaking his head. “I do not think you meant that.”

“And he would know when a woman slaps him and means it, Sophie, don’t you think?” said Spear, still chuckling. He put a hand to his shirt pocket, as if checking to see that something was still there.

René was looking over his shoulder toward the couch, an amused half smile on his face, and something about the expression put Sophia in mind of their Banns, and Lauren Rathbone, and that gaggle of women he had so expertly flirted with.

This time her slap turned his head.

“Ah,” René said after a moment, hand to his cheek. “That was much better.”

He rubbed his face, where a patch of skin was beginning to show the shape of her hand. Sophia would have sworn the blue fire in his eyes was pleased. She almost smiled before she could stop herself.

“This will be about the timing, I think,” he said. “You should come across the room, pause, step one, two, three, and hit. Let’s do that, Mademoiselle, without the hitting …”

They did it without, and then they did it with, adding dialogue, working for the actions to be automatic, for René to turn slightly just in time to deflect the worst of the blow, until Benoit could tell them the level of preparation was not obvious. René would accept no one else’s opinion on that subject. She was afraid she must be bruising his face, but René’s enthusiasm, she discovered, was a force of nature, not to be diminished or controlled. They kept at it.

Spear seemed to forget that there was a rehearsal going on, and it made him bold. He flattered her, shielded her when it wasn’t needed, sat too close when she let René’s cheek have a rest. “Staking a claim,” that had been Orla’s single comment in her ear. Sophia did not want to be “staked.” And René was aware of it, too. He kept giving her that knowing look, as he had that first night in the farmhouse, which made him much easier to hit. Especially when she called up the image of the way he had smiled at Lauren Rathbone’s smudgy eyes.



The candles had burned low before Benoit finally gave his blessing. Spear banked the fire, thoughtful, while Sophia trudged up the stairs, tired and with a hand on her side, Orla behind her. Benoit and René were both out of sight. Spear allowed himself a smile. Things were going well. Sophie seemed to like the farm, she’d sat with him on the couch, and she’d been slapping the stuffing out of Hasard. Since dusk. And he knew Sophia Bellamy well enough to see when there was anger on her face. She’d never been that good of an actress. He had nothing to fear from Hasard. The knowledge lifted a weight from his mind. Spear put the poker back in place, still smiling, checked his shirt pocket once more for the rustle of paper, then headed toward the kitchen to blow out the lamps.

Hasard was just entering the narrow passage from the kitchen door, head down and preoccupied, barreling down the hall to stop only just short of a collision. They circled each other, Hasard’s hands going up in mock apology before they both moved on in their opposite directions. Spear smiled again. The man’s left cheek had been a very satisfactory reddish-purple.



René grinned as he walked away down the kitchen passage, rubbing his sore cheek, slipping the folded piece of paper from Spear Hammond’s shirt pocket into his own.



“What do you think, Benoit?” René’s Parisian was very soft as he knelt at the little table in his room, where Benoit was taking advantage of a strong lamp. Benoit ran the end of the eyescope over the now unfolded piece of paper, then held it up, peering at the light shining through.

“It is an official document of the Sunken City,” Benoit said. “Not a forgery, I would say.”

“And why would Hammond be carrying this particular document with him, do you think?”

Benoit didn’t answer. René had not expected him to.

“And where did he get it, Benoit? Had Tom Bellamy already acquired it, or did he get it from LeBlanc, perhaps?”

But René did not expect an answer to this, either. He scratched his stubbled chin, frowning once as he grazed his bruised cheek.