Rook(57)

She reached out to catch his collar and thought better of it. He wanted out, and would have protested. Vigorously. Mr. Halflife began to turn at the noise and Sophia ducked back around the corner. She heard René get up from his chair as St. Just went yelping and barking into the sitting room.

“Ah, St. Just!” René cried. Sophia could hear her fox resisting having his ears scratched. He really was desperate to get out. “He is such a good pet, is he not, Mr. Halflife? But you must excuse his wild behavior. He is not a happy fox. He has the trouble with the … how do you say, the vermin.”

Sophia closed her eyes.

“Monsieur Hasard, I would be so grateful if you could tell me when I might have the pleasure of speaking with Miss …”

“Oh, pardon, Monsieur! Please … No, no, allow me …”

Sophia peeked around the corner to see St. Just leaping about the room like mad, her silver shoes gone, and René pulling pretend fleas off Mr. Halflife’s gray coat. She pulled her head back, biting her lip against an urge to laugh.

“We will have this attended to in a week or so, I am certain,” René was saying. “But they are stubborn creatures to be so small. Very vexing. A thousand pardons …”

The front door was opening. “When does Miss Bellamy return from her …”

The voices and barking faded as everyone moved outside. Sophia waited, then hurried upstairs and into René’s room, which had a view of the front. She put a finger to the wavering crack between the two curtains and watched Mr. Halflife practically on the run, brushing at his sleeves. A sleek landover stood waiting a long way down the lane. It seemed Mr. Halflife had hoped to catch someone unawares. He nearly had.

She heard boots on the stairs, and René came in, Benoit just behind him. René paused in the doorway. He’d been avoiding her when he could, and she had just made that impossible. Good. Sophia peered once more through the curtains. “He’s at a trot,” she said, speaking Parisian for Benoit. “I’d say that was very well done. And where are my shoes?”

“Under the couch,” René replied, tossing clothes from the bed onto a chair, brows drawn down. He looked tired, as if someone had pulled the cork and let out all his effervescence. She glanced around. His room had so many foreign things in it. Large boots, an eyescope on the table beside the bed. A little bowl of soap for shaving a face. So was this the real room, she wondered, instead of the staged one he’d left for her in Bellamy House? Or only another carefully constructed set? She watched Benoit taking away the clothing René had put in the room’s only chair.

“And here,” René said, emptying his pockets onto the cleared bed. She came to look. Her necklace, a list of food items in her handwriting, a few letters, a brush with brown spiral hairs sticking out of it, and a pencil. She stared at the pencil.

“Because you bite them, Mademoiselle,” said Benoit, answering the unasked.

“I did not know if Halflife would know that,” René added.

She picked up the pencil, which did indeed have bite marks. She hadn’t known she did such a thing. “Do you think he knew I was here?”

“He knew someone was here,” René replied. “He heard me putting logs in the hearth. But the chimneys would tell him as much. Perhaps he did not know you were here. Necessarily. Otherwise I do not think he could have been so easily dissuaded.”


He sat down on the unmade bed and leaned back, one arm behind his head, propping all but the dirtiest end of his boots on the blankets. He was a mess. Sophia felt sure he hadn’t slept. He’d been moving near dawn, when she saw him behind the curtain, and he’d been splitting logs not long after that. She’d heard him from the stable, where she’d gone with her sword to render unwarranted destruction on three bales of hay. He had his coin out of his pocket now, flipping it into the air and snagging it easily with the same hand. He opened his fingers, and the coin was face up. He made a mess look rather good.

“Did you tell her?” René asked. Benoit shook his head while René caught the coin again. Face. “Benoit says there is someone watching the house.”

Sophia felt her forehead crease, remembering rustling, and branches that moved when there was no breeze. She looked to Benoit. “You think, or are you certain?”

“I watched a man leave the trees after you went into the house last night. He circled, and then went back through the woods. I did not see a man replace him, but there could have been one. I do not think there was.”

So Benoit had not gone back to the farmhouse after all; he’d been watching her. She wondered if he’d seen Cartier. Probably. Likely the whole time, from the footbridge on. Benoit did not like her, but this might be the second time she needed to thank him for her life. She sat on the corner of the bed and ran her hands through her hair.

“What did he look like?”

“Large,” Benoit said. “Muscled. Knitted hat. No beard. But that is all I can say.”

“Who outside this farmhouse knows you are here, Mademoiselle?” René asked. Flip. Three turns in the air. Face.

“No one. Other than Cartier, of course.” She tried to think. “Nancy and her husband must know I haven’t gone far, and they might guess Spear’s, but they wouldn’t tell anyone. I’d stake my life on that. Could it be Mr. Halflife, do you think?”