Rook(67)

“They know what to print and what to not. But they must have something to write about, yes? And we must give it to them. So I am saying that starting at dawn, at the dock, Miss Bellamy and I will have to behave in a way that is … very engaged. Can we do this?”

An uncomfortable silence spread. Sophia hadn’t considered this part of their plan, especially in light of that magnetic force that she was currently trying to resist by standing at the window. René would go back to being the man of the Parisian magazine, and with a bride-to-be to show off. Should she pretend to like it, when she really did, all while pretending that she didn’t? She fiddled with a shirt button. What a strange torture.

“But it is not only the papers that should concern us. We must assume we are being watched,” René continued. “LeBlanc will be watching. On the ferry, on the road, every step we take in the city. No one must doubt my relationship with Miss Bellamy, not until the fight we have planned. To do otherwise would endanger the Rook and those that wait for her in the Tombs. So I cannot afford to have my behavior questioned.”

“You are not to kiss her,” Spear said. Sophia’s head whipped around.

René was slouched into the chair now, his grin a little wicked. “As chaperone, you must feel it your proper duty to make such rules. But I wonder, Hammond, just how good you will be at enforcing them?”

Spear and René glared at each other like two boys with one cake between them. It woke her temper. Sophia left the window, snatching up her fluffy white underskirt from the laundry basket on the way, and sat herself down before the low table in a cloud of white cloth.

“I’ll be the one making my own rules, thank you,” she said, pulling out a knife. “And I think you both know I’m perfectly capable of enforcing them.” What was wrong with them? What was wrong with her? Since when had she ever wanted to marry anybody? “Spear, I’ll die happy if I never hear your opinion on this again,” she said, mentally gauging the size of the firelighter. “And as for you, Monsieur …” The cloth of the underskirt made a soft ripping sound as she slid the knife through the seam. “Tomorrow we will be exactly as engaged as I say we are.”



LeBlanc set down a goblet of wine and cut a slit beneath the seal of a small invitation. His desk was littered with reports of insurrection and red feathers, but his interview with the Upper City commandant had left him in a good mood. He read the invitation’s neat Parisian, drumming his fingers on the top of the plain, polished desk.

“Well, Renaud. It appears the marriage with Miss Bellamy goes forward. Isn’t that charming?”

Renaud was on his knees on the other side of the desk, scouring blood from the floor.

LeBlanc read through the invitation again, drumming harder on the desk. “They are to give an engagement party, on the eve of Tom Bellamy’s execution, and we are invited. How kind of them.” He chuckled. “I don’t think we need to attend such a farce, do you? And what funds does my young cousin think to use for this marriage?” His pale eyes became slits. “Exactly whose side is he playing on, Renaud?”

Renaud always kept his opinions to himself. It’s why he was alive.

After a time LeBlanc sighed. “It is unwise to tempt Fate, and I admit I am curious. We will have the landover road to the city watched, and a personal search at each gate, I think. The Goddess may have declared life for the Rook for three more nights, but there is no need to make that time easy for her, Renaud. And perhaps it is also time to have another talk with Madame Hasard. She may be very interested to hear this happy news about her son.” LeBlanc’s smile curled as he looked at René’s looping script. “The love of a parent often affects good judgment.”



Sophia lifted the trapdoor to her father’s room and silently pushed aside the rug. It had been a difficult trip to negotiate. She’d had to go out the farmhouse window, onto the roof, across and down the outside of the chimney stones. And then she’d taken to the woods and fields instead of the road, ways that were almost as familiar, all of it armed to the teeth. For all she knew Mr. Halflife was still lurking about, hoping for that breakfast meeting with signatures and scones. But she would not leave the Commonwealth without seeing her father, and she wasn’t in any mood to ask permission, or make the trip with fanfare and an escort.

Bellamy sat much as he had the last time she’d come, in his chair looking out the window. Dying firelight flickered on the walls, and the room was stifling. Just how many times a night was Nancy tiptoeing in here to build up the fire? She was glad Orla was coming to help her. Bellamy’s eyes were open, hair combed, pajamas and robe clean, but he seemed to have shrunk beneath his blankets. Sophia put a tentative hand on his chair.

“Father? It’s Sophia.”

Bellamy blinked once, but did not change his stare.

“I’m leaving now,” she whispered. “I’m going to get Tom. He’ll come back to you in just a few days. I promise you that.” She did not promise him that she would come back. She waited. “Do you understand, Father?”

The boom of the ocean was an undercurrent in the thick, stagnant silence. Sophia waited for ten of Bellamy’s breaths, then laid a red-tipped feather in her father’s open hand. She left the way she’d come, the stifling dark of the room settled deep in her lungs. The feeling didn’t fully clear away until she was back at Spear’s farm, up the chimney stones, across the roof, and in through her bedroom window.