Rook(79)

He came at her fast again, and instead of meeting him head-on she ducked and turned, switching their positions. She stepped back, knocking his sword aside and then crossing with him again, letting him push her up against a door. His expression was a little disappointed from the other side of their blades. “You ran? I did not think …” She gave him a beatific smile, reached behind with her free hand, and pushed down on the door latch.

She’d been ready for the loss of resistance but he had not. She dropped to her knees and he went down to the floor through the doorway, though he managed to knock her sword from her hand on the way. There was a scramble in the dark as they fought over the loose blade, Sophia crawling right over his back to get it, her struggle becoming ineffectual from laughter. René was cursing up a storm in Parisian, a flurry of words that would have made any man on Blackpot Street proud.

Then he froze for just a moment, grabbed her hard by the arm, and thrust her behind him, both of them still on their knees. There was someone else in the room, moving with soft footsteps across the carpet. The window curtains were yanked back, the lights of the city and a rising middlemoon showing a tall woman in her nightgown. Even in the dim Sophia could see that the woman’s hair was flaming red.

“Maman!” said René, in a tone rather close to his words from Blackpot Street.

“René,” the woman said. In her voice, the name sounded like an accusation.



Sophia sat straight-backed on one end of the pale green settee in the main room of the flat, René on the other end, her discarded underskirt piled in fluffy disarray between them. Her hair was a mess but her dress was righted, shoes scattered somewhere on the floor near the windows. Madame sat enthroned in a gold-painted chair, regal in a dressing gown, looking pointedly at the underskirt. The silence stretched. Sophia wondered where Spear had gotten to. Then Madame Hasard held out a handkerchief from an outstretched hand.

“Miss Bellamy,” she said, face unreadable, “you have hair powder on your … chest.”

“Oh, please, Maman,” said René, throwing up a hand.

Sophia took the handkerchief with a smile. “Thank you, Madame Hasard, for pointing that out.” She made a show of tidying her skin before handing it back. “Is that better?”

Benoit came in with a tray, eyeing René with what Sophia thought might have been amusement. He offered a glass of wine to Madame Hasard, a mug to René, and a mug of the same to Sophia, then stepped away to hover in the background. Sophia peeked inside the mug.

“Warm milk,” said Madame Hasard. “It promotes sleep, and discourages nighttime rambling.”

“Enough, Maman,” said René, slamming down the mug alarmingly hard on a tabletop of glass. “I apologize for disturbing you. But might I remind you that you were supposed to be in prison?”

She feigned surprise. “You prefer your maman to be locked away?”

“When did you get out? Are you on the run?”

“René! You will offend the sensibilities of Miss Bellamy.”

“I do not think you are concerned with the sensibilities of Miss Bellamy!”

“If you were concerned with the sensibilities of Miss Bellamy, perhaps you would not have been ravishing her in the same room where your poor maman was trying to sleep!”

René loosened the cravat and then he was on his feet and pacing. Sophia’s eyes bounced from one powdered white head showing streaks of red to one mostly red head showing a few streaks of white. She considered saying, “No, Madame, he was only trying to skewer me with a sword,” but decided to hold her tongue. Benoit put his hands behind his back.

“Miss Bellamy,” René was saying, “is my fiancée, Maman. And by your orders, if you will remember.”

“What Miss Bellamy is remains to be seen.”

That statement stopped René’s stride. He turned on his heel to look at his mother. “Maman, why are you out of the Tombs?”

Madame Hasard sipped her wine. “I am out of that filthy place, dearest, because I signed away your fortune.”

Sophia’s eyes darted to René, and she watched shock hit him like a blow to the middle. He sat on the edge of the settee, elbows on knees, breath knocked out of him, expression uncomprehending. And then his head was down, hands on the back of his neck. When he finally looked up he said, “I was coming to get you, Maman.”

“Were you?” She sipped more wine. She was thin beneath her dressing gown, but Sophia did not know her usual build. “It seemed to be taking quite some time.”

“You signed?”

“Yes, René.”

“And what do we have left?”

“Not a franc in the city.”

“The flat?”

“LeBlanc owns the flat.”


And that, Sophia thought, explained the guard at the street level of the building. René said, “What about the ships?”

“LeBlanc does not know about the ships.”

Sophia breathed. That was good.

“And how long do we have the flat?” he asked.

“Two days, René.”

Sophia let out her breath again. They needed only one. One day, and they could do what they had to. René’s eyes met hers, but the fire had gone out of them. He leaned forward again, fingers tented over his nose, staring at the floor that now belonged to LeBlanc.