Rook(85)

She stepped back, restless and unsure why. Spear had not been himself ever since they left the Commonwealth. He was distracted, and when she’d asked him where he’d been the night before, he’d said Aunt Francesca’s, reminding her that it was good to have more than one plan B, and would say no more. She thought perhaps he was angry with her, after the ferry and the landover ride. If he was angry with her now, he would be furious with her later. He was never going to understand why she would take René Hasard with no marriage fee, when she could have had Spear Hammond for the same. But she could not think of that now. It was time to go down, to get Tom, to do what she’d come to. But for just a few more moments, the shadows of the unlit gallery held their own charm.

She started at a hand on her shoulder, and found René behind her. He was in full ballroom René regalia, though a bit more understated, as favored by the city at the moment. He didn’t speak, just pulled her through the doorway to the corridor, where he turned and put a hand on her neck and his forehead on hers. Sophia closed her eyes, lifting his other hand and holding it to her cheek. The door to the flat opened and shut below them, a distance that for a little while seemed very far away.

“Are you ready now, my love?” René whispered. She nodded. He tilted up her chin and kissed her once. “Then I will see you downstairs. Give me time to come through the back hall.”

She straightened, nodding again as she stepped away, watching as René disappeared into the dark hall. Her uncertainty was gone, doubt trickled away into nothing. She snapped out her fan, went onto the gallery, and waited in the shadows. When she saw René’s white head in the crowd below she lifted her chin, and began taking slow steps down the stairs to her engagement party.



Spear wove his way through the crowd, glass in hand, ignoring the women who smiled, moving to a corner where he could watch Sophia’s gray gown glimmering in the shadows of the gallery. She’d been just as easy to see at the end of the corridor, standing still with Hasard’s white head against hers when he’d opened his bedroom door. So easy to see when she’d let him kiss her. And now she was coming down the stairs, head held high under the fancy, black curls, eyes painted dark, skin the color of honey. She was so, so naive.

He’d thought it all through, made his preparations, but still he’d been undecided, dithering like a schoolboy. But now he knew what was right, and he knew what to do about it. Would not be dissuaded from it. He could have forgiven her infatuation; such things went away. What he could not forgive was what he had just seen in the upper corridor of the Hasard flat.



Just like at her Banns, conversations paused as she came down the stairs, and ballroom René, or a version of him, was waiting for her at the bottom. He kissed her hand.

“Miss Bellamy,” he said, so that only she could hear. “You are the brightest of stars fallen to the earth.”

Sophia looked at him from beneath darkened lashes. “Isn’t that what the Ancients said about Lucifer, Monsieur?” The familiar words caused a quirk at the corner of his mouth as she took his arm. “I am surprised you remember that,” she whispered.

“I never forget your insults. They are so instructive. And it is good to be right.” His eyes were mesmerizingly blue in the soft light. “Sometimes I do think you are the very devil.”

She hid her smile behind her fan before putting on a more formal expression. Unlike at her Banns, these guests were queuing up in a line several feet away, ready to walk up one at a time and greet her. The violins began to play McCartney as the first in line, a woman with a turban on her head, approached.

“Madame Gagniani, stop! Please!” René said loudly. “You turn my thoughts from my fiancée!” Sophia returned the woman’s amused curtsy.

“Smuggler,” René whispered near Sophia’s ear, as Madame moved away, “though she never uses the turban, which is strange to me. And this one coming is a collector, and a supporter of Allemande. We watch him carefully.” Sophia gave her hand to an older, very proper gentleman, and then to another man, large around the middle.

“My love, let me introduce you to the Sunken City’s new Ministre of Trade.” She smiled pleasantly at the man who had taken Ministre Bonnard’s post. If this was the man who had condemned them, she wished him a slow death.

“And Louis!” René said. “Where is your maman? You know how she always longs to dance with me!”

There must have been some inside joke here, because Louis, a boy who could not have been much older than Cartier, dimpled a little when she held out her hand. To her surprise, she felt that he’d left something behind when he let go. “Smuggler?” she asked René beneath her breath, hiding her hand behind her fan.

“Fence.”

“Is there anyone here who is not a criminal?”

His gaze roved the room. “Are you including us?”

Sophia smiled. Mostly criminals, then, and almost all of them armed, she’d noticed. She glanced down to see what was in her hand, and froze. It was a tiny black feather with a tip of red. This was for Tom, she thought. From the young fence. And for her, if he’d known it. She exchanged pleasantries with a sand supplier, and before their conversation was over, the tiny feather was down the front of her dress.

As the line thinned René said quietly, “I should warn you, my love, that you will meet all of my uncles before the night is over. But do you see the tall man with the lace on his collar, drinking wine with that foul melter, the one who is looking at us now? That is Uncle Enzo, and you must be particularly cautious around him.”