servant is in the pay of the Fenians, who I believe are in the pay of the French. I've provided a copy of my findings and of the list of names provided by Don Sebastien's agent"—and how strange, now, to dismiss the old-eyed, magnanimous young Mr. Priest with that cold description, as if he were no more than Sebastien's extended hand—"to the Colonial Police."
And as her comment was interrupted by the sound of the door knocker, she concluded, "I rather expect that's them now."
And the wonder of it was, Richard stepped back. "Abby Irene, this will ruin me."
"Nonsense," she answered. "You're unsinkable."
But he was always so clever, so ruthless. And this was no exception. "We can salvage this," he said. "If you'll say that you left out the Lord Mayor's part in the plot under duress, under threat or ensorcelment, and testify that Seamus is Eliot's agent, we can still salvage this."
One may, Garrett mused, flee an island nation for colonial shores and leave a handsome prince behind. One may set one's self well back from the centers of power—or as far back as one's temperament and inclination will allow. One may limit one's options and remove opportunities for conflict,
for temptation.
It will find one anyway.
She had been here before, metaphorically speaking. She knew the signs of a tipping point as well as she knew anything: the damp palms, the cold across her neck. She was intoxicated, perhaps not the best state in which to be making life-altering decisions, but she'd never let that stop her.
She said, "Not without an order from my King."
* * *
In the small hours of the morning, Garrett answered a tap on her front door. Mary was long abed, and Garrett had been drinking that night, rather than sleeping.
She swayed as she pulled the handle, but managed the operation with only a little awkwardness. Say what you would about the Crown Investigator; she was a lady who could hold her liquor. She chortled at the thought: most unladylike, which made her laugh the more.
At the top of her stair, cloaked against the night's deep chill and with a hood drawn over his bright hair, stood Mr. Priest.
"Oh," she said. "Mr. Priest. Come in."
A moment later, she remembered to stand aside to let him enter, but
he remained where he was. "I'm just here to deliver a message," he said. "Against my counsel—not, please, that I do not think you can be trusted—Sebastien sends to tell you that a letter may find him in Boston at the home of Mrs. Phoebe Smith. Under the name of Nast. Will you remember that, Crown Investigator?"
"I'm drunk, young man, not incapacitated." Her show of indignation was admittedly somewhat undermined when she was obliged to clutch the doorframe to stay upright.
He smiled, a cherub with a wicked secret. "Also, he sent this." He held out a gloved hand with the back toward the sky, something concealed in the palm. When she reached, he laid a crisp, green-bloomed red apple in her grasp. A van den Broeck, grown in New Amsterdam since the first Dutch settlers brought over seeds sewn into their petticoats.
She closed her fingers over the cool, waxy globe and lifted it to smell. Tart, sweet. The aroma cleared her head a little.
Comfort me with apples, she'd said, quoting the Song of Solomon—
and had Sebastien answered in kind? My beloved spoke, and said unto me, "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." "Was there a message with it, Mr. Priest?"
The young man shook his head. "He said you'd understand. And please call me Jack, Abby Irene."
Chatoyant
(December, 1902)
Don Sebastien de Ulloa turned the silver ring between his
fingers, refusing—quite—to frown. The metal stayed cool; Sebastien's touch could warm nothing. He watched the light bend across a cloudy cat's-eye sapphire set level with the broad flat band, and licked his lips.
"Chatoyant," he said, and when he looked up felt the frown get away from him. Jack Priest, his friend and courtier, stared at him across the width of a cherrywood table in the chintz-and-lace front parlor of the Boston townhouse of Mrs. Phoebe Smith. His head cocked under a cherubic blond tangle, he frowned right back.
"Said of a mineral's luster," Sebastien continued, "'containing numerous threadlike inclusions, aligned to produce catseye figures with reflected light.'" He held up the ring so the glow from the gaslamps caught in those selfsame inclusions. It was not yet evening, but Sebastien could not venture into sunlight. And so the draperies were drawn.