Read Online My Lord and Spymaster by Joanna Bourne - Free Book Online Page A

she and I were on speaking terms.”

    “Save it. Listen.” Under the clank and rattle of the Flighty and the racket of rain hitting the deck, he heard wheels on the wharf. “Someone’s here.”

    Adrian cocked his head. “That’ll be Doyle with the hackney. ” He studied the girl on the bed with a remote intensity. “You won’t ever forgive me for arresting Josiah, will you? I don’t generally betray my friends. But then, my dealings with you Whitbys have always been exceedingly complex.” He touched her cheek. Her head rolled to the side, completely lax. “Out of the hunt. She never did have a head for liquor.”

    “A concussion is more to the point.”

    “How right you are. Between the knock on her head and the potent powders of the East, she won’t even remember being here. When I take her away, she won’t remember you at all, mon vieux .”

    Adrian always thought he was being subtle.

    Jess Whitby had got herself wound up in his blanke C iniv>ts. Her leg was bare to the thigh, long, with a down of golden hair. Erotic images started rolling around his mind like badly stowed lumber.

    He pulled on a clean shirt. The linen was salty from being washed at sea, a good, familiar smell. Nothing exotic and woman-scented. “Get her off my ship.”

    “Oh, I will. I will. Carry her for me, will you? I threw my knee out, fighting.” Adrian wrapped the blanket around Jess with a proprietary air. “And no clothes at all. You are so . . . thorough. It always complicates matters when they don’t have any clothes.”

    You’re not funny, Adrian. “Where are you taking her?”

    Adrian found her shoes. “I’m in the process of deciding that. Let’s proceed, shall we? I want her out of here before more gentlemen with knives show up.”

    It was mostly blanket he felt when he picked her up. But a bundle of blankets wouldn’t have shaped itself to fit his arms or leaned, confident and accepting, against his shoulder. Her hair blew back in his face when he pushed through the companionway door and the outside cold rolled over them. He recognized the spice on her now. She smelled of cardamom.

    She won’t remember me. He wanted to shake her and wake her up and make her look at him so he’d be sure she wouldn’t forget him. He wanted to see her eyes dilated, huge and dark, with his image inside. Most of all, he wanted her gone.

    The dock was empty. Adrian pulled his throwing knife and went first. They crossed the gangway and headed toward the coach that waited in the drizzle, side lamps lit. If Adrian’s knee was playing up on him, it didn’t show in the way he leaped up into the coach. He reached down impatiently. “I’ll take her from here. Hand her up to me.”

    All he had to do was hoist her up and walk away. You abandon damaged ware. You mark it off the inventory, and toss it away, and forget it.

    He couldn’t do it. Adrian, damn him, knew that.

    It should have been awkward, climbing into the coach, carrying a girl snuggled against him. But she didn’t weigh much. He set her in his lap, wrapped in his coat, keeping her steady when the coach lurched forward. “What are you going to do with her?”

    “If I said it’s not your concern . . . ?”

    “Don’t try my patience.”

    “I can’t take her to Meeks Street.” Adrian stretched his boots out casually across the strawed floor. “I might as well turn her over to the Foreign Office, neatly trussed. They’ve hatched several asinine schemes that involve her.”

    Sebastian wasn’t going to ask why the Foreign Office wanted Jess Whitby.

    “They don’t quite dare to arrest her openly—they are so very discreet, our diplomats—and I’ve been refusing to do it for them. I am unpopular with the Foreign Office at the moment. ” Adrian stashed the knife in his sleeve. “Colonel Reams at Military Intelligence is also full of plans for Jess. We’re agreed, are we not, that Colonel Reams will not get C wil Rhis hands on Jess?”

    “Fine.