But strangely enough, she’d felt better sitting there, huddled on the floor. Her father was ill in his mind and becoming so in his body. Seeing that had made it easier to let go of words that reflected nothing more than sickness and grief. She decided not to remember them. And so instead she’d thought about what René Hasard had said in Spear’s kitchen, just as she’d thought about it while he swung his scythe in the cornfield until there were no more stalks. The way she’d thought about it when he sat down in the kitchen, doggedly finishing the invitations, while she made her escape from the roof and into the toolshed, where she’d spent the entire span of highsun sharpening her sword and every one of her knives. After that she’d shut herself up in her room, sewing her picklocks into the seams of her gloves, not thinking about what René Hasard had said at all. Instead she thought about what he’d done: his slightly calloused hands on her hair and her neck, the way his thumb had moved, as if he liked the feel of her. She paid zero attention to Orla’s shaking head and knowing looks.
And when she finally had encountered him, coming up the stairs as she was going down, she hadn’t been able to think about anything at all; her eyes had dropped immediately to her feet. “I owe you an apology, Miss Bellamy” was all he’d said before moving past her up the stairs. Thinking about that had kept her restless and kicking the furniture until, when the much too observant Orla had finally fallen asleep in her own room, Sophia had thrown open the window, dropped out a rope, and taken off to Bellamy House.
The water beneath her feet was noisy, the rookery sleeping and quiet, the north lights fading almost to nothing. There were no portents, signs, or balls of fiery machinery shooting across the sky, either. Mostly there was the wind, which smelled just a little like the sea. And winter. Sophia pulled her coat closed over the filigree belt she wore, just in case, and glanced once at the trees on her left.
“Benoit,” she called, raising her voice, though not enough to wake the rooks. “Come walk with me.” She waited, standing still in the breeze, then switched to Parisian. “Wouldn’t it be easier if we just walked back together?”
She heard the faint rustle of leaves, and the rustle became the shadow of a man materializing from the woods. Sophia smiled as Benoit stepped into the road and followed her across the footbridge. They walked side by side down the A5 lane.
“I’ve been to see my father,” she said, still in Parisian. “Though I’m sure you know that already.”
Benoit didn’t say anything, just walked, hands in pockets.
“I’ve wanted to … I should have said it sooner, but I wanted to thank you for what happened at the Holiday.”
She saw the movement of his nod. Benoit was thin, unremarkable, perfect for his job, but his walk struck her as unhappy. She said, “You didn’t do anything wrong, you know. I didn’t know you were there. I just assumed that one of you must be. I wouldn’t have let me go sneaking off in the middle of the night on my own.” Benoit shuffled along beside her, silent. “Your master really should let you get some sleep.”
“René does not sleep. And he is not my master.”
“I see.” Sophia considered this as they made the turn onto Graysin Lane. Parisians were usually so clear about the lines between classes, but nothing about René seemed to follow the usual. “If he doesn’t sleep, then why doesn’t he follow me himself?”
“Because he is being a fool.”
“Oh, so he thinks I don’t need following? And this upsets you?”
“I am not used to seeing a Hasard act like a fool.”
Sophia smiled, thinking of René running about Bellamy House, finding ingenious ways to be annoying so he wouldn’t have to marry her. “I would’ve thought you’d be quite familiar, actually.”
Her words had been teasing, but Benoit’s were not. “Now you are being the fool, Mademoiselle.”
She looked at him sidelong. Probably he’d be surprised to know that, generally speaking, she agreed with him. “I don’t think you like me, Benoit.”
“No. I do not.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you care for nothing but the money.”
Sophia stopped in the road. “Once you get going, you are very free with your opinions.”
“I am truthful. That is all.”
“You may think you’re being truthful, but you are just being wrong.”
“As you say.” He started down the lane again, hands in pockets.
Sophia caught up to him. “I didn’t ask for this, you know. No more than he did, and of course I care whether my father is in a debtor’s cell and if we lose our land. But I will get Adèle Hasard out of the Tombs whether there is a marriage fee or not.”
The trees thinned, the farmhouse looming dark on their left, one window showing a faint candle-glow. Sophia felt her spurt of temper evaporating. “I said I would get his mother out and I will. But whatever happens afterward, I don’t mean him any harm, Benoit.”
His soundless footsteps ceased. “And yet you are causing it, are you not? René does not show himself easily, Mademoiselle.” And with that Benoit turned and walked away, taking a smooth, quick stride to the farmhouse, uninterested in anything else she might have to say.
Sophia looked up. The candlelit window was René’s room, a figure moving back and forth behind the curtain. What did Benoit mean? And could she really have the power to hurt him? She’d thought any danger of that was the other way around.
She watched Benoit’s shadowy form slip around the corner of the farmhouse, then turned and looked behind her. Branches were moving, and Cartier came out of the woods on the other side of the lane.
“You’re lucky I got him to walk with me,” Sophia said as he came trotting up.
“I reckon he would’ve spotted me for sure, Miss Bellamy.”
Sophia grinned at the top of Cartier’s mop-like head. You would never guess that Cartier was Parisian. He’d taken to the Commonwealth like a little chameleon, embodying Parliament’s ideal of the resourceful survivor better than most men she knew. Even though he hadn’t quite hit his growth spurt.
“I’ve left you three more kegs,” Sophia said. “In the print house, in the usual place. You can get all eight of them sent on to the city tomorrow? And they are all correctly marked?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“And this is still our secret, even from Spear?” The boy looked so affronted she didn’t wait for an answer. “Right, off you go, then. And … No, wait.”
Cartier dropped out of his runner’s stance and looked up at her inquiringly. She reached into her jacket and handed him a small sack of quidden.
“This isn’t all of it. Money is … a bit scarce at the moment.”
“Well, that’s no secret, Miss Bellamy. My mum told me that.”
Sophia sighed. That should not have surprised her. “Will your mother be all right? Until I can get the rest?”
“Not to worry, Miss.”
She grinned again. Cartier was an absolute brick. “Careful, then!”
“Double to you, Miss Bellamy.” He took off like a young fox into the trees.
Sophia looked up again at the farmhouse, the vague silhouette walking back and forth between the candle flame and the curtain. She supposed she’d always thought of things like marriage and love as a trap, like René had said, something clever girls didn’t let happen to them. Mrs. Rathbone, for all her prattling, had never struck her as happy. Nancy she could envision nowhere but in a kitchen, and the loss of her mother seemed to have all but destroyed her father. Not, perhaps, the best of examples on which to form all her judgments. But now she wondered.
Leaves rustled, and Sophia turned her head, thinking Cartier had come back. But he hadn’t. She went still, eyes scanning, hand to her belt buckle. She waited, but there was nothing, only trees combing the wind with half-naked limbs.
She took Benoit’s route back to the farmhouse, watching black shadow arms stretch up high behind a head in a room filled with candlelight. She wanted to know if what René had said could be true, and if so, what she would risk to have it. She wanted to know if Benoit meant what she thought he might, that René was showing her something real. She wanted to know if he was real. Preferably before she risked death in the Tombs.