Текст книги "Rook"

Автор книги: Sharon Cameron

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

What had just happened? What had she nearly allowed to happen? Her skin was tingling, pulse still racing, and not from her climb. She closed her eyes, letting the sun burn the lids. When she was a child she’d seen molten glass once, a glowing, fiery mass that looked soft and moldable like clay, but amazingly translucent, lit from within, so alluring that she’d ached to touch it even though she knew it would burn. And that was exactly how she’d been thinking of René Hasard, something tempting but off-limits for her own good. But what if he did not burn? He’d just said truth to her, more truth than she’d known what to do with. She touched her neck where his hands had been. Or what if he was just that good at the game?

Then she was up on her elbows. The kitchen door had been kicked hard from the inside, bouncing back into the wall stones she’d just climbed. She craned her neck and saw René striding across the farmyard, untucked shirt billowing with his speed. He went straight into the toolshed, coming out again with a curved, rather wicked-looking scythe, his face hard and white as a chalk cliff. When he got to the cornfield he tossed the blade aside, stripped off his shirt, wadded it up and threw it on the ground, picked up the scythe, and took a mighty swing. Down came the cornstalks in a scythe-wide swath. Once more, and again, each new swing of his arm ending in a little Parisian uff. The muscles of his back stood out with the effort, smooth movements repeating over and over until he was shining with sweat, red hair blowing wild in the wind. It was true. He was beautiful.

Sophia lay back down on the roof thatch, listening to René cut the remnants of Spear’s cornfield. Swish, uff! Swish, uff! What if he could be believed? What if she could believe him? She’d already pulled out those scales again, this time weighing her future against two-thirds of the souls in the Tombs. That was done. An easy choice. But did she really know what she was giving up? And what if, somehow, she managed to come out again?

She closed her eyes, feeling a finger move her hair, a thumb brush the skin along the edge of her jaw. No matter how many times she told herself that René Hasard was a liar, the simple truth was that she desperately wanted him not to be.

“Tom?” Jennifer called.

Tom brought his knees up to his chest, huddling for warmth, though he knew his leg was not going to like that for long. The cold down here had a way of seeping into the bones, making them ache. “I’m here.”

“Are you afraid to die?”

“No,” he said. “But I hate the idea of not living.” He’d had Jennifer talking for a long time. He liked it when she talked. It kept her from terror and kept him sane. When she was quiet, he was consumed by the irrational fear that someone had spirited her away without him knowing.

“Tom,” she said again. Tom concentrated on her voice in the dark. He could hear the change in it. “I …” She paused a long time. “I told LeBlanc that it was you. The day they cut me. I knew it was Sophie, but I told them it was you. I didn’t want them to catch her, and I needed … I needed them to stop.”

Tom sighed. He knew. But Jennifer hadn’t done any different than he had, had she? “You did the right thing,” he said. When she didn’t answer he said, “It was right, Jen.”

“But in here …” Tom leaned nearer the door, straining to hear. “When LeBlanc came, I told him it was Sophie. Because I couldn’t … make myself live through that. Not again.”

Tom lifted his hands, wrists heavy with the shackles, and rubbed his bearded cheeks. He’d thought as much. Then it was certain that LeBlanc knew the identity of the Red Rook. And he would be a fool not to know that the Red Rook was coming for her brother.

“Tom, I’m sorry …”

“Jennifer, listen to me. None of this is your fault. I don’t want you to think about it again. Not for another moment.” He didn’t know if he would have risked her anger and resentment if the circumstances were reversed. It would be too much of a loss. “And if you don’t stop thinking about it, I’ll be forced to sing you a song.”

The darkness of the Tombs pressed down. “Oh, no,” Jennifer said, her voice small. “Please, Tom. Anything but that.”

They laughed, a weird, incongruent sound in that place. But if LeBlanc knew Sophie was coming, Tom thought, then what was there to prevent him from taking her now? From her bed in Bellamy House, or the Channel ferry, or an Upper City street? What would keep him from just killing her on the spot? He couldn’t think of a thing. And LeBlanc seemed to have allies in the Commonwealth that none of them had been aware of. His sister had enemies on every side, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“Now close your eyes, Jennifer,” he said slowly, “and imagine you’re on the balcony of your flat. The tiles are cold, but you’ve got a blanket wrapped around you. You’re camping out, like you and Sophie did when you were little. The sky is black, and you can hear the water of the Seine falling down the cliffs. And I’ve brought you a light, so you won’t be frightened …”

LeBlanc lit his last candle and stepped back, admiring his work. He stood inside a giant circle of fire, dozens of tiny, blazing flames that lit the polished floor of his private rooms, sending bright, flickering light onto the black-painted walls. LeBlanc’s flat, connected by a door to his office, looked like the rooms of a holy man, or a hermit. Serviceable, plain, unadorned. But he knew Fate was soon to offer him better.

His new black and white robes rustled pleasantly as he moved to a table in the center of the circle, draped with a cloth that had been stitched together, half white, half black. It matched the streak in his hair. A coal fire burned in a small brass brazier, and swinging above this, suspended on a tripod, hung a burnished pot filled with water. LeBlanc looked up as Renaud entered.

“You have brought it, Renaud?” The secretary approached and presented a small vial of rust-brown liquid over the candle flames. “Good. Very good. The blood of the brother should be perfectly adequate.”

He set the vial beside the pot. Tiny wisps of steam were beginning to curl into the air. Then he clicked the latch of a plastic box, not reformed, but Ancient, smoothly ribbed and shining black. Inside was a row of four small plastic bottles, also Ancient, two partially filled with a dark liquid, two with white, all fitted with a heavy wax seal. LeBlanc chose one of each color and lifted them to the light. Formed into the plastic of each bottle was the word HILTON.

“This is a dear sacrifice, but I think it is needed, Renaud. When to kill the Red Rook is a decision that lies heavy. But what will be, will be, and therefore has already been. The Goddess will show the path.”

He set the bottles to one side, picked up the vial Renaud had brought, and began pouring Tom’s coagulated blood into the pot that was just beginning to boil. And then the door to LeBlanc’s office creaked open slowly. LeBlanc paused, paralyzed, still in the act of pouring Tom’s blood, while Renaud slipped farther into his corner. Premier Allemande stood looking at them, blinking at the dozens of candles dripping wax onto the floor.

“There you are, Albert,” said Allemande, voice as soft as LeBlanc’s. He was a small man, unassuming, in trousers that were just the slightest bit too long for him. He turned and waved a hand, instructing his escort to wait before he shut the door on them.

“You did not come to the viewing box tonight, Albert. And the last one was so lively, too. She gave us quite a show.” He indulged in a muted chuckle as he removed his spectacles, cleaning them with a handkerchief. The viewing box had been built with such proximity to the Razor that occasionally there was spatter. “We can only hope your Red Rook will be half so entertaining,” he continued. “I am disappointed you missed it. Very disappointed. Or perhaps you have lost interest in the justice of the city, Albert?”

“I apologize, Premier,” LeBlanc said, steadying himself against the table. LeBlanc’s reply was just as soft as Allemande’s, only his voice betrayed a tinge of fear. “Forgoing something enjoyable is often a sacrifice required by Fate. The greater and more personal the sacrifice, the more the Goddess will attend us.”

“While I am of the opinion that official executions should be attended by my ministres,” stated Allemande, holding up his spectacles to the candlelight, “especially my Ministre of Security.”

LeBlanc bowed slightly, a move of both apology and deference.

“I take it you have an important question to ask of your Goddess?”

LeBlanc glanced once at Renaud, and then at the boiling pot, the edges now ringed with brownish foam. If Allemande discovered that the man rotting somewhere deep below them was not the Red Rook, then it would be the Ministre of Security’s head that the officials of the city would enjoy watching roll across the scaffold. He could always allow Tom Bellamy to die as the Red Rook, of course, have the sister quietly killed, and Allemande need never be the wiser. Sophia Bellamy could be dead by the next dusk if he chose. But would that displease the Goddess? Or no? Fate had not removed Luck from him, and he would not choose the death of the Red Rook without consulting her. Who he would not be consulting was Allemande. He set down the vial.

“Yes, Premier. I do have a question for the Goddess.”

“Well, by all means,” Allemande replied. “Let’s hear it, then. I am always in need of amusement.”

Renaud stiffened in the corner where he had retreated, watching his master carefully, but LeBlanc only smiled, a creeping crack that widened across the bottom half of his face. He stood a little taller. What did he have to fear from an unbeliever like Allemande? Was he not fated to become all that Allemande was, and more? Was he not marked by the sign of the Goddess in his own hair?

“I will be happy to, Premier. Perhaps you would allow me to show you.” LeBlanc picked up the Ancient plastic bottles as Renaud seated Allemande in a chair. “Yes,” LeBlanc said, holding up the bottle of white liquid, “and no.” He raised the bottle of black. “Life and death. Those are the answers of Fate. One of these answers she will give us, and show us what is to be.”

He looked to the air, where the steam from the pot was rising. “Goddess, is it your will that I kill now, while the Red Rook is in my hand? Or do I wait, and grant life until the proper time, that the Rook may become a sacrifice to you?”

He waited, bottles raised to the Goddess, then dropped them simultaneously into the bubbling pot.

Sophia paused on a small stone bridge, water churning and splashing beneath her feet, rushing on its way to the sea cliffs. She thought she’d heard a faint rustle in the trees to her left, but the noise did not come again. She looked skyward. The north lights were muted tonight, faint undulating waves of pale green and a bit of red, the sky behind them spangled with the last of the stars. That’s what Tom had always said: spangled with stars. The stars, he said, were from Before. She wondered if Tom had gotten her note, if he knew she was coming for him. If he didn’t, then he didn’t know his sister at all. But she’d wanted to make sure he hadn’t forgotten to hope, like their father. Their father had forgotten everything but despair.

She’d sat for a long time on the floor of Bellamy’s room, coming up through the trapdoor beneath his rug—Bellamy House was full of such oddities—watching his back as he gazed out the black and empty window. It had been very quiet, only Nancy snoring faintly in the other room. She thought her father had been asleep as well, but it was hard to tell. Nancy said there wasn’t much difference either way.

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.

Life. Or Death. LeBlanc pressed his hands together, waiting for Fate to declare the Red Rook’s destiny as the Ancient bottles bobbed in the boiling water, warping and collapsing in on themselves. It took some time, as if the Goddess was suffering a fit of indecision. But then, suddenly, a bottle broke.

LeBlanc straightened. “The water is white. The answer of the Goddess is life.”

Renaud’s face showed a slight eye-widening of surprise from his place behind Allemande’s chair.

“I am of the same opinion, Renaud. I …”

Allemande got up, voice smooth and even softer when annoyed. “So you wait to send Tom Bellamy to the Razor until the last day of La Toussaint. That was the answer of your Goddess? Isn’t that the date you have already set, Albert?”

LeBlanc ignored Allemande’s pique and bowed over the pot. “The will of Fate is absolute.”

“I think you will find that my will is also absolute. The Red Rook dies at the appointed time, no matter how many more rituals you perform. Is that understood?”

Allemande turned to go after LeBlanc had directed another bow his way, spectacles flashing with the tiny flames of half-burned candles. But then he paused and turned back, using a voice so muted it forced the attention of the room.

“I am glad to have seen this little demonstration. I believe the idea of being fated to die will capture the imagination of the people nicely. Set up something especially dramatic when you reduce the population of the Tombs, Albert, and I don’t think you’ll have trouble filling the chapels with your believers. What think you of a lottery wheel?”

“A wheel,” said LeBlanc quietly, “is not an object of Fate.”

Allemande dismissed this with a hand. “Present your ideas to me, then. Tomorrow, if you please. I hope your paperwork is in order?” LeBlanc nodded, lowering his eyes. Allemande looked him over for a few moments more, then opened the door and left with his escort, weapons jangling as they filed out of LeBlanc’s office.

LeBlanc waited until he heard the bell of the lift taking Allemande back down the center of the white stone building. Then his smile curled, long and slow.

“And now we let her come to us, Renaud. Every move that Sophia Bellamy makes is one step up the scaffold.”

Sophia came down the steps of the farmhouse, turned at the landing, and immediately turned again and went silently back up. Mr. Halflife was coming through Spear’s front door, and René was letting him in. Sophia froze on the stairs, out of sight around the corner of the landing, but trapped by the creakiness of Spear’s floors.

“Good day to you, too, Monsieur Hasard!” Mr. Halflife’s posh Manchester accent was strange in the house, especially in comparison with the ballroom Parisian René was affecting while inviting him in. “This is such a pleasant surprise, such a pleasant thing. I had thought you and Miss Bellamy were holidaying in the Midlands … discussing. I am happy to find I was wrong. Might I speak with Miss Bellamy? I have business with her that I want to conclude posthaste.”

“I wish that I could help you, Monsieur. But Miss Bellamy still travels. I came before her, to stay with my good friend Monsieur Hammond. He is nearly a brother to me now, of course.”

Sophia stood silently, hearing the pause this last sentence gave Mr. Halflife. She stuck one eye very carefully around the corner of the landing, where she could see the back of Mr. Halflife’s slicked head sitting on the couch. He was wearing a gray jacket, very tasteful, the cut of which was not at all Ancient, René nearly facing her in the other chair. He was sweaty, wood chips sticking all over his shirt, and yet somehow managing to pull off ballroom René very well. She saw the blue eyes make a quick, general sweep of the room that included the stairs.

“Then, I am to suppose …” Mr. Halflife collected himself. “I take it you are still contracted to marry Miss Bellamy, despite her brother’s misfortunes, and your cousin’s …”

“But of course! We are so very in love.”

“And what does Mr. Hammond think …”

Sophia watched René make an elegant gesture with his hand. He slid so easily from one role into another that it gave her pause. Then she felt her stomach tighten. Her silver shoes for the second engagement party, with the heels so high she’d had to practice walking in them, were still on the floor at the end of the couch, just out of Mr. Halflife’s sight. She focused her gaze, willing René to see what needed to be done, and then she heard St. Just’s claws come clicking down the stairs.

She reached out to catch his collar and thought better of it. He wanted out, and would have protested. Vigorously. Mr. Halflife began to turn at the noise and Sophia ducked back around the corner. She heard René get up from his chair as St. Just went yelping and barking into the sitting room.

“Ah, St. Just!” René cried. Sophia could hear her fox resisting having his ears scratched. He really was desperate to get out. “He is such a good pet, is he not, Mr. Halflife? But you must excuse his wild behavior. He is not a happy fox. He has the trouble with the … how do you say, the vermin.”

Sophia closed her eyes.

“Monsieur Hasard, I would be so grateful if you could tell me when I might have the pleasure of speaking with Miss …”

“Oh, pardon, Monsieur! Please … No, no, allow me …”

Sophia peeked around the corner to see St. Just leaping about the room like mad, her silver shoes gone, and René pulling pretend fleas off Mr. Halflife’s gray coat. She pulled her head back, biting her lip against an urge to laugh.

“We will have this attended to in a week or so, I am certain,” René was saying. “But they are stubborn creatures to be so small. Very vexing. A thousand pardons …”

The front door was opening. “When does Miss Bellamy return from her …”

The voices and barking faded as everyone moved outside. Sophia waited, then hurried upstairs and into René’s room, which had a view of the front. She put a finger to the wavering crack between the two curtains and watched Mr. Halflife practically on the run, brushing at his sleeves. A sleek landover stood waiting a long way down the lane. It seemed Mr. Halflife had hoped to catch someone unawares. He nearly had.

She heard boots on the stairs, and René came in, Benoit just behind him. René paused in the doorway. He’d been avoiding her when he could, and she had just made that impossible. Good. Sophia peered once more through the curtains. “He’s at a trot,” she said, speaking Parisian for Benoit. “I’d say that was very well done. And where are my shoes?”

“Under the couch,” René replied, tossing clothes from the bed onto a chair, brows drawn down. He looked tired, as if someone had pulled the cork and let out all his effervescence. She glanced around. His room had so many foreign things in it. Large boots, an eyescope on the table beside the bed. A little bowl of soap for shaving a face. So was this the real room, she wondered, instead of the staged one he’d left for her in Bellamy House? Or only another carefully constructed set? She watched Benoit taking away the clothing René had put in the room’s only chair.

“And here,” René said, emptying his pockets onto the cleared bed. She came to look. Her necklace, a list of food items in her handwriting, a few letters, a brush with brown spiral hairs sticking out of it, and a pencil. She stared at the pencil.

“Because you bite them, Mademoiselle,” said Benoit, answering the unasked.

“I did not know if Halflife would know that,” René added.

She picked up the pencil, which did indeed have bite marks. She hadn’t known she did such a thing. “Do you think he knew I was here?”

“He knew someone was here,” René replied. “He heard me putting logs in the hearth. But the chimneys would tell him as much. Perhaps he did not know you were here. Necessarily. Otherwise I do not think he could have been so easily dissuaded.”

He sat down on the unmade bed and leaned back, one arm behind his head, propping all but the dirtiest end of his boots on the blankets. He was a mess. Sophia felt sure he hadn’t slept. He’d been moving near dawn, when she saw him behind the curtain, and he’d been splitting logs not long after that. She’d heard him from the stable, where she’d gone with her sword to render unwarranted destruction on three bales of hay. He had his coin out of his pocket now, flipping it into the air and snagging it easily with the same hand. He opened his fingers, and the coin was face up. He made a mess look rather good.

“Did you tell her?” René asked. Benoit shook his head while René caught the coin again. Face. “Benoit says there is someone watching the house.”

Sophia felt her forehead crease, remembering rustling, and branches that moved when there was no breeze. She looked to Benoit. “You think, or are you certain?”

“I watched a man leave the trees after you went into the house last night. He circled, and then went back through the woods. I did not see a man replace him, but there could have been one. I do not think there was.”

So Benoit had not gone back to the farmhouse after all; he’d been watching her. She wondered if he’d seen Cartier. Probably. Likely the whole time, from the footbridge on. Benoit did not like her, but this might be the second time she needed to thank him for her life. She sat on the corner of the bed and ran her hands through her hair.

“What did he look like?”

“Large,” Benoit said. “Muscled. Knitted hat. No beard. But that is all I can say.”

“Who outside this farmhouse knows you are here, Mademoiselle?” René asked. Flip. Three turns in the air. Face.

“No one. Other than Cartier, of course.” She tried to think. “Nancy and her husband must know I haven’t gone far, and they might guess Spear’s, but they wouldn’t tell anyone. I’d stake my life on that. Could it be Mr. Halflife, do you think?”

“Then why is he not the one sitting on my bed, Mademoiselle, pen and ink in hand? This man that was watching, he was right behind you last night, Benoit says.”

Sophia looked closer at René. He was tired, yes. But he was also ticked. What about, exactly, she was not sure. “LeBlanc, then?”

“Why?” he asked, without sarcasm.

She didn’t know. If LeBlanc knew she was the Red Rook, wouldn’t he also be right here in this room, with twenty gendarmes and a pair of shackles? Her gaze went to Benoit.