Unlikely Spy Catchers by Carla Kelly

Author:Carla Kelly
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2019-05-20T18:00:00+00:00

— Chapter Twenty-Six —

Jean found it easy enough to tell Mrs. Six a bit more of the truth, when she and a pretty redhead returned to the room with a tray of food. Mrs. Six told Smitty to go below with Betsy to eat.

She walked Jean’s new and unwanted roommate to the door. Smitty stood there a moment.

“Yes, Smitty?” she asked.

Master Six’s enforcer looked suddenly young and precisely twelve years old, to Jean’s eyes. “I’ve wanted to live here,” he said in a rush. “We all do.”

“I wish I had room for all of you,” the lady said. “When you finish your meal, fetch your belongings and bring them back. You are welcome here.”

Smitty grinned, and Jean saw all the genuine pleasure. It had been years, but he remembered his home, and Maman and Papa. Those were simple times, before Maman died, Papa married a dragon, and France plunged into the Terror. And now I am here in an English seaport, because I dove into a pile of corpses. Life is strange.

Still Smitty hesitated. “Should I leave you, Mrs. Six?”

“I will be fine. Go eat before your food is cold. Sir B and Miss Croker are staying for dinner, too, so mind your manners.”

“That’s the hard part about living here, isn’t it?” he asked, and Mrs. Six laughed out loud.

As Jean watched the little scene with growing appreciation, Mrs. Six planted a kiss on Smitty’s cheek – Smitty the enforcer – and pulled him close for a second.

“Smitty, think what you can learn by listening to such august company,” she said. “There will be dessert.”

No thug now, Smitty beamed at his benefactress and clattered down the stairs, spurred on, no doubt, by dessert. And look, there was dessert on Jean’s tray.

“Madame Six, you have achieved excellence in the management of boys,” he said, then tucked into the food in front of him.

“I treat them kindly, and have never been disappointed.”

Madame, have you any idea how charming you are? he thought. Jean felt every care in his life slide away, if only for a moment. Pleasant smells – except for him – filled his nostrils. True, the food was English, but why quibble? The mattress was soft, and he was warm enough for the first time in the long winter. No one argued or babbled or shrieked or raged. True, he had lost all his art supplies, but he knew there would be more. He doubted that St. Brendan’s boys would be as sly as Ianthe Faulke. He closed his eyes, happy to blot out her petulant face.

“Pierre, have you been here all this time? Oh, I do wish you understood English.”

He opened his eyes to see Pierre standing close to the bed, giving him a worried look that made Jean sigh inside. I don’t want to think of war at all, he told himself, then felt ashamed because after all, Pierre was his powder monkey and he was Capitain Hubert to the little fellow.

“He is so quiet that I sometimes forget where he is,” Meri said.

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