Chapter Six #2
“Possibly,” Sidney said, “but it’s out of our hands now. We’ll pass it on to the Rook, and his team will take care of the matter.”
A shadow darkened Bishop’s face, and Sidney’s suspicions about the real reason for the meeting resurfaced. Something stronger than an eagerness to decipher notes made the set of Bishop’s chin one he feared would be difficult to cross.
“I know you made your position clear at the library,” she began slowly, “but I’m asking you to reconsider.” She looked down, picking at a crack in the bench between them. “I telephoned the Rook last night, and he agreed to double his original stipend offer.”
Sidney drew back in surprise. He’d known at first glance Bishop was the sort of person used to having her way, but he hadn’t expected the Rook to push over so easily.
A stipend wasn’t guaranteed as a field agent, and the Security Service must be truly desperate to increase the incentive—but he had already declined money once. “I said I won’t be bribed into this.”
“Think of it as payment for services rendered. You will simply take up a different side job.”
“Worked a lot of side jobs, have you?”
Bishop’s nostrils flared, and he expected a stinging retort. But her restrained calm was more unnerving. “I have not, which is why I am so eager to accept his offer. You might be able to pick up work as you please, but I cannot, Mr. Braithwaite. I need this money.”
There was a hunger in her eyes Sidney hadn’t realized someone who’d likely never known an empty belly could feel. “Can’t you ask your father?”
“No.” The word was a cold, hard thing that fell with the weight of a hammer.
Bishop frowned at something across the greenhouse, her profile sharp against the light.
Her pale skin glowed like his mum’s porcelain cameo brooch, a woman gazing off at something unseen.
As a young lad, he’d stared up at it during church, wondering what the woman saw that made her so sad, wishing she would look at him instead.
Only when Bishop looked back at him, it burned.
“My father is responsible for my present predicament. In short, he has decided someone outside our family shall inherit the estate, and I wish to dispute the matter in court.”
It sounded like problems of the rich, but the anger dancing across Bishop’s delicate features made Sidney hold his tongue.
“My father has never cared for me,” she continued, her voice tight as though controlling something fighting to escape.
“My earliest memory of him is when he boxed my ears after I broke his favorite pipe. I was four. My mother sent me out of the room, and I don’t know what she said or did, but he never touched me again.
Neither to strike nor to embrace me.” She hesitated, toying with her string of pearls.
“Mostly, he ignored me, and neglect was preferable to his attention, which was usually comments upon my ungainliness. Mother shielded me from it all, even taught me herself instead of hiring tutors—Greek and Latin, chess and knot-tying, how to ride and how to shoot. But finally, at sixteen, I was sent to finishing school. She died while I was away.”
The hollow between Bishop’s collarbones gave a small heave at this, and she fell silent.
She wasn’t wearing her usual red lipstick, and the lack of color made her seem more vulnerable; as though it were the armor she usually wore in public, and she had purposefully chosen to meet without it.
There were new shadows under her eyes, and a drawn quality to her cheekbones—signs Sidney recognized only too well of restless nights with thoughts that wouldn’t leave.
“I say this not to prey upon your pity,” Bishop said, “but so that you’ll understand.
I don’t want to help the Rook because I am bored or a busybody.
A future job does interest me, but I need money now.
” She closed her eyes and drew a quiet breath.
“The Rook has offered me the means to fight, and the Security Service is an employer I trust to keep my work secret. My father can’t bluster in and try to cow them into firing me like any old shopkeeper. It is a coincidence I cannot ignore.”
“It’s not a coincidence,” Sidney said. “The Rook probably has a dossier on your family and knew you might need the money.”
Bishop laughed bitterly. “I don’t really care, Braithwaite.
One day, I am going to lose the memories I have left of my mother.
They’ll fade, like all memories do.” She turned toward him on the bench and laid a deliberate hand on his forearm.
“The house should be mine by right, and I’ll do whatever I can to keep it. I won’t let Father take my mother too.”
Though her touch scorched Sidney’s skin, it immobilized him like ice.
All his reasons for declining—the panic, the nightmares—rose up his throat in a choking wave.
But there was no way to put all that into words; he would have preferred to rip open the old scar in his side rather than make it plain to her why he could not help the Rook.
The whole point of going to Olenev’s was to avoid this very situation.
Only he hadn’t counted on feeling a prick of sympathy for Ginevra bloody Bishop.
Sidney looked down at the hand clutching him rather than meet her eyes.
He recognized the pencil calluses, the ink stains, the tiny paper cuts from constant riffling through books.
There were hours of study engraved in that hand, and her initial interest in taking the job was probably not from boredom at Oxford.
Begrudgingly, he could admit he’d misjudged her on that point.
But it was the simmering pain in her confession, the brutal honesty about her father, that would not stop roiling through Sidney’s mind.
He could not have shared all that with equal composure, and admiration for her resilience forced him to face the truth: He and Ginevra Bishop were very different sorts of people, but both were broken, brittle creatures with shadows dusting their heels.
She needed his help, and walking away from someone with a real need was impossible for him.
A maelstrom of defensive emotions swirled, but Sidney shunted them to the back of his mind.
He knew he was more than capable of tracking down the informant, and the money would be useful, much as he was loath to admit it.
A break from squeezing in odd jobs, from long nights studying to compensate.
This assignment simply added another layer to his regular routine, and it couldn’t go as badly as France.
He could make sure Bishop didn’t do anything else stupid, didn’t end up like Amélie—
Sidney exhaled, cutting off the thought before her face could materialize.
No, if he took this job, there would be absolutely no lingering in the past nor repeating old mistakes.
He would become the Rook’s ideal agent, compartmentalized and cold, and keep his contact with Ginevra Bishop professional and brief—which was best, as he didn’t have the time nor capacity to train her properly.
Despite the Rook’s appreciation of her charm, Sidney still thought her dynamic personality would be hard to restrain when needed.
Hopefully, she would be content with simple surveillance, and he could focus on completing the job while keeping the storms at bay.
Sidney removed Bishop’s hand from his arm and rose before she could glimpse the turbulence within him. “All right then. We’ll do it.”
Bishop tilted her head to a wary angle as though she’d anticipated a longer fight. “Are you sure? I promise, I’ll do my part—”
“Yes.” Sidney reclaimed his jacket and hat from the neat pile he’d made on the ground. “We’ll call the Rook tomorrow morning. Telephone box on Pembroke Street by St. Aldate’s, nine o’clock.”
Her eyes lit with an anticipation Sidney hadn’t felt for anything in a long time, and his old wound twinged again.
There was a good chance they would both regret this, and he only hoped he could avert a complete disaster.
With a clipped goodbye, he exited the greenhouse before she could drown him in more questions.
For that, he certainly needed a solid night’s sleep first.
But the bedrock of his world had shifted, tilting him toward parts unknown.