Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series Book 3) Read online

  Strong drink indeed, he thought, the peat and smoke of the Spey swimming warm through his veins. Combined with the steamy heat, the scotch brought a thin skim of sweat to rest upon his forehead. He was only grateful no fellow countryman was there to see it.

  One golden eyebrow, curved with the perfect symmetry of a gull’s wing, arched delicately in his direction.

  “Tongue found, sir,” Robert said with a watery smile.

  “So it is. I was worried there for a moment that we’d have to go in after it with chisel and pike. I believe you have something for me?” The golden head inclined and Robert, eyes squinting through the steam that was fogging his spectacles, started slightly and handed over the sodden bundle that had ridden between rib and elbow since his precipitate leave-taking of Glasgow some three days earlier.

  An amber sylph, seemingly conjured from thin air, received the parcel from his hands and crossed the room to deliver it to His Lordship, who laid it to the side, the unnerving green gaze never once leaving Robert’s face. He said something in a rapid, staccato singsong tone that Robert thought might be Cantonese, and the sylph dissipated back into the air as quickly as she’d apparated.

  “Ah, look at him will you? Fresh down from the Isle of Skye with the moss still green between his toes and the final notes of ‘Will Ye No Come Back Again?’ fading from his lips. What shall we do with such an innocent?”

  Robert cleared his throat and attempted to wipe a bit of the fog off his glasses. “To whom would you be speaking, sir?”

  “To the leprechauns, of course. If they’re not addressed three times a day they have terrible fits, turn the cream sour, salt the whiskey when your back is turned and let the grasshoppers out of their paddocks.”

  “Jamie,” a voice soft as black lotus emerged more fragrant than the burning brazier. “Do quit toying with the poor man. He’s only trying to do his job.”

  Turning, Robert wondered how he’d missed her. She was not a woman one overlooked, ever. Her beauty was Byzantine in its opulence, the face of the most favored odalisque in the sultan’s harem. Skin neither black nor brown nor white but a combination that made all other shades seem coarse and inferior. Black hair, uncompromisingly straight, hung in a smooth sheet down her back. She wore gold silk, all but transparent in the heat, and even from a distance exuded the scent of spiced roses. Small-breasted and smooth-bellied, one leg lay in the part of her robe, gleaming with the rub of pampered flesh.

  Robert momentarily underwent the misery of the plain of face in the presence of preternatural beauty, felt slightly nauseated, and took another sip of his drink for pity’s sake.

  “Of course,” The Lord of Ballywick and Tragheda said, “I am being a boar. Robert, this is Quiyue Rourke, solicitor for the Far East holdings of the Kirkpatricks.”

  “I am more commonly known as Sallie,” the woman said in a voice that bore barely a trace of inflection, but caressed his ear like a long ripple of amber silk.

  Robert blinked. This woman, who ought to have well-muscled eunuchs waiting upon her every whim, was a lawyer? He stifled a sigh, thinking not all advancements in feminine equality were to his taste. He rose and extended his hand, feeling as overdressed as an Eskimo in the tropics. The woman with the prosaic name laid her own hand across his and Robert considered that there were situations that good, no-nonsense Scots Presbyterian mothers could not quite imagine. He kissed the hand and came away with the taste of cinnamon hot on his tongue and an overwhelming impression of liquid black eyes under high, painted, immaculate brows.

  “If you can tear yourself away from Sallie, perhaps you’ll be so good as to tell us the reason for this visit, Robert?” The Irish Lord was smiling, but there was little of humor in the expression. When the earls had fled Ireland in 1603, the Kirkpatricks had opted to stay. At that point only five percent of the land in Northern Ireland was left in the hands of Irish Catholics. The Kirkpatricks held on with both hands and never lost so much as an acre. Robert could see, rather clearly at present, the sheer bloody-mindedness such an act would require, well delineated on the face of their descendant. Of course, if one credited such things, there was the legend that Queen Elizabeth I, despite her double-barrelled abhorrence of Catholicism and the Irish, had been rather fond of one Silken James, an illustrious ancestor of the man who sat here before him.

  “Well, sir, as you know, I’ve done work for Monseigneur Brandisi from time to time, and as he knew I was looking for a more permanent position—”

  “He conveniently thought of me,” Jamie said, eyes narrowing slightly. “Tell me, Robert, have you been sent to spy for him?”

  “No, sir, it was only in the way of a favor.”

  “And how, may I ask, does a man of modest means from a tiny village on the edge of nowhere come to be in the position of having the Father General of the Society of Jesus owe him favors?”

  “He is my father’s first cousin.”

  “How is it,” Jamie enquired with what might be mistaken for a gentle politeness, “that I always forget Giacomo’s pack of Scots relations?”

  Robert thought it a question that did not require an answer.

  “And how, Robert, do you think you can be of service to me?”

  “Perhaps, sir,” Robert said trying to ignore the large beads of perspiration gliding down his back, “it would be more fitting for me to ask what you require?”

  “I wasn’t aware of having needs of any sort but as you’ve asked I’ll answer. I have,” His Lordship said sweetly, “three requirements of a secretary—he must be a man who knows how to hold his pen, his liquor and his tongue.”

  “A fair enough bargain,” Robert replied, glass beginning to slide from his slick palms. “I think my previous employer can vouch for me. I am as discreet as the mythical monkey, neither seeing, nor hearing, nor speaking any evil… unless of course, sir,” he chanced a smile, “you wish me to.”

  “Ah,” the voice was as golden and drawling as a sun-drenched lion. “The Scotsman has a sense of humor. How unnatural. Now perhaps, Robert, you can convey the message you were sent to convey and I,” Jamie put a hand over the one Sallie had laid lightly on his bare knee, “can get back to enjoying my afternoon.”

  “ Well, sir,” Robert began awkwardly, feeling his suit beginning to shrivel like a raisin in the unnatural heat, “there are some who feel, rather strongly, that now is the time to go home.”

  “By some,” Jamie said, “I presume you mean that bossy little Italian, Brandisi.”

  Robert choked slightly on his drink. He had never met anyone with the temerity to call the Father General of the Society of Jesus ‘that bossy little Italian’, though no doubt many had thought it.

  “It would seem that a certain man with rather definite religious beliefs has poked up his nose again in Belfast.”

  His Lordship’s eyes narrowed slightly, “The fair Lucien looking for light, is he?”

  “As you know, sir, the Republican party is split—”

  “Yes I do know—the main philosophy of one being to shoot first and ask questions later and the other to talk you to death so there’s no need of bullets. I’m well aware of the political platforms, such as they are, of our rebel friends. What I’m wondering, Robert, is if you’ve come all this way to enlighten me on the state of Northern Irish politics or if Giacomo actually had a message to transmit?”

  “It seems the ground is fertile right now for a radical man on the Unionist scene too, a response to what’s happening on the Nationalist side. The word is, the Reverend may be that man.”

  “He’s hardly a man of the people,” Jamie said in a relaxed tone, though a slight vertical line had appeared between his eyebrows. “And the vote in Northern Ireland has little to do with politics or the common good. The vote splits itself down tribal lines. Lucien belongs to no one’s tribe.”

  “Unless of course, sir,
if you don’t mind me venturing an opinion, you consider how desperate these people are. We’re talking about the hard core working-class Loyalists here, people who no longer trust the gentry or the new rich to make their decisions for them.”

  “A thug voted in by thugs. Rather appropriate, don’t you think?”

  “Sir,” Robert shifted uncomfortably, all too aware of Sallie Rourke’s amused gaze, “perhaps I am failing to purvey the gravity of the situation properly. It’s thought by many that the stage is setting itself for confrontation.”

  “Enter,” Jamie said dryly, “stage extreme left, the Provos, who’ve been waiting in the wings for war.”

  “Exactly, sir,” Robert said with a tinge of relief.

  “And how does this concern me, Robert? If you’re Giacomo’s agent, then who is he representing in this little masquerade of fools? Tell him the Tory minister will be satisfied with bouts of peace and quiet, interrupted occasionally by an acceptable level of violence and the odd bit of savagery. The British don’t expect, nor do they want, any better from the Irish.”

  “The Father isn’t complicit in the politics of the British.”

  “Robert, you’re making my head ache,” His Lordship said without a smile.

  Sallie Rourke, silent to this juncture, rose from her couch, hair falling in a silent wing to hide her face as she retrieved a heavy glass bottle from a low, enameled table with carvings displaying amazing skill folded into its legs. She unstopped the bottle and poured into her hand a heavy stream of white powder that glittered in the fragrant light like milk-washed opals. From another flask, she poured a dark, viscous liquid into a small squat glass and added the white powder. This exotic brew she handed to His Lordship, who took it with murmured thanks and a look that conveyed many things, none of them well-bred.

  “Ground pearls, doused in the blood of Scottish virgins,” Jamie said in answer to Robert’s raised eyebrows. “The ladies believe it lends vitality, stamina, and—shall we say—a certain luster to a man’s abilities.”

  Robert watched as his potential employer took a deep swallow of the brew, the large square-cut emerald on his left hand catching the light in a dazzling display. If the rumors about His Lordship were true, the pearls were rather like bringing coals to Newcastle.

  Both rumor and reputation had it that His Lordship lacked neither vitality nor stamina, and with amber sylphs fairly tumbling forth from the woodwork, Robert was inclined to put some credence in the stories he’d been told.

  “Sir, I think you hardly need to be reminded that the Father General only has your welfare at heart. He is very fond of you.”

  “I’ve told him not to worry, but,” Jamie sighed, “with Brandisi things go in one ear and out the other, like the wind whistling through dried honeycomb.”

  “While it is true,” Robert replied with the patience of a born diplomat, “that the good Father tends to only heed what he wishes to, he does hear everything.”

  The cat eyes narrowed, considering him. Robert felt a sudden brotherhood to mice everywhere. Like a cat, the man’s moods apparently could change at whim as well, for suddenly he assumed a different mask and a different tone. “Well, Robert, what is it you know of whiskey and linen?”

  Robert could have told him a great deal and induced tears with a riveting monologue that began with the sincerity of the unseeded flax and ended with the frivolity of the distiller’s ether, also known as the angel’s portion. But he chose humility instead.

  “Very little, sir, but I learn quickly.”

  “A wise answer, Robert. I see we begin to understand one another.”

  “Though the good Father thought perhaps I might be more useful in a political capacity,” Robert said hesitantly.

  “Ah, just when I thought we had found some common ground. I’ve taken a leave from politics. Things will go neither to heaven nor hell in my absence.”

  His Lordship had taken leave abruptly and without explanation in the fall, fueling rumors of scandal within the government where he’d sat as the Member of Parliament for West Belfast for the last two years. Even Giacomo didn’t know the truth of the matter which, for a man who was reported to have the ear of a bat and the eye of a fortune teller, was endlessly vexing.

  ‘In all things,’ Robert could hear Father Brandisi’s voice in his ear, ‘he will use intelligence and reason. He is a man of great passions, but rarely will he allow passion to lead him.’ Perhaps though, thought Robert, this instance would be the exception rather than the rule.

  He’d saved his trump card for the last, thinking perhaps that it was unfair to use it unless the situation qualified as an emergency.

  “The Reverend has been seen at particular meeting places in Belfast recently.”

  His Lordship eyed Robert coolly. “Does Giacomo actually believe I don’t know that?”

  Robert wondered wildly if Giacomo was punishing him for some unknown offense.

  “Father Brandisi thought perhaps these appearances are an opening gambit, meant to provocate.”

  One golden eyebrow arched slightly. “Of course they are. At this point I choose not to take the bait.”

  “But you will in the future?” Robert cursed the words as soon as they left his lips. Giacomo had warned him to be careful on this particular issue.

  “Predictability is a disease of the middle class and fanatics, and in neither group do I have membership,” which Robert translated as, ‘None of your damn business, meddling Scot.’

  Robert nodded, glasses sliding down the increasingly slippery slope of his nose.

  “Perhaps, sir, I have made a mistake in coming here.” He quaked inwardly at the thought of having to relate his failure to Giacomo who, though a man of God, had a most worldly temper.

  “Perhaps you have, Robert, but as you and I are both aware that Giacomo’s will is rather like a horse cart from hell that runs down all in its path, I think we might as well find a mutually agreeable way to go under the hooves.”

  Robert blinked at this unexpected turn of luck, hoping his face didn’t reveal too much of his surprise.

  For the next half hour they discussed terms and conditions, His Lordship asking questions designed to test Robert’s knowledge of the international finance market as well as his expertise in matters political. Robert, as instructed, remained deferential, displaying his knowledge while retaining his modesty. There would be little point in pretending to know more than he did. The man would catch him out, and the trust he was meant to cultivate would be destroyed before the ground for the foundation was even broken.

  James Kirkpatrick was known as something of a magi in the financial markets, though no one understood how he took a dollar and made it not two, but two hundred. His instincts were infallible and investment bankers from Wall Street to Hong Kong clamored for his business. He’d been born to a sizable inheritance but had, in a few years of intense scrutiny and mind-numbing work, turned it into an emperor’s fortune. Where the sizable inheritance originated was rather less clear. Rumor, tale-spinner that it was, had it that the original ancestor had come over from the Hebrides as a mercenary, responding to the call of the Irish chieftains who often hired Scots to fight their internecine tribal battles. Kirkpatrick was, after all, a Scottish toponymic, meaning very simply, ‘church of Patrick’.

  The main bulk of what Jamie had inherited came from whiskey, a heady brew called Connemara Mist that the Kirkpatricks had distilled by the side of a small river in Ulster for four hundred years. Only the Guinness family rivaled the Kirkpatrick name and money in the world of alcohol exports. Another portion came from the linen mills that had also been in production for hundreds of years. Kirkpatrick linens, embossed with a graceful, arcing ‘K’ were famous the world over for the high thread count that made them the last word in luxury.

  The present head of the house of Kirkpatrick had expanded the
business far beyond the borders of Ireland and simple exports. He had investments from mines in the far north of Canada to offshore oil exploration in the North Atlantic, to several small loan companies set up in underdeveloped nations, allowing those without the means to start small cottage industries of their own. And these were only the thin end of the wedge.

  Robert had not been averse to the notion of working for this man, if indeed the man could be persuaded to take him on. Until a moment ago, it had seemed extremely unlikely. Robert knew if His Lordship was willing to take him into his employ, however, it wasn’t because he needed an able assistant but because he’d his own reasons for allowing a spy into his world. Robert felt distinctly pawn-like and yet intrigued by the man who sat before him in all his arrogant beauty, as though conducting job interviews in the nude were merely a matter of course. The man was now looking at him as one would look at a rather dim-witted schoolboy.

  “I’m sorry, sir, I missed the last bit of what you were saying,” Robert said, fighting the urge to stutter that pulled hard on his tongue.

  James Kirkpatrick the Fourth, the Lord of Ballywick and Tragheda, did not apparently repeat himself for those hard of hearing or short on attention. He merely took another drink from the small glass in his hand and continued in his chilled whiskey voice.

  “I have commitments I need to keep over the next several months. I do not plan to be back in Ireland until next autumn,” His Lordship said. “If you still wish, after hearing the conditions I’ve set out, to be in my employ, you’ll be there as well. Until then, you will receive instructions from time to time. The work will involve a great deal of travel.”

  “Indeed sir, I look forward to it,” Robert answered courteously, wanting only to escape the hellish heat of the room and be on his way, mentally adding a codicil to take the beautiful and intriguing Sallie Rourke with him as he went.

  The golden head inclined itself against the brocade pillows, fire-lit lashes tipping down over deep-bitten green. Robert saw that the man had not merely been acerbic, he had a headache and, judging from the tight line from jaw to temple, a very bad one. He cleared his throat quietly, disconcerted to find himself awaiting permission to leave, as though this man were a medieval king and he a peasant straight off the fief.