"Boss!"
A Rook was waving him over to the edge of the docks, gesturing briskly. Jacob jogged over, breaking away from discussions of reinvesting in security for the brothels with Lottie. All around him was a hive of activity, frantic movement as the new Rooks got to work rebuilding their stronghold.
The Rook gestured downwards and Jacob saw what he was pointing out: underneath a mark on a wooden box that read "JOHNSON SHIPPING", the paper had peeled slightly away to reveal another symbol. The Templar Cross. "Open it," he instructed, and one of the boys ran to get a crowbar.
The crate popped open to reveal rows and rows of new guns.
Jacob whistled appreciatively, picking it up and testing the weight. "Good find," he said, imitating firing off a few shots. "Get these packed away. No need for it to be delivered, don't you think?"
The Rooks whooped, and for the first time since Jack's take-over, Jacob truly felt like success was in his grasp.
Anne was illuminated by the light from the window, fingers lightly fiddling with the scarf draped around her neck. Evie gently placed a teacup in front of her, settling down and getting comfortable as she watched the other woman. It was their second cup; conversation had been easy enough, and time had passed quickly.
"Thank you for visiting with me," Anne said softly, "it was good to learn more about Jane's background. She seems a lovely girl."
"She is," Evie agreed, "and she'll do better than where she came from."
"I have no doubt."
Time had eased the agonizing guilt on Evie's end, and on days where she could work past it, she found that she actually quite liked this woman. It wasn't a stretch; she loved Jacob, and if Jacob liked Anne, it rather made sense that she could see the appeal.
Evie took a thoughtful sip. "Emmett seems dreadfully smitten."
That prompted a smile. "I suppose every young man goes through it one time or another. I've invited Jane to come around once a week and join us for supper, and poor Emmett can barely get through a sentence without scrambling his thoughts. He'll have to relax, eventually, but everyone should have a first love." Her gaze moved to the wall behind Evie. "Just like his Father must have. I suppose you knew her?"
It took a great deal of self-control to not flinch. "I'm sorry?"
"Cecily's mother." Anne cocked her head. "I always assumed she was a childhood friend, from the way he spoke. And another Assassin, too." She shook her head with a world-weary smile. "He once told me that she could best him in a fight! It was hard for me to imagine back then, but I've seen enough of your creed to understand now."
"I…" Evie hesitated. How to phrase this? "I did know her, yes. I believe she loved him very much."
"Such a loss," Anne sighed, setting her cup down and quickly drawing out her pocket watch. "My goodness, I had no idea that it had been so long. I'm sure you have other things to do— and I must be going. Thank you for the tea, Evie, I'm relieved that we can be friends."
"As am I," Evie agreed, standing and collecting their dishes. "I enjoy hearing about Emmett from someone who remembers actual details."
Anne chuckled at that. "Have a pleasant afternoon," she said, collecting her coat. "I'll hail a coach, don't worry about me." With a wave, she left the front door, leaving Evie alone with her thoughts.
She was back to copying reports and instructions for the novices when Jacob returned, grinning broadly.
"It feels good to be back in the swing," he said, rolling his shoulders. "Sort of like being young again, if you can imagine it."
Evie smiled back at him. "Anne came by for a visit— no, no need to worry, it was nice. She wanted to talk about Jane. We had a pleasant talk. Although…" She slid her chair out and raised her eyebrows. "She did quite casually ask about Cecily's mother, and whether she was a childhood friend who so badly broke your heart."
In the middle of reaching for some food, he gave her a guilty look. "I… May have drunkenly blubbered on her shoulder in a very un-manly manner when I first knew her. Once or twice."
"I just said that I knew her and that she loved you very much."
"All true," he agreed.
Standing, she went to him and put her hands to his cheeks, feeling the stubble under her hands. "The truth, of course, is that it's not in the past tense."
"Mmm." He nuzzled his nose to hers in an affectionate gesture. "Not any more, anyway."
With her best mock-gasp, she punched him in the shoulder. "I always loved you!"
"Prove it," he mumbled, food set aside as his fingers worked against her collar.
Laughing, she stumbled along with him until she fell backwards onto the bed, pulling him down on top of her for a long kiss. "You're unbelievable."
Finally at the bottom of her buttons, he pulled the fabric of her shoulders. "This really is like being young again."
Perched on a rooftop, Henry leaned over and bit off another bit of his apple with a sigh.
Lockwood was writing, again, busily scribbling away. This job would be a lot easier if he could just read those letters, but she was meticulous. Whenever she was called away, she always took the message with her, carried on her person. There was the option of knocking her out and taking them by force, but that would alert the Templars that she was being watched.
His attention was grabbed when someone burst into the room where she was writing. There was a lot of frantic hand waving; something had apparently happened, and from the movement, it looked like it had been bad.
Lockwood jumped to her feet; without a backwards glance, she raced away.
Leaving the letter on the table.
Henry could've crowed at his good luck. Quickly balancing up, he rappelled across the street, nimbly scurrying down the side of the building. The window was unlocked, thank God; it was easy to roll into the room.
When he reached the desk, he quickly straightened out the paper and started reading. It was mostly finished, only cut off above the ending salutations. If he could commit it to memory and leave, they could still leave Lockwood in the dark about the surveillance and keep her as a source.
...
Daley —
Recent events regarding the gangs in London have caused me great concern. You must return from Paris immediately; the Order is in need of you. I am in need of you. If you hurry back, you may expect a promotion to my second in command.
May the Father of Understanding guide you…
...
Good God. The realization hit him like a ton of bricks. Lockwood wasn't a messenger for the Grandmaster. Lockwood was the Grandmaster.
She had attended Clara's meetings personally, had contacts high and low. Not only did she know that Evie was back in town, she had to know about her connection to Clara— had a million ways to come within striking distance of Evie.
He had to tell Evie. They had been envisioning this all wrong. This changed everything.
Hastening back to the window, Henry crawled along the side of the building until he could drop to the ground in an abandoned alley. There was no time to lose. He had to get to Evie straightaway.
Jacob could see that she was still a bit cold, so they huddled under the covers as he ran his hands down along her skin, pressing kisses to her neck until he reached her shoulder and blew a raspberry. When she shrieked in protest and tried to kick him in revenge, he just pressed her further into the mattress, laughing at her outrage and reaching up to tickle her trapped form.
"You—" she stuttered, unwilling giggles leaking out, "you bastard—"
"I'm quite confident about my parentage," he retorted, relenting and pressing a kiss to her nose instead. "As you should be."
She relaxed against him, her hands sliding down his back and tracing the myriad of scars that resided there. "Fine. Idiot, then."
"Fair," he conceded. To make it up to her, he lowered his mouth along the peaks of her breasts, letting his tongue flick until she was squirming, her hands winding into his hair. "I can be a generous idiot, though."
"Please," she whispered, a breathy sound that always made him shiver with anticipation.
"Please what?"
Snapping down to glare at him, she grabbed his hand and yanked it between her legs. He stroked the wetness that he found there gently, smiling at her calmly through lidded eyes, cock getting harder and harder as she writhed and hissed curses at him.
When her neck was arched upwards towards the wall and her hips were canting, he quickly crawled up the length of her body and took himself in hand, sliding her leg aside and gently pushing into her without preamble.
She tensed for a moment in surprise at it not being the fingers she expected, but she relaxed almost immediately, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her lips to the shell of his ear with a quiet moan.
Cupping her behind, he went as deeply as he could, groaning at the warmth and softness of it. Once fully seated, he stopped, pressing a kiss to her forehead. When she started to squirm, trying to encourage friction, he grinned again.
"You—" she managed, "you're in a terrible mood today—"
"I only do it because it works," he quipped back, rewarding her with a few quick movements of his hips, enjoying her gasp before he stopped again. "Ask nicely."
Apparently giving up on the berating, she flopped back against the pillows. After a moment of looking up at him balefully, her gaze softened and she put her hands softly to his cheeks. "Please, Jacob," she whispered quietly. "Please."
He would never hear enough of it. Tucking his nose against the curve of her neck, he began to move in proper, hissing in pleasure as she keened and wrapped her legs around his waist.
Henry took the stairs three at a time as he raced up the building, heart in his throat. Lockwood was a meticulous woman; he knew this from his days of tracking her, following her every movement. With the Rooks back under Assassin control, her retaliation couldn't be long in coming. Time was of the essence.
Without bothering to knock, he rushed into the apartment that Evie was sharing with Jacob, trying to catch his breath long enough to call out. In the space that it took to try and breathe in a lungful of air, though, he heard it.
A breathy cry. One that he knew all too well. Surely this wasn't possible, surely he had misheard?
There was a moment of silence, and his shoulders relaxed. He was hearing things— he was truly growing paranoid. Not an attractive trait.
He opened his mouth to ask if anyone was home when he heard it again; his blood froze in his veins, heart speeding up.
Surely not. Not Evie. Not his wife. His sensible, level-headed wife.
In a perverse way, his brain knew it made sense. Her sudden distance and reticence explained, her unwillingness to live with him no longer a mystery— but he didn't want to believe it.
He made his way through the flat to her room, the closed door looming large. Just when he thought his heart couldn't sink any lower, the begging started.
"Oh please, please don't stop, I can't, God, please—"
That couldn't be his wife. Not "right, do that again" and "there, that felt good" Evie; it wasn't possible.
Hand over the handle, he still hesitated. There was something so final about this.
A male voice grunted out her name.
Anger flared, white-hot, and he threw the door open.
For a moment, he couldn't make any sense of the image. His mind refused to interpret what he was seeing. He saw the scars that spider webbed across wide shoulders, that stupid cross tattoo, the slicked back hair.
It beat like a drumbeat in his head.
Not possible. Not possible. Not possible.
But as sure as he stood in the doorway, there was his Evie, hair loose around her bare shoulders, eyes glued to him in shock, wrapped in the arms of her brother.
There was a feeling that Evie had grown accustomed to over the course of her training; every time she took a jump, there was a heartbeat of worry that her fingers wouldn't meet her next goal. That instead of landing safely, she would plummet, unable to arrest her momentum until she hit the ground.
Of course, every time, her fingers would grip brick or stone smoothly and the moment would pass. Over and over and over, until it was second nature, until she barely registered the moment of uncertainty.
She had never known what it was like to fall. And yet, in that moment, with Henry standing in the doorway with horrified shock written all over his face, she keenly felt the swooping sensation of having made a jump without safely reaching the other side.
Jacob's head had snapped around at the sound of the opening door, his grip tightening on her arms as he realized what was happening. With a sound that was wincingly loud in the shocked silence, he pulled out of her, quickly swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
Even as the whisper of fabric and clink of metal indicated that Jacob was tugging on his trousers, Evie just sat and stared, drawing the sheet up tightly around her chest. A distant part of her brain reminded her that it wasn't strictly necessary to preserve her modesty— given that everyone in the room already knew what she looked like naked— but it was a small bulwark against the aching vulnerability of the moment.
"You," Henry finally said quietly, barely a whisper, his eyes still glued to her.
"Henry," she started hesitantly, as she watched his hands clench at his sides. "I'm—"
"You whore," he hissed, cutting her off.
Jacob swivelled on his heel. "Watch it, Greenie."
Shakily, Evie held a hand up towards her brother, trying to gesture for him to be quiet. "Henry, please be calm."
"This is—" Henry sputtered, beginning to shake, his fists curling in tightly. "I cannot believe that this— your Father would die of the shame, thank God that he's dead already and doesn't have to know, how could you commit this— this disgusting unnatural perversion—"
Jacob made a hissing noise. "I think you should leave now."
Henry ignored him entirely, advancing a few steps towards the bed. Evie was determined not to shrink away, she was made of sterner stuff than that; but the sheer fury still made her feel cold. "How could you," he said, voice cracking a little, some of the fury giving way to despair. "I loved you."
"I know," she whispered back. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry," he choked, "you're sorry. Sorry that you fled to London and started whoring yourself out to— my God. Did you— before we left, when you…" If there was any colour left in his face, it drained away completely. "Cecily."
The temperature in the room seemed to suddenly drop by ten degrees.
Henry's face finally swivelled to Jacob, acknowledging him for the first time. "You… Cecily, you…"
Jacob gazed back evenly, arms crossed, expression defiant.
"You don't deny it," Henry said, voice faint. "You don't… You," he hissed, face turning back to Evie. "I thought that I was rescuing you from ruin after a drunken indiscretion, but you would have had me raise your brother's bastard?"
Jacob was gritting his teeth so tightly that she could almost hear them grinding. "Evie, please let me hit him."
Ignoring him and nudging forward, Evie reached for her robe, quickly tugging it on and standing to wrap it around herself. "I— please, I didn't see any other way, and I was grateful—"
"Grateful?!" Henry's volume was coming back, growing higher in pitch. "Grateful that you could use me, grateful that I was stupid enough to not see…" He put his hands to his face and there was a moment of silence while Evie looked to Jacob in total despair, but when Henry drew his hands away, his face was terrifyingly calm and blank. "It was a mercy that Cecily died."
The floor dropped out from underneath her. "What?"
"You would have made something innocent live with being the product of this perverted depravity, made her bear the burden of such disgusting and immoral sin," he spat out. "You deserve every inch of grief you felt and more, and to think I comforted you— thank God we never had our own children, you don't deserve to be a mother. You repulse me."
Evie's world blurred.
Everything suddenly seemed extremely far away, sounds coming to her like they were travelling through water. She barely registered the movement as the mass that was Jacob moved forward in rage, or as Henry fell, clutching at his nose as blood fell on his light clothes. She simply swayed on her feet when everything equally suddenly went silent, and there was only Jacob, Jacob gently taking her shoulders and sitting her on the bed, his touch soft on her face as he called her name.
She blinked up at him and her face was wet, a distant whine growing in her ears, everything was coming into clearer focus and things were real again but she didn't want them to be—
He pulled her up to the head of the bed, where she curled up tightly against his chest.
"He's gone," he was saying, "he won't bother us again, I'll make sure of it. Everything will be well."
Wanting to believe it, she simply clung to him, shivering as the light dipped in the room, sun slowly sinking below the skyline in the distance.
Author's Note: Something in the realm of three chapters left, we are nearing the end!
