Dearest Diary,
I ended what was intended to be my nightlong watch by waking up after noon, the man I aimed to protect having begun his day hours earlier. As nothing terrible befell him in the night, I shall consider this a success.
The woman definitely knew Katniss' bed had not been slept in.
Very aware of the housekeeper's eyes on her, Katniss grabbed a slice of toast from the stack before her and took a delicate bite. Dry, very dry. She really ought to have put some of the preserves on it. She eyed the red dish and tried to calculate how much more Mrs. Carrow's opinion of her would drop if she put a dollop on now.
Probably not worth it. She took another bite of the dry toast. She needed energy, and the thought of anything more substantial made her stomach churn.
For what must have been the thousandth time, she read over the note that Edgar had found on the doorstep this morning.
It has come to my attention that we both have something that the other wants returned. I will contact you with more details for our exchange soon. To avoid embarrassment on both of our parts, it is best that this matter stays solely between the three of us.
"Every time I read it, all I can see is that he says 'both' when referring to all three of us." Peeta put another spoonful of, by this point, probably very cold scrambled eggs in his mouth. Pity he had waited for her instead of eating when he had first woken up. Someone should have enjoyed the breakfast Mrs. Carrow had prepared when it was still warm.
"It does ruin the tone," she agreed.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Mrs. Carrow appeared at the door. Moving silently through the room, she deposited a calling card with Peeta. "You have a visitor."
Katniss' heart stopped. As much as she longed to make Crane pay for what he had done to her family, she was not prepared for this. She needed time to plan, to steel her nerves for when they inevitably came face to face again.
Wordlessly, Peeta handed her the card.
Lord G. Hawthorne
Bloody hell, him again?
"Be my second if he wants to see me at dawn?" Peeta kept his voice low so he wouldn't be heard in the next room, but she could still hear the humor in it.
Katniss grinned up at him. "I'd fight him first, but I fear it wouldn't do much for your honor."
"You're going to stay in here?"
"It's probably best that he not see me here if we can avoid it. I'll listen and come out if I'm needed."
He kissed her forehead and left.
She couldn't hear a thing. With all the listening in she had done over the past few weeks, one would think she could manage a conversation where one participant was trying to be eavesdropped on.
Not quite ready to give up, Katniss pressed her ear harder against the door. It would be brilliant timing if they decided to enter the room now, wouldn't it? She would love to explain this one away.
Thankfully, Peeta knocked. It gave her enough time to scurry back to the dining table before the door opened.
"Hawthorne would like to see you."
Time to play the docile fiancée. She rose from her chair with passable grace. So far, this was going well.
One corner of Peeta's mouth quirked up. He dropped his voice. "Need to convince him that I don't have you locked in a wardrobe somewhere."
"Have a spare one we could stuff him in?"
Peeta chuckled as he guided her into the drawing room, where Hawthorne, crisp and polished as ever, waited for them.
"Miss Everdeen. Congratulations." Hawthorne frowned as he took in her attire, a boy's shirt and breeches, with a shawl borrowed from Mrs. Carrow around her shoulders for added modesty. "You've been hurt?"
"No." Best to keep her answers short. She wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.
Hawthorne wasn't cooperating. "Are you certain?"
"I think I'd remember." He had best be on his way soon, or she was going to snap at him. Katniss didn't particularly want to make an enemy of a peer, but her patience had its limits.
"Your hands are bruised, and your fiancée has a black eye. I don't think it an unreasonable question."
Damn him for pointing it out. "I have been well tended to. Thank you for your concern."
"I called at your house this morning and looked inside when no one answered the door. It looked as though it had been broken into."
And now he was here, checking on her wellbeing? Katniss felt her annoyance slipping away. "It had."
"Were you home when it happened? Do you know who is responsible?"
"You might have asked me," Peeta said.
"I apologize. I simply wanted to hear the news directly from Katniss." He turned towards her. "The gossips have talked of nothing but you and your family for days. I heard you were walking the streets yesterday, covered in blood. It seems you have also been kidnapped by slavers and ran off to Scotland with a stable boy."
Peeta laughed. "That would never work. Edgar is much too afraid of Katniss."
"And you aren't?" she challenged.
"I have a healthy and realistic fear of you, but am not smart enough to heed it."
"That, I am willing to believe."
Hawthorne looked between the two of them as though they had lost their minds. "You do realize that these lies could completely ruin what few shreds of a reputation you have left."
"Oh, the first one isn't a lie."
Hawthorne sighed and rubbed at his temples as if physically forcing an unwilling brain to accept the unpleasant fact. It took only a little imagination to picture a few white hairs sprouting as her admission finally took root in his mind. Perhaps around his ears – yes, that suited him nicely.
Humorous as that mental image was, Katniss clamped down on it. Hawthorne had devoted his morning to making sure she was safe, and for that she was grateful. "Are you all right?"
"I feel as though I arrived at the harbor too late to board my ship, but at the perfect hour to watch it sink."
She felt Peeta stiffen beside her, but Katniss snorted. "I'm flattered."
Hawthorne finally moved his hand away from his face. "You would have made a terrible Lady Hawthorne."
"I'm glad to see you arrive at that conclusion. Everyone else reached it weeks ago."
He winced. "Are your mother and sister all right?"
She didn't know what to say.
Hawthorne's gaze moved between her and Peeta. "I assume this has something to do with Mr. Crane?"
When neither Katniss nor Peeta responded, Hawthorne lowered himself onto Peeta's setee. "Tell me everything."
"Crane has threatened us should we involve another person."
"You obey orders now? I didn't realize that an engagement caused such immediate change."
The man had a point. Katniss caught Peeta's eyes, and he shrugged. She sat on the yellow armchair across from Hawthorne and waited for Peeta to settle in as well before she began to explain.
"You have something more than evidence, don't you?" Hawthorne sounded certain, but, well, Hawthorne usually seemed assured his conclusions were correct. If they could bottle that kind of confidence, Katniss would pay good money for it. "The two of you have something he needs – the very information he was planning on passing on to the French."
Her eyes narrowed, and surreptitiously, her hand started to move towards her pistol. "How do you know?"
If Hawthorne noticed her response, he did an excellent job of hiding it. "Crane has already shown that keeping the two of you alive is of no concern to him. The attack yesterday proves that much. If his goal was only to keep you silent, he would have had the house burned down as you slept."
Katniss was starting to catch on. "But that would mean burning the plans along with us."
"They're blueprints," Peeta explained, pulling the folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and handing them to Hawthorne, "for some sort of ship. I'm afraid I can't make much more out of them than that. My familiarity with the fleet is limited."
Nonexistent, Katniss' mind supplied. God, they were in so far over their heads that she half-expected sea monsters. Honestly, it could be an improvement. To the best of her knowledge, sea serpents did not generally try to court their prey's younger sister.
Hawthorne's voice, deathly serious, pulled her attention back to the matter at hand. "Whoever Crane is involved with wants those plans, and I would assume that he is in as much danger as us should he fail to provide them."
One word popped out at Katniss. "Us? I thought you wanted no part of this. You told me to leave the entire matter alone."
"I did." Hawthorne's eyes, dark and intense, fixed on Katniss. "At that point, I hoped that the situation was less serious than you believed, and that it would blow over with time. Now, knowing what I do, I cannot in good conscience allow the man to walk free."
That was… admirable. Why couldn't Hawthorne just let her hate him the way she wanted to?
She glanced at Peeta, and he shrugged. It was better than anything they had come up with.
Hawthorne missed that interaction entirely as he unfolded the plans and studied them. "Could we copy these? I can't claim to know the first thing about shipbuilding, but I do understand geometry, and I think I can change some numbers and add or omit a few components to make them useless." He looked to Peeta. "I remember Vick once mentioning your drawings when he came home from Eton. Do you think you could copy the architect's drawings?"
Peeta leaned in over the blueprints, his nose only inches away from the paper. "Imitating the hand will be difficult, but I think I can manage."
"Brilliant. I'll shorten and thin this piece," Hawthorne explained, pointing to one corner. "It seems to bear the load of this above it. We can make up for the height lost by lengthening this up here. It shouldn't be difficult to work out the length from the angle."
Peeta craned his head back to look at Katniss. "Could you please fetch paper from my study? It's the first room on the left, and I think there ought to be a piece around the right size on the desk." He glanced towards Hawthorne, who was still poring over the blueprints. "Some paper for figuring might be helpful as well."
Glad she could finally be of some assistance, even if it was just an errand, Katniss followed his instructions up to his study.
She had to smile when she opened the door. Peeta could call it a study all he wanted, but it would not change the fact that this was a studio. An easel stood in the corner, the canvas on it marked only with a few brushstrokes, more an inkling of a future painting than a full-fledged concept. Paints and brushes cluttered the desk, and a handful of what she assumed were completed works were leaned up in a stack against the wall. Now, in the midafternoon, the entire room was bathed in warm sunlight that further brightened the already sunny yellow walls.
It was easy enough to locate the papers she needed. Though it looked cluttered at first, she could make out some organization to Peeta's desk, and indeed to the room in general. Brushes here, rags there, the few records that a third son needed stowed off in a corner. It was a functional space, but homey as well, and perfectly Peeta.
Katniss could hardly help but take a quick look at the paintings before she returned downstairs. The first was a landscape with a grand manor house visible through a haze in the background. Gorgeous. She had known that Peeta had talent – that much was obvious from the sketches he had sent along with their correspondence – but she had no idea he could create something like this. No wonder Hawthorne's brother had remarked on Peeta's abilities. Excited now, she slid it to the side, greedy for the other wonders the stack surely held.
Certainly Katniss had never looked at anybody like that. Beguiling, seductive, goodness if even Katniss didn't want to move in closer. The woman was a modern Venus, lust and beauty woven into one. Perfect coils of dark hair surrounded one of the loveliest faces Katniss had ever seen. Thick, dark eyelashes framed grey eyes speckled with green. The woman – Carlotta, her mind unhelpfully supplied – wore a golden gown that practically dripped off her figure. The dress seemed about to slip off, and it already revealed tanned shoulders and a broad expanse of her upper breasts. Rather a broader expanse than Katniss had to offer, which was just poor manners.
Until she realized what the woman held, Katniss was willing to be somewhat detached. She could see the time and technical skill crafting such a stunning painting must have taken, appreciate the beauty of its subject. But when she noticed that Carlotta held one of Peeta's orange tulips between long, delicate fingers, Katniss wanted to scratch out the woman's face, shred the canvas.
Her grip tightened around the edge of the canvas. She could do it now, pierce the back with her fingernails, continue the tear far enough to rip through Miss Carlotta's face. Show some restraint, and she might be able to pass it off as an accident.
No, she couldn't. Peeta had poured himself into this painting. That much was obvious from the tiny, painstaking strokes, the golden warmth that permeated every inch of the work. Peeta had intended this as a visual memory to savor forever, and she had no right to take that away from him.
Katniss gently set the painting back and, after picking up the paper from where she had set it earlier, went out into the hall. She was halfway down the stairs when she made the connection. Same dark hair, grey eyes, olive complexion. Katniss was a paste jewel that could never sparkle quite the same way as a diamond like Carlotta. A replacement, and a poor one at that.
Her eyes burned with tears that begged to be shed, but Katniss allowed herself only a few seconds at the landing to collect herself before returning to the others.