Poetic Justice by Alicia Rasley

nature, and close by business habit. All he needed was Alavieri to hear that the Shakespeare play might have survived the Terror. He'd send an army of Jesuit warriors, not just a pack of thieves, after John.
    He looked up to find Devlyn studying him. He was an observer, was Devlyn, and knew something was up. "Exciting, no doubt, these acquisition trips of yours. But now you've this new title, and it's sure to bring you more business. You've got a fleet of—what? Seven ships?"
    "And the Coronale," John murmured, so as not to slight the lady.
    "You could send them all out with their cargo, and spend all your time in London as a consultant and dealer. You don't have to make these trips, risking your life with the lunatics you keep meeting along the way."
    "Alavieri's no lunatic," John replied defensively. "He's the best in the world. I'd give my right arm for half his ability and knowledge."
    Devlyn raised his hand as if calling a halt to this. Still he gave it an ironic consideration. "Let me see if I have understood you correctly. You admire the man—a priest, by God—who tried to kill you over some old book?"
    "It was nothing personal. I daresay, had he his druthers, he would let me live, and perhaps even take me on as a junior partner of sorts. But the Jerusalem is more than an old book. And the book business is—"
    "More than cutthroat."
    "Well, yes. But I assure you it is no more dangerous than free-trading, and I did that for years. It is surely less trying than smuggling guns to the Calabrian resistance. And Alavieri is only slightly more ruthless than Bonaparte."
    "Somehow that doesn't reassure me. Whenever you leave on a voyage, I go out and look at that old raft we built, and think probably it is the last time I will see you."
    Devlyn, John realized yet again, had a deep streak of pessimism down the middle of his practical mind. And it was disconcerting to find bits of maudlinity in a man of sense. But then, Devlyn had always cherished mementoes of his past. In one of the barns, next to the old raft, he kept the aeroballoon the princess had stolen from France. And he had kept John busy over the years, tracking down and retrieving the mediocre family portraits the late Lord Devlyn had sold to pay his gambling debts.
    Restlessly John twisted the sapphire signet ring on his left hand. It had left a pale circle against the tan leather of his skin, mute evidence of the amount of sun he had gotten since he started wearing it seven years earlier. He shoved it back into place, and flexed his hands. He felt confined suddenly, both by his old friend's concern and the new change in his circumstances. Baronets, he gathered, weren't supposed to take risks.
    "You're a fine one to talk, Devlyn. You were how long at war?"
    "Nine years in the army. Seven at war, I suppose."
    "And nary a scratch."
    Devlyn shrugged. "But I am lucky."
    "And I am smart. I earn my luck."
    "Well, perhaps you are right. I must say, I never thought you'd earn a title, never in all my days." And so, with less than grace, Devlyn gave up. The role of the older advisor had never suited him anyway; he was no model for the staid and secure life, since he was married to a princess. "Just be cautious, won't you?"
    A tiger kitten wandered through the door, wended its way around Devlyn's chair, and finally came to nuzzle at John's boot. He wriggled his toes to scratch the cat's throat. "I'll be here in cautious old England all summer, as it happens. Nothing very interesting will occur, you may be sure."
    "Then you'll be able to come to Tatiana's charity ball next week."
    Though he was here for that very purpose, John knew Devlyn would expect him to demur. He bent to pick the kitten up, and to hide any eagerness his expression might betray. "I hadn't considered it, actually."
    "Do me this one favor, lad, and come. It will be nigh unbearable otherwise. All our charitable neighbors will be there."
    The kitten was digging her claws into John's breeches, and he