Free Newt's Emerald by Garth Nix

General’s French, and partly to admire his dress — although she told herself it was merely for the purpose of furthering her own disguise.
    For the ink-stained coatless ruffian of that morning had been replaced by an expensive elegance that stopped short of dandyism. From his astonishingly white knee breeches to his cravat tied in the waterfall mode, he was attired as a man of taste and consequence. Even hisjet-black hair had succumbed to order, swept back in a style Truthful could only admire without recognizing it as being done in the fashion known as à la Brutus.
    Supper was a simple affair of white soup, cold meats, poached salmon, curiously cut vegetables that Truthful wondered were some sort of private joke and various cakes and trifles. But neither the general nor Harnett ate very much, and Truthful followed their example, though she did not do so when it came to drinking the port. Though she knew she drank considerably less than would be usual for most young men of her class she hoped her supposed asceticism and devotion to religion would be sufficient to explain her abstinence.
    The initial talk was inconsequential, mostly of the sporting variety, the kind of conversation Truthful was used to overhearing from her cousins. Nevertheless, she listened carefully, not least so she could relay some of it back to her great-aunt. She also learned two small but useful facts. One was that Harnett’s first name was Charles, and the other, that he was very much a confidant of General Leye, and furthermore was even known to that still more-famous general, the Duke of Wellington. So he was a man of some standing after all, which made it curious that he was not a member of White’s.
    After dinner, the two men lit cigars, Truthful declining both a cigar and the offer of snuff. She would have liked to try the snuff, for she had heard of several women of great
ton
who took snuff like men but she feared her inexperience with the stuff would be too telling, even in a Frenchman destined for the priesthood. She did, however, accept a brandy as they moved from the table to the chairs set around a fire, newly kindled by the servant who had just finished labouring with lucifers and bellows. But even with the fire lit, there was no great increase of light in the room, particularly as two of the six candles on the side table had gone out.
    “Now,” said the General, as the servant left the room, “We shall get down to business. Which is, I understand, the theft of the Newington Emerald. Perhaps you could tell us all you know, Chevalier.”
    “Lady Truthful has described to me everything that happened in great detail,” said Truthful. “I shall relay it as she told it to me, if you are agreeable.”
    Both men indicating their assent, Truthful told them the whole story, from the arrival of the Newington-Lacys up to “Lady Truthful’s” arrival in London, with occasional interruptions as the General asked questions or wanted her to elaborate on what she had said.
    Truthful concluded her tale by saying that it was a fortunate circumstance that he had arrived in time to take up enquiries for Lady Truthful, in the absence of any other male relatives.
    “Very fortunate,” said General Leye dryly. He raised a silver-cased eyeglass and looked at Truthful with his great eyebrows wrinkled together. She paled as he stared at her. He blinked, let the monocle fall into his open hand and glanced at Major Harnett. His brow cleared, and the corner of his mouth quirked into a faint smile, there and gone so quickly that Truthful was unsure whether she’d seen it happen. On balance, she thought she had seen it, and General Leye had seen something too. But the smile gave her hope.
    “It is fortunate, too,” he added, “that Lady Badgery is a woman of great resource, not to mention a very fine
sorceress
.”
    “What I don’t understand,” said Harnett, oblivious to this sally, “is these Newington-Lacy cousins. Why head off to secure a