Somewhere inside that self-assured figure in the pretty suit had to be a scared little boy, waiting for one of those nuanced traps to swing shut on him, condemning him forever to the cold outer reaches of eternal disdain. You’d have to be awfully cold-blooded not to hold some degree of uncertainty.
So how to tap Bunsen’s pocket of uncertainty? And how to do it so Bunsen didn’t simply pull away? Stuyvesant could hold the threat of shame over him, making it clear that if Bunsen ran, Laura would see it, but if he wanted Bunsen to allow him near, he couldn’t be too open with it.
Much better to ride the line between harmless and puzzling—like the bumptious American act he’d pulled on Carstairs, but with thorns, to whet a sapper’s appetite for danger.
He wanted Bunsen to be so interested in him, he couldn’t bear to let him go.
A distant clamor rose up, which grew into the reverberation of the gong. He glanced at his wrist-watch, startled at how long he’d sat here staring into space: Time to get going. He turned the gun over between his palms, feeling its reassuring authority, lifting it to his face to breathe in the odor of the oil. Then he stood up from the bed and put the weapon back into its hiding place: He wouldn’t be needing it any more tonight.
He washed his hands, studied his reflection in the mirror, and went to join the others for dinner.
Chapter Forty-Three
IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN EASIER if Bunsen didn’t look like a Mediterranean Ivor Novello, smooth and handsome and oozing charm and good humor from every polished pore. He wasn’t tall, no taller than Laura (ha! thought Stuyvesant—that’s why she’s in flat shoes tonight. And immediately pushed away the thought as petty.) and his eyes looked somehow amber, caught between light brown and hazel. His hair was perfect, and his moustache might have been painted on, its lines were so flawless. He made even Patrick Hurleigh look like a “before” picture in the advertisement pages, and Sarah’s friend Simon Fforde-Morrison was sulking in the corner, shooting the newcomer dark glances.
The music man, however, seemed to be the only stand-out among the thirty or so people in the long gallery when Stuyvesant arrived. The group around Bunsen was laughing at some nicety, and even those in the other groups glanced over from time to time with amusement or interest.
Without knowing his history, Stuyvesant would have sworn that Bunsen was born to the life of cleverness and ease. Certainly he was the most vivid creature in the room, and it was extraordinary, and somewhat disturbing, to watch Laura Hurleigh pull into herself, deliberately dropping a basket over her own light so that Bunsen might shine the brighter.
Not that she needed to: As Stuyvesant had anticipated, the man possessed in large measure the knack of the successful politician—or the successful scam-artist—to make the person he was talking to feel the most important, most fascinating individual on the planet. Holding eye contact, Bunsen might as well have been saying aloud, My entire attention is on you and you alone. And when the eye contact was broken, that impression stayed on: Stuyvesant would bet that, after tonight, each person here would feel that he or she had been in close, prolonged conversation with the man.
That kind of animal magnetism was a gift, not a thing one could learn, and Bunsen had it in spades. Even the Duchess of Hurleigh was not immune: She had melted in the palm of Bunsen’s long-fingered hand, and was responding to his overt act of flirtatious courtier with a similarly self-aware act of near-coquettishness: a game, and they were both agreeing to play it.
Stuyvesant circled around to where Sarah and Bennett Grey stood, and bent forward to say in her deliciously scented ear, “Your friend seems to have made a conquest of the resident dragon.”
Sarah turned and said something to him in response, but Stuyvesant did not hear her words, for Bunsen’s attention had been attracted, either by Stuyvesant’s entrance or by the big man’s proximity to Sarah Grey, and he turned his gaze on the American.
The jolt of that gaze was so tangible, the room’s voices seemed to fade. But the crackle of energy between them was personal; he and Bunsen alone had gone still, and Stuyvesant stood with his head canted towards Sarah’s voice, unhearing, his full attention locked on the light, oddly colored eyes of the man he had crossed an ocean to find.
The only one taking notice of the meeting was Bennett Grey, at Stuyvesant’s elbow. Grey’s hand had closed onto his arm, to convey some wordless comment. Encouragement? Protest? Stuyvesant could not tell without looking at him, and he did not wish to break away from Bunsen for another few seconds—but too late. Bunsen pulled away first, to make another comment to the Duchess and raise his nearly empty glass to his lips. Stuyvesant waited. Sure enough, on the count of seven, Bunsen glanced back at him. His eyes, Stuyvesant decided, were hazel-yellow with a green overtone. This time, Stuyvesant was the one to withdraw first. He turned back to Sarah.
“I’m sorry, honey,” he said. “What was that?”
“I said, ‘Do you want to meet Richard?’”
“Oh, he’s busy just now. We’ll have plenty of time after dinner to get to know each other.”
Five minutes later, just before the second and final sounding of the gong, the Duke came in to claim his wife’s arm. Out of the corner of his eye, Stuyvesant saw Bunsen come to attention and greet his host with a great deal more formality than he had demonstrated towards the man’s wife. He then moved over to pick up something from a table in the corner and, with a formal little half bow and a deprecating gesture of his other hand, presented it to the Duke.
It was a small paperboard box held together with a twine tie. The Duke listened, and with a degree of reluctance pulled the twine and lifted the box top.
Whatever the contents, they caused his bushy eyebrows to rise. He tucked the top under the box and pulled aside the packing material. Bunsen continued to speak, shrugging to let his host know how relatively unimportant the gift was, but the older man was clearly captivated by the object, and Stuyvesant did not think him a man easily impressed by the efforts of his lessers.
The Duchess said something to her husband, causing him to push the contents down in the excelsior and replace the top. He appeared intent on carrying it in to dinner, but the Duchess took it, handed it to a nearby servant, and firmly put her arm through his. The Duke pointed at the packet and told the man something, and the servant immediately left the room, holding the crude box as if it were a diamond tiara. As the man went past, Stuyvesant looked to see what was in the box: a small, rather dull china dog, something that might sit in the garden of a child’s doll-house.
Right: the Duke collected the things. Clever Bunsen.
Arms were linked into elbows and the guests and family began to move towards the stairway. Stuyvesant was pleased to be given Sarah’s for the purpose, but he waited for her indication that it was time for them to move—the order and priority of guests at a country house Saturday dinner was a mystery too deep for a mere Bureau of Investigation agent to crack.
He followed the parade down the stairs, and found that tonight, dinner was to be in the Great Hall. He was seated across the table and down from Bunsen and—to his chagrin—down from Sarah Grey, who was at Bunsen’s left. When the Duchess turned to the other side, Sarah leaned forward to speak to Bunsen. His gaze came down the table to touch on Stuyvesant—Sarah must have been introducing him in absentia, because Bunsen nodded—before returning to her.
To Bunsen’s right was the Duchess herself. Stuyvesant watched the arrangement surreptitiously, wondering what it meant. Twenty years ago, he knew, the rigidity of society meant that every person at a dinner party had their seating clearly laid out for them—and if there were any doubts, priority was given in Debrett’s, lest incompetent servants or an inexperienced hostess commit a career-shattering faux pas. But then the War had run its cart and horses through every level of society, and Stuyvesant did not know how far-reaching were its effects. Yes, there were thirty people here for a formal meal, but they were mostly either family or their young friends, and presumably rank was
allowed to loosen its tie a notch. Hell, twenty years ago, a ducal family like the Hurleighs would not have shared a table with half the people here, including himself—the question of seating would never have arisen.
Was there even a salt any more, to sit below?
In any case, he was just an American, and a purveyor of motorcars at that, who shouldn’t be expected to possess any awareness of subtle social hierarchies. So he would not.
He introduced himself to his neighbor, settling in for a demonstration that even American car salesmen were capable of civilized behavior.
As the meal wore on, civilized behavior became increasingly difficult. To his astonishment, Richard Bunsen had responded to their little staring contest by taking the lead, and was playing precisely the game Stuyvesant had considered playing with Laura Hurleigh. How he’d known Stuyvesant was at all interested in Sarah Grey, he didn’t know, but Bunsen was clearly paying a closer attention to the young woman than she was accustomed to. She went from surprised over soup to flustered over fish, and by the time the beef was laid before them, she was pink with pleasure.
Despite his exasperation, Stuyvesant had to admire Bunsen’s technique: The man managed to engage Sarah fully without giving the Duchess the least cause for complaint. If anything, he was more openly flirtatious with the older woman; it was only in Sarah’s reaction that Stuyvesant saw anything out of the ordinary. The Bastard possessed the skills of a polygamist, he thought, giving a vicious stab to the meat on his plate: two-handed seduction, conducted right out in the open.
One time only, as the final course was being set on the linen, did Bunsen betray any awareness of the American down the table. He leaned over to murmur something to Sarah, and at her resultant laugh, his eyes flickered in Stuyvesant’s direction.
Bunsen was already turning to the other object of his affections, the Duchess, so their eyes met only for the briefest moment. But that brief flash washed like a soothing balm across Stuyvesant’s growing ill humor, and he picked up his fruit knife (was this the fourth knife?) feeling cool and purposeful once again. He did not so much as glance in Sarah’s direction during the remainder of the meal, but entertained his table-mates with an embroidered tale of how he’d sold a fleet of very pricey Ford motorcars to an infamous New York crime lord, ending his story with, “And, I even managed to get his check to clear before the police raided his headquarters!”
As if he’d timed it, the laughter was still ringing when the Duchess rose, followed by the other ladies. Under the different timbre of male voices and masculine laughter, half the party moved upstairs, to take port and cigars before the fire in the solar and in the adjoining billiards room. Stuyvesant excused himself for a minute, and when he returned, positions had been taken up: Bunsen with the Duke at the center of things, the two Hurleigh sons to one side with a coterie of friends, ostensibly on their own but in fact more than half listening in. Bunsen had the voice of an experienced public speaker, capable of a carrying volume with no apparent effort. In this setting, his voice cut through cross-noise in a seemingly natural manner, as if he just happened to have that manner of speech. It was difficult not to listen to him, as he casually recounted to his host how he’d come across the china dog, in the grasp of a small child in a pram in Kensington Gardens.
Stuyvesant took a glass (brandy, not port—he’d experienced that alcoholic syrup before) and circled around to where Bennett Grey stood, in the cool air near the window. His face was pinched and the knuckles wrapped around his empty glass were white.
“You okay?” Stuyvesant asked.
“Do I look ‘okay’?” Grey snapped. Stuyvesant exchanged glasses with him and watched him shoot the contents down in one swallow. He looked, if anything, worse after that. With a shock, Stuyvesant realized that the man was actually drunk.
“Is it one person in particular, or all of them?”
“All of them,” Bennett said, then immediately, “Bunsen’s the worst, but the accumulation…Are you going to get me another drink?”
“No, I’m going to take you out of here.”
“I can’t go yet.”
“Why the hell not? You’re a goddamn blown-up war hero, you’re allowed to feel ill any time you like. Come on.”
“I must at least take my leave of Uncle God.”
“Uncle—oh, right, the Duke.” Godlake Reginald Gryffin and so on. “Okay: ten seconds and then I’m dragging you away.”
Grey walked up to the group around Bunsen as if approaching a firing squad: straight-backed, slightly unsteady on foot but unwavering of purpose. Keeping his eyes on the old man, he made his formal apologies, nodded to the others, and returned to Stuyvesant, definitely weaving.
While Grey was speaking with the Duke, Stuyvesant had been covertly watching Bunsen, who studied his glass, his face neutral. Did he know of the connection between Grey and Laura Hurleigh? Stuyvesant couldn’t begin to tell.
He got Grey down the stairs without quite having to carry him, and had one of the servants show him the short way to the barn, a door beside the kitchen. Outside, the rain was gurgling in the down-spouts and sheeting off the far end of the roof where a gutter was blocked, but when Stuyvesant would have laid a hand between Grey’s shoulders and hurried him in the direction of the barn, Grey stopped dead and lifted his face to the sky. There he stood, showing no sign of moving, so Stuyvesant took a step back under the eaves, lit a cigarette, and gave himself a thorough kicking for not managing to keep an eye on Grey’s intake. Sarah would not be pleased.
The rain fell; the smoke swirled; the man got soaked through. At last he scrubbed his face with his hands and ran his fingers through his dripping hair, then looked around.
“Harris,” he said. “Why din’ you go back inside?”
“It’s nice out here,” he said, and crushed his stub under his heel. “C’mon, my old friend, let’s put you to bed.”
Grey leaned on him as they went up the stairs, then stood on the rug like a child as Stuyvesant peeled off the sodden garments. “See if you can get those buttons,” he suggested as he knelt down to pick at the wet shoelaces. Grey’s fingers, clumsy with drink and cold, managed about half of them, and Stuyvesant did the rest.
In the end, he got Grey down to his under-shorts. He pulled the bed-clothes over the man’s savagely scarred leg, stuck a bath-towel under his head to protect the pillow, and went to the door.
“Thank you, Ster—Stew—Stoy—M’ol’fren’ Harris.” The man in the bed giggled, a sound that in a sober man would have been hair-raising.
“Any time, Bennett. Sleep well, old man, you’ve done a valiant job. And by the way, you’re finished for the week-end. From here on in, I’m on my own.”
The only answer was a ragged snore.
Chapter Forty-Four
BACK UPSTAIRS, STUYVESANT FOUND that a shuffling of personnel had taken place, and that more had been added. New arrivals, dressed less formally than if they had been dining, were spotted here and there, most of them young and with the look of students about them. And the ladies had returned from wherever ladies went after dinner, although neither the Duke nor Duchess were present; it occurred to Stuyvesant that apart from Gallagher, he was the oldest person in sight.
Drinks were again set up in the solar, with the doors that linked it, the billiards room, and the long gallery propped open to ease the flow of movement between the three spaces. There were a few people talking in front of the fire in the solar, including Bunsen, but most of the girls were draped around the billiards table with cigarettes and glasses, waiting for the music to begin. Several men had removed their jackets to concentrate on the game, and others were sitting down to cards on the other side of the room.
The band was taking its place at the far end of the gallery, putting down their drinks and tuning their instruments. Half a dozen eager dancers stood waiting, and shortly, Simon Fforde-Morrison stood up beneath the mirrored ball they had hung from the ceiling, and signaled to his musicians. On the downstroke of his arm th
ey launched into “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue.” The waiting couples began to gyrate; a number of those in the billiards room extinguished their cigarettes and hurried to join them.
Bunsen stayed where he was in the solar, leaning against the fireplace with an audience to hand. Stuyvesant slipped behind the others to fetch himself a drink, then took it to the doorway, where he could appear to be watching the dancers while he was listening to Bunsen’s voice.
On the stage at Battersea, the man had looked and sounded like the educated son of a working man; his hair was slightly wrong, his suit had come off the peg, and his wide gestures were designed to reach to the farthest row back. Tonight, however, he wore an accent as expensive as his suit, and the motions of his hands were controlled and subtle.
Still magnetic, still compellingly intelligent, just working a different class of crowd.
He felt a touch at his elbow: Sarah.
“Is my brother all right?”
“Oh yeah, just plastered. I put him to bed; he’ll have a head on him in the morning but he’s fine.”
“I wish he wouldn’t do it.”
“He hurts,” Stuyvesant said bluntly. “And booze is the world’s oldest pain reliever.”
She took a metaphorical step back to look at him. “You are a remarkably sensible sort of a person, Harris Stuyvesant. Come, you must meet Richard properly.”
Slipping her hand into his, she began to pull him across the room. Stuyvesant wished her grasp felt more like a woman conscious of her skin against his and less like that of an eager acolyte: “Sensible” was little threat against a sleek-haired firebrand with eyes like chips of amber and a face like Ivor Novello.
Sarah pushed him forward into Bunsen’s admirers, and Harris Stuyvesant held out his hand to the man, showing no sign that his entire body hungered to beat his brother’s destroyer to a bloody pulp.
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