The God's Eye (Lancaster's Luck Book 3)

by Anna Butler

  “And you don’t want to walk the path anyway, you mean? But if you don’t, who will?”

  “Our father has impressed that truth on me already. Don’t worry. I’ve accepted my responsibilities and I’ll adjust. Not without some kicking against fate, perhaps, but I’m resigned to it.”

  She leaned forward at what seemed a perilous angle, given her feet were tucked underneath her, to prop her elbows on the desk and rest her chin on her hands. “That’s what’s made you so glum?”

  “I’m very well, I assure you.”

  “I’m not so sure. You’re looking a trifle unkempt. For a start, you need a haircut. Although, with that hair, I don’t know whether to recommend a barber or a zookeeper.” She talked right over my protest as if I hadn’t bothered opening my mouth. “You’re thinner, too. I don’t think you’re eating or sleeping as well as you should be. Are you so desperate to be in Aegypt?”

  Double damn. She was, as all Stravaigors were, far too knowing.

  “Sad to be so transparent, perhaps.”

  “As glass, my dear. So clear I can see the back of your head.”

  I gave up. Nell took no prisoners. “Well, yes, that’s part of it too. I want to be there more than I can tell you.” I could hardly sully her maiden ears with the real reason I wished I were a full two thousand miles away, after all. Even if she understood the concept of confirmed bachelorhood, I couldn’t explain I missed Ned as my lover, that my nights were empty without him in them. Not to mention my growing unease about his jaunt away from Hermopolis. “I like excavation work. Ned Winter is a very good friend, my closest friend, and with him gone—”

  I stopped. Grimaced.

  “You’re lonely.” She nodded. “I know. It’s this house. It makes everyone lonely.”

  Our father lay dying upstairs. His wife refused to return from Paris. His only legitimate son was dead, on his own orders. His elder daughter was absorbed in her husband and her coming child. Nell was faltering and brittle, deserted by all of them. And then there was me. So out of place, I was the proverbial fish missing the briny, and what’s more, a fish whose mate was swimming now in an entirely different ocean.

  I could have said something philosophical and deep, something epigrammatic. After all, we’re all alone, most of the time. At best, we touch other people here and there, and now and then. All of us inhabited our own little worlds, touching each other only at the edges, our planets spinning in orbits that barely intersected.

  But I didn’t. Instead, Nell and I looked at each other and nodded, and her smile, faint and vulnerable enough to shatter, was knowing.

  Yes, indeed. The house made everyone lonely.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “The Singapore office should be doing better than it is.” My father put down the report he’d been reading when I came into his bedroom. His was an old man’s hand now—the skin tissue-thin, blue-veined, and wrinkled. It shook under the weight of the report as he laid the papers on the counterpane. He sat propped against his pillows to help him breathe.

  I picked up the report to return it to its leather portfolio. “I sent Peter there, remember? We’re lucky we still have a Singapore office.”

  “Why Singapore?”

  “Because it’s as far as I could send him, since we don’t have an office in Timbuctoo.”

  My elder half-brother had been John Lancaster’s crony all their lives and had plotted with John to kill me. Sending him to the other side of the world was the kindest plan I could come up with, lest I be provoked to order Tatlock to make his absence permanent. I would not become a typical House Princeps. I would not. But in Peter’s case, it was best to put him out of temptation’s reach.

  I mused on it further. “Perhaps I should send him to set up a new office in the South Sea Islands somewhere. I could have him marooned on Fiji. That sounds promising.”

  The old man snorted. “Peter is a useful idiot, no more. Remind him of the penalties if he doesn’t do better.”

  “I will.” I took my usual seat beside the bed, picked up the scattered reports, and stacked them on his bedside table. “I’m sending Nell to Paris tomorrow to see her mother.”

  He stared. “The deuce you are!”

  “Yes, I am.” I glanced at his greyish, sagging face and narrowed eyes. “She’s worn out and sad, and far too young to be cooped up here feeling helpless and unwanted.”

  “Unwanted? Who says she’s unwanted?”

  “When did you last send for her? Sit and talk to her for more than a few minutes?”

  His gaze met mine, hard-boiled-toffee eyes glistening and impenetrable, expecting me, I think, to wilt under their implacability. But he looked away first. “I’m fond enough of her.”

  “I know you are, sir. But I’m not sure ‘fond enough’ is enough. Not for a bright little bird like Nell. She’s lonely, and she hasn’t seen her mother for two years. She’ll leave tomorrow and be back in a month or so.”

  Another snort. “I don’t suppose I get a say in the matter!”

  “You get to say ‘Bon Voyage.’ And ‘Merry Christmas.’ And tell her you’ll be looking forward to her homecoming.” We stared at each other for a few more moments, and I added, in a softer tone, “Let her go, sir. She’ll be the better for it, and we should want the best for her.”

  “You two are bloody chummy.” But the hard-boiled toffee was softening into something closer to melting caramel.

  “I’m very fond of her, too. She’s a gem.”

  “She is.” He let out a long sigh and lay back among the pillows. I wondered if he’d last until Nell came home again. In the end, he nodded. “True, I don’t spend enough time with her.” He offered me a wry, fleeting smile. “I need to use what time I have wisely. I don’t mean to neglect Eleanor, but I still have a great deal to pass on to you.” A short pause, while his mouth worked and his gaze grew distant. “Very well. I’ll try to see more of her when she returns. Providing I’m still here, of course.”

  “You make an unconvincing martyr, sir.”

  He managed a real smile. “Hmmph. Just you and me for Christmas, then.”

  “So it seems. I’ll tell the cook to downgrade the festive goose to a small chicken.”

  That made him laugh, a “rusty steam engine with a leak” sort of noise wheezing out of his chest. “I look forward to it. As for Eleanor, make sure she has plenty of spending money and she comes in to see me before she goes.” At my nod, he settled himself, and lay watching me through half-closed eyes. “Who’s going to keep her in cigarillos in Paris if you’re not there to do it?”

  I might have guessed Nell hadn’t managed to deceive him. “You don’t miss a thing.”

  “Peppermints can’t hide everything.”

  We grinned at each other.

  “She’ll be mortified. I’ll put a case into her luggage for her to find when she arrives, shall I?”

  “Do that. Put my name on it.” He closed his eyes, and his voice slowed. “With my love.”

  Our family reminded me of a set of crotales, those tiny cymbals capable of silvery music but, in our clumsy hands, more often producing little more than a discordant jangling. But now and again, even we had our rare moments of harmony.

  Christmas Eve.

  By the time it dawned, I was so far from feeling the spirit of the season, that “good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time” as described by Mr Dickens, I would have embraced Scrooge as a brother.

  December had been a monotony of days dragging past on leaden feet. Life was… fractured. That’s the word. Fractured. Explorers of the northern wastes describe the bitter cold of frosted glacial plains where the ice is broken into shards, great jagged, tumbled spikes thrusting up at perilous angles, jutting against each other as though jousting for space in a biting, piercing, perilous winter—the centre of Dante’s Hell made manifest. My days were full of such barbed ice spikes, abrading my usual cheerful spirits into fractious discontent.

  I’d have liked to lock myself away and mo
pe, but I had social obligations now I couldn’t evade. Alliances and friendships could only thrive if fostered, my father said when encouraging me to go forth and shake the hands of important men, to affect a veneer of bonhomie and good cheer. Fostered? I’d adopt them out entirely and wash my hands of them, except for that damnable sense of responsibility with which I’d been cursed. I blamed Ned for encouraging it along, mind.

  Invitations to various House festivities abounded. Though I declined several on the grounds of my father’s dubious health, it was not politic to refuse the pre-Christmas dinner the Cartomancer gave for all his allied Houses. I went with my most charming smile pasted upon my face and kept it there despite the jaw ache. At least the claret continued to belie my father’s assertions about the Cartomancer’s lack of a palate, and he employed an excellent chef.

  While it would be definite folly to refuse the Gallowglass’s invitation to luncheon on Christmas Eve, I’d accepted with more alacrity than dismay. At least I felt less resentful about shimmying into formal House dress, aided by Harper, my father’s valet, than I had when coerced into it for the Cartomancer’s dinner. But then, I had a great deal more respect for the Gallowglass.

  Luncheon required House day dress, a sartorial blessing compared to evening wear. I was, I grant you, still a wonderful impersonation of a Regency dandy—why on earth couldn’t our beloved monarch update this bally tradition?—but could at least eschew the knee-breeches and buckled shoes I’d had to don for the Cartomancer’s dinner. Harper shoehorned me into breeches and shiny Hessian boots instead, and insisted on tying my cravat himself. My old habit of contorting it into a loose knot and sticking a jabot pin through it gave him the vapours. He folded the linen while I stared at the ceiling and regretted those halcyon days when my donning House dress consisted of no more than sticking a silver Stravaigor badge onto my dinner jacket. Now my House badge, the little ship with its full-bellied sails, tacked across my left breast in platinum and diamonds. Despite the glitter, I understood now why House dress tried even Ned’s sweet temper.

  Ned.

  I made a vain effort to brush away the ache that was well-nigh unbearable. He still hadn’t returned from wherever he’d hared off to three weeks before, and hadn’t contacted either me or his family. His absence tried my temper even more than House dress.

  I arrived at Gallowglass House hoping he’d returned to Hermopolis that day as promised. We’d crank up the Marconi, and he’d give us his greetings for the season, and I for one wouldn’t care about feeling silly for worrying.

  The Gallowglass came to meet me at the drawing-room door when the butler announced me, and we shook hands with genuine goodwill. “I’m glad to see you, Rafe. How is the Stravaigor?”

  “Holding on, sir.”

  His grimace was sympathetic. “The best we might expect, I suppose. I’m sorry to hear he hasn’t improved. Well, try and put it all aside for today.” He lowered his voice. “I’ll call you in when Ned’s on the Marconi.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  We shook hands again, and he went off to speak to another guest. I accepted a glass of champagne from a footman before looking about for a friendly face. Most people present were the Gallowglass’s major allies, including my sister Emily and her husband. She favoured me with a hard stare and a nod by way of a festive greeting, but others were warmer. Sir Tane Stafford, the Scrivener, was at a little distance from me but raised his glass in salute when his gaze caught mine. He was in conversation with Mr Pearse, the Jongleur, whom I’d first known as the former owner of my coffeehouse. While I liked Sir Tane, I was very fond indeed of Mr Pearse. I returned Sir Tane’s salute as Mr Pearse, alerted by a tug on his sleeve from Sir Tane, turned. His cheery smile was instant, and he beckoned me to join them.

  I did so, happy to be invited. We were still in the midst of exchanging cordial Christmas greetings, when Sir Tane smiled over my shoulder at someone behind me. I turned.

  Young Theo Winter.

  He greeted us with a “Gentlemen,” and a respectful bow.

  I took a sip of my champagne and nodded back. “Winter.”

  He glanced around. “I wondered if your sister is here, sir?”

  Well, now. That had all my keraioi quivering, so to speak, like a bed louse scenting fresh blood. Interesting enough to quell my chagrin at being “sirred” by a man a mere six years my junior. Positively aging. I took another sip of champagne. “Emily? She’s here with her husband, of course, in the Plumassier contingent. There she is. Talking to Madame Verrier.”

  That earned me a wry smile. “I didn’t mean Mrs Farrell.” The smile widened. “As I’m sure you know. I thought to see Miss Lancaster at the Pallisers’ do last week.”

  Had he, now? And had he been disappointed by her absence? I was aware they’d met at the few functions after the Cartomancer’s ball that Nell had attended, but she hadn’t confided anything interesting to me.

  “My younger sister is in Paris for the holiday, visiting her mother. I expect her to return in the New Year.”

  “Ah. I wondered…” He took a swig from his glass. The tightness around his eyes suggested disappointment, and conferred on him the strained look of an early Christian martyr standing too close to a pile of firewood and an open flame. “Her friends will be eagerly awaiting her return, of course.”

  I let him flounder until I recalled it was the “kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant” season and it didn’t do to torment the young at such a time. Far too Scrooge-like, even for my current mood. “It’s kind of you to ask after her, and I’ll mention it when I speak to her next. She’ll be pleased to know she isn’t forgotten.”

  “Thank you. Please convey to her my best wishes for the season.” He nodded, took another gulp of his champagne, bowed to us all, and took himself off, a trifle red about the ears.

  Sir Tane, Mr Pearse, and I watched him go. I don’t know about my expression, but theirs were thoughtful and speculative.

  Mr Pearse cleared his throat. “Do you think young Theo admires your sister, Rafe?”

  “It seems he might.”

  “I don’t know Miss Lancaster.” Sir Tane glanced at Emily, and a small frown furrowed his brow.

  “Nell is the best of us.” I debated the merits of being blunt. Nell was nothing like Emily. Indeed, she knocked Emily into a cocked hat, and no friend of House Gallowglass should worry if Theo did indeed harbour a tendre for her, since he had to prove he was good enough for her, not the other way around. And what’s more, he’d have to prove it to me. I didn’t lay claim to many standards, true, but I’d be establishing a few for Nell’s benefit. Young Theo Winter would have his work cut out to win her.

  Sir Tane laughed. “You sound proud.”

  “I am, which surprises me as much as it must surprise you. I never thought I’d find anything admirable in my family. I was wrong.” I smiled and changed the subject. “What are your plans for the season, gentlemen? I didn’t expect to see you in London, Mr Pearse. I take it the attractions of Eastbourne palled again?”

  Mr Pearse had retired to live in Eastbourne in early 1900, when he’d sold me the coffeehouse. He was so little enamoured of the littoral life, however, he often deserted the niece who kept his house there and decamped back to the capital to indulge in the delights of civilization. His gently voiced complaints about the vicissitudes of seaside living kept us amused until we were called into luncheon.

  The tables had been set up in the ballroom, marching down its glorious, decorative length in two long lines, burdened with blinding-white linen, heavy silver, and so much food and drink it showed why old Nicholas was the beloved patron saint of vintners and grocers. I could only hope my formal jacket, buttoned tight, would be sufficient to constrain any overindulgence.

  By mid-afternoon the world outside the vast ballroom windows was darkening with a flurry of seasonal sleety snow. I’d pushed my seat back from the table edge, all the better to accommodate my luncheon-packed midsection—a ploy adopted by many, and I wondere
d how many of the ladies had surreptitiously loosened their corsets—and now sat at my ease, glass in my hand. The occasion was the essence of conviviality. I hadn’t enjoyed myself at a social event this much in months. Years. In fact, I’d never enjoyed a House occasion this much. I was replete, the inner man refreshed. Madame Gallowglass gave us permission to smoke. I was with friends I valued. The conversation was light, airy, friendly; the smiles glittered to rival the great aether chandeliers above us.

  The Gallowglass made a discreet exit with his lady, sending a faint smile my way. Off to the Marconi room. Soon I’d be talking with Ned.

  Life could only be better if he were here with me, if it were his hand holding the lucifer steady to light our cigarillos at its flame, his glass clinking against mine for the toasts.

  Ah, then I could truly embrace the spirit of the season.

  When the summons came, I was filling up nonexistent empty corners with marchpane snowflakes and laughing at one of Sir Tane’s wry jokes.

  It wasn’t quite the summons I was expecting.

  Theo Winter leaned over me to speak in my ear, tapping the long ash from his cigar into the small crystal dish at my left elbow. I turned my head in time to catch the fleeting expression on his face before it froze into a social smile. The marchpane tasted like ash, my mouth so dry I couldn’t swallow. I doubted I’d ever be able to bear the taste of almonds again.

  “My father says you’re to come and join him in our Marconi room, please.”

  There wasn’t enough air in that vast ballroom. There wasn’t enough air anywhere, not even through the long, deep breaths I pulled in to try and stem the flow of ice. The cold pulsed in my chest in rapid bursts, matching my erratic heartbeat, the frost spreading through me as relentless as death.

  I sketched a smile at my luncheon companions, seeing Mr Pearse’s look of concern, hearing Sir Tane’s disquieted murmur, and lurched out of the room in Theo’s wake. Odd that my legs held me up, but they did. I moved with speed, despite the numbness. “Ned?”