by KJ Charles
“One could almost respect that, you know. Like a medieval queen.”
“She is medieval. She runs Castle Speight ‘sacked if seen’, so if any servant who isn’t meant to be there dares to intrude on her view, they are dismissed at once. If she catches a housemaid doing her job or sees a footman in the wrong place or a groom not in the stables, that’s their lot. God help anyone who is meant to be there but doesn’t bow with sufficient deference, come to that. The locals call it Castle Spite.”
“They must have quite the changing roster of staff. Interesting. So she wasn’t much of a stepmother to you. Your father didn’t seek to improve relations?”
Alec rested his head on his arm. He hadn’t spoken about this in years. Family wasn’t a subject he discussed with anyone but his siblings, who already knew. “No, not at all. He took her side in the arguments—there were a lot of arguments—and he always made it clear that if it came to a choice between his wife or his children, he’d choose his wife. Eight years ago it did, and he did.”
“Leaving you where?”
“In an attic,” Alec said. “George has a small income as Hartington—well, a very good one for a young man, which is what it’s meant to be, but he’s had Cara and Annabel, our sisters, to support since the break, and a family of his own now, and a wife who didn’t expect to penny-pinch when she married an earl. He’s had to shoulder all the family obligations because Father won’t. He’s never even met his grandchildren, do you know that? George has two sons, one of whom will be the Duke of Ilvar eventually, and Father doesn’t give a damn. He won’t acknowledge any of us unless we bow the knee to him and grovel to his wife.”
“And you won’t.”
“We oughtn’t have to. I don’t say the Duchess should have loved us, but the fact is, Annabel was four years old when they married, and I was eight, and we didn’t deserve to be punished because we wept for our mother. George oughtn’t have to be de facto head of the family, with all the burdens and none of the benefits. Cara—” He broke off, glaring through the glass at nothing.
“No,” Crozier said. “Some might say that nobody at all has a right to the kind of obscene wealth possessed by your family, but I quite see that if you’re born to it, it would be exasperating not to have it.”
“I’m well aware George’s income could support all the families in this street, if he lived like the families in this street,” Alec said testily. “But he’s a duke’s heir. He’s got to keep up appearances, to keep them up for his wife and children. You said yesterday, one ought to reach for what one wants and not miss opportunities. Well, George and his wife and his children and Annabel have the opportunity to be part of the highest society. And if George gets a job as a clerk, say, or Annabel becomes a governess, they and their children will suffer for it. You must know that.”
“They’d prefer aristocratic poverty to joining the middle classes?”
“Yes,” Alec said. “They would. Because George will be a duke one day, when Father dies and if he and his children have become an object of pity and contempt to their peers, well, that’s not fair on them. And Annabel is the Duke of Ilvar’s daughter. It’s not unreasonable that her intended’s family should want her to bring something to the marriage, but Father won’t give her a penny for a wedding portion. And if she could marry and George didn’t have to worry about her any more, that would take a strain off him too. She and his wife don’t get on awfully well—nobody’s fault, but it would be better for everyone if they didn’t share a house. If I could give her a sum to marry on—”
“Is that it?” Crozier asked. “Are you funding Lady Annabel’s dowry with the Duchess’s jewels?”
“Henry, with whom she has an understanding, is a gentleman,” Alec said. “Which means he needs to marry money rather than making it himself.” That came out slightly more sarcastically than he’d intended, and he heard the ghost of a chuckle from behind him. “I don’t mean to be rude. He’s pleasant enough, but not the most energetic fellow, or terribly bright. He’s a drone, not a worker bee.”
“And as a worker bee yourself, you disapprove.”
“Not really. I’d have liked an idle life of luxury as much as anyone.”
“Would you?” Crozier said. “This room seems to me a hive, as it were, of industry. It suggests a man who puts importance on his work.”
It didn’t lack markers of his profession, Alec was aware: he had pictures pinned haphazardly to the walls, pots of drawing materials, piles of images for reference. It was a working space more than anything and he did feel a certain satisfaction in his Bohemian existence, at least when the commissions came thick and fast. Not to mention that artists and journalists tended to have better conversation than sons of gentlemen, to be rather less demanding in matters of dress, and considerably more open in their pleasures.
“I have a knack for drawing,” he said. “And as it happens I like it, and the society it’s brought me into, well enough. Naturally I’d rather have more money; I dare say we all would.”
“I dare say.” Crozier sounded rather dry.
“If Father had given me an income to live on, I don’t suppose I’d ever have taken up drawing seriously, and I’d have missed out on a lot of things. But he didn’t cut me off to teach me to live a useful life. It wasn’t a lesson; he just doesn’t care. So even if I don’t feel I’ve been wronged as George and Annabel have, it’s still not right.” He took a deep breath. “And then there was Cara.”
“Yes,” Crozier said. “Tell me about Lady Cara.”
“He wouldn’t pay for her.” Alec stared out of the skylight. There was a cat on the roof opposite, a brindled one, basking in the sun. He fixed his eyes on it, because sometimes, if one fixed one’s eyes on a thing, one didn’t cry. “She was never strong, always short of breath. The Duchess called her sickly. She ought to have been in the country, with clean air, but instead she lived with George. He did try to send her to the seaside when he could, but with all the expenses—he couldn’t afford to keep up two households, and I needed to be in London to get work, and she didn’t want to go to a sanatorium on her own. And then last autumn the fog was so dreadful that I wrote to Father. I begged him to invite Cara to Castle Speight. I told him she was unwell, that she needed to be out of London, and please would he help. And his secretary wrote back and said His Grace could not countenance my request unless Cara wrote to make a personal apology for her intolerable insolence. His secretary.”
Crozier was silent. The brindled cat blurred in Alec’s vision. He blinked the tears away. “She caught a cold. It would have been a mere chill for anyone else, George’s boys constantly have them, but it came at the same time as that bad week’s fog in early December, and she died. Her weak chest, you see. It was very sudden. We’d been worried, but we didn’t expect her to die.”
“I’m sorry,” Crozier said softly.
“So am I. And Father refused to pay for the funeral. He said the expense was not convenient.”
There was a slight pause. “That’s quite a statement from one of the richest men in England.”
“Yes. He said he had an obligation to his Duchess which took priority. That was the diamond parure. As if he couldn’t have afforded to pay for the funeral too, as if his own daughter’s funeral shouldn’t have been more to him than another set of jewels. George had to pay, and we didn’t have flowers. Cara loved flowers but in December—hothouse lilies are awfully expensive— There was holly. One of the vases was knocked over and berries rolled everywhere, on the floor. People trod on them.” He remembered the red drops splashed like blood against the stone and the sharp smell.
“Yes,” Crozier said, as though he were agreeing with something, instead of listening to Alec ramble about holly. “I see. It’s the insult of indifference.”
Alec swung round at that. Crozier was only a couple of feet away. Alec hadn’t heard him move. “That’s exactly what it is. He has no right to be indifferent. No right to treat us as though we don’t exist. No right
not to come to Cara’s funeral, not to care.”
“I’m surprised he wasn’t concerned with public opinion.”
“We didn’t want people to know. George says it would make things worse if everyone was talking about us as hard done by, and he’s probably right. And in any case, I don’t think Father would care what people say. He’s so entrenched in his outrage at people’s failure to pay suitable homage to the Duchess that he doesn’t see anything else. It’s the only matter of right or wrong in his world. And Cara would rather have died than apologise. She did.”
Crozier’s brows angled down. “An extreme stance even in a family dispute.”
Alec had no intention of going into her reasons. “Well. Is that what you wanted? Enough of my family misery to be getting on with?”
“It’s a start.” Crozier seemed unconcerned by the belligerence of his tone. “The obvious question: Given the situation you’ve described, how do you propose to claim your place at the anniversary dinner?”
Alec put his chin up. “I’m going to apologise. I’m going to reconcile with my father and bow to the Duchess. He’ll want that: it will prove he was right all along.”
“And what have your brother and sister to say to that?”
Alec’s stomach clenched. “I haven’t spoken to them yet.”
“What are you going to say?” Crozier pressed.
“Well, I’m not going to tell them I’ve hired thieves,” Alec snapped. “I don’t know. That I’m tired of the fighting, that I’m giving in to Father in order to wring money out of him for Annabel. What else can I say?”
“That you need the money yourself. It’s very heroic to sacrifice yourself for your sister, but firstly she might refuse the offer, and secondly, if you announce that you’ll do anything to get money for her and then the jewels go missing, your siblings would be fools not to link the two things. Whereas if you admit to a minor villainy now, they will believe they know what you’re up to, and there won’t be an outstanding mystery to which the theft will, in due course, be a solution.”
“Oh. I see, I think. So I should say I want his money, and I don’t care about what he’s done?”
“Not that you don’t care, but that you can no longer keep to those principles. Let’s say you have accrued gambling debts. You’ve fallen back into expensive society—that’s me—and need to hold your own. You’re tired of scribbling for pennies. You’d prefer to have lilies at your funeral.”
Alec couldn’t help wincing. Crozier held his gaze, giving a deliberate shrug. “Forget your sensibilities. You’ll need to ask your father for money, lots of it, well before we do the job. Another safeguard: why would you steal from the goose when it’s started laying you golden eggs again?”
“Yes. Right. Christ.” Alec made a face. “George and Annabel will despise me.”
“I’d say it’s considerably more likely that once one of you has thrown in the towel, the others will follow. Try not to despise them if they do.”
“I don’t think they will,” Alec said with some understatement.
“In that case, yes, this is likely to be unpleasant for you with the people you most care about. Are you prepared for that?”
“Am I prepared to have people say cruel things to me?” Alec asked, almost incredulously. “Yes, probably I am. I went to school with everyone quite sure my father had married his mistress after driving her husband to suicide and covering it up. I grew up in the Duchess’s power. I think I can tolerate my brother and sister’s poor opinion for a couple of months. I don’t much want to, but I can.”
“Good, because you’ll have to. If your father is to believe in your submission, you can hardly be on good terms with the offspring who defy him, can you?”
Alec hadn’t quite thought of that. “I suppose not.”
“Three months,” Crozier said. “Two to prepare, the job, and then at least another month of good behaviour before you arrange to be cast into the outer darkness once more and can rebuild bridges with your siblings. This is what we call playing the long game, and it has a price. Don’t imagine any of this comes free and easy.”
Alec tried an eyebrow lift. “You look free and easy enough.”
Crozier’s lips curved responsively. “I already told you. I’m never sorry.”
He was two feet away, very close in a room which seemed suddenly rather smaller than usual. He wasn’t sorry, and he didn’t care about things, and he was going to guide Alec down the primrose path to villainy, and Alec wished to God he hadn’t drunk so much last night because it always made him randy the next day. The last thing he needed right now was, for example, Crozier taking two steps forward, grabbing his hands, pressing him against the wall or down over the drawing table...
The second last thing he needed right now was to be sporting a hard one, and he was well on the way. He put a hand casually behind his back, in order to dig two fingernails into the sensitive ball of his thumb. “Well. I’d better get on and speak to my siblings, then.”
“Before your father? Would you do that if you had no ulterior motive? What if he’s not interested in your submission?”
Alec resisted the obvious, tempting, unsayable reply. Keep your mind on the job, damn it. “Uh... I don’t know what I’d naturally do. Probably not this at all. I’d rather speak to George first.”
“Or is it that you’d rather put off contacting your father a little longer?”
Alec glared at him. “I dare say you’re very acute, but it doesn’t make you any more likeable.”
Crozier laughed aloud. “I’m sure it doesn’t. Look, from what you tell me, it will be harder than I suspect you realise to do as your father wishes. You’ll have to say a number of unpalatable things. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Tell them to me.”
Alec didn’t want to tell him anything. It stuck like brambles, all of it. He shut his eyes, which didn’t help, and opened them to find Crozier a silent step closer.
“You’re crossing the Rubicon,” the thief said softly. “If you were doing this because you meant it, you’d be renouncing a great deal of what has guided your life to this date. As you aren’t, you’re taking a significant step down a path that you don’t want to walk. But this is nevertheless the way to your goal, so tell me, what will you need to say?”
“That I apologise for my insolence to the Duchess.” Alec’s throat felt thick; he had to force the words out. “That I regret my failure to give due respect to my father and my father’s wife. That I pray to be accepted back into their good graces, that I promise proper filial piety from now on and will—will do as I’m told.”
Crozier nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s rather a lot to swallow.” He paused for a fraction of a second. “Do you not like to do as you’re told?”
“It depends what I’m being told to do,” Alec said. “Just as it depends what there is to swallow.”
Crozier’s eyes snapped wide, and Alec felt a fierce pulse of satisfaction—wrong-footed you there, you bastard—alongside the appalled realisation that yes, he had said that. There was silence for a few seconds. Alec’s blood was pounding; he could hear Crozier’s breath and his own. The air felt thick.
And then Crozier smiled, and Alec thought, Oh shit.
It wasn’t a nice smile, or a complicit one of shared understanding, or even the sort of smile that was a precursor to being bent over a table. It was a smile that could only be called predatorial. His brows were slanted in a truly satanic way, and Alec’s ribcage was suddenly rather too tight for comfort.
“That’s very true,” Crozier said slowly. “If it’s a matter of humiliating necessity, say, to which you’re driven by sheer desperation...that wouldn’t be good, would it?”
“Not at all.” Alec’s mouth was dry. He swallowed involuntarily, saw Crozier’s eyes dip to track the movement of his throat.
“Desperation is a terrible thing,” Crozier said. “It’s amazing what a man can find himself doing once he’s on his knees.”
Alec tried very hard not to whimper. He wasn’t sure if he’d succeeded. Crozier’s smile tilted, a crooked curve. “You know, in my line of work it’s useful to have a few characters. Identities, you might say, entire personalities that you can slip on or off like a garment. It’s far easier than struggling to reconcile difficult realities or remembering a mass of loose facts.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s simple enough. Don’t write your letter as Alec Pyne, degrading himself in his own eyes with lies he’d rather not tell. Write as, shall we say, ‘Lord Alexander’, the weakling nobleman who comes on in Act One. A man of no real strength, easily swayed by bad company, who’ll do absolutely anything he’s told to.”
Alec blinked. “A character from the melodrama, you mean?”
“Precisely. The effete young cipher, the hapless plaything of stronger men’s will. Create the part and play it. And then, you see, you’ll have Lord Alexander ready and waiting whenever you need to go to your knees. For any reason.”
“That’s your professional advice, is it?” Alec managed.
Crozier took one more step forward, so he was far too close, mouth almost at Alec’s ear, breath warm. “I’d be delighted to help you create the character.”
Oh God. Alec had to lock his knees to stand straight. This was all appallingly wrong and a terrible idea and...
...it might work. The Lord Alexander that Crozier had sketched out would write the vile, humiliating letter that he needed to write. He’d do anything a strong ruthless villain like Crozier wanted. Anything at all.
“Or,” Crozier said softly. “Perhaps I could let you think about it, and you could have my words at the back of your mind as you write your letter and create your character, and try it out on paper and in person. All that time you could be speculating about how far Lord Alexander can be pushed, and what he can be made to swallow. Do you think that might help your inspiration?”