by KJ Charles
“You’ve done your best,” Clem said, not quite meaning it but wishing he did.
“I will do more. What I hope, now I am at last free of Emmeline, is to woo my wife again.”
“Really?” Clem said faintly. He remembered the arguments, her demands for a divorce, her offer to commit adultery in a way that would destroy her reputation forever if it would only rid her of Edmund. He winced.
“Our estrangement is my fault,” Edmund said magnanimously. “All that has passed…well, on my side it is forgiven. I intend to make a clean breast of it all, to admit my fault and the wrong I did our son—”
“And her.”
“And, as I was about to say, Clement, her. I shall ask her to marry me once more, make our son as legitimate in the world’s eyes as he is, I dare to hope, in God’s, and put right what was ill done. By me,” Edmund added, raising his chin to take on the admission. “Ill done by me.”
Clem was not entirely optimistic about the chances of this noble aim. “Er…do you think she will?”
“For Peter’s sake, I hope so.”
“Well, um, good luck.” That didn’t sound suitably encouraging. “I mean, that’s admirable, that you’re trying to put things right. Uh, Edmund?”
“Yes?”
“Who killed Lugtrout?”
Edmund sat back, shoulders sagging. “That dreadful business. He was a slave to his habits, and became sadly corrupted by greed, but he was a good man once. Well.” He paused, evidently working out what he was going to say, to get it right. Clem wasn’t used to that from his brother. “Well. Lugtrout’s demands for money increased this year. Whether he knew of Emmeline’s death and saw his victim slipping through his fingers, I don’t know. But the last time I spoke to him, he threatened to sell my secret to someone who would be a hundred times harder than he had ever been. Those were his very words. I fear that he betrayed my shame to some villain, who decided to take the page for himself and use it to blackmail me.”
Jim Spim. Of course. Perhaps he’d been a drinking partner of Lugtrout’s, or had heard the man’s idle talk in some Golden Lane gin shop. “Well, that explains it,” Clem said. “But he set fire to Mr. Green’s shop.”
“What? Who did?”
Clem explained briefly about Jim Spim. “And that would have burned the page. Why would Spim do that?”
“Malice, or vengeance?” Edmund suggested. “If he thought the page had slipped through his fingers, or even that Green had got hold of it, perhaps he acted in a fit of rage and frustration.”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose so.” That would certainly fit with Lugtrout’s appalling fate, but it was a deeply frightening thought. “Edmund, I think you will have to go to the police. This is too dangerous.”
“You said you’d stand with me! For God’s sake, Clement. For Peter’s sake.”
“But what about Mr. Green? And all my lodgers? Spim’s still out there, the police haven’t caught him, and if he’s going to set fire to buildings out of spite, he’s a danger to us all.”
“Wait. Let me think.” Edmund held up a hand for silence, then put it over his eyes. He was still for a long moment. Clem waited. He could imagine his brother’s turmoil, his shame, and he would do what he could to protect Edmund from the consequences of his crimes, but not at the expense of his lodgers, and not ever if it risked Rowley.
“You are right, of course,” Edmund said at last. “I cannot allow innocents to suffer. But my son is innocent too, and I must protect Peter from the shame of his birth and the stain of my ill-judged acts. For the Earl of Moreton to be imprisoned as a common felon…”
“No.”
“No. It is imperative that the page from the register be destroyed. Without that there can be no proof of my wrongdoing. If that page no longer exists, and I persuade my countess to entrust me with her happiness once more for our son’s sake, this creature will have no hold over me and the worst will be averted.”
“But Spim will need to know it’s destroyed,” Clem pointed out. “Otherwise he’ll keep looking for it.”
“Well, I can hardly advertise in the newspaper to say so,” Edmund snapped. “Uh—I shall find some way. As soon as the page is destroyed.”
“But what if he has another fit of rage and frustration? What if he comes back to Mr. Green’s shop? He’s probably angry about Mr. Green setting him on fire anyway.”
“What?”
“It was self-defence.”
“It sounds as though Mr. Green is able to look after himself,” Edmund observed. “And, one might even suggest, has earned this villain’s enmity.”
“But—”
“Really, one might think you care more about that fellow Green than about me. I will deal with it, you have my word. I shall see this man Spim brought to justice, whatever it may cost me. But first I need you to bring me the page.”
“I can burn it at home.”
“I must be sure,” Edmund said. “I don’t doubt you, not a whit, but I should very much rather do it myself. Then I shall be easy in my mind after so many years. Thank you, Clement. I am, today, very happy to call you my brother.”
—
“In a pig’s arse,” Rowley said. “Sorry, Clem, but that’s nonsense from beginning to end. I’ve never heard such rubbish.”
“What?” Clem demanded. “What’s wrong with it?”
He’d hurried home through the darkness to tell Rowley of Tim’s findings and Edmund’s tale, not exactly relieved, but certainly with a sense of dawning hope that this nightmare might end. He’d hoped Rowley might be happy too. It seemed not.
Rowley stuck his hands into his hair. “I don’t even know where to start. It’s straight out of Wilkie Collins. Did you ask about the marriage certificate?”
“What marriage certificate?”
“The one the minister gives the lady at the wedding. You can burn all the copies of the register you want, but if she’s got that, it’s proof.”
“Oh. Maybe he made her hand it over when he paid her off?”
“Maybe, or maybe she found God, or maybe it seemed too much trouble for a young Lucretia Borgia to blackmail a rich man she had under her thumb. Look at it, will you? This Emmeline is barely more than a child but she’s got the experience and the cunning to weave her toils—you’ve got me at it now—around an earl’s heir ten years older and trick him into marriage? And nobody mentioned to him that she was the village fourpenny? Don’t give me that. Whereas we know, because he said, that your brother bribed a minister to commit a felony—”
“He didn’t bribe him!”
“What, so Lugtrout risked ten years in gaol for love?”
“People do.”
Rowley opened his mouth, stopped, and gave Clem a reluctant smile. “We do, don’t we? But unless things just got a lot more complicated, that’s not what we’re talking about now. Face it. Edmund married in haste and repented as fast, he paid off the minister to get out of it, and now he’s spun you a tale to show himself in the best light.”
Clem set his teeth. “Yes, well, maybe he did. But if he simply made a mistake with his marriage—”
“—and committed a felony to cover it up—”
“All right. I’m not defending him. But it was twenty-three years ago and I don’t see what difference it makes now. The point is, he’s trying to put it right. If he can remarry Lady Moreton and legitimise Peter—”
“Are you sure it works like that?” Rowley asked. “I’m not a lawyer, but I’d have thought if he’s born out of wedlock, he’s a bastard and there’s no more to be said.”
“Well, there is something more to be said. It’s not precisely entertaining being a nobleman’s bastard. Being surrounded by things you can’t have, and people who will always look down on you—”
“It was like that at my end of things too,” Rowley said. “And I bet you had shoes.”
Clem’s fingernails were digging into his palm. “I did have shoes, good shoes, and I was made to feel grateful for every pair because
I had no right to them, and then I got sent to a school with a lot of people who thought I ought to be cleaning their shoes because of who my mother was. And if I told anyone in this house who my father was, nobody would trust me again, and you know it. I’m neither fish nor flesh and it’s horrible, actually. It really is. I grew up with it, but Peter’s known his whole life he’ll be an earl. Imagine if that’s taken away from him, if the other boys know he’s a bastard and chant things and call him names, and— It’s not fair.”
“No,” Rowley said. “I’ll grant you it’s not, all round.”
“Peter’s his son. Edmund made his vows in church. If Peter inherits, who’s harmed?”
Rowley shrugged. “Whoever else is in line for the cash?”
“Yes, but that’ll be Phineas, and he’s dreadful.”
“Your brother’s not exactly a prize himself, to my mind,” Rowley said. “I don’t give two hoots for earldoms. I’m worried about you and me, Clem, and it seems to me your Great I Am of an earl has made a marvellous case for looking after himself and the devil take the rest of us.”
“That’s not true,” Clem said, trying to work out why it wasn’t. “He said he’d make sure Spim was brought to justice.”
“How? Come on, he’s been covering his own arse from the first minute. He won’t be trotting along to the police, because he’s not the one in trouble, is he? Clem, he’s known what this business was about all along!”
“No.” Clem felt dizzy, and rather cold. “No.”
“He knew that Lugtrout was planning on selling his secrets to a criminal. You told him the old sot was murdered. Why didn’t he tell you you were in danger? Why wasn’t he looking at a tortured man dumped on his brother’s doorstep and thinking, I’ll pay the fellow anything to leave Clem alone?”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Clem said without thinking, and heard the words in his own ears as if a stranger had spoken them.
“No, he wouldn’t, would he? You would. You’d offer Spim all your worldly goods if you thought your rotten brother risked having his teeth pulled and his fingers shortened, and he didn’t even warn you?”
“But how was he to know—”
“Why are you defending the fucker?” Rowley said in a violent, strangulated whisper. “Why are you on his side when he doesn’t give a curse for you?”
“Because he’s my brother!” Clem snarled back. “That’s what families are supposed to do. Because he gave me my home, and my work, and if you think he ought to have known how to deal with some filthy criminal from the rookeries then I don’t think you know much about earls, and—I don’t have anyone else!”
“Right.” Rowley’s face went blank again. “Right.”
Clem wasn’t sure what that meant. He wanted to say, I do have someone else; he wished he could. But they’d only known each other eight months, been lovers for a fortnight, and when he’d blurted out I love you, Rowley hadn’t said anything.
Which was sensible, of course. Clem didn’t know if men of their type could expect I love you very often, or to have it mean much if it came. Nathaniel had had his one and only, but he was dead, and Greg and Phyllis mostly bickered, in public at least, and Clem doubted Mark had ever said I love you to his own mother—
You’re panicking, he told himself. Concentrate.
“Look. Just—just wait.” He knew he needed to calm down, but knowing was easier than doing. He wanted, very badly, to be alone, or to be alone with Rowley properly, not like this, shouting at each other, but quietly sitting and letting everything that was now boiling over settle down. “Tell me, then. What do you think Edmund should do?”
“Go to the police and tell them everything he knows, right now.”
“And what good would that do? They already know that Spim burned your shop, so what does it matter why? He doesn’t know anything else.”
“Except this is about secrets, isn’t it?” Rowley said. “The whole point is to hold your brother’s secret over his head, for blackmail, or expose it, for the sake of the next heir in line. If your brother admits the truth—”
“It will ruin Peter’s life.”
“You know who should have thought about him? His father. All this time we’ve been sitting on a powder keg that your brother put under us, and you’re telling me you want it to stay there for the sake of giving a rich boy a coronet he’s not even entitled to?”
Clem clutched his temples. “Stop it. Stop.”
“Look, if I could make this go away, I would,” Rowley said more gently. “But there’s only one man in a position to do that, and you’re talking about shielding him, at your expense and mine. And I don’t like that for either of us.”
“I promised I’d help him. I promised.” Clem closed his eyes. After a few seconds, he heard a whisper of movement and felt arms slipping around his waist, Rowley’s head on his shoulder.
“Oh, Clem. Your blasted brother doesn’t deserve you.”
One might think you care more about that fellow Green than about me. “Don’t,” Clem whispered, putting his hands on Rowley’s narrow hips. “Don’t make me choose. I might be a bastard, but I’ve still got obligations.”
Rowley began to say something, stopped, sighed. “I don’t want to make you do anything, but you’re talking about destroying evidence of a crime, and keeping quiet about a motive for murder. You could get in trouble for this with the rozzers.”
“That’s up to me. I won’t tell anyone you knew about it.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Rowley said. “Oh, blast it. I don’t think you should give him the page.”
“What?”
“While you’ve got the page, Edmund’s got a reason to deal with Spim for you. While it exists, he’s got a problem. If he can get rid of it, what’s to stop him shrugging his shoulders and taking a nice long holiday to the Continent?”
“He wouldn’t do that!”
“Why, because he’s taken such good care of you till now?”
“That is not fair.” Clem stepped back, out of Rowley’s hold. “You must see the page is a terrible danger to him and Peter. And to us, if I keep it here.”
“Other way around, I’d say. When Spim turns up with a pair of pliers, I’d prefer it if you had something to give him.”
Clem’s stomach did a head-over-heels. “No, but…you don’t think…”
“He knows where we live and he wants what we’ve got,” Rowley said brutally. “If you hand it over, it protects your brother, but it makes you, us, vulnerable.”
“I won’t be pitted against Edmund. I won’t. This is the first time in my life I haven’t been a disappointment to him.” Rowley made an explosive noise. “And who’s to say it won’t be just as bad if Spim gets the page? He didn’t let Lugtrout off, did he? And he set fire to your shop, which shows he doesn’t think we have it.”
Rowley’s brows drew together. “Well, yes, but—”
“Not but. I’m going to give Edmund the page. And I am going to talk to him about it all, and find out what he’s going to do, but I’m not going to treat my brother like he’s my enemy because he’s not. That’s Spim.” Clem was pleased with how that sounded. Firm, clear, reasonable.
“I think that’s a mistake,” Rowley said. “A bad one.”
He’d made the damned decision; did Rowley have to argue it? “You m-might think that, but it’s not up to you.”
“You can’t let your brother tell you what to do all your life.”
“I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do, including you,” Clem returned. “And if you don’t think I’ve the brains to make my own decisions—”
“I don’t think that at all.”
“Then why are you arguing with me?”
Rowley made a frustrated noise. “Because I think this decision’s wrong. Because I think you are very kind, and very trusting—”
“Gullible,” Clem said flatly. “That’s what you’re going to say, isn’t it?”
“Look, seeing the good in people
is a great thing, as long as there’s any good there.”
“You don’t trust my judgement. You’re always saying I’m good with people, but you don’t trust my judgement, so what does that make me, some sort of smiling child?”
“Clem—”
“Well, I’m sick of it!” The words rang off the walls. Clem wasn’t sure quite how this sudden, overwhelming rage had sprung up so strong and fully formed, but it had a deep familiarity, as though it had always been there, and he was shaking with it. “All of it. I’m sick of being worse than nobody because neither of my parents wanted me to exist, and worshipping a family that never gave me a place. I’m sick of people thinking I’m a spineless weakling because I don’t threaten my own brother or lock my lodgers out in the cold, as though a bit of kindness is contemptible. I’m sick of ‘making up for it with a handsome face,’ do you know how often I’ve heard that? I’m sick of people being kind and patient with me, and I’m s-sick of people needing to be kind and patient with me, and I am sick of people walking roughshod over me because I don’t shout and complain all the time, and telling me it’s in my best interests when they do it! Edmund, Mark, Nathaniel, you. You all do it, and I’m sick of it, and if I want to make a bloody mistake, I will!”
Rowley’s eyes were very wide. “All right. All right.”
“Don’t humour me. Don’t you dare.”
“I’m not,” Rowley said. “You’ve got every right to be angry. I, uh, I’m sorry. I truly don’t think your face makes up for anything— Jesus wept, that’s not what I meant. Look, if I’ve been ‘kind and patient’ like that, I’m sorry. And I trust your judgement, I swear. You’re better with people than I’ll ever be, and I know it. But I still think you’re wrong about this. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”
“He’s my brother,” Clem said. “And it’s my decision, so will you give me that page, please.”
Rowley took off his spectacles and rubbed both hands over his face. “I can’t.”
“Rowley—”
“I gave it to Mark this morning. He’s gone to Chepping Wycombe to find out more about Lugtrout and match it to the parish register.”