by Anna Butler
“We’ll talk then, if you don’t mind.”
Another look worthy of my dear departed nanny, and Ned nodded. “Very well, Rafe. Later.” He changed the subject, bless him. “I hope you don’t mind my bringing Harry here now and again. I know that in most families the children are handed over to Nanny and forgotten about, but I like my sons, and I like spending time with them. And now their mother is… well. I’m all they have, and I try to give them as much of my time as I can. Jack is too young to take about much with me, but Harry loves the museum. I often bring him with me on my research days.”
“You haven’t brought him here before.”
“I know. There were… complications, Rafe. I hope you’ll forgive my caution. I had to be sure.”
“Sure of me?”
His smile would melt pure phlogiston, with much the same result in explosive percussion. “I have always been sure of you, Rafe, but they are my sons and my responsibility. I take that trust very seriously. I want them to know you, but we’ll have to continue to be discreet. You do understand?”
Of course I did. Ned could hardly announce our relationship to the world, much less to his infant sons. The Gallowglass was a remarkably accepting father and had accepted me too, I think. But he would stop Ned in a heartbeat if I stayed at Ned’s house when the children were there. Still, the amount of trust and faith Ned showed in bringing Harry to meet me… I wondered if the temperature was rising. I was rather warm, particularly in the chest area. No one had ever entrusted me with so much before.
“I appreciate your confidence very much, Ned. I know what it means, and you can rely on me. Don’t be concerned about anything but their safety and happiness. I know that to the world I can always only be a friend.” I caught another inimical glance from the eldest infant son. “Although Harry appears to have his own criteria for friendship. To quote the immortal Miss Riderhood, he appears to view it in a very bony light.”
Ned laughed out loud. “He has strong views on the place of archaeology in the scheme of things.”
I sighed, and my thoughts reverted to the ritual for casting out demons. “I think I failed his test. I wonder where I put my prayer book?”
Chapter 4
ANY GENTLEMAN can toddle down St. James’s Street to White’s or be a member of Brooks’s or the Athenaeum, providing he isn’t blackballed because he’s a nouveau riche arriviste with more money than lineage. So long as he can trace his way back to a genteel grandfather or two and knows how to eat asparagus, the doors of most private clubs open. Even I used to belong to White’s, and the Royal Aero Corps Club in Piccadilly boasts my illustrious name on its membership rolls.
Such clubs are exclusive, of course, but Margrethe’s…. Margrethe’s is so exclusive it sneers at White’s.
Membership there is closed, guarded, and very circumspect. Lineage is still important, of course—as is asparagus, given the demigod dwelling among us in the form of Margrethe’s French chef, Henri—but the principal requirement for membership is a shared understanding of confirmed bachelorhood. To wear the enameled daisy in the lapel tells other members that you are of that select band whose bachelor status is not just confirmed, it has taken Holy Orders and is preaching gospel to the choir.
The doors opened soundlessly when I touched them, lightly swinging on oiled brazen hinges into a foyer sheathed in marble and hung with a chandelier dripping with aether crystals that probably cost as much as my coffeehouse. Nothing of understated luxury here, thank the Lord. The more lavish, the better. Elegant, mind you, but sinfully, opulently, ever-so-slightly decadent.
I fit right in.
The concierge at the reception desk greeted me with a smile and a glance that took me in from head to toe. I turn out well in evening dress. I was, if I say so myself, tres soigné. His smile was appreciative, and it powered up to an even higher wattage when I produced my daisy badge. Perhaps he was somehow attached to the aethernet power grid? He was in danger of burning something out. The smile, however, faded a trifle when I put the daisy into my right lapel.
The signal was clear. Wearing the daisy in my left lapel said, “Right, then, you handsome young man, line up there on the left with the others and let me take my pick.” But the daisy on the right said, just as clearly, “Noli me tangere. Touch me not, my lovelies; I am not available for company no matter how doleful the looks or heavy the sighs.”
I was meeting Ned. There was never an instant’s doubt which lapel I’d use, even though I couldn’t expect to see him much before ten, and the clock was barely striking nine. The dolorous sighs were mine. I found a quiet corner in the Praecipias Lounge to await him.
A waiter appeared bearing a scotch and soda, a box of fine South American cigarillos, newspapers, and small plate of amuse-gueules. I stimulated my palate on gougères aux herbes, sipped my scotch, and whenever I looked up from my leisurely perusal of the Times, watched the lazy drift of cigarillo smoke dousing the lamplight in a bluish haze. The obvious retort “Ned Winter!” aside, what more could a man desire to pass a quiet hour at the end of his day’s labor?
Margrethe’s was quiet. There were, perhaps, a mere dozen members in the lounge, and all of them wore their daisies on the left. More than one wandered in my direction, scouting the possibilities, as it were. Gratifying that they looked glum when they saw the placement of my daisy, but the rules of Margrethe’s are strict. With a nod and the occasional little moue of disappointment, they wandered away again without disturbing me. It was a restful hour, and I tried hard to put aside my worries about the Stravaigor and his malign visit. I was not completely successful, of course. As I mulled over the glowing accounts of the Imperium’s vaunted successes at the Second Olympiad in Paris—we had swept the board at tennis, even the ladies’ game, although I draw a discreet veil over our showing in most of the other events—the Stravaigor’s words kept insinuating themselves onto the page in front of me.
I see a value in you. I have a greater regard for you than you realize.
I gave the newspaper an impatient flap to shake his words from it, and tried to lose myself in erudite articles on the continuing South African war, international politics and diplomacy, and, when I grew desperate, the state of the Imperium’s finances. I can’t say it worked.
I see a value in you.
“You’re frowning rather too hard, Rafe, for those to be the sporting pages.”
Ned.
Like me, he was in evening dress, and he was just delectable. I made myself fold the paper into careful quarters, fighting the impulse to ball it up and toss it aside before catching Ned by both arms and kissing him senseless. No. I would be calm. Gracious. Restrained.
“The financial page. I believe I’m now almost an expert on the average cost-of-debt ratio. I could tell you about it if you like.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Ned’s mouth. “Save it for my father. I used to read that kind of thing to try and please him, but he begged me to stop. Hearing me try to talk about liquidity or account aggregation reminded him only too vividly that he’d lost me to dead bodies and hieroglyphs, and was akin, he felt, to training puppies by rubbing their noses in it. He may be more sanguine if it comes from you.”
I laughed, tossed the Times aside, and stood to greet him. Here in Margrethe’s, I could steal a chaste little kiss. No one would care.
No one but Sam, of course. Ned’s shadow was never more than an arm’s length away.
“None of that, Mr. Edward,” he said, tone sharp. “’Least until I’ve talked to him.”
Sam Hawkins cramped my style considerably, more effective than a dousing with ice water. I brushed Ned’s lips again with mine out of sheer I’ll-show-you-Sam-Hawkins obstinacy, and signaled the waiter to bring more scotch. Ned’s cheekbones were a little flushed, and he was smiling. Sam, as ever, put the ow! into scowl.
Sam, too, was in evening dress. He filled it well, and if his inclination had been of the bachelory kind, he would have had no shortage of offers from the other memb
ers of Margrethe’s, many of whom had a deep admiration for highly trained muscles and broad shoulders. Sam, however, never appeared to show any sort of preference. His entire raison d’être was to protect Ned.
He at least waited until the scotch arrived and even thanked me for his drink. But one sip of good whiskey did not change that leopard’s spots. He was back on track like a terrier in a barn full of rats. “The Stravaigor? And his First Heir?”
“Yes. Unexpected, their paying me a visit.”
Sam scowled. “John Lancaster’s a fool, but his Pa is anything but. What did he want?”
And damn it, loyalties were torn. Of course I needed to tell Ned, but equally I had intimated to the Stravaigor that I would treat our discussion as confidential. A gentleman did not break his word, even when given to the undeserving.
So all I could do was grimace.
Ned put down his glass and took one of the cigarillos. “Did he ask you not to speak of it, Rafe?”
“He did indeed.”
“All right, perhaps we can find a way around that by keeping within at least one letter of the law. You have a very expressive face. We’ll do charades when you feel you shouldn’t say anything.” Ned paused for a moment to light his cigarillo, puffing on it to make it catch. His eyes narrowed against the smoke. “Let me see if I can summarize what our intelligencers have gathered. The principal issue is that the rift with the Cartomancer shows no sign of healing.”
I allowed myself to nod.
“Our understanding is that the Cartomancer’s ire is unassuaged. We believe he took great exception to a deal Stravaigor House made regarding the importation of Indian opium into Shanghai. American ships carrying out the trade withdrew. We don’t know why, since our intelligencers in the Americas find it hard to penetrate some of their commercial decisions. The Stravaigor, though, sent a representative to take up the slack—” He stopped and looked at me, a wide smile on his face.
“Peter.” I could only laugh. Leave it to my big brother to make a fool of himself.
“It appears so. However, the Stravaigor didn’t want to bother the Cartomancer with such a small piece of business.” Ned leaned back, still smiling. “You can gather the rest.”
Indeed I could. The Stravaigor had miscalculated. Very much so. Odd that he had made such a misstep. It was very unlike him. Perhaps he was losing his grip.
What was it the Stravaigor had said? I am not best served by my First Heir. Mmmnn. His First Heir and my regrettable brother were joined at the hip. Coincidence? Perhaps. And perhaps it hadn’t been the Stravaigor himself who’d misstepped.
Sam cut in then. “The Cartomancer had been negotiating a deal with the Venator. There’s a lot of money in opium, and it should have put a very canny sum into the Cartomancer’s coffers. Instead the money went to the Stravaigor, and the Venator is screaming about unprincipled double-dealing.”
Even at the Convocation level, the alliances shift like quicksand. The Cartomancer ranks third in the hierarchy, after Gallowglass and the Justiciar. Why would he need to ally with Venator, probably the poorest and least influential of the Convocation Houses?
Dear Lord, but I hated House politics. Murky as ditch water.
Ned took up the tale again. “We don’t believe that the Stravaigor has been welcomed to any House Cartomancer event, business or pleasure, for most of this year—”
I pursed my lips. Shook my head.
“Longer?”
An inclination of the head to indicate agreement. At this rate, I needed to be as skilled as a French mime. Only with less white face paint. Sadly, anything more substantial than yes, no, and a shrug for maybe was beyond me. It took me a moment to realize that miming “the festive season” was an impossibility without attracting the unwanted attention of the other people in the lounge. I was forced into speech, although I had to say as little as possible and remain true to my principles. “I heard something about it on Christmas Day.”
“Ah. So the estrangement was beginning to bite last year? I’ll mention that to our chief intelligencer.” The thin column of gray ash on Ned’s cigarillo glowed red as he inhaled another lungful of the fragrant smoke, and he hurriedly tapped it away into the ashtray. “He has not been formally cast off. That’s a hard thing for a House to do to an ally, as it tends to make all the others nervous. It’s not something we’d do in Gallowglass. He’s in the cold, though, and explains why he married his daughter off to the Plumassier’s Heir.”
“He’s casting about for allies in the other Convocation Houses.” Sam glanced at me and arched an eyebrow, looking for confirmation. “In case the Cartomancer’s less squeamish than us about cutting him adrift.”
I couldn’t actually say so and stay within the letter of my agreement with the Stravaigor to be discreet. I could, however, make odd facial grimaces and tap the side of my nose in the “nod’s as good as a wink” kind of way that anyone with an iota of intelligence would understand.
Ned glanced at Sam. “We guessed as much. He’s looking at us.”
I pointed an emphatic forefinger at Ned.
“Oh, at me in particular? To ease his way into my father’s good graces, I expect. Well, we always thought that your House would strive to make the most of its opportunities, Rafe.”
And that spurred me into emphatic speech. “They can whistle for it.”
“I hope they can.” Sam leaned forward, and I was very aware that this was a trained House killer in evening dress. His stare was hard, unflinching; his mouth set into a straight line. He looked me directly in the eye.
I glared back, no mime or mummery necessary to convey my umbrage.
“Enough, Sam.” Ned raised his now-empty glass and gave me an inquiring look. When I shook my head, he smiled. “Very well, Rafe. Then we all understand what is motivating the Stravaigor to look outside the Cartomancer’s sphere of influence, and if I may employ a cliché, forewarned is forearmed and all that. I don’t think there is much else we need to do or say now. We’ll keep an eye on things and rely on you to give us warning if the Stravaigor ramps up his efforts.”
Well, blow my dickey, as my father’s shepherd used to say. Life was getting too complicated for mime to express everything by… how does the dictionary put it? By gesture, expression, and movement. Well above my poor skills. At this level of performance expectation, I’d have to decamp to Paris to take mummery lessons at the Comédie-Française.
Chapter 5
WE DIDN’T linger over supper. We stayed in the dining room long enough to eat a couple of savories and drink a port so fine it tasted of molten cinnamon mixed with the tartness of warm lemons. But neither of us wanted to tarry over the meal. What really mattered at Margrethe’s was dessert and who you shared it with in one of the bedrooms upstairs.
Putting aside our first night together the previous November, memorable for being the day my life changed when I met Ned, we had been lovers—real lovers—for less than a month. It was new and precious. Ned was rather more important to me than anything as prosaic as dinner.
I don’t remember what we ate that night. I was too busy looking at Ned’s face across the table every time I glanced up, Ned’s gaze meeting mine, Ned’s mouth curving into a smile. The light from the chandeliers glinted on his fair hair, turned those wide-set hazel eyes to a gilded green whenever he turned his head, slid its decadent gold sheen down a sharp cheekbone, and pooled its gleam and glimmer in the hollow of his throat. As we talked—and the Lord alone knows what we talked about—he smiled often, used his long, elegant hands to delineate the length, breadth, and height of our conversation, and laughed with an ease that made me almost giddy.
Whatever we ate would have been sublime, as always. But that was mere food for the body. Ned was food for the soul.
NED MUST have already arranged matters with the concierge, Charles. When we walked to the desk, Ned’s hand warm in mine, Charles had a key ready.
Room 12.
The room we’d used last November, the night we’d m
et. I glanced at Ned. Had he remembered? Was it a deliberate choice? He turned his head to smile at me. Oh, yes. It most definitely was.
Dear Ned. Dear, romantic Ned.
We climbed the stairs hand in hand. A row of ornate, gilt-framed mirrors lined one wall of the upper hallway, pairs of girandole lamps mounted between each one. The lamps, set to a faint glow, left the hallway flickering with shadows. At every mirror, we loomed up in the looking glass, indistinct figures walking close together and flaring into muted life for an instant before fading back into a kind of artificial twilight that leached all the color from the world. Somewhere behind us was Sam Hawkins, at home in shadow, discreet and quiet, and for once, considerately allowing our mood to remain unaffected by his sense of duty and honor. He’d be close by the room all night, alert and watchful. Knowing he was there, that he knew what we would be doing, didn’t embarrass or constrain me, couldn’t suppress the joy bubbling through me. Ned and I were together. Nothing else mattered.
As I closed the door of Room 12, I glimpsed Sam’s dark figure slip into a chair set in an alcove in the wall opposite. He would sit, silent as a sphinx, watching the door all night. I would wager a week’s takings at the coffeehouse that his aether pistol would be primed and ready in the hands resting on his knees. He took his responsibilities seriously, did Sam Hawkins. I didn’t worry about locking the door. Sam wouldn’t let anyone disturb us, and if there was an emergency and he needed to burst in, it saved him blowing the door down.
When I turned, Ned was waiting.
The curtains had already been closed against the night, and the lamplight shimmered against dark green velvet drapes and reflected in acres of polished mahogany. The hangings of the four-poster were swept back, showing the linen had been turned down. Soft silk scarves in tones of green were heaped in artful confusion on the pillows, suggesting a myriad of possibilities for extensive, if slightly risqué, pleasure. As usual, the staff had provided a range of oils, the bottles lined up on the top of a small, intricately carved cabinet within easy reach of the bed. They were a thoughtful and discreet lot at Margrethe’s.