The Jackal's House

by Anna Butler

  I bowed. When I resumed the vertical, his whole demeanor had sharpened. Everything had hardened, from his gaze to the unaccustomed softening of the line of his cheek and jaw. He had straightened his shoulders and was quite himself again. Whatever contemplative mood had occupied him on my arrival had vanished. Or was hidden.

  “Ah, Rafe. Thank you for coming to see me.” He waved me into the chair set before his desk. “A little early in the day for a whiskey, but help yourself to a cigar.”

  It was a Lonsdale. One of those I’d given him in September, perhaps. Well, at least I’d get to try one. I clipped off the cigar end using his jeweled cigar cutter, and lit it with the eternal lucifer he offered. Crivvens, but it was mellow tobacco. Perfect. Worth every penny when spent on the right man.

  He picked up his own cigar, tapping off the column of gray ash. “They are very good cigars. Thank you again.”

  “I’m surprised they’ve lasted so long, sir.” I grinned at him. “Although delighted you still have enough remaining to share with me.”

  His chuckle was the dry rasp of sandpaper drawn over sharkskin. “I’ve eked them out. I believe they were your first gift to me.”

  I was flummoxed for an instant. We’d never been on such terms that I even saw him for years on end, much less staggered up to Stravaigor House under a load of presents for him every chance I got. “I don’t think I’ve had the opportunity before now, sir.”

  “No. It was better that way.”

  What? But he gave me no time to reflect on his words or pursue them further.

  “I hope, Rafe, you’ve given some thought to our conversation of the summer?”

  I inclined my head. “Often.”

  What was it he’d said as he told me he expected to be able to use me to deepen an alliance with House Gallowglass? I see a value in you.

  “Our relations with the Cartomancer have stabilized, but remind me of the sort of politeness you give me and the House. He preserves a cautious distance.” He smiled and waited for me to return it. I aimed for rueful. Very rueful. “I am still on the outskirts of his business dealings, and I suspect there would be even less interaction if I did not hold China, the Americas, and most of India, and it will be most difficult for him to smoke us out. They are the most profitable regions, in trade and business terms.”

  I nodded and drew in a lungful of fragrant smoke. It tasted like nectar on the tongue. “I understand. You’re indispensable to his profits.”

  “Indeed. However, it doesn’t affect my attempts to cultivate the Gallowglass’s allies or look for opportunities to bring us to his notice. Such an opportunity is before us, now Ned Winter is short one pilot.”

  I managed not to gape at him, but it was a close-run thing. How in the nine circles of Hell had he managed to find that out? “I hadn’t realized it was general knowledge, sir.”

  He gave another of those raspy chuckles. “My dear Rafe, I have intelligencers in my service whose job it is to watch House Gallowglass. They tell me you and Winter continue to be close friends and meet often. And they tell me that Winter’s pilot was killed a couple of days ago. A brawl in a public house, I understand.”

  I kept my voice as uninflected as I could manage it. Had there been a knowing note in his tone when he mentioned my meeting Ned so often? “So I heard.”

  His gaze never faltered. He waited for a moment, then grimaced when I didn’t expand on my answer. “Are you flying Ned Winter to Aegypt next month?”

  Well, there was nothing like being direct, I suppose. I answered with some reluctance. “He has asked me to do it.”

  “Excellent. I wish you to agree, if you please.”

  I didn’t need to ask why. He saw me as an extension of House Stravaigor and wanted to put Ned under an obligation. If it came to jumping ship and swimming to Gallowglass for refuge, he wanted as many merits on his side as he could get. I understood that perfectly.

  “I have a business to run, sir. It may not be much compared to all this”—and I swept out one arm to encompass Stravaigor House and all its dealings—“but it’s my livelihood. I can’t leave it for months on end. I may be able to take Professor Winter’s expedition to Aegypt and come straight back, but I can’t see my way to staying there in the way his original pilot intended.”

  “Oh no. That won’t do at all.” He ignored my stare. “Am I your greatest creditor, Rafe?”

  He was almost my only creditor, damn it. Certainly the only major one. “You know it, sir.”

  He nodded, taking a paper from the desktop and flourishing it at me. “From the finance office, summarizing your debt. You’ve done very well to pay back so much in so short a time. Nine months, more or less, and you’ve repaid almost half. I could wish all my debtors met their obligations so meticulously.”

  Damnation, but there was no point in beating around bushes here. Bullets were waiting to be bitten upon. “I want to be free of debt to the House as soon as I can manage it, sir. You’ll understand that.”

  “Indeed.” He regarded me through the haze of cigar smoke for a moment, his eyes slitted. “I notice that since August, you have increased the amount you pay.”

  “I need to reduce the capital debt. The discussion I had with John left me in no doubt that he will foreclose on the loan the moment he can.”

  “Before I am cold, you mean? Yes, my Heir is an unforgiving soul. All I can promise is that I intend to live for a long time yet.”

  “About fifty years would do it.”

  His smile was wry. “At least until your debt is paid and, I hope, a decade or two beyond that. Fifty years may be a little optimistic, although I am gratified by your good wishes.”

  I couldn’t help but grin. He was a sly, untrustworthy old fox, but I was discovering a reluctant liking for him.

  “Which brings me neatly back to the point. I would like you to fly Winter to Aegypt and stay with the expedition at least until Christmas. Beyond, if you can manage it. I want you to make yourself useful there.”

  I pressed my lips together hard. The reluctant liking faded back to distrustful dislike in a flash.

  “You’re no fool. You know that I need to establish with the Gallowglass that we are a House that can be trusted to support him.”

  Trusted! Trust the House of brigands and vagabonds! How I kept a straight face is beyond me, but all the Stravaigor did was wave a dismissive hand to dissipate the smoke and my ingrained cynicism. He certainly couldn’t have missed the latter.

  “We must prove we can provide resources he needs when he needs them and that we will not stint in giving our support. I do have one link to Winter in Aegypt, but it hasn’t a tenth of your significance. I know you and Ned Winter are close. He trusts you. We are in a unique position to help. I don’t ask much of you, Rafe, but now I require your agreement as a matter of obedience and House obligation.”

  “What! But—”

  “I have never asked anything of you. But I wish you to take the position as pilot of the expedition. In return, let us consider your debt. My original thought was to suspend it for a period of six months, requiring no payments and exacting no penalty. But on further consideration, all that will do is extend the length of your indebtedness to the House and increase the risk of retaliation from John if your good wishes prove fruitless and something befalls me. So, instead I will mark the next six months’ payments as made, at the sum you’ve been paying since August. John will never know. He doesn’t take a great deal of interest in the House finances except for paying for his pleasures.”

  “B-but….”

  “If all goes well, and certain criteria are met, I will cancel the debt altogether after your return. We will agree to this in writing today and sign a contract. You, my dear Rafe, will go to Aegypt.”

  I threw up my hands, and in defiance of respect and etiquette and all that nonsense, jumped up and stamped over to the window to glare out at the garden where the few flowers bent their heads under the driving rain. Ye gods! Of course I wanted to go to Aeg
ypt! Of course I did. To help Ned, to be with Ned, I’d walk to Timbuktu and back in my stocking feet. I’d hated the last couple of days when I really couldn’t see how I could go and have a livelihood to come home to in the spring, not least because I owed this old jackal so much. That burned me. And now here was the Stravaigor offering me everything I truly, really wanted. But to be able to do it just because my House Princeps was offering a magnanimous favor? To do it because it fell in with his designs, his plans, his Machiavellian scheming? That burned too. I was back in the coils of the House with a vengeance, and I couldn’t see my way out.

  Damn the House! Damn them! Damn him.

  I leaned my forehead against the cool glass. Six months’ payments deemed to have been credited to my account—more than half of what I still owed. Six months, with the prospect of the debt being canceled. That made everything possible.

  Behind me, the old man chuckled. There was more real amusement this time, less sandpaper. “Peter wouldn’t hesitate when it came to a House directive. You are very different.”

  Peter was a contemptible worm, squirming under the House’s foot. “I’m not Peter. Nor my father. I’m not like them.”

  “No. You are very like your mother. You inherited her independent streak, at all events.”

  That made me turn. My mother? What did she have to do with any of this? She was almost thirty years dead. “I was still in petticoats when she died. I don’t remember her at all.”

  A pall of smoke hung near the Stravaigor’s face, and I couldn’t quite see his expression. His voice came to me through that gray mist. “Of course you don’t. Rafe, do you want to go to Aegypt?”

  I couldn’t lie and say no. I couldn’t tell the truth and say yes. I glared instead.

  “I thought so. I am offering you the chance to gratify your own wishes, and, quite coincidentally, mine. Without financial penalty, without the anxiety about your business that, in your place, I’d feel too. There is no logical reason for you to refuse.” He chuckled again, a richer, warmer sound than I’d ever heard from him. “Apart from your distrust of the House, of course. We’ll take that as a given, shall we?” He gestured to the chair I had vacated so hurriedly. “Sit down. We’ll discuss the finer details and call in the finance officer to witness our agreement.”

  I walked back to the chair. What to do? What to do? What could I do, other than accept? I was being offered my heart’s desire… but hardly string-free. I would have to stand between Ned and my House as much as possible.

  He smiled when I sat, and for the first time ever, I could detect no calculation in it, no manipulation. He merely looked pleased. “Besides, you should finish your cigar. They’re far too fine to waste.”

  “This isn’t my place.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at me.

  I waved a hand to indicate… oh, everything. “In the House. Enmeshed in House politics. Being used, I suspect, as a weapon to bludgeon your Heir. That does no good to him or me.”

  His mouth twitched. “Ah. No, you really are not a fool.”

  “I don’t belong here, sir.”

  He smiled then. “Don’t worry. You are exactly where I want you.”

  Yes. Precisely what I was afraid of.

  “WHAT THE hell are you doing here?”

  John Lancaster’s voice came from behind me as I collected my hat and overcoat from the butler. The butler’s expression went from professional blankness to alarm and smoothed back to blankness again. I followed his example and presented the blandest expression to John when I turned.

  “First Heir!” My bow was not quite perfunctory. Not quite. “Good day to you, John. I hope you’re well?”

  Peter skulked in John’s shadow, as usual. Was he living at the House? The beneficiary of our system of primogeniture, he’d inherited the Wiltshire estate and the townhouse in Bourne Street, not far from Sloane Square. He should have no shortage of places to lay his head. But oh no, there he was, dogging John Lancaster’s every footstep. The two of them deserved each other.

  John cut off any further pleasantries with an abrupt motion of his hand. “Why are you here?”

  I touched my jacket over the inside breast pocket. I couldn’t feel my copy of the contract, not through the layers of Harris tweed and linen, but I knew it was there. I gestured to the corridor leading to the Stravaigor’s study with my other hand. “My House Princeps summoned me.”

  “So, he persists in thinking you’ll bother to support us with Gallowglass. Well, you don’t fool me! I know very well what you think of the House.” John’s mouth twisted. “Not above using us for your own ends, though, are you, Rafe? Pah!”

  If ever the House failed and John Lancaster was in need of a job, then third-rate actor in a backstreet theater was right up his alley. He had the villainous sneer down pat.

  John took two steps away before swinging around to face me again. “I will speak to my father and see if I cannot bring him to his senses where you are concerned.”

  He stormed his way down the hall toward the Stravaigor’s study, not giving me another glance.

  Peter drew me to one side of the hall. “I am probably wasting my breath here since you have about as much finer feeling as a runaway locomotive, but think what you’re about, damn you! You’re pulling others down with you. You’re pulling me down—” He threw up his hands, letting go of my arm with a rough gesture of repudiation. “You were always selfish.”

  “Does that work for you when you’re negotiating new trade deals? Insults and sneers?”

  “This isn’t a negotiation! I have worked hard all my life to support the House. Papa’s whole raison d’être was to support the House. Everything he ever taught us about honor and duty… we owe the House everything we are. What is wrong with you, what’s twisted inside of you that you can’t see how dishonorable and disgraceful your attitude is?” He drew himself up, trying to look dignified, the poor fool. “I won’t let you drag me down. I’ll do what Papa should have done years ago. I really will cut you off. You are no brother of mine.”

  I thought we’d already gone through the repudiation scene when Peter and John had visited the coffeehouse in August. I hadn’t noticed any difference to my health and happiness as a result. “Well, that’s a blow.”

  The thin line he made with his mouth was rather ugly. “John is in a position to do you great harm. I will do nothing to stop him. I’ll support him in whatever action he takes against you. You can’t imagine that he won’t cut you off from the House the moment he….” Peter stopped and grimaced, unable, I supposed, to openly talk about the Stravaigor’s death and John inheriting the mantle.

  Peter’s nose bends to the left where, years ago, I thumped him when he was being just such a House flunky as now. I would dearly have liked to bend it back again, and only my outstandingly good manners—one does not brawl in another gentleman’s house, even if he is a mean old jackal with very dubious morals—prevented me from attempting the operation.

  Instead I smiled. “I am counting on it, brother mine. Counting on it.”

  ALAN AND Hugh were waiting when I returned to the coffeehouse, both looking expectant. I swear curiosity zinged through their veins instead of blood.

  “Well? What did the old devil want?” Alan’s words and tone lacked the sort of respect a House Princeps expected as his birthright.

  I shrugged out of my overcoat, shaking the rain from its heavy folds. I hoped I didn’t look quite as chagrined as I felt. “Well, I’d better write to Mr. Pearse. I’m going to Aegypt.”

  “Pffft.” Hugh rolled his eyes. “I know that. I started packing two days ago.”

  Chapter 10

  NED PROFESSED himself delighted when I called him on the telephonic device in my office as soon as I got back from Stravaigor House. So delighted, he barely needed the device—I had to hold it away from my ears to save my delicate hearing from permanent damage. He rushed to the coffeehouse and arrived so quickly he must have left at the instant I replaced the brass earpiece in its
cradle, his avowed intent to kiss me until I swooned. Ned is a man who lives up to his promises. I may not have swooned when he burst into my office, grabbed me with masterful hands, and twirled me around to a fast waltz tempo while whooping, but I clutched him to me, my hands in his hair and my toes curling up inside my boots.

  I had seen quiet, rather introspective Ned. I had seen happy, loving Ned. I had never before seen a Ned so dizzily ebullient. It was quite an eye-opener, that he had yet another aspect to his character. All the more for me to find and explore. In the meantime, I gave myself over to his ministrations and set out to enjoy them.

  “You wonder! You brilliant, brilliant wonder!” He kissed me down the length of my jaw, brushed his lips over mine and worked his way up to the other ear. “Rafe Lancaster, you are the dearest, most amazing man in creation!”

  Well, that was nice. And all that despite my telling him of the Stravaigor’s intervention.

  “Oh, who cares about the old reprobate! He’s made it all possible, Rafe. God bless him!”

  I didn’t feel I could quite find it in me to recommend the Stravaigor to the deity’s care, but I confess that Ned distracted me instantly by kissing me with such fervor that I not only forgot about the old man but had some difficulty recalling my own name.

  “I’m glad I can go,” I said, when I could. “It was eating at me, having to say no.”

  “It was eating at me that I’d be leaving you here. I can’t wait to show you Aegypt, to share it with you. You’ll love it!”

  Given we couldn’t transport ourselves immediately to view the Pyramids by moonlight—a treat he promised would ravish my senses quite as thoroughly as he intended to ravish me—Ned whisked me off to Margrethe’s, and he made love to me all night. He was in a masterful mood, bypassing dinner and sweeping us straight up to a bedroom, where he had his wicked way with me until I saw stars. Shooting stars, at that, fizzing around the heavens in coruscations of light and accompanied by groans and keening noises that, in other circumstances, would make me blush. Great trumpeting pachyderms, but when Ned was that focused, nothing short of Armageddon could stop him. Indeed, he created a few earthquakes and tsunamis of his own that night.