by Anna Butler
So would I. That was a facer.
In the shocked silence, Ned fumbled for his glass. “Gentlemen. For the last time—” He raised his glass. “—the Queen!”
Everyone, the Pasha included, got to their feet. The others’ faces reflected what I was feeling: shock, a feeling that the world was tottering, that an epoch had come suddenly to an end.
“The Queen!” The toast was ragged but the sentiment clear. “God bless her!”
I WAITED in Ned’s room the next evening while he and Sam saw the Pasha to his launch, amusing myself by tossing the scarab amulet as if it were a coin, sending it up spinning. For luck.
Ned came in, grinned at me, and quietly checked on Harry. When he was satisfied Harry was in the land of Nod, with Todd and another of the guards replacing poor Frank, he came to watch me play Toss the Scarab.
After a couple of tosses, he snatched it out of the air. “Where did you get this?”
I told him. He nodded, not commenting except with a slight grimace, turning it in his long fingers. He switched on the desk lamp, the white aether light bringing the carvings on the scarab’s underside into crisp relief.
“They’re very common, really. Lots of people in Ancient Aegypt used them, carried them like charms, from the very earliest dynasties through to the last. Given where you found it, I think we can confidently date this one. It has a motto engraved on it….” Ned turned the scarab again, and his lips moved while he concentrated.
“What does it say? Viva la Libertà isn’t all that likely, I suppose, for an ancient peasant. Nor Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.”
“You’re in revolutionary mood tonight, then,” Ned said, glancing up from the scarab, grinning.
“I’m merely bitter.” I returned the grin. “On a more hopeful note, how about the Aegyptian equivalent of Amor Vincit Omnia? Although knowing my luck, it’ll be something uplifting about achieving success through hard work building pyramids, or something similarly puritanical and moral.”
“It says merely ‘true of heart.’” He smiled. “I can’t think of a better motto for you.”
Good Lord. A man my age blushing like the veriest maiden. Disgraceful.
Sam groaned, passed his hand over his eyes in theatrical fashion, and headed for the connecting door to my room where he would be sleeping. “You two are more than mortal man can bear! Good night. Keep it quiet.”
“Good old Sam.” Ned laughed and tossed the scarab in the air. “Do you mind if I hang on to this?”
I’d rather miss it, but…. “No,” I said. “I thought you said they were common, though.”
“Oh, they are.” Ned stowed my scarab into his stud box. “That should keep it safe.” He pulled me to my feet. “I’m glad Sam’s left us alone. There’s something I want to say.”
Which would have been nice, if he’d said it. Instead he hemmed and hawed, shifted his weight from one foot to the other, glanced at me and away again a dozen times, and not to put too fine a point on it, was all aflunters. I am a more patient man than I realized. I forbore to tell him to get on with it. I rather enjoyed seeing my Ned so flustered, and the hand holding mine was warm. Looking into those earnest hazel eyes… well, I couldn’t ask for more.
“This is not… not easy. I haven’t really said this to anyone before. Not to Daniel Meredith, all those years ago, and not even with my heart to my wife when she was alive, despite the vows I made to her. I loved Daniel, and I grew to be very fond of Laeticia. But neither of them came close…. No. Not even close.” He had both my hands in his now. “When we started this, I never imagined…. Rafe, what I’m trying to say is….” He blew out something that was half a laugh, half a sigh. “Oh Lord, this is hard!”
My ears were burning, and he’d pinched my scarab. I had nothing to play with, nothing to transmute the internal fidgeting to calmness. Warmth spread through me, like the sun rising. “Ned,” I said. “Ned.”
“I can’t guarantee what our future holds. We are who we are. We’ll never escape the Houses, not entirely, and they’re damned hard to hold off—”
“They’re Laocoön’s serpents. What you mean is there are obstacles.”
“House expectations weigh on both of us now.” Ned’s grin was pained. “Less on me, perhaps, since I have my Heir in Harry and the spare in Jack. I have done my duty by my House by marrying Laeticia. They can demand no more of me there.”
The sun threatened to be eclipsed as swiftly as it had risen. “Politics, though. The Houses always look for alliances, and none bind more tightly than marriage. And I have no Heir.”
He nodded. “An obstacle indeed.” His thumb traced lightly over the back of my hand. “I hate, too, that we must hide in the shadows. I hate that you could have died for Harry and me the other night, and I would never have been able to say ‘That was my lover and my heart,’ but only that you are the dearest of friends. That I will never be able to say more than that to others.”
“I know, but really, I don’t need public acknowledgment. Our friends know, and they accept us.”
“It still pains me, Rafe, that I can’t be open about us. So many obstacles, but not insurmountable if we’re determined. We’ll face them, yes? Together?”
“Yes.”
Ned’s eyes gleamed gilded green. “So what I’m trying to say is that you mean more to me than anyone ever has before. More than Daniel. More than Laeticia. And despite all those obstacles, the rest of my life, whether long or short, I will spend with you, Rafe Lancaster. That is my most solemn promise.”
I’d never be able to say this in church. I’d never be able to stand before the world and proclaim love and commitment. I’d never be able to make this vow, this promise, in front of witnesses. But I turned my hands in his and tightened my grip. “The rest of my life, long or short… with you.”
Well, perhaps the motto was Amor Vincit Omnia, after all.
SEVEN DAYS later, on Wednesday, 30 January, I walked up the steps of the house in Kensington and pushed open the door. For the first time, I walked into Stravaigor House, not as an unwilling guest or even more unwilling suppliant, but as its Heir.
Its First Heir.
Chapter 31
THE STRAVAIGOR wore black. It was hard to swallow, given the choice he’d made that had condemned his son, but I suppose the expectations of public mourning had to be met. I’d contented myself with a black armband. People could choose to believe I wore it for the Queen or for John Lancaster, as they wished.
He stood up when I came into his study but made no move toward me. “Rafe.”
I nodded. “Sir.”
“I’m glad to see you safe. Tatlock told me everything last night.”
We had arrived back in Londinium the previous evening. I’d had to bring Tatlock with us. He’d refused to return with Peter, who was probably crossing Europe on a train from Brindisi by now. Instead, Tatlock had sat around in Abydos trying to make himself my Sam Hawkins. Pushing him into an autohansom at the Friary Park Aerodrome and telling him to hand himself back to the Stravaigor had been quite satisfying.
The Stravaigor—I would be damned before I called him “father” or thought of him so—resumed his seat. I took the chair opposite him, a desk-width of glowing mahogany between us. Mutely he offered both scotch and a cigar, and just as mute, I refused them with a headshake. Neither of us was eager to start the conversation. It was all rather painful. I wasn’t quite certain how to break the deadlock of silence.
He did it eventually, clearing his throat and saying, his voice rough, “It must have been quite a shock, when everything was revealed. I had hoped that I could explain to you myself. And that the various hints I’d let drop this last year had prepared you somewhat.”
I must have been particularly obtuse, because most of his hints had fallen on stony ground. “Not really. I was aware of your increased interest in my doings, but I’d ascribed that to your wanting closer ties to Gallowglass.”
“In part, that’s true. It was an extra advantage,
if you like, but not the whole. Nowhere near the whole.”
“Oh.” For a moment or two, I avoided his gaze and let my own roam the room, staring at the rich furnishings and all the signs and trappings of an affluence I had never aspired to, much less had thought might one day be mine.
He said, “We do need to discuss—” just as I piped up with “We took care to ensure that John—” and we both stopped and stared. It was very awkward, the pair of us floundering to get past those first clumsy moments. In the end, I pulled in a deep lungful of air and pushed ahead, aware I was being maladroit but just needing to get the discussion started. To get it over with.
“Let me just tell you what I did about John, and then we can talk.” I blew out that large lungful of air in a soft sigh. Despite having rehearsed this scene a dozen times a day in my head, it was almost unbearable. “There’s a Coptic monastery just north of where we had the dig. I had John buried there last week, in Christian ground. Tatlock said he thought you’d prefer that to me bringing him back here, although an embalmer brought from Cairo by the Khedive’s representative preserved John’s remains. If you would like him brought home, I can arrange that when I return to Aegypt.”
I forbore to mention that we’d brought the two Gallowglass guards home to be buried in their native land. Ned had felt no such compunction in John’s case. I agreed with him, but I’d stretch the point if the Stravaigor wished it.
“Thank you,” the Stravaigor said. “I will consider it.”
“John and I were not friends… the opposite of friends, really, but I am sorry he died. You’ll give my condolences to Madame Stravaigor? I doubt she’ll want to see me, in the circumstances.”
“She left for Paris two days ago. I expect her to take up permanent residence there.”
That did not surprise me. I didn’t know her at all well, but I couldn’t imagine any woman meekly accepting the humiliation of her husband’s bastard replacing her own son. The son her husband had had killed.
“I see. I have some photographic images of the graveyard, which I’ll leave with you to send to her if you wish.” He nodded, and I waited for a moment before bursting out with “Tell me about it. I need to know why.”
“Your mother?”
I could only nod.
“I loved her very much. If it had been feasible, if divorce had been a possibility, then I would have married her. But she would not leave Peter behind, and I had to consider… well. You understand that if even now divorce is shocking, it was inconceivable thirty years ago.”
And adultery was less so? Never a moralist, even I was stumped by that equivocation. As stumped as I was by the notion of the Stravaigor loving anything or anyone. Yet when I glanced at him, I saw his eyes were bright and the hand he drew over his mouth trembled slightly. No actor could have made his face pale like that. After thirty years, it appeared that his grief for my mother was still fresh.
And yet his indifference to John’s death was chilling.
“You gave her the jewelry she left me in her will.”
“Yes. Most of it. I gave her the rubies when she gave me my son. To celebrate your birth, Rafe.”
I grimaced. How charmingly domestic. I wondered what he’d given Madame Stravaigor when John was born.
“I was delighted when you were born, overjoyed, and… but when Elizabeth died, three years later, and our child died with her….” He stopped and drew his hand over his mouth again. After a moment his gaze met mine. “Does it surprise you?”
I saw no point in prevarication. “That you still feel grief for her? Yes. You are always very controlled. I did not realize—”
“That I could feel anything?” He smiled. “Well, perhaps that is only to be expected. However, to return to our history, when she died, I agreed with your father that he would continue to acknowledge you as his own. Marie Josèphe—Madame Stravaigor, that is—demanded as much if she were to remain here, and I could not, at that time, allow the scandal of her leaving. It seemed the best thing to do. Thirty years ago, too, the Houses were less restrained in their rivalries and machinations against one another. It was safer to hide you in the guise of my stepbrother’s son and keep you out of the game as much as possible.”
Mr. Pearse had once described the Stravaigor as “tricksy.” He wasn’t wrong. No wonder the House had its reputation for cunning.
“The ace up your sleeve.”
The Stravaigor grimaced but inclined his head. “I admit, that too. It gave me, and the House, an alternative if John proved to be….” His voice trailed off again. He reached for the decanter of scotch on his desk and poured himself a hefty dram. His hand shook, just a little, as he raised the glass.
“And Tatlock’s orders?”
“If it came to a choice between you and John, then I wanted you. John was a bitter disappointment. He was mean, petty, small-minded. I couldn’t, in all conscience, entrust the House to him. He’d destroy it within a year. And, after all, you are my Elizabeth’s boy.”
I couldn’t help but say it. Someone had to. “John was the son you raised.”
Under other circumstances, such insolence would have drawn the severest reproof. But he barely reacted, except for a slight tightening of his mouth and a lift of one shoulder in the start of a shrug, quickly repressed. I pushed the chair backward hard to get to my feet and walked to the windows. I’d rather stare out at the rain-soaked garden than look at him any longer. January in Londinium was very different to the warmth of Abydos, but even so early in the year, there was a promise of renewal in the air. Several snowdrops lifted their little white heads under a hedge border, defying the beating rain.
There was a lesson there, I supposed, for those of a philosophical bent.
“For the first few days,” I said at last, “I was very angry. You know what I think of the Houses. Why on earth did you think I could be manipulated into a role I abhor and despise?”
His response was rather shocking. A low, almost indulgent chuckle. Warm. Human. “My dear Rafe, why did you serve in the Aero Corps?”
I frowned at the snowdrops. “I’m a second son. It’s what second sons do—the military, the law, or the church. If you remember, we had already decided that I was more likely to destroy the church than be an ornament to it, and frankly, the law is drier than the Sahara. It wasn’t much of a choice.”
“You could have sold out at any time, once your point there was made. Why did you stay?”
I turned to show the frown to him. “We were in action in India first, along the frontier. Then in other places, other parts of the Imperium, before the Boers rebelled. There is always some far-flung outpost where the Imperium’s writ runs a little thin and dog-eared. It was my duty to do the best I could.”
He nodded. “Honor and service. Exactly. You try to hide it, but you have a sense of responsibility and duty, Rafe, that will not permit you to allow our family, all the House dependents, to fail. I know very well you despise House machinations and dealings, but do you know how many people look to the House for their welfare? Their living, their education, their care when they are sick?”
I could only shake my head.
“Almost four hundred. They depend on me to do the best I can for the House and for them. As they will depend on you.”
“I am a very shaky prop for the House. Any House.” I came back to my chair. I’d have preferred to tell him my decision and walk out, but we needed to understand each other, the Stravaigor and me. “A wise Aegyptologist of my acquaintance said I had three options. He’s right. I could accept this, but you are very aware that I’m not a House player. I am, quite possibly, the worst candidate for First Heir that you could have lit upon.”
“The choice is entirely mine. The responsibility to put the House into the hands of someone who will serve it, who will do his duty to it, is entirely mine.”
“Well, I was very tempted to tell you exactly what to do with the House and its Heir and everything connected to it.” I had been more than very tempted.
The words had trembled on my lips throughout this odd, strained interview. “It was my first instinct, and the second option, to turn away from the House altogether and deny any responsibility for it. A very seductive notion, to have a clean break. For a few days, that’s where I tended, to refuse to have anything to do with you or the House.” I found I’d taken off my spectacles and was rubbing the lenses on my pocket handkerchief with such force I was probably grinding them into a different refractive index altogether. I replaced them and stared at him.
He splashed more scotch into his glass. It glowed like rich amber through the cut crystal. This time, when he proffered the decanter and raised an eyebrow, I accepted the offer. The scotch tasted as mellow as it looked. Soothing. For a few moments, we sat in silence, sipping our drinks and looking anywhere but at each other.
“And is that your decision, Rafe?”
“No. Oddly enough, it isn’t. Ned Winter suggested I think harder about his third option.” I finished the scotch and set down the glass with regret that I really couldn’t have more. I needed to keep my wits about me, even in this strange, restrained conversation. “So I did. Ned suggested I use the opportunity for good, if you like, and change the House. That would be worthwhile.”
The Stravaigor stared, his glass half-raised, and with a thump of the heart, I remembered John doing the exact same thing in the saloon on that damned dahabiya. The resemblance was shocking. They looked so alike, father and son, staring at me over the rim of a whiskey glass; they looked so much like murky reflected images of myself.
“Change it?”
I didn’t have time to elaborate. The butler knocked at that moment and entered with a card on a salver. Despite the glower the Stravaigor gave him, he bowed and offered the tray. The Stravaigor’s eyebrows rose when he glanced at the card, and he shot me a swift, measuring look.
“You know who this is?”
“The Gallowglass, I fancy. Ned told me last night that his father intended to call on you today.” I looked at the butler. “I wouldn’t keep him waiting.”