“Marvellous,” Crane muttered. “And it’s not gone for good?”
“Not yet. I might need help to get rid of it permanently.” Day hesitated. “Were you frightened of him, as a child?”
“Terrified. I used to spend half my time in the attic, hiding from him. One holiday he found me and broke my leg in a door so I couldn’t run away. It took him three tries. When I heard he was dead, we got drunk for a week.”
Day’s thumb had stilled, his grip tightening on Crane’s hand. “I will make it go away,” he said softly. “I’ll get rid of it for you. I promise.” His thumb resumed its circling movements, slower and a little firmer, warm and close and caressing. “You know,” he added, “there are a number of recommended methods of dealing with ghosts—salt and iron, harmonic resonance, some people swear by exorcism, and not just priests—but that’s the first time I’ve seen anyone try a left hook.”
“Now you say that,” Crane said, “it strikes me that it was a very stupid act.”
“It was brave.” Day sounded serious. “A bit stupid. But mostly brave.”
The shaman knelt before him in the moonlight, painfully close. At some point, Crane wasn’t sure when, he’d moved so that his arms were now resting on Crane’s thighs, warm and heavy. His hair glimmered dark copper in the cold light, and his caressing thumb was sending spangles of sensation up towards Crane’s elbow now.
Crane looked down at him. As if he’d felt the gaze, Day looked up, mouth slightly open, and his wide eyes met Crane’s for a long breathless moment.
Crane reached out with his free hand and brushed his thumb slowly over Day’s lips, pushing them gently apart, feeling his mouth move softly, opening, accepting the touch. His breath came fast against Crane’s hand. Crane’s need was suddenly, violently urgent after the night’s terror, and Stephen Day was kneeling before him, lips inviting, pupils dilated, a gift to be unwrapped. He pushed his thumb further into the warm mouth and felt a flicker of tongue against his skin, a tentative taste.
“Stephen,” said Crane softly, trying out the name.
Stephen tilted his head back a little. “I…I don’t…”
“Oh, you do.” Crane stroked his fingers possessively over the small chin. “You really do. Lovely boy.”
“I’m twenty-eight,” Stephen said weakly, and Crane’s lips curved, knowing that was surrender.
His hand closed on Stephen’s jaw, pulling him closer. “Come here. Unless you want to stay on your knees, of course,” he added, with a twitch of a brow, and something in the other man’s eyes went suddenly dark.
“Listen to me,” Stephen said. “I have been clearing the abreaction for the last few minutes. This has been dull and uneventful, and you’re keen to go in and do something more interesting than talk to me. I’m very boring and drab and unattractive, after all, and you’d be much happier talking to Mr. Merrick. You want to forget about me and go in, so you’re quite glad to hear that the abreaction has cleared.”
“Has it?” said Crane. “Oh, good. Can we go in?”
“Of course,” mumbled Stephen. He leaned backwards, shifting his bony elbows off Crane’s legs. The moonlight greyed his rather dull, mud-coloured eyes and nondescript features. He looked drawn and tense, almost distressed. Crane didn’t know why.
Crane rose and held out a hand. After a second Stephen took it, and Crane heaved him to his feet.
“Ow.”
“Did Hector—it—hurt you?” Crane asked.
“No. No, my knees are just a bit stiff. No damage done. Well, I caught my jacket on those roses.”
“Merrick is very good at rescuing clothes.” They fell into step back through the moon-shadowed grounds to Piper. “He kept me respectable for years. What happens next?”
“I’ll walk back the Judas jack tomorrow. See if I can find out where it was made and who did it. Prevent them doing anything else. And then I’ll find out what provoked the haunting and make it go away.”
“Where to?” Crane asked. “Hector, I mean. Where would he go?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Stephen. “Away is really all I’m concerned with. Does it matter?”
Crane shrugged as he opened the side door, and recoiled as he came face to face with Graham, standing right at the door. The old man held a candlestick, and his face was deeply wrinkled and malevolent in the dancing shadows as he looked them both over.
“Oh, there you are, your lordship,” he said. “I trust you had a pleasant time in the garden. Dear me, Mr. Day, your lower garments are quite wet. Perhaps you should spend less time on your knees.”
He turned on his heel and stalked off. Stephen looked after him, and turned to Crane, face neutral.
“It amuses him to be offensive,” Crane said, wondering whether Stephen had grasped the ludicrous insinuation. “My apologies. I’ll have a word.”
There was nothing in Stephen’s muddy eyes, except perhaps tiredness. “Don’t bother. Good night.”
Chapter Nine
The unseasonable sun was shining through the narrow windows of the drawing room, onto the faded carpets and brocade chairs, and Crane was bored.
Stephen had been particularly uninteresting at breakfast, barely meeting Crane’s eyes, making only polite and noncommittal remarks. Crane, deprived of conversation, found his mind kept wandering to Hector, and the jack, and the ghastly legal and financial tangle ahead of him, until he had all but forgotten the dull little man opposite him.
Stephen had disappeared after consuming a huge breakfast and was now sequestered in the library, where he had been all morning, armed with the most detailed map Crane possessed and supplies of tea and cake from Mrs. Mitching. Merrick had gone off to spread the agreed story that the cement fixing the stones of the Rose Walk had deteriorated catastrophically and it was likely to collapse on anyone foolish enough to walk through it. Crane had settled down with Piper’s accounts, which possessed all the clarity and order of a plate of chao mian noodles but none of the spice, and had thought that this would be the dullest thing he did all day, right up until the moment Sir James and Lady Thwaite arrived to make a morning call.
Sir James concluded his hunting anecdote with a hearty laugh, in which his wife joined. Crane said, “Very good,” without any effort at sincerity. “Now…”
“Well.” Sir James glanced at his wife. “I expect you’re wondering why we’re here, my lord, and the fact is, we’re having a dinner this evening.”
“We had no idea when you’d be back, you see,” put in Lady Thwaite. “Or we would have sent you a card. Naturally.”
“Cards,” said Sir James dismissively. “Man doesn’t need a card to share meat with his neighbours. Come and take pot luck with us this evening. You can meet our Helen again, and all the society roundabout here, not to mention the Brutons. Muriel’s friends, they are, coming up from London today. Just your sort. Sir Peter and Elise, that’s Lady Bruton, don’t know if you’ve met them? You London folk all know each other, I dare say.”
“That’s most kind of you, but—”
“Now, don’t say you have another engagement.” Lady Thwaite had an air of suppressed triumph. “The Millways are coming, and there will be Mr. Haining too. And really, I can’t imagine what else you could be doing.”
Crane could think of a number of occupations that would give him more pleasure, even in Piper. “I’m not engaged, as such, but I’m extremely busy. Matters are in something of a tangle here. I really can’t spare the time for social events, I’m afraid. Thank you anyway.” He rose as he spoke.
“But you must come.” Lady Thwaite stood too and took hold of Crane’s hand. “Listen to me. You can’t refuse to meet your neighbours and you really mustn’t decline. Come tonight, at seven, or you will offend us all and you don’t want to do that.”
“I—”
“Listen to me. You don’t want to refuse at all, dear Lord Crane. You know you must come. You have to meet Helen again. You like Helen so much, she’s so sweet and pretty. Such a lovely girl.
So suitable, so eligible. You must come.”
Crane sighed internally, realising he would have to go. “Very well, then, thank you. But I’ve a guest with me here.”
“Bring him along!” said Sir James boisterously, getting in before his wife could speak. “The more the merrier.”
“I’ve no idea if he has dining clothes—”
“Oh, don’t bother about that!” said Sir James merrily. “We’re not sticklers, are we, my dear?”
Lady Thwaite patted Crane on the arm with a victorious smirk. “Of course not. And you must come, dear Lord Crane, you really, really must.”
Crane returned to his work for ten minutes or so after the Thwaites had left, cursing himself for giving in to a pointless social obligation, and wondering what the devil Stephen could wear to any kind of dinner. The man was barely presentable as it was. He caught himself reflecting that his own amber cufflinks would match Stephen’s eyes, the blend of warm brown and glowing gold, and wondered why he’d had that thought, because Stephen’s eyes were a drab clay colour…
He put his pen down.
He knew the man’s eyes were golden, changeable, intense. He’d watched them long enough. But he also knew they were dull and unattractive, because…
Because Stephen had told him so?
Crane made himself go over and over the last night, memories swimming to the surface as he concentrated. The cold rough stone. Stephen on his knees. Warm breath and soft lips against his hand.
He knew it had all happened. But part of his mind was insisting it hadn’t—because Stephen had made him think it hadn’t. Because Stephen had gone into his mind, and practiced on his thoughts.
Stephen, the shaman he trusted to protect him, the man he had started thinking of as his friend.
Crane stared unseeingly at the surface of the desk, face tightening as he thought it over. When he was sure he was right, he got up, walked out of the room to the library and knocked on the door in a restrained, calm, steady fashion for about five minutes without stopping, until several rather confused-looking servants had gathered round him and his knuckles were getting sore.
Finally Stephen opened the door a crack and gave him a look of exasperation. Crane responded with a bland smile, and kicked the door open so hard that the other man had to leap back to avoid being hit.
Stephen had barely slept the previous night. He had compounded that shameless performance in the garden with a disgraceful abuse of his powers: he had tortured himself for half the night with reproaches and the other half with images of what might have been, painfully aware of Crane oblivious and asleep in the next room. He had been scarcely able to meet Crane’s eyes at breakfast for anger at himself, and he had spent the morning getting increasingly frustrated at the maddening difficulty of casting in this ridiculous, hateful house. It had taken him hours to get into a state of focus that meant he could force the meagre ether to do his bidding, and the knocking that broke his concentration was almost as unwelcome as the results he was seeing, or the heavy oak door that came within two inches of breaking his nose.
“What the devil?” he demanded as Crane strode in and back-heeled the door shut with a slam.
“I,” said Crane sweetly, “have just accepted a dinner invitation for us both. Tonight.”
“You’ve done what? Why?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Crane. He stalked forward. Stephen dropped back a pace. “I was happily refusing the importunities of a pair of dullards, when quite suddenly I found myself realising that I was being terribly rude and it was absolutely necessary that I should attend this tedious social engagement. Much as, in the past weeks, I have found myself thinking that I was a worthless piece of human waste who ought to kill myself.”
“Oh! You think—”
“Much as,” Crane went on over him, taking another step forward so that Stephen was backed up against the desk, “last night, just after you revealed yourself as the world’s best card-sharper and faced down a bloody ghost, I found myself thinking that you’re really a very dull little man that I don’t want to pay any attention to. Isn’t that odd?”
Stephen froze. Crane glared at him, ugly with rage, clenching his fists. “You damned little swine, how dare you play the fool with my mind?”
He pushed Stephen backwards. The smaller man squirmed sideways. “Not the desk, don’t knock the desk!” he yelped. “I’ve spent all morning doing that—”
“The hell with the desk,” said Crane, shoving it hard. There was a sad tinkling clatter as a tangle of something metallic collapsed, and Stephen gave a pained cry of protest, which Crane ignored, reaching for him again. Stephen ducked under his arm and sidestepped. Crane grabbed him by the shoulders, walked him back two paces and slammed him against a bookshelf.
“Ow.”
Crane stared down. Stephen knew he had a slight flush in his cheeks, but he met Crane’s eyes directly.
“Well?” demanded Crane.
“Well, you’re right, of course.”
“Why?”
Stephen looked at him steadily, chin tilted slightly up, refusing to drop his eyes. “It’s safer.”
“For whom?”
“Me. Can you let me go, please, I’ve got some sort of atlas in my back.”
Crane shifted his hands from Stephen’s shoulders to the shelves behind, but didn’t otherwise move, so that Stephen was still trapped by his body and outstretched arms.
“That was neither an explanation, nor an apology,” Crane said. “I want both. What did you do to me?”
“I put fluence on you. Influence. To lead your thoughts in the direction I wanted them to go.”
“Why?” asked Crane again.
“If I wanted to discuss it, I wouldn’t have used fluence in the first place. You know, I’m used to people being taller than me, and I really don’t find it as intimidating as you may imagine, so you may as well step back.”
Crane leaned forward and down instead, eyes snapping with fury. “Will you be more intimidated when I wring your neck, you little sod?”
Stephen reached up and put a finger on Crane’s throat. “Listen to me. Step back two paces, calmly.”
Crane stepped back. Stephen rolled his narrow shoulders and took a breath, counting mentally. When he reached six, he saw the rage ignite in Crane’s face and rapidly moved away from the wall.
“You fucking little shit!”
Crane lunged. Stephen ducked, jinked sideways and retreated in earnest as Crane went for him, far faster than he’d anticipated. He skipped backwards and found Crane had backed him against the desk again. The taller man grabbed him, astonishingly hard, and threw him backwards, so that the breath burst out of him, and before he could move, Crane was over him, pinning him down.
Stephen’s back was on the desk, and his feet didn’t reach the floor. Crane leaned on him, bodies pressed close, pinioning his wrists above his head, face dark with anger.
It occurred to Stephen Day that he had just made a fairly spectacular misjudgement.
“I apologise for that.” He spoke as calmly as possible, trying to ignore the pressure of Crane’s body against his. “It was in the way of an experiment, to see how fast you’d shake it. You’re developing surprisingly rapid resistance to fluence.”
“Perhaps that’s because people keep doing it to me,” said Crane through his teeth.
Stephen’s brows drew together slightly. “I think you may be right, at that. How—”
“No,” said Crane. “I’m asking the questions.”
He was pressing down painfully on Stephen’s wrists, taut body just over Stephen’s, hard and intent and all too close to the night’s imaginings. Stephen swallowed, cursing the betraying rush of blood, wishing he dared shift position.
“This is quite uncomfortable.”
“Good. I remembered what happened last night.”
“Nothing happened,” said Stephen instantly, defensively.
“Yes, it did. There was a ghost.”
&nbs
p; “Oh—well, yes—”
“But that wasn’t what you had in mind, was it?”
Stephen bit his lip. Control this. “Why don’t you tell me what you think happened last night?”
Crane’s lips drew back in a snarl. “What I think is that I was about to have you right there in the garden. I think you were about two minutes from being flat on your back in the grass.”
Stephen felt the blood recede from his face. Brilliant, Steph, well played.
“And…” Crane shifted his leg up so that it rubbed against Stephen’s painfully tight groin, ridding him of the admittedly faint hope that Crane hadn’t noticed his arousal. “I think you’re two minutes from the same thing right now.”
“Oh God,” said Stephen involuntarily. He couldn’t tell if Crane meant it, or what he meant. A dizzying pulse of excitement was making it difficult to think. Crane’s body was hard against him, and he could feel the larger man’s cock, pressing against his stomach. “Listen—”
“Shut the fuck up!” It was a shout, but Crane’s voice moved immediately to a savage purr. “I want to make you pay for that right now, you manipulative little bastard. I want to make you pay, and you know it, and…” His mouth curled, and he shoved his thigh cruelly against Stephen’s erection again. “And you like it. In fact, I suspect there’s nothing you’d like better. Is there?”
Stephen couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.
“Well?”
Stephen licked his lips. “What do you want me to say?” His voice sounded breathy in his own ears.
“Tell me why you did that to me last night. And don’t lie to me. I know what you wanted, what you want. So why did you do it?”
He did not want to answer that. “I— It was—”
“You wanted me to fuck you, didn’t you?”
Stephen shut his eyes. “Briefly.”
Crane lowered his head so his mouth was right on Stephen’s ear, voice vibrating, teeth and tongue touching the sensitive flesh. “When I fuck you, Mr. Day, it will not be briefly. It will be long and hard and extremely thorough. I’m going to take pains with you.”
The Magpie Lord Page 7