A Case for Christmas (The Lords of Bucknall Club Book 2)

by J. A. Rock

  He touched the side of his neck, dug his nail under the small scab there, and was pleased to feel a bead of fresh blood form.

  “Most unkind!” he declared to the night sky.

  He jolted when a voice said, “Lord Christmas?”

  He thought for a second it might be Chant’s voice, but what a foolish thought. Chant’s voice was much softer and warmer than this… bray.

  Teddy stepped into the pool of light from the nearby street lamp.

  Gale’s stomach seemed to detach from whatever held it in place within him.

  Teddy from the salon. Teddy, who had turned away from Gale and gone to fuck the French artist. Gale’s last encounter with him had involved a fair amount of alcohol too.

  “What are you doing out here?” Teddy asked.

  “I am walking by the river,” Gale said. At least, that’s what he hoped he said. His tongue felt thick and rather useless.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Where is Hartwell?” Gale blurted. That was not what he’d meant to ask.

  “I don’t… You mean Lord William Hartwell? Your friend?”

  “He is not my friend. I have no friends.” Gale rubbed the back of his head. Where was his hat? Had he come here with a hat? “Chant is not my friend.” It seemed very important that Teddy know this.

  “Gale, shall I call you a cab?” Teddy squinted through the lamplight. “You’re bleeding.” He stepped forward.

  Gale stumbled back. “Don’t!”

  A voice, thin and higher than he’d expected. The accent more English than Dutch. Pale eyes, boring into his. “Do I need to tell you what will happen, should you continue to pry into matters that don’t concern you?”

  Gale hurried along, ignoring Teddy’s voice behind him. He needed to clear his head, but how? If he sobered up, he might remember too much of his afternoon. But if he stayed as he was… he could not see, could not think. He was exposed out here. He doubled over suddenly, his hands on his knees. He could not draw breath. There were… He did not know how to describe it, even to himself. There were things that belonged inside. Inside himself. His thoughts, his feelings, the occasional hours he spent in the dimly lit rooms of molly houses. The days he spent in Russell Street, in his rooms, where no one could reach him. He had only ever wanted a life lived inside, protected, private. And now so much of him was being forced out into the open. By the papers, by Society, by Benjamin Chant… Chant was the worst of all. With Chant, he could not stay within himself, not entirely.

  And it was not fair.

  He made his way toward the pier, hunched and stumbling. There was no one there, not at that precise spot. There was just black water glittering under the light of the moon. The moon that Chant had spoken of on the Harringdon terrace. A breeze hit him full in the face and seemed to clear some of the fog from his mind. He could breathe again, though it took some effort. He leaned over and stared into the water.

  De Cock had bent to remove his boot. “I must have a stone in my boot. It’s been bothering me all afternoon.”

  He heard the creak of boards and turned his head to discover Teddy was standing next to him, his handsome mouth illuminated by moonlight but his eyes hidden in the shadow cast by his hat.

  “I think there is a metaphor in that somewhere,” Gale muttered, and glared for a moment at the small, hazy moon as though it were its fault.

  “A metaphor, sir?” Teddy asked.

  Gale grunted and waved his hand at Teddy. He’d had rather too much to drink to explain neatly why the fact he could see Teddy’s mouth but not his eyes summed up their entire relationship. What had it been, after all, but a series of transactions? Gale had paid—if not coin and not directly—for that mouth, but he had never been terribly interested in the man behind it. He wondered if Teddy’s artist was kinder than he had been.

  “How is what’s her name?” Gale asked.

  Teddy’s mouth curled into a smile. “Do not pretend you don’t know her name, sir. I know there isn’t a single fact you have ever overheard that you have then forgotten.”

  Gale grunted. He’d thought so too, once, before Chant. Then last night he’d been so distracted by Chant’s presence at dinner that he’d failed to remember the letter in his pocket. It was unaccountable and most certainly unprecedented. Now Visser had either fled or been captured right from under Gale’s nose. And there was something about the surgeon and his assistant that Gale could not put his finger on. Something about that house, and yet, whatever it was, Gale just couldn’t see it.

  Even now, staring at Teddy’s pretty visage and remembering all the things Teddy could do to make Gale’s blood turn hot in his icy veins, it was Chant he was thinking about. Chant with his captivating eyes, that little crease that appeared between his elegant brows whenever he regarded Gale—as though Gale confounded him, ha!—and that golden hair he wore too long. Gale wanted to tug that ribbon free and comb his fingers through Chant’s hair. More than that, he wanted Chant to do the same to him. He wanted to feel the scrape of Chant’s nails against his scalp, the slight pressure, the strange thrill of the touch that had lit him up from the inside.

  He had never petted Teddy’s hair or wanted Teddy to pet his.

  Chant made no sense. Nothing made sense, Gale’s own mind least of all. And of everything in the world, Gale had always been certain of his own mind. Now he felt adrift, unanchored and uncertain, and it wasn’t just his drunkenness. Was this how other people felt all the time? People like Hartwell or Warry or even Soulden, who experienced their lives as a series of random events occurring at the whim of a capricious universe and did not see the pattern to it all? The order? How horrifying.

  He shivered as he stared into the black water.

  Chant had ruined him. He had lured Gale in with his odd, unasked for compassion toward him, and he had ruined him.

  He glanced at Teddy again and wondered if he ought to invite him back to his rooms in Russell Street. He and Teddy had enjoyed a few assignations there. Except, no. Not even the memory of Teddy’s pert and inviting arse could get a stand out of Gale. Not even a damned twitch.

  Ruined.

  And all because of—

  “Gale!”

  Gale spun around on wobbly legs to see Chant hastening toward him. “What the devil are you doing here? How did you even find me? Have you belled me like a cat, sir?”

  The Belled Cat. Howe had died in the pub’s back alley. Stabbed by the same blade that had been pressed to Gale’s throat hours ago.

  Chant pulled up short, and the men behind him almost barrelled into him. Gale squinted at them. Hartwell? Hartwell and Warry?

  “You asked for Hartwell,” Teddy murmured. “I sent a boy to Bucknall’s to ask for him there.”

  Good Lord. How had Gale not realised that? A child would have realised that.

  “I have lost my mind because of you!” Gale said, pointing an accusing finger toward Chant. “I have lost all my mental faculties, and now I am a gibbering idiot like Hartwell!”

  “Do I gibber?” Hartwell asked. “Warry, do I gibber? Am I a gibberer?”

  “Hush,” Warry said. “Gale, are you drunk?”

  “I am drunk,” Gale said. “But there is much I understand.”

  For a moment, he saw two Hartwells, both beckoning him. “Come on off the pier now,” the Hartwells said.

  “That is not what I wish to do.” Gale walked out farther, and the rest of the world fell away as he approached the edge.

  Behind him, he heard Chant say, “You all may go. I’ll handle this.”

  Handle this? Gale did not need to be handled. Not a one of them realised what Gale himself had handled today.

  De Cock’s breath had reeked of fish and gin as he’d touched the point of his dagger to Gale’s throat. Gale had remained calm. Disturbingly calm. He would have expected the prospect of death to be terrifying, but the moments he’d thought would be his last had seemed somehow as ordinary as all the moments that had come before.

  Late
r, he had gone to the hell with his cravat fastened high around his neck to cover the spot where the dagger had drawn blood.

  “Are you sure?” he heard Hartwell ask Chant. “He was of service to me recently when I was in my cups. I should be glad to return the favour.”

  “You were a gibbering idiot that night,” Warry put in.

  “I need no favours!” Gale called back.

  The water was filthy. The moonlight outlined every bit of rubbish that bobbed in the river. Gale should not have minded throwing himself in with all of it. It would be better than letting Chant handle him.

  The water lapped the dock, and a scrap of metal collided with what looked like a burlap sack. How cold would the water be? He heard low voices. Footsteps retreating.

  “Gale.”

  He made no answer.

  Chant did not come closer. Gale didn’t know whether he was relieved or disappointed.

  “I do not like you so close to the water,” Chant said.

  “I do not like you having opinions on my proximity to the water.”

  All at once, an icy and horrible feeling rose in Gale. Was this the terror he ought to have felt earlier in that ramshackle room with de Cock? He did not want to face Chant. Not until things made sense again.

  “Will you not come to me?” Chant asked gently.

  Gale closed his eyes. It seemed he still saw the pattern of moonlight on water against the back of his eyelids. He wondered idly if this was how Flummery had felt, cowering under the lumber pile in Jacob’s Island as Gale cursed and commanded him. No wonder Gale could not get even a dog to like him. If, in this moment, Chant were to shout at him as he had shouted at Flum, he would jump into the river.

  “No.” If he said it enough times, Chant would give up and leave him in peace. It was a strategy that worked on everyone except Gale’s mother.

  His gut felt as if it were being wrung like a rag. He needed to get to Russell Street. Needed to shut himself in his room and stay there.

  “I wish to go home. But I am not coming off this pier until you are out of the way. Stand aside, sir.”

  “And just what is it you fear I mean to do?”

  “Fear? I think you mean to embrace me and fret over me and whisper reassurances as you would a babe. And I have not the stomach for that.” The stomach in question suddenly felt hollowed out by longing—though for what, he could not be sure. Perhaps for precisely what he had just accused Chant of wanting to do.

  “Then we are at an impasse. For I cannot let you walk off this pier without taking you in my arms and determining for myself whether you are too cold, or too hungry, or too unsteady on your feet to be left alone.”

  “Then I shall stay here forever.”

  “All right,” Chant agreed. A moment passed. “What if we compromised? You come off the pier, I embrace you, but I promise to whisper no reassurances. It shall be a silent embrace.”

  That longing pulled at the core of him again. Perhaps it would not be so terrible to be in Chant’s arms, just briefly. “You may whisper one phrase of your choosing. It need not be a reassurance.”

  “Very well. Are you coming here, or shall I go to you?”

  “I am…” Gale did not know. “I am coming. In just a moment.”

  “All right. I shall use this interlude to think of my one phrase.”

  Gale stared at the water and sighed. He had given Chant every opportunity to leave, and the fellow was still there. So could Gale be blamed for… for accepting whatever Chant was offering?

  “I must have a stone in my boot…” And Gale had made no sound, no movement, even as De Cock overturned the boot he’d removed, and a small item fell out, landing with a soft thwick on the dirty floorboards.

  He began to shake as he left the pier behind. He did not want Chant to see him in this state. Had Chant not seen enough of this sort of feebleness at the ball the other night? Perhaps he would put it down to the cold.

  Even with strange shadows cast over and about him, Chant’s form was familiar. The gold of his hair gleamed where a bar of lamplight caught it, and he stood as relaxed as though he were simply taking in the night air.

  Gale walked right up to him, difficult as it was, and stopped, unable to meet Chant’s gaze.

  Chant’s arms came around him, and while he made an irritatingly sympathetic noise at Gale’s shivering, he did not speak right away. He pulled Gale closer to him, and, unsteady as Gale was, he ended up leaning against the other man for balance.

  There was the darkness and quiet he craved, and Gale sank into it. He lowered his head. With his face pressed to Chant’s shoulder, he could shut out the rest of the world. With Chant’s arms around him, he did not feel nearly so exposed.

  “You old fool,” Chant whispered in his ear.

  He made it sound like a reassurance, which was a talent Gale could almost admire.

  Gale inhaled, but there was no hope of letting the breath go smoothly. Chant rubbed his back as the air shuddered from his lungs.

  He was not sure how much time passed after that.

  “What did you mean,” Chant asked softly, “going off on your own like that? Getting in such a state?”

  Gale bit his tongue as what started as annoyance turned to something else entirely—a warmth, rather like embarrassment but lacking the sharper bite of shame or resentment. It was, in some odd, obscure way an almost pleasurable sensation. He flushed quite helplessly with it, and was glad Chant could not see his face.

  “Your whispered reassurances need some work,” Gale muttered.

  “These are not reassurances. These are chidings. You are being chidden.”

  Gale felt that flood of warmth again. Was he really so foxed that his very blood had grown hot? “Whatever you call it, it is all the behaviour of a fretful matron. I’ll not stand for it.”

  “You can barely stand at all, my friend.”

  That seemed grossly unfair of Chant to point out.

  “Shall we go somewhere you can rest?”

  “No,” Gale said firmly. He forced his head up. “I… I will go home after this, but first, there are some things you must know.”

  “All right,” Chant said, voice calm as ever.

  Gale took a few shallow breaths against the shoulder of Chant’s greatcoat. “Are you going to let me go?” he asked, his voice muffled.

  “No,” Chant said above him, his cheek pressing against Gale’s hair. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d really rather not.

  Chapter 12

  All told, Chant thought he did fairly well at schooling his manner and expression as he listened to Gale’s story. Gale remained in his arms as he spoke, though he’d lifted his head again so Chant might hear him. This was a deserted enough spot Chant worried more about thieves than about gossip, but he did not wish to break the spell of Gale’s trust by insisting they go to one of their homes. He knew his duty here was to listen. Still, he could not stop himself from tensing when Gale described being pulled into the abandoned house by de Cock.

  “God,” he breathed. “Gale…”

  “Let me finish,” Gale said.

  He went on, and his description of the encounter left Chant queasy. De Cock had warned Gale to halt his investigation. That, Chant would have expected. The captain had drawn a line under his message by putting his dagger to Gale’s throat. Chant could have gone off to find the man this instant and killed him without hesitation. Gale had attempted to get de Cock talking, but de Cock had not taken the bait. He did not confess to the murder of Howe, nor would he reveal whether he’d had a hand in Visser’s disappearance. Not until their conversation was at an end, and de Cock made for the door, limping as he did.

  The captain had told Gale there was a stone in his boot that had been bothering him all afternoon. Then he’d removed his boot, turned it upside down, and had shaken it.

  What had fallen to the floor between them was not a stone, but a human ear.

  The edge where it had been detached was rough and dark with coagulated
blood. Gale had stared at it for a long while, even after de Cock left.

  “It was Visser’s,” Gale told Chant now. “Who else’s could it have been?”

  Chant did not much care who the fuck the ear had belonged to. His arms eased from around Gale, and he swallowed several times.

  Gale stepped back, out of the embrace.

  “You told me you would not do this,” Chant said. “That you would not put yourself in danger.”

  “I said no such thing.”

  “You said you would try. And you have not tried, even a little.”

  “This is precisely why I did not want you involved in any of this mess!” Gale swayed on his feet, and Chant almost reached out to steady him. But the man remained upright. “I tell you that de Cock has maimed Visser, and all you can think about is how you tried to extract a promise from me, and how I have not done as you wished. Here you are nagging at me like a disgruntled spouse!”

  “Is that really what you think? I shall have no problem walking away if so.” Chant shook his head when Gale did not answer. “You may know much that I don’t, Gale, but I am beginning to see that you don’t know the first thing about people, unless they have stolen a brooch or murdered a dockyard worker. You know on the surface why they do what they do, but you do not feel their motivations in your own heart.”

  “A good thing, I should think. To not feel in my heart the motivations of a murderer or thief, yes?”

  “No. Do not deflect. You wilfully misunderstand my intention in condemning your behaviour.”

  “And you, sir, wilfully stand in the way of what I am trying to do.”

  “Stand in your way? I have wanted nothing but to help you since this began.”