Jack faked a yawn. “Tedious. Are you sure you won’t take jewels instead?”
“Oh fuck off, you overbred streak of goat’s piss,” Ross snapped.
The silence was tight as cradling string. Ross’s hand made a motion to cover his mouth before he shoved it back down and kept glaring.
After an enjoyable moment, Jack drawled, “I can’t imagine why you’ve had such trouble making connections in civilised society, Mr. Ross.”
“Let me rephrase.” All the polish came back, cloyingly mocking. “I strongly dislike you.”
“And do you think I enjoy the company of an unrelentingly hostile East End criminal?”
That lighthouse expression flashed again. Jack pulled air over a catch in his own breath. But Ross, out of mousetraps for the moment, didn’t step on Jack’s. Didn’t say: Yes, it’s terribly obvious that you do. Didn’t say anything else for the rest of the trip to Westminster.
The palace and its grounds were crawling with robes and suits, briefcases and bowler hats, as the work of Parliament began for another day. Jack took them through the main public entrance into St. Stephen’s Hall.
Ross seemed determined to be unimpressed by the marble politicians who bracketed their progress down the hall, as well as the robed and wigged flesh-and-blood versions of the present day. His eyes roamed sharply, a faint crease between them, and he gripped his hat to his chest.
By the time they reached the Central Lobby, Jack had already exchanged nods with several people, none of whom had paid any attention to the shorter man at his elbow.
“I can find you some Post-friendly voices, if you think you can resist the urge to erect a guillotine beneath the mosaic of Saint George.”
“I’ve managed not to bite you yet,” muttered Ross. “Can’t hardly get any worse.”
The Viscount Austin, who was nearing eighty and wheezed when he spoke, was in discussion nearby with two equally ancient peers. Jack was on the verge of directing them across to join that group when—
“Hawthorn!”
He turned. Pete Manning had a hand upraised, the other arm full of papers. Only half a head taller than Ross, broad-chested and with a neat, dense beard, Manning made his way across the lobby like a bulldog parting pigeons.
“Damned refurbishments, forcing me halfway round the palace to get to my own office,” he puffed. “You owe me a chat and a pint, Hawthorn. What’s this? Found yourself a proper secretary, have you? How d’you do, boy. Don’t let his lordship bully you, he’s mostly bark, y’know.”
Jack had no idea how that would go down, but a glance showed him that all of Ross’s animosity had been packed away beneath the sharp features.
“This is a journalist friend of mine—unbusheled, Pete—Mr. Alan Ross. He’s interested in the fuss over the budget. Ross, this is the Honourable Peter Manning, Member for some insignificant hedgerow or other.”
Manning’s look of surprise at the word unbusheled gave way to a throaty chuckle. He extended a hand. After a moment, Ross shook.
“How d’you do, sir. Should I congratulate or commiserate with you on the budget passing the Commons?”
“Cheeky sod, isn’t he?” Manning grinned approvingly. His own accent had the Somerset burr rubbed smooth by education. “I’m of Asquith’s party, boy. I’ll take the congratulations. Someone needs to hammer the words public good into those peers of the realm who are screaming like foxes in traps at the prospect of their precious lands being taxed.”
Ross’s hand went instantly to his pocket and emerged with a notepad and pencil. Jack could already see the next day’s fox-based caricature if Ross had worked for a more progressive paper.
“And I heard the Irish Party’s not pleased about the proposed import duties either?”
“Hah. Yes. Glad it’s not my fight any longer. It’ll be a messy business. But I suppose you know that, given how hard Lord Hawthorn here is working to haul it past the screamers and through the Lords.” Manning’s head rose at the sound of the bell for the Commons. “It’s going to be a devilish long day. Best to your family, Hawthorn.”
“And yours. Did I hear Arthur’s doing some work at the Barrel now?”
Manning gave Jack a sharp look from beneath his heavy brows. Their friendship over the past several years, like most connections that Jack had maintained with magicians, had been based in pretending that both of them were as unmagical as the next man.
“That’s right. My son,” he explained, for Ross’s benefit. “Barrister. Trained up in magical law as well, so he stands as dicentis in the Library when he’s called upon. Just got himself engaged to be married too.” He brightened with pride. “Now, if only the wife and I could drag Abigail’s head out of her books and get her to show some interest in the prospect. Ah, well. Time enough. Better be off.”
Jack beckoned Ross towards the Peers’ Corridor. “As he said, it’s out of that House’s voting power now. We’ll try the Peers’ Lobby. That’s where the properly screaming ones congregate.”
Ross, however, showed no sign of moving. He stepped aside to allow for the northward migration of MPs towards the exit to the Commons, and drew Jack, by an impatient tug on the sleeve, to stand in one of the small alcoves beneath a monarch’s statue. The glare was back.
“What did he mean, you’re working for it to pass?”
“Are you criticising the clarity of his words?”
A frustrated hiss emerged from Ross. Jack smothered a smile and leaned against the smooth, ancient wall. Power drenched this place as surely as it did Spinet House, even if it was of a different sort.
“You’ll inherit an earldom!”
“There are several Liberal-affiliated peers in the House. I believe this is how government works.”
“And the supertax clauses—you’re rich as bloody Midas.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I have been trying to give some of it away to the ungrateful poor, but I’ve only had limited success.” He adjusted his cufflinks. Ross followed the action with his eyes, and spots of colour appeared in his flawless cheeks. “Taxation has the appeal of efficiency.”
“You’re—no. I don’t believe it.”
Jack could have pointed out that not once, during the frequent displays of Ross’s anti-aristocratic principles aboard the Lyric, had Jack ever given any indication that he disagreed with them. Instead he shrugged and turned away, striding to the southern exit and down the corridor quickly enough that Ross would have to scurry to catch up. The light of the man’s indignation made Jack feel alive. He could have stood there all day, stirring the embers of it whenever they threatened to dim.
There were certainly enough Conservative-affiliated peers in the lobby that it was easy to steer Ross at a cluster of them, once he’d spent a few seconds transferring his glare from Jack to the gilt decoration above the Brass Gates.
“Not a word about magic to anyone here, or I’ll cut your tongue out,” Jack murmured. “How d’you do, Hunterbury. Morton.”
He introduced Ross in this company as the son of an enlisted man he’d served with—“Good, solid fellow, saved my life in the Boer. I promised to look out for his son, and only just found him. Writes for the Post,” he added, which would be far better currency here than with Manning.