Alan drew the small stool up to his writing desk and lit his own candle. He rested his chin on folded forearms and watched the flame flicker. A few insects danced shadows onto the wall.
Everyone else in the family shared. Alan, unmarried and currently the sole source of household income beyond Bella’s darning pennies, had the luxury of a bed and a room to himself, even if it was this poky slice of attic space. It was a far, far cry from living on the streets, or those two basement rooms in Shadwell where they’d been constantly fighting the damp of the docks.
Still, it was a step down from the neat bachelor’s boardinghouse room Alan had rented until four months ago.
Four months ago was when Bella had been dismissed from the lady’s-maid position that she’d worked so hard for. Well—Alan’s forged references had got her the place in the house, but her own quick wits had done the rest. She’d been trusted and valued by the young lady she attended, earning a good wage, secure in her prospects.
And then that fucking rat’s arsehole of a boy who called himself the son of the house had grown tired of her placating smiles and sidestepping, had stopped heeding when she said No, sir, and had done what all men raised in the cesspit of wealth and power did: took what he wanted, because he believed he had a right to it.
And then three months ago, a piece of timber had fallen on Dick’s leg.
And so Alan had quit his lodgings, stared grimly down the barrel of his finances, and moved the whole lot of them into this house. He’d pulled every meagre string he had to get the copywriting job for the White Star Line and the society article. He’d arranged through Berto to sell dirty books on behalf of the Charing Cross establishment that usually sold his own; he had Berto give him, in addition, some tutorials in lock-picking.
Thanks to Lord Hawthorn, he’d walked away from the voyage on the Lyric with even more wealth than he expected, and had promptly packed his family off to the seaside for three weeks, because his ma’s cough had thickened and Caro’s kids were looking dangerously hollow-eyed.
Paying for housing and fuel and food was one thing, but a seaside holiday … it had been obvious, then, that he couldn’t have come by the money honestly. His ma had been incandescent with anger. Alan hadn’t cared, seeing how much colour her cheeks had regained with the fresh air. But none of her children had ever out-stubborned Maria Rossi, and eventually she’d made him promise. No more theft.
There was enough of Hawthorn’s money left now to keep them afloat a fair while. Provided Dick’s leg healed eventually and he found work. Provided Bella’s delivery was easy and the children stayed well, and they didn’t need the expense of a doctor. Provided Alan kept his position at the Post, or found a better one. Provided he was never found out and thrown in prison for writing the Roman books. Provided his clothes didn’t wear out too fast.
Alan would manage. Tom and Emily and baby Lizzie would never know what it was to live without the safety of a roof and four walls. Never. If Alan had to drag his principles through the mud, if he had to go begging for help from people he resented—well, you begged, if you had no other choice. Everyone knew that.
Alan shook his head and took out pen, ink, blotter, and drafting paper. Lord Hawthorn was the last person in London he’d wanted to beg for anything. When he made the request, he’d thought that at least forcing himself to spend time with the man would be a useful reminder of what an unbearable, arrogant arsewipe he was.
But today had been … bearable. His lordship could have taken that grenade of danger and made Alan swallow it. Alan was still reeling uncomfortably with the knowledge that instead, Hawthorn had laughed. Had taken all of Alan’s hostility and treated him not quite as an equal, but with abrasive respect.
The candle flickered again. Alan glanced up at the broken windowpane that had been patched with paper, and through which a small draft insisted on leaking. This was what he needed to remember. The reality of his life, to be held up in ruthless comparison with the wooden grandeur of Violet’s house and the over-gilded halls of Westminster.
He had nothing in common with those people. He wasn’t on their side. To anyone of that station, someone like Alan was only a tool to be used.
Surely Hawthorn’s show of respect was an illusion. Bella’s situation represented the truth of the world. Some toffs might claim to like it when people stood up to them, but it was a lie. Oh, they might enjoy a bit of token banter, but they’d always exert their superiority pretty damn fast if actually challenged. If the natural order of things was threatened.
Or else they wanted to be humiliated, wanted the excitement of feeling themselves degraded by associating—sexually, not socially—with the lower classes.
Alan wasn’t interested in being used as a filthy rag to add grime to someone else’s soul. And he preferred the illusion of degradation the other way around.
A workhouse brat with delusions of vocabulary.
A hot breath escaped Alan’s lips as if it had been jolted loose.
Fuck, fuck. It was even worse than before.
Fortunately, he’d built into his life a way of dealing with the desires he could neither indulge nor ignore. He looked at the candle’s flickering flame for a few moments more, letting the first sentence arrange itself. Then he dipped pen to ink and wrote:
The owner of this remote and ramshackle manor had hair dark and thick as the night in which I found myself stranded. His eyes, lit by the lantern uplifted in his hand, could have been two sapphires set there by a master jeweller. Despite the chill of my wet clothes, despite my entire wretched situation, a thrill of heated excitement seized my body as it was subjected to his cruel regard. His expression, turned as it was upon the no doubt unfortunate figure that I presented, was that of a patient creature who had finally worn its prey to exhaustion and now had the leisure of choosing when to strike: ravenous, intent, and with not a speck of mercy to be found.
6
Jack slipped his much-thumbed copy of Bootblacks and Groundskeepers into an inner pocket of his jacket to read on the train. He also bought a newspaper to disguise it in, on the slim chance that any of the other denizens of his first-class compartment on a midweek train heading to the southeastern corner of Essex were also readers of the Roman.
The paper was the Morning Post. He couldn’t justify that, really, except that it arose from the same prickle of prurient interest that had made him burn to reread some of Ross’s erotic work in full knowledge of the author.
The elderly man sitting across from him from London to Wickford looked liable to remain asleep even if a full brass band marched through the carriage. Unlikely to crack an eye to pass judgement on Jack’s reading material. Jack found himself reading the newspaper anyway. Like Ross himself, the Post made him enjoyably angry—just in the other direction. He kept a mental list of political causes he would donate to out of petty spite because the Post frothed over them.
He had the compartment to himself after changing to the older, pokier car of the local line. It was a fine day, and the South was showing off its summer wardrobe: lush patchworks of grazing green and golden crops sailed past, the vivid pastoral colour all but giving off a harmonious hum that Spinet House would have envied. Morning sunshine warmed the side of Jack’s body through the train window and shone merrily onto the pages of the Roman booklet.