“Stop that,” said Jack. His tone surprised even himself: low, commanding.
“—but I haven’t yet seen you bite.”
“Perhaps if you asked nicely.”
It hung between them, developing its own weight and shape. Their bodies swayed apart and together like a small tide.
“You’ve earned that hazard pay today,” Jack went on. The words came out, dragged by that tide. “I refuse to have you interview any more of my relatives, but I can offer you dinner.”
“Dinner,” repeated Ross.
“At my townhouse. I planned to dine there tonight anyway.”
“Dinner.”
“Quid pro quo,” said Jack, “if that helps your pride.”
“You don’t give a toss for my pride.”
“Dinner and as much arguing about politics as you wish. Or if you’d rather keep yourself warm with the knowledge you declined a dinner invitation from an earl’s son—”
“Piss off.” But Ross didn’t move. His face was a taunt. Jack waited, and eventually Ross said, clipped, “You know I can’t change for dinner.”
“Then I shan’t either. It’ll be informal.”
“All right.” A pause. “Thank you.”
The exchange about biting throbbed in Jack’s skull all the way back to his Mayfair townhouse, where Makepeace batted nary an eye at the prospect of an unexpected guest and put the machinery of dinner in motion. They ate in the smaller, more intimate dining room. Still—
“Informal my arse,” muttered Ross, twitching as a footman flicked out his napkin. He stared around him at the table setting.
Jack was on home turf and therefore in an easier mood. “I haven’t eaten here in weeks. Let them make the most of it.”
Ross inspected a fork. “I suppose they polish the silver on Tuesdays even if there’s nobody about to see it.”
“Should I kick my staff out onto the street when I’m not in residence?”
“Pay them the wage, but let them do what they like with their time,” said Ross. “Or are you afraid they’ll become educated above their station? Here—when was the last time you had enough time and energy to read a book? For leisure or self-improvement?”
The footman he was addressing—Metcalfe, the younger one—gave Ross a startled, pained look, as if they’d both failed an unspoken test.
Jack cleared his throat. “Mr. Ross here has an irrepressible interviewing instinct, and I have deprived him of subjects. He’s a journalist.”
“Actually, I’m a jewel thief.” Ross lifted the glass of wine to his mouth and paused before drinking. “Got my eye on all that silver.”
Jack caught Makepeace’s poker face, within which amusement gleamed, and indicated that they would prefer to dine in privacy and would ring when ready for the next course. Conversation would be easier without Ross needling the staff.
Once they were alone, he said to Ross: “I’ll wait until you’re leaving the house and then make a charitable show of giving you the candlesticks.”
“I didn’t have you down as a humble man of God,” said Ross. “And—ah. You didn’t have me down as someone who might’ve read Hugo.”
“One assumes you learned all those long words somewhere.”
The rhythm broke, and one of those sharp, considering looks replaced it, but Ross made the visible decision not to take offence. He merely shrugged. A miracle. Perhaps it was the wine.
“I was at a charity school, and that was the longest book in my teacher’s collection. All about God and forgiveness and poor criminals bettering themselves through faith.” The sharp look took on an edge of irony. “He was thrilled when I showed an interest. Less thrilled when I thumped it back down onto his desk a week later and went on about how the boys with the barricades had some good ideas which needed better execution.”
“Guillotines,” said Jack. “As I suspected. Nobody threw Hugo at my head until Oxford, and I can’t say I enjoyed it. Was this the norm at those charity schools?”
Ross shook his head. “The school in our area was half funded by the church, and half by a philanthropic society. The masters there had the radical notion that teaching the poor to think would not tear apart the fabric of society. I was bloody lucky. Luckier still that my family let me stay as long as I did.”
The Education Act made school attendance compulsory only to the age of thirteen. Where money was scarce, most families would encourage paid work after that.
Ross went on, “I was Mr. Voight’s pet project. He had dreams of me winning a scholarship to university. The perfect poster boy for the ragged schools and their potential.”
Impossible to miss the bitterness in his voice.
“What happened?”
“My pa died.” It landed like a slap. “So I took what I had and I did the best I could with it.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen.” Ross raised his impossible dark eyes to Jack’s in the candlelight. There was something more complicated than defiance there, and in the way he gripped the knife and fork of Jack’s everyday silver dinner service.
“And now you’re cornering earls in Parliament and demanding their opinion on the budget,” said Jack.
“Now I’m in the fox trap of the lower middle class,” said Ross. “D’you know what my brother Emilio wears to his worksite? Yesterday’s clothes, mud stains and all. Nobody gives a rat’s arse what he looks like. Look around you in the City sometime, Lord Hawthorn. Hundreds of the men you see can barely afford to wear a clean shirt every day, but it’s expected. And they have to pay for rooms close to their place of work. And it’s twice as tough if they have a family to provide for. They are terrified, to a man, of slipping below the line.”
Most charity works were dedicated to improving the lot of the truly poor. Starving orphans, struggling widows on the street. Jack hadn’t considered that there might be a need to improve conditions for the average banker’s clerk.
He said, “You’ve never struck me as terrified.”
Ross gave a harsh, incredulous laugh. “I’ve been below the line. I know I can survive it. That helps. But no, I’m clinging just as hard. I like using my mind rather than my hands. I like that I won’t be useless by forty from backache or worn-out knees, and I like that men born into houses full of silver hear the long words I use and will give me a few more inches, a few more moments of their time, so I can keep my family’s heads above water.”
He spoke with an intensity that reminded Jack of Catherine Kaur, speechmaking in the Library: an ebb and flow that demanded your attention. In Ross’s case he could have been taught oratory at that charity school, but Jack suspected it was simply natural passion. Jack wanted to push back, to leap into the rhythm, but he swallowed it and left silence like an invitation.
“I am terrified all the time,” said Ross. “I am terrified that my sister’s daughters will grow up and go into service and then get thrown back onto the street when their bellies start showing the evidence of a rich man’s greed, my lord. That happened to Bella. And she and Caro wouldn’t have ever found positions in the first place if I hadn’t forged references for them.”