“I betrayed you. You’re furious with me.”
“Yes,” said Jack. His hand was tight around Alan’s wrist. Alan could pull against it and never be free, and right now that was the only thing in the world that he wanted. The only thing that would help.
He hissed, “Show me.”
Contained fury bled across Jack’s face. He snatched Alan’s other hand and now his grip was circling both of Alan’s wrists at once, holding them pinned, the bones grinding painfully against one another. Alan gasped. Jack’s other hand was beneath Alan’s arse, and before Alan could breathe again Jack was standing, bearing Alan’s entire weight, and Alan was being flung hard back onto the bed, where he sprawled ungainly with surprise.
It knocked a laugh out of him: one he didn’t recognise. Wild, snarling anticipation took him between its teeth. And then he lifted his head and saw Jack’s face.
“Stop that,” said Lord Hawthorn. It was flat and final, and far more an order than anything that had passed between them before now. “Don’t you dare do that to me.”
“Do what?” Alan asked. He didn’t know what script they were playing from.
“When I fuck, it’s because it’s what I want. Not because I’m punishing someone, or too angry to be safe.”
“Oh, untwist yourself, my lord. It’s a game,” Alan gritted out, pushing to his elbows. His own anger was turning ugly now. He had a sense of the floorboards vanishing beneath his feet, ready to dump him into the wine cellar.
“No, it isn’t. Not like this.” Jack stared down at Alan and a muscle jumped in his cheek. “Is this what you were doing at the Morning Post? You knew what you were about to do, so you used me as a rod to make stripes on your own back?”
The sheer disgust in Jack’s voice was what did it. The size of his mistake began to sink horribly into Alan, and most of his crazed desire ebbed away beneath it.
“No!” He sat up fast. “I wanted that, and it had nothing to do with—hell, you have to know how much I wanted it. It wasn’t punishment. It was a reward, and I knew I didn’t deserve it, and I took it anyway.”
It took several dreadful seconds. But Jack’s expression relented, and he sat back in the chair.
Alan stayed in the bed. It seemed safest. “But you are angry. And you saved me anyway. Are you going to denounce me as a sodomite? Or leave it up to the others to decide what fate I deserve? Why am I here, if not to let you have your revenge?”
“I don’t need revenge,” said Jack.
“Why the fuck not!” yelled Alan.
His misery punched a brief hole in the conversation. Jack picked up the neglected wine and took a sip with an expression that said he wanted to throw back the whole glass.
Jack said, quietly, “Why were you working for my cousin, Alan?”
It was the first time he’d said Alan’s name, for all that he’d been invited days ago. Not Cesare. Not an insult, real or playful. His name.
Jack went on, “Because I’d lay two hundred pounds on you not having a choice in the matter.”
“There’s always a choice.” Alan hesitated, then reached out a hand in request, and Jack put the glass of wine into it. Alan took a good gulp. It was probably hand-squeezed by virgins on a moonlit mountaintop in France, but right now he just needed his nerves to stop jangling. “It was that Morris. He found me, and he’s bad enough, but I’ve known thugs like him before and I think he realised that. So he brought me to your cousin George.” Another gulp. There wasn’t a great deal of wine left.
Alan said, “I could have chosen to let Bastoke drop a word in Kenyon’s ear and have me dismissed. Or a word in our landlord’s ear to have us kicked out onto the street. And that’s not counting the other things they said they’d do, to … to everyone I care about.”
George Bastoke had seemed bored by the very act of threatening. He’d laid out a list of things that magic could do to a person and earnestly suggested that Alan imagine them applied to his dear mother—his brother, his sisters—those charming little children. They’d done their research before Morris plucked him off the street.
Alan swallowed. His hand cramped and his mouth tasted sour. “Bastoke said, You are completely at our mercy. As if he was telling me the sky was blue. And he was absolutely fucking right.”
“My wager stands. That wasn’t a choice.” Anger still sat heavily on Jack’s features, but it had altered. “I’m sorry.”
Alan waited. It didn’t appear to have been a trick.
“You’re apologising to me? You’re apologising? To me?”
“Calm down—it won’t happen again. I’m sorry you were put in this situation. That’s all.”
“If you had your way I’d have had my memory taken on the ship,” Alan pointed out. “Peppermint, wasn’t it? I don’t know if I could have perturbed a potion.”
“You already had,” said Jack. “The sleeping charm Mrs. Vaughn put in my whisky should have had you out for days.”
Alan absorbed that. He nearly pointed out that he shouldn’t have drunk the whisky in the first place, but he was damned if he’d apologise for that. They’d not known each other then.
Not that Alan had dropped the habit of appropriating Jack’s alcohol. He drained the rest of the wine and handed back the empty glass. It finally seemed to be calming him.
“Whatever Edwin and the others need to get the contract back, I’m on board. I’ll help. Anything, if it’ll make Bastoke and his people bleed. I hate them so much it makes me sick. Making me go begging for help, and then making me betray people who’d shown me nothing but kindness.”
“Kindness and a prick in your mouth,” said Jack, very dry, and Alan found himself abruptly shredded by laughter with his face buried in his hands. He shook with it, all the tension and dread of the last few weeks boiling to the surface, and he took a long time to stop. His rib cage kept giving little aftershocks and gulps.
A hand settled on Alan’s shoulder. He lifted his head. Jack was at the edge of the chair, his bulk awkward now that he was attempting to use it for something other than intimidation. Alan shuddered out a final breath and let himself be comforted.
“The others will hate me,” said Alan.
“They’re better people than we are,” said Jack. “They’ll understand.”
“At least tell me you still hate me.”
Jack produced a smile that Alan refused to translate. “I despise you, Cesare.”
“Good.”
After that Jack summoned another servant, this one to confirm that the baths—baths?—were ready, and then to ask Alan’s address so that he could send his family a message. The offer to stay was not spoken, but Alan felt it hovering. He firmly wrote that he’d be home later that night, folded the letter into three, and handed it over.
There were indeed two baths drawn in the large bathroom that was part of Lord Hawthorn’s suite of rooms. One of them was an absurd, claw-footed thing, properly plumbed and porcelain, with gleaming brass taps on either side of the faucet. The other was a plain metal tub that had clearly been fetched from elsewhere in the house. Both of them steamed. The room smelled of soap and a hint of Jack’s deadly cologne.