And then the house had sounded the melody of friend in loud disharmony with the unbroken note that meant foe, and Violet had come charging down with Maud’s pistol in her hands to see who it was.
“Bastoke threatened his family,” Jack said, instead of pointing out that Alan wouldn’t have led anyone anywhere if George had succeeded in erasing Alan’s memory and leaving him in a gutter. For George, it had been a staggeringly shortsighted plan. A waste of a brilliant mind he’d already coerced into being an asset. George was an elegant edifice of moral rot, but he did usually recognise talent regardless of class. Joe Morris was proof of that.
But then, George hadn’t bothered to get to know Alan. Only to threaten him.
Maud appeared as if summoned by Violet’s distress. She directed a green-eyed glare first at Jack and then Alan.
“What did you do to her?”
“Asked her to marry me,” said Jack, losing patience. “Stabbed her with a carving knife. Violet, I won’t stand here all day.”
Violet made a wet sound that was almost laughter and scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. She looked pink and smudged.
“Up your arse, Hawthorn. It’s been a beastly night and I’ve barely slept.” She shifted to look at Alan, who’d stopped skulking in Jack’s wake and come up beside him. He held himself as if braced for carving knives and pistols both.
“I’ll answer any questions you have,” Alan said.
“Answer them in front of everyone, then,” said Maud.
“And I’m reserving the right to toss you both out a top-floor window,” said Violet, but she put her palm to the doorframe. “Alan Ross is welcome in this house. For the moment.”
The main staircase didn’t flatten under their feet, and the music of alarm had faded to silence, but Spinet House had a wary feeling to it. Footfalls were swallowed by the air. Jack didn’t bother to ask why everyone was gathered in one of the smaller first-floor parlours instead of the larger ones on the ground floor. Retreating to higher ground was a natural response to being under threat.
Robin lay asleep on the largest couch, his head resting in Adelaide’s lap and those parts of his legs that didn’t fit dangling over the other arm. Adelaide’s striped grey skirt was unfortunately a similar fabric to the upholstery, which combined with her tired posture to give her the look of someone who’d sat long enough to be absorbed into the furniture. And Edwin paced. Back and forth with a book in his hands, occasionally turning a page, a motion that struck up a small echo of the past in Jack.
Edwin looked like a poor construction of himself. Surely he should have been the one asleep. He stopped pacing when Violet motioned Jack and Alan into the room, and actually swayed on his feet for several blank seconds before his face remembered a human expression.
Then he clapped the book shut. The sound startled awake Robin, who went from horizontal to sitting with comical speed once he saw Alan.
“All right, nobody start shouting until we’ve heard him out,” said Maud hastily. She stood in the middle of the room as if to referee any boxing matches that her brother might be tempted to start. Violet planted herself in a chair and folded her arms.
“And why should we trust anything he has to say?” asked Robin.
“Fetch one of those truth-candles,” said Alan.
“Which you can likely perturb at will. Because I taught you how. You’re welcome,” Edwin added in his cattiest tone.
“He didn’t have to come back here at all,” said Jack. “All of you be quiet and listen. And then you may shout.”
Nobody in this room cared about Jack’s title, but they were responsive to his officer voice when he wielded it with purpose. Edwin collapsed onto the space vacated by Robin’s legs and made a wordless gesture of agreement.
Alan explained. He made no excuses for himself; nor did he let his fear and frustration show as he had last night in Jack’s house. He just laid out what had happened. The atmosphere in the room, tight and hostile, relaxed by minuscule degrees.
“We know they like threatening family,” Maud said when he was done. “Robin.”
“Yes.” Robin’s body language had softened. One of his legs was pressed up against Edwin’s.
“I didn’t tell Bastoke a thing he didn’t need to know,” said Alan. “Not about that tunnel into the house. And not about how I was helping. I let him think you were happy to have an unmagical canary who’d simply walk into rooms first and take the brunt of any danger.”
“So he didn’t know what you can do,” said Edwin. “Is that how you shook off the memory spell?”
“Yes.” Alan paused and then said, stiffly, “I do owe you a lot, for teaching me how.”
“How did they know to approach you in the first place?” asked Violet, edged with suspicion. “We were careful to keep you out of sight for most of it, on the Lyric.”
Not careful enough, clearly. The gossips of first class had certainly known that the young journalist on board spent a lot of time with Lord Hawthorn and his two scandalous lady friends. And Morris was sharp.
Alan shrugged. “They may have only suspected. If I’d had more sense I’d have pretended not to recognise Morris, but he caught me unawares. Couldn’t help it.”
“If nobody is going to shout after all,” said Jack, “I believe it’s my turn to ask questions.”
He had several. He’d busied himself last night arranging them into a list and ordering them, because he’d needed something to distract himself from the memory of pale olive skin stretching across Alan’s collarbones; the way Alan’s mouth had felt on his; the amount of restraint it had taken for Jack not to haul the man half-dressed into the tub and kiss him until he couldn’t remember how to make words of any language with that too-clever mouth.
Unlike Edwin, Jack was not a natural list-maker. The distraction hadn’t worked at all.
Now he turned to Adelaide.
“Firstly. Are you a magician?”
Something halfway between guilt and a grin took hold of Adelaide’s mouth. She stopped tapping her ring against the arm of the couch and clasped her hands tight in her lap.
“No.”
“Are you a perturbator?”
“No.”
“Must I ask the next question?”
“It only worked because it was Walter,” said Adelaide. Walter, who’d been about to hurl magic at Jack in the Lockroom when she’d thrown herself in between. “He’s the one who made blood-oath with Robin. He can’t harm any member of Robin’s household.”
“Household…？”
“Addy asked me to marry her,” said Robin. “And I agreed.”
Jack was hard to shock. He still felt as if someone had tossed him a double handful of something entirely unexpected and difficult to grasp: live goldfish, perhaps, or blancmange.
“You’re married?”
“Betrothed,” said Adelaide. “My mother insists she needs at least until the new year to plan a wedding, and we agreed not to announce it until after Kitty’s confinement.”
Edwin didn’t look as if he were wasting tragically away because the love of his life was pledged to marry someone else. He looked rather like he was suppressing laughter.