Their mother wiped her face briskly. “I’m proud of you, Elsie.”
She didn’t say I’ve missed you, any more than she’d said it to Jack. She kept the door open for them to step through. That was all.
“I love you,” said Jack, before he could lose his nerve.
Maud’s nose scrunched in a final, heartbreakingly familiar expression. “Ugh, very well. I love you, lump. Now, go raise hell on that bastard. And then come back and tell me about it.”
Maud climbed gingerly down from the swing. She raised an anxious look to Lady Cheetham, who thanked her and then drew her into an embrace.
Jack could see Edwin was brimming with five new theories about what it meant for magic to mingle and to go back into one person—for someone to ask their land to help them keep it there. Jack had just been scraped raw. He wasn’t ready to discuss it in terms of theories yet.
He thanked Maud as well, and pleased colour came into her cheeks. Then he went back to his own room, uncertain if he wanted to lie down exhausted or do push-ups for an hour. He felt lighter again, with that night’s terrible silence lifted at last. To have his twin given back to him, in this small way—to have her there. Perhaps not forever. But just to be able to sit there and know her at peace …
Jack sat on the edge of his bed and shivered restlessly. His eyes were dry and his mind moving too fast. He didn’t want to sleep, or to walk, or to do anything that he could think of to do. He wanted an illusion of Violet’s that would take up all of his senses, so vivid he could sink right into it and forget himself.
Someone knocked on the door.
“What?” Jack said hoarsely.
“See, now I’ve met your ma, I know you got your dreadful manners from your pa,” said Alan. “Must be the title. It ruins you. I always suspected as much.”
If Maud had been a rope in a storm, the amusement Jack felt now was as good as an anchor. He sat more upright.
“I refuse to be insulted through a door. Come in and do it to my face.”
Alan did so. He was still wearing that red-wine waistcoat that made his complexion sing, and he didn’t look hesitant at all. He looked as if a decision had been put behind him.
The soft click as Alan turned the key in the door lock found a lace somewhere in Jack’s body and pulled it abruptly tight.
Alan said, quick, “I meant it when I said I didn’t enjoy the idea of you in pain. I’m sorry if what I said about Elsie, earlier, made that any harder on you.”
Jack shook his head. “You were speaking sense.”
Alan came over to him, still with no hesitation at all, and cupped Jack’s face and tilted it up. The last time this had been followed by a kiss. Now it felt more like comfort. But there was still a promise there, in the closeness of Alan’s body and the light scratch of his nails. In the way he released his breath when Jack set hands heavily on his hips to hold him in place.
In close daylight, Alan’s hair looked like raven feathers. The deep brown of his eyes was breathtakingly even—not even a fleck of grey or yellow to break the intensity. Those eyes watched Jack thoughtfully, as if memorising him to capture in words.
“What do you want, Jack?”
People kept asking that of Jack as though it were easily answerable. Alan was asking it with the simplicity of invitation. His gaze said he’d give it if he could, and wouldn’t if he couldn’t, and Jack would always know the difference.
Only you know what you want, and what you need.
His hands tightened on Alan’s hips. The man in front of him was solid and real and far, far better than an illusion.
“I want distraction,” Jack said roughly. “I want something to consume me for a while.”
“Hm.” Alan’s mouth made one of those crooked smiles. He stepped out of Jack’s grasp. “Well. We are in this grand house of yours, after all. And for all that I’ve stolen this disguise, I clearly don’t belong here.”
He went to the dresser. Oliver kept most of Jack’s things neatly packed away, but there was a leather travelling case set there. Jack could see only the back of Alan’s head as he opened the case and picked through the contents.
“I’m only a thief. Was hoping I’d get away with it and vanish into the night. But you caught me in here with your best cufflinks in my pockets.” He turned back and lifted an open palm, which glinted. His accent had slid downhill from the consciously educated one he used in company.
His expression said: Well?
Jack’s breath was coming more heavily. The air between them was so tight, so rich with potential, that he wouldn’t have been surprised to see a crackle of magic. A seam of lightning gold.
He stood. By the time he reached Alan and grabbed hold of the wrist extended in his direction, Alan had closed his fingers over his prize. Jack tried, none too gently, to prise those fingers up.
“There’s no use being stubborn,” he said. “I have you now. Hand it over.”
“Go fuck yourself,” said Alan, coming alive. He gave his arm a sudden serious wrench, using his body’s weight to do it—Jack nearly lost him, but tightened his grip in time. “I’m not scared of you.”
“As you pointed out, you are in my house.” A sensation like a liquid shadow, like the burn of good brandy, was spreading beneath Jack’s skin. His cock clenched. Alan’s fingertips dug deeper still into his own palm, resisting, and Jack yanked him closer and leaned down to set his mouth above Alan’s ear. Alan’s whole body shivered.
“Nobody is coming to help you,” Jack said, low and precise. “And I plan to teach you a lesson about what happens when someone tries to steal from me. Not scared of me, you arrogant brat?”
He pulled back. Instead of trying to get his nails beneath Alan’s closed fingers, he lifted Alan’s hand towards his own mouth and delivered a slow puff of breath, as if he could soften Alan’s grip like a wax seal. Then he tapped his fingers beneath Alan’s chin: mockingly, dangerously, deliberately gentle.
“Oh, we’ll soon fix that.”
26
Alan swallowed reflexively.
Luckily, the thief he was playing would have needed this moment, too, to reconsider the situation in which he now found himself. To feel the iron solidity of this lord’s hand around his arm. To search that cold, brutal face for a single crack of weakness, and find none.
Alan needed the pause to tell his body not to climax on the spot. His entire hand still felt wreathed in the startling heat of Jack’s breath.
“All right,” he said, making it sullen. “No need for a fuss. I’ll put ’em back. See?”
He released his fingers and the cufflinks fell to the floor. Jack shook him by the arm and Alan fired off a defiant grin.
“Go on then, my lord. Teach me your lesson. You think I haven’t been thrashed before?”
“I’m sure you have,” said Jack. “Clearly a repeat hiding won’t make any sort of impression. No, I think we can do better than that.” His free hand landed on the small of Alan’s back and then slid down to take deliberate hold of Alan’s arse, which he squeezed as if testing a piece of meat. Alan nearly bit the end of his tongue.
“What—what’re you doing?”