A pause. Jack kept Alan’s hand folded in his as if the cufflinks or some other precious thing lay there.
“Maud is still hoping we won’t have to kill anyone tomorrow,” said Jack. “I rather hope the opposite.”
Alan looked at his hand engulfed in Jack’s. He said, coming to the realisation along the way, like a sentence that only revealed itself word by word as he wrote it down: “You’re still the kind of arse who’ll pick two fights before breakfast, but you’ve been desperate for someone else to look after, haven’t you?”
“Someone else…？”
“Because of Elsie.”
Jack’s expression began to darken, and Alan was ready to snap back. Then he read the darkness properly. It wasn’t directed at him.
“Jack—you didn’t fail her. It’s obvious you’d have died for her, given the slightest opportunity.”
He wondered if Jack would break to anger after all. Alan had stopped thinking in terms of presumption, when it was just the two of them; here he was, talking to this lord as if they’d grown up on the same street. But like the very first night in Jack’s study, there was a gap along his nerves where the danger could have been.
Jack’s arm, near him, was trembling.
“Oh, fucking hell,” said Alan. He did what he’d have done for anyone else he cared about: he reached out and touched Jack’s shoulder.
Jack leaned into it, and then kept leaning.
Alan swallowed a sound of surprise. All right then. He let his legs flatten so that Jack could shift further down, until the arrogant Lord Hawthorn was lying with his head propped on Alan’s leg and his hands over his face. He wasn’t crying, Alan didn’t think. A storm long buried had been creeping closer to the surface since they’d come to Cheetham Hall, and Elsie’s ghost had knocked down the last barrier keeping it at bay. Alan had no idea what to do about it. It didn’t seem the sort of thing anyone could fix.
He opened his mouth, then closed it. Didn’t seem the kind of thing words would help either.
Alan slid a hand into the dark walnut-wood of Jack’s hair and left it there. Occasionally he moved his fingertips, soothing. Mostly he just sat and let the enormity of this, the fact that Jack was letting him see it, sink into him. Despite the gulf between their lives, they had this in common: neither of them was given to trust. Both of them had been twisted up by the plain facts of their existence. The past could turn you into a strip of paper with a single side, so that comfort and vulnerability slid away down invisible channels and couldn’t be grasped.
Except, perhaps, if you bent your will towards unlearning your own history. If you let yourself soften and be porous. Even if only like this, in silence, and at an angle.
27
The last time Jack had attended the triennial equinox gala of British magicians was the year he and Elsie turned sixteen. Just old enough to attend, their parents said. As long as they behaved, they added, with rather less hope.
It had been held in a castle near the Scottish border, and Elsie had taken less than two hours to acquire a small regiment of similarly excited young magicians. By the time the sun rose, there wasn’t much left of the castle’s greenhouse. Lord Cheetham had apologised frostily and then lectured his offspring for the first hour of the long carriage ride home.
Jack thought about this as Oliver shaved him. He could remember that night with less pain than before: his father encouraging Jack to take an interest in politics both magical and not, the candles charmed against midges, the fireworks that had filled the sky at the deep midpoint of the night, the unrepentant dimples that always ringed Elsie’s mouth when she led them into trouble.
George and Lord Cheetham arrived even earlier than expected. Oliver, stationed as lookout for the approaching motorcar, rushed into the breakfast room to let them know. Everyone set down cutlery on poorly emptied plates.
“Here we go,” said Robin.
“Edwin,” said Jack.
“I know.” Edwin sent a faint smile at Robin and slipped out of the room. If all went to plan, that would be the last Jack would see of Edwin’s face until this was finished. Alan had not even come to breakfast with the rest of them.
If the enemy didn’t know you had a weapon, you damn well kept it up your sleeve for as long as you could.
“Well then,” said Lady Cheetham, rising. “Let’s find out exactly how much poison my nephew has been feeding my husband along the road, shall we?”
Jack squeezed her hand when she slipped it through his arm, and they walked out into the cool September morning with the others trailing behind them. Liveried servants were hurrying to gather as well.
No Morris stepped from the car this time; no doubt he’d be coming later, along with Lord Cheetham’s valet and most of the luggage. His lordship did not travel lightly when switching residences.
Jack treasured the moment of raw surprise on George’s face as George climbed the stairs and found himself greeted by most of the people he’d been searching for.
“He knows we’re here and we know he knows,” Maud had said. “Let’s play this all out in the open.”
“Give them precisely what they expect to see,” added Violet, the theatre magician, “and their eyes will have less chance of straying to look at anything else.”
Jack sent George a bland and hostile smile.
“Polly,” said Lord Cheetham to his wife. “Hawthorn. This is more of a welcoming party than I expected.”
“Leo.” She stepped in to greet him. “Indeed. Let me introduce you to our guests.”
“You see, sir?” said George. “I didn’t want it to be true. However…”
Lord Cheetham’s brows lowered. And there went the hope, which Jack had been trying not to nurture, that he’d have the time and space to explain this entire outrageous situation in a way that his father would understand. He still refused to believe that his father would have been part of this conspiracy from the beginning, condoning the cold-blooded murder of old women. But Lord Cheetham, stubborn and self-righteous Conservative peer, would believe in power being collected and used for the good of all magicians. He might also believe that George Bastoke, the model of strong magic and political acumen, was the right person to wield it.
Perhaps Jack and Polly could still drag Lord Cheetham into the walled garden, with a young medium his father had never met, and try to convince him to listen to the voice of a ghost. Perhaps the earl would even believe them.
In which case he would throw George directly off his land, and the entire conspiracy would go into hiding and try again, in secret, and whatever slim chance there was of thwarting them would vanish into nothing.
“Polly,” said his lordship. “I hardly wanted to believe—sounded so unlike you, when George told me—you do know what these people have done?”
“I invited Miss Debenham up here last week, to help with decorations for the gala,” said Lady Cheetham calmly. “She has a remarkable gift. And Jack’s friends, too—we’ve been quite the cosy little party, and they’ve been invaluable in helping with our preparations. This is Sir Robert Blyth, and his sister, Miss Maud Blyth.”
If anyone knew how to exude well-bred friendliness in a frankly absurd situation, it was Robin and Maud. Even Lord Cheetham murmured something reflexive and shook Robin’s proffered hand.