It didn’t work. “Nobody ever thought much of me anyway,” said Sir Robert. “But it’s true. People keep telling me that nobody’s going to entrust their daughter’s hand in marriage to someone with so little care for his own sister’s virtue.”
Miss Morrissey hid a spurt of laughter behind a napkin.
“My virtue is in daily peril.” Miss Blyth flicked a crust of toast at her brother. “Robin. I demand you do something.”
Laughter between the two of them. Alan glanced from one Blyth to another and made a rapid decision.
“I’m around and about the city a lot for the Post; they don’t expect me to stay in the office all day. If you have a use for me, Miss B—anything at all—I’d appreciate it. I won’t ask for charity, just work. But my own sister’s husband was injured last month, and he can’t bring in a wage for a while, so things are tough for their little ones.”
Miss Blyth’s face melted at once into concern. “Of course we can find something.”
“I wasn’t joking,” said Courcey abruptly. “We could use a perturbator, and not just for studying. Violet—if he isn’t affected as much by magic, then some of the difficult doors…”
“Like a canary in a mine?” Miss Debenham raised her eyebrows at Alan. “You don’t have to agree, Mr. Ross. The thing is, we haven’t found Lady Enid’s knife yet, and this particular house is making the search … interesting. It’s not safe or easy work, even before you consider that our enemies are constantly trying to break in at night.”
Alan hesitated. If something happened to him, then what would become of Carolina and Dick and their family—Bella, who had no prospects in her condition—his mother—？
And if he didn’t agree, what would happen to them then?
“No less safe than running around a great ship with a pack of murderers,” he said. “If you think I can help with the hunt, you’ve got me.”
“Well, you can name what you want in return,” said Miss Debenham. “If Dorothy deserves hazard pay, then you certainly would.”
Alan had been turning this one over. Asking baldly for money seemed grubbier and more obvious, here in someone’s fancy dining room, than it had on the Lyric. Not to mention that he felt like a bloody blackmailer, coming back to dip his hands greedily into the same pot.
Besides: no matter how deep the pot, you couldn’t keep coming back to it forever. He wanted something that would sustain him and his for longer than a single payment. What was the saying? Give a man a fish …
He forced his voice into its mildest talking-to-superiors form—the one he used on his editors—and turned to Lord Hawthorn. The largest fish here, if Alan could land him.
“Quid pro quo,” he said. “I want a favour.”
4
The cab to Westminster wasn’t the most awkward enclosed space Jack had ever been in, but it was muscling its way towards the top spot. Summer had squeezed a muggy morning over the city. Jack’s hairline prickled with sweat, and the heat was already battling Oliver’s best efforts at starching his collar. Ross sat across from him and stared fixedly out the window with discomfort written in the clench of his hands on his knees. Those hands were ink-stained at the edges of the nails and were a shade darker than the olive complexion of Ross’s face. Turned to the side, his sharp profile was shown to good advantage.
Not that he seemed to have any unattractive angles.
Jack could hold a silence with the best of them. And Alanzo Rossi, Alan Ross, was in Jack’s five-day experience of him a pitch-dark room scattered with mousetraps. Almost any topic of conversation could become a fight.
It had been an age since Jack had been in a proper fight. Not many people argued with the Earl of Cheetham’s heir; most of those who did had been at breakfast in Spinet House. He was not yet reduced to the indignity of turning up on his own doorstep and picking a fight with Makepeace, if only because his butler knew him far too well. Makepeace would have the argument, but it would be a kindness, and they’d both know it.
Jack stretched his leg out across the carriage. It wasn’t hurting any longer, but knocking his knee against Ross’s gained him a suspicious dart of the eyes.
If anything was going to be a fight, then Jack could pick his poison, couldn’t he?
“Why the Morning Post?”
“The Post’s readers have been closely following the debate in the Lords over Mr. Lloyd George’s bill,” said Ross.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Forgive me, my lord. I’m used to spending my time with people who pay attention to the clarity of their words.”
Snap went the trap. Jack almost wanted to snatch back his toes.
“How did you come to work there?”
“How and why are different questions. And I think the words you’re looking for are educated above my station.”
“And here I was going to call you a workhouse brat with delusions of vocabulary.”
That hit something, somewhere. It flashed like a distant lighthouse in Ross’s expression and then vanished. When he spoke again, his accent had dropped some polish and found some geography. There were probably linguists who’d be able to place his origins precisely within one of London’s neighbourhoods.
“I write for the Post because the Post had an opening. I read a month of back editions in an afternoon and wrote the editor a stuffy, bloody-minded column about how hardship is good for the soul and government charity only encourages laziness and breeds sin.” A smile with no humour. “He started me the next day.”
Jack did not take the Post, merely glanced over its front page at newspaper stands, but that was certainly in keeping with their philosophy. They’d probably been delighted to condescend to a working man who fit their ideal pattern of gratitude.
“Writing advertising copy on the side was a step up on the ladder of truth,” added Ross dryly. “And…” He looked out the window again. There was a rearranging sort of pause. “And one day I’ll either choke to death on it or get booted aside in favour of someone’s nephew. I need the security of a better position.”
“And for that you need connections.” Thus the quid pro quo. Thus Ross in Spinet’s breakfast room, saying I want Lord Hawthorn’s escort to the House of Lords, and the promise of his help.
Jack steadied himself as the cab took a corner at speed. Ross’s mouth was a thin, unhappy line. On the Lyric he’d tried to hurl every generous gesture of Jack’s back in his face and been forced into acceptance by circumstance. Being here, asking this of Jack, was clearly solidifying his personal dislike into crystal.
“Mr. Shorter liked the society piece I did about the voyage, but I’ll never be invited to the right sort of parties to write for Tatler. He’d take me for the Sphere if I could get a sub-editor position at the Post. Or at least some more prominent stories.”
“Prominent meaning political.”
“Right. The People’s Budget is out of the Commons, now—it’s all about the fight in the Lords. And I can be educated up to the bloody rooftops and talk like it too, but as soon as someone asks about my people, I have to admit that my dear papa was a Clerkenwell ice-cream seller and his parents were farmers who came over from Italy when the alternative was starve to death in the famine. You,” he said, shimmering with loathing, “probably rubbed mud into rugs belonging to half the peers in the House when you were a tiny lordling. I don’t need to be invited to tea, but I want introductions. Contacts. I want a few peers who’ll recognise my name and let me flatter a juicy statement out of them. There.”