The smile on Billy Byatt’s face had turned faintly apologetic when Edwin looked back up at him.
“I told them you’d do all the work for us, if we gave you your head,” he said. “You bookish types never do give up on a good puzzle, do you?”
“Your head’s elsewhere today, old chap,” said Fenchurch, lowering his gloves.
He was right. Only half of it was the fact that Robin had been dreading, all through their bout, the pepper-taste and odd smells that would herald the foresight; he’d already tapped out after some dancing lights that were, in the end, only the normal response to having someone else’s padded fist land firmly on the side of one’s head.
The other half of Robin’s distraction was everything he was refusing to let himself think about, starting with the way his skin prickled when he walked the streets alone and ending with the memory of Edwin biting down on his shoulder.
“It is,” Robin apologised. “I’ve a meeting to engage a new steward in an hour, and I’m readying myself to have coals heaped on my head.”
Fenchurch landed a commiserating blow on Robin’s upper arm. “Will we see you at the club for dinner? Bromley’s an inch away from announcing his engagement to the ravishing Miss Gerwich, and we’ve promised to take him carousing.”
Robin laughed. “You’ll have to carouse without me, I’m afraid. Family dinner.”
“Next you’ll be telling us you met someone at whatever shooting party or what-have-you swallowed you up last week.” Robin didn’t manage to stop himself from blushing, but did manage to cover it with a lascivious enough wink that Fenchurch would take it in jest. He sponged off and changed and reflected grimly that meeting with Milton, the old—and hopefully new—steward of the Blyth country estate of Thornley Hill, was at least going to be more pleasant than meeting with Lord Healsmith and grovelling for a new position. Robin hadn’t gathered the nerve to contact Healsmith yet. Perhaps the man would decide that the Blyths’ son had been humiliated enough. If not, God only knew what else he’d have up his sleeve now that Robin had turned down the most obscure-sounding assistant position in the Home Office. Dust-paper man, perhaps.
Robin met with Milton in his study at home. The man was middle-aged and gravel-voiced and all shades of brown and green, like a tree uneasily transplanted into the city. The late Sir Robert had dismissed Milton in favour of a steward less prone to shouting about agricultural mismanagement and the poor conditions of the tenants—a steward who would cheerfully squeeze every last pennyworth of profit from the lands and send it on to the coffers of London’s philanthropic darlings, where it would be spent on parties and dazzle and whatever noble cause would allow the Blyths to convert it to the currency they truly cared for. Praise.
Robin had, in turn, let this man know that his services were no longer required, and contacted Milton in order to do his first stint of grovelling. Thankfully not much was needed. It took ten minutes of suspicious squinting for Milton to decide that the new Sir Robert was cut from different cloth than the old one, and a further five minutes for him to clearly decide that while Robin was an idiot on matters of estate management, he was at least a benign one, and willing to be led by experts.
“Can we turn it around?” Robin asked, once Milton had shuffled through the records and accounts.
Yes, was the short answer. The long answer was that Robin could have a very slow turnaround of the estate’s income-generating potential, or he could take out another loan in order to throw some money at the problem, and thereby have a faster and riskier one. A slow musing on the mathematical pros and cons of these options got a headache going like bells in Robin’s temples, and all the fidgety energy he’d managed to expend in the boxing ring began to gather again.
When Milton left, Robin rang for a pot of tea—he needed something to revive him before lunch—then collapsed in his armchair and felt sorry for himself. He wished Edwin were here. He wished Edwin would rap his knuckles on the door and not wait to be asked inside, but lean against the desk and sort out all of Robin’s problems in his cool, exact, intelligent voice.
No. That was one of the things he Wasn’t Thinking About. Robin was arranging his future like a man sorting out three generations’ worth of junk from an attic; he didn’t need to clear a space within it for someone who was willing to lie to him and use him. Someone who, even after all the two of them had been through, couldn’t dredge up the courage to admit that they might be allowed to matter to each other, and to show it.