“It’s a bit much to call a man a cuckold if it was you who cuckolded him.”
“On the contrary. I can be absolutely sure that my accusation is true.”
“Well, at least you ought to lay off Elise for committing adultery,” Zeb countered. “That’s damned hypocritical.”
“Why? I never made vows to Bram, and I never forced her to break the ones she made. She degraded herself of her own free will. Should I pretend otherwise?”
Zeb contemplated the dim oval of his face in the darkness. “You know, Hawley, if you despise married women for having affairs with you, you should stop having affairs with married women. Just give it a rest, will you? I would like to get through the next couple of weeks with a minimum of unpleasantness, so if you could kindly avoid making every evening as awful as you made this one—”
“You expect me to sit silently while Elise manoeuvres? Watch her dangle London in front of Jessamine like a bribe? I think not, Zebby. Any more than I intend to watch you act out your performance of virtuous indifference.Oh, no, I will not marry for money, I’m too noble. Give it all to Jessamine,” he mocked in a high-pitched whine that Zeb had to infer was an imitation of himself. “Absurd.”
“It’s not a performance. I don’t want any part of this medieval nonsense.”
“Oh, give it a rest. Have you another job yet?”
“What has that to do with it? No.”
“No,” Hawley repeated. “Sacked again, and that’s what, the third time in four years? Can’t keep a job, not a penny to your name, and a house and a fortune waiting to be snapped up if you can bring yourself to tolerate cunny rather than cock for ten minutes. But of course you don’t want the money, no indeed. Do you expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t care if you believe me, and my affairs are none of your business.”
“But they are,” Hawley said, puffing on his foul cigarette. “They are very much my business if you intend to enrich yourself at my expense. Let me be blunt.Iam having the girl, and the inheritance with her. If you make grounds with Jessamine, I will not hesitate to let her, and Wynn—and Bram, come to that—know exactly how you spend your leisure hours and who with. I doubt either Jessamine or Wynn’s favour will survive the information that you are one of London’s more dedicated sodomites. Wouldn’t Bram feel vindicated then? Wouldn’t dear Elise make hay with it?”
“Go to hell, Hawley,” Zeb said. “Be damned to you. You had absolutely no need to say that. What have I ever done to you?”
“Nothing at all, dear boy. I have no desire to reveal your sordid secrets to the world, and no quarrel with you other than the prospect of you getting in my way. But I really must oblige you to give up any thoughts of winning Jessamine or Lackaday House. No more manoeuvring, Zebby, or I will be forced to act.”
He puffed once more on his cigarette, tossed it away, a little orange shooting star in the darkness, and went back to the housewithout farewell. Zeb stood alone, his cheeks burning, needing the sting of cold.
He had always known Hawley was a shit. One could hardly fail to notice. But he hadn’t particularly been a shit to Zeb before. When their social circles overlapped, as occasionally happened, they’d nod at one another civilly enough, or exchange a few mildly barbed words and move on. Zeb had come to regard that as a relationship in its way, just as one might get used to a snarling dog when you passed it every day, so that it came as a surprise when the cur finally went for your throat.
He stood outside, seething and miserable, until it was too cold to be tolerated and he had to retreat inside. The grandfather clock in the hall chimed ten as he came into the hall.
There were voices audible in the drawing room. Zeb skirted it; he had no desire to speak to anyone present. Not Bram or Elise; certainly not bloody Hawley; not Jessamine, whose friendliness he’d now have to repel if he didn’t want Hawley to carry out his threat. Not the excessively military Dash; not Wynn, whose damn fool ideas had let him in for this ghastly event, and absolutely not Gideon, who hated him.
Sod the lot of them. He had broughtThe Riddle of the SandsandThe Phoenix and the Carpetwith him and was looking forward to both. An hour in bed with a book would be a great deal more pleasant than anything else on offer.
He headed up the stairs, noting that the light from the gas lamps was very low and flickering again. He wasn’t quite groping his way along the corridors, but the dark red of the wallpaper, thedark wood of the floor covered by dark rugs, the dark rectangles of paintings, and the long, dark, windowless stretches of corridors made for an extremely uninviting journey. It was exactly the sort of dimly lit empty maze in which one might see a ghost.
He turned the corner and saw a ghost.
There was an indistinct grey cowled shape at the far end of the corridor. The lights flickered again. It was extremely cold. There was amonk.
It turned to face him. Slowly, slowly, it lifted its hooded head, and under the hood he saw only darkness.
Zeb knew a terrified impulse to hide his face from it, but the emotion that actually seized control was anger. “Oi!” he shouted. “Who the sod are you?”
The monk turned and whisked around the corner, its robes swishing on the floor. Zeb sprinted after it, but he skidded on a loose rug that felt like it had been greased, losing his balance, and had to windmill his arms to right himself. He swore, turned the corner—
It wasn’t there.
Nobody was there. He hadn’t heard a door open or shut, but the corridor was empty, as if the monk had vanished in the few seconds it had taken him to catch up.
He looked around, baffled and annoyed. “All right, very funny. You can come out now.”
Silence. Absolute silence. He stood still, waiting for the giggle or the breath or the creak. None came.
Bastard. He marched down the corridor, trying all the doorson the left, then working his way back up. They all opened onto empty rooms. There was nobody here.
