Gideon looked as though he was struggling to breathe. “I literally cannot lose this job. I can’t. If your damned cousin is going to tell Wynn everything—Mother of God, are youtryingto ruin my life?”
“I didn’t ask him to blackmail me! For God’s sake, why would I want you to lose your job again? I still feel guilty about the last time!”
“Perhaps because you don’t want me here while you’re courting your cousin.”
“I am not courting my blasted cousin! I don’t want the Wyckham fortune at all, still less with Jessamine attached!”
“Of course not, why would you? When you’re unemployed again, and on your uppers—”
“I’m not on my uppers at all. I’m doing very well.”
“You don’tlooklike you’re doing well. You look like a tramp.”
“I have always looked like a tramp, employed or not,” Zeb pointed out. “I don’t want the damned money, I have said so repeatedly, and I don’t see why the idea is so hard to grasp!”
Gideon leaned back, face sceptical. “Because it’s a hundred and fifty thousand pounds.”
Zeb’s jaw actually dropped: he could feel himself gaping. He closed it hastily. “Howmuch? Good Lord. I had no idea. I knew he was rich but a hundred and fifty thousand? Really? Why the blazes doesn’t he redecorate the place? I don’t know what one could do with Lackaday House short of knocking it down and starting again, but probably one of those interiors people would have ideas. Or he could just live somewhere else.I’dlive somewhere else.”
“As you could,” Gideon said. “Anywhere you like, if you marry the girl.”
Zeb could feel the tug of it. A hundred and fifty thousand was an obscene sum. It was fur coat money, yacht money, Monte Carlo money. Money that would make your whole world a place of pleasure and ease. Money you’d do anything to have.
Obscene.
“It’s a lot, I grant you,” he said. “But as somebody, possibly Jesus, said, what does it profit a man if he gains a cartload of cash but loses his soul?”
“It profits him a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Many people would put their souls to one side for that.”
And Gideon thought Zeb was one of them. Hurt surged through him. “For God’s sake, Gideon. What did I ever do to make you think I’m greedy? Irresponsible, thoughtless, careless, I’ll admit all of that. But greedy? Really?”
Gideon opened his mouth, but whatever he might have said didn’t come. The silence stretched out for a few eternal seconds.
“No,” he said at last. “I would never have said you were greedy. I would never have thought you would stab anyone in the back for an inheritance, still less marry a schoolgirl for one. I can’t reconcile the man I knew with your presence here.”
“You could reconcile it very easily if you listened to me!” Zeb yelped. “I’m notdoingthose things!”
“But,” Gideon began, and stopped there with an arrested look.
Zeb tried to wait for him to speak, jamming his hands in his pockets in an effort to hold back, but the words bubbled out. “Look, I’m sorry. I hate this. I wish we weren’t on these terms. I’m sorry I thought you did something horrible to me, and I wish you didn’t believe I’m doing horrible things now. I can’t bear that we’re like this, actually. Would you walk?”
“Walk?”
“Walk and talk. Since we’re both stuck in this blasted house, maybe we could make things less bad if we talk to one another rather than shouting and storming off. If you want to make them less bad, of course. You might not. Up to you.”
Gideon looked slightly off-balance, maybe a little wary, but something had changed in his face. “Uh—we could walk.”
“Thank you. Can we go outside the grounds?”
“Not easily. The only exit is the front gate, which is kept locked.”
“No back door and the front gate always locked?” Zeb asked as they set off. “I dare say Walter Wyckham might have worried about his privacy when he built this damn fool place, or been half mad, whichever, but why does Wynn live like this?”
“I understand there was an incident a few years ago. An escaped convict made his way inside the walls and was in the grounds for five days before he was identified and caught.”
“You’re joking.” Zeb felt slightly dizzy, walking along with Gideon, having a conversation. It wasn’t a conversation about anything they needed to talk about, but it was still an exchange of words which they were both trying to make work, and that was something.
“Not at all. He hid in one of the follies and stole food from the kitchens during the day. He was caught when he attacked a maid.”
