“Mr. Grey,” Gideon said, low and savage. “Remember that. You’re not losing me another job.”
Zeb’s stomach tensed so hard it hurt. “What are you doing here?”
“I assumed you’d get lost. Clearly, I was right.”
He stalked off on that. Zeb hurried to catch up. Gideon had longer legs and a fast pace; Zeb was one of nature’s amblers.
“I meant, why are youhere?” he demanded as they stormed along the dark corridor. “Here with my cousin? How did you get this job?”
“Not off my references from Cubitt’s; I can assure you of that.”
He sped up, leaving Zeb entirely behind, and led the way to a door that opened on to the landing at the top of the main hall.
Zeb had been too distracted to pay attention when he had entered the house. He now saw it was impressively sized, with a very high ceiling, a couple of huge windows, and a neck-breaker of a stone staircase leading down to the flagstoned floor. It was distinctly cold. He hurried after Gideon, but couldn’t quite catch him before they reached the drawing room, and his assembled family.
Everyone turned to look at him as he tumbled in at Gideon’s heels. There was a silence. Finally Bram said, through tight lips,“Zebedee. You’re late.”
“Charmed to see you too,” Zeb retorted.
He regretted it as soon as the words were out. He always did, but his determination to be the bigger man and rise above his brother’s sneers never survived contact with the blighter. He swung away before it got worse, giving his sister-in-law the obligatory bow. “Good evening, Elise. Ah—” He glanced between the two men he didn’t know.
The shorter of them stepped forward, smiling, and shook Zeb’s hand warmly. “Zebedee. How delightful to meet you after so long. I am your Cousin Wynn.”
Wynn was cheerful, plump, and entirely bald but for a fringe of grey hair. He blinked in a friendly way through owlish spectacles. Zeb knew him to be in the region of fifty; he looked older.
“It’s lovely to be here,” he lied. “Very good to meet you, Wynn. Well, to meet you again, I suppose, since we have met, but I was rather young then—”
Bram muttered something not quite under his breath, in which Zeb made out the word ‘wittering’. He stopped talking.
Wynn was smiling, though. “Yes, it has been twenty years or more, hasn’t it? We must not let so long go by again. Thank you for coming, Zebedee.”
“Zeb, please. I go by Zeb.”
“Really? What an ungainly shortening of an elegant name. Still, that’s young men for you, eh, Dash? Do you know Colonel Dash?”
He indicated the other unknown man, who looked to be in his mid-forties, with a ramrod-straight back and a heavymoustache. He and Zeb shook hands as Wynn said, “Wyckham Dash, our second cousin. Dash, this is Zebedee. Zeb.”
Dash gave a confident smile. “Pleased to meet you. Call me Dash. Too many Wyckhams in here.”
That was inarguable. Zeb crossed his fingers as unobtrusively as possible, turned to the final member of the company, and said, “Good evening, Hawley.”
“Zeb, dear boy,” Hawley drawled. He was much the best-looking of the younger generation, with dramatically swept back dark blond hair and striking green eyes, and sported a goatee that suited him tiresomely well. He wore an emerald velvet jacket in lieu of the conventional black (or, in Zeb’s case, blackish) evening dress the other men sported; it made him look like the artist he was. He held a glass of sherry, presumably because Cousin Wynn didn’t stock absinthe.
Hawley was assessing Zeb in his turn. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Now, when was it I last saw you?”
He knew very well where: a very specific sort of gentleman’s club. Hawley had been there because he liked to be acquainted with London’s scenes of vice; Zeb had been there because he was a member. It was a little tease, a little taunt, a little flick of the cat’s claw.
“The Café Royal, I think. You were with a party,” Zeb said. That was actually the last time but one he’d seen the fellow, and it had been brief, what with Hawley’s party getting themselves thrown out for drunken and disorderly behaviour.
“The Café Royal?” Elise repeated in her clear, bell-like voice.“Goodness, Hawley. How strangely predictable of you. So very bourgeois.”
“It can hardly be strangely predictable, dear Elise,” Hawley returned, with a wolfish smile. “You muddle your metaphors.”
“That wasn’t a metaphor,” Zeb said, and got glares from everyone involved: Hawley for the correction, Bram for inserting himself in a conversation with his wife, Elise for existing, probably. She’d never been pleased about that.
Wynn beamed around them. “How marvellous it is to have the whole family together like this. I don’t know if it has happened before.”
Zeb was fairly sure it had not, since the spectrum of Wyckham family relationships ran from indifference to loathing. He said, “It’s very kind of you to host us all.”
