She gave him an uncomfortably measuring look, her eyes sparking with mischief.“You’re a Cambridge-educated historian and archaeologist.And I’m sure you can speak fluently and intelligently about things like manuscripts and ancient languages.”
“It depends on the language, time period, and region of origin,” Neil returned with a note of irritation.“I might be able to rattle on about something written in hieratic, but that hardly means I can pick up a set of Shen Dynasty oracle bones and make any kind of sense of them.And even with hieratic, it varies based on whether they’re using a standardized form or one with regional variations, the condition of the material, the—”
“I’ve made my point.”Constance’s mouth curved into a smile of musing satisfaction.“Doctor… Bartholomew Culpepper.”
“Who’s that?”Neil frowned.
“You,” Constance replied.“When we knock on Borthwick’s door.”
“Bartholomew Culpepper?” Neil echoed with obvious skepticism.
“If Borthwick has heard of you at all—and that’s an enormous ‘if’—he’ll know you as Dr.Neil Fairfax.Not Dr.Culpepper.”
“What if he’s seen my photograph?”Neil challenged, searching for reasons why this was clearly a terrible idea—besides the absurdity ofBartholomew Culpepper.
“How on earth would he have your photograph?”
“Someone from the Order might have sent it to him.”
Constance stared at him.“You really don’t know how that sort operates, do you?”
“What sort?”
“Yardborough has the king’s ear,” Constance replied.“Northcote is a banker who finances actual wars.Lady Hastings’ family owns the better part of a county.They live in a different world than the one we’re in.”
“But aren’t you…” Neil trailed off awkwardly.
“Rich?”Constance filled in bluntly.“Not that rich.My father’s a baronet.Have you any notion how many baronets there are in England?I live at the edge of their class—near enough that I know how it works—but I’m not part of it.That lot… they don’t just think they’re better than the rest of us.We’re not even part of their reality.They’d never conceive that a Cambridge scholarship student might actually be a threat to them.”
Neil jolted with hurt at the old, familiar label.
He hadn’t gone about Cambridge announcing that he was there on a scholarship.People had somehow always known anyway.It had put him in a different category than the men whose fathers owned half a railway or whose family pedigree went back to the Norman conquest.
“I’m not a student anymore,” he snapped.
Constance rolled her eyes.“That’s not how I think of you, Stuffy.But you know the sort of people I’m talking about.The sons of the realm’s great men.They must have been all over Cambridge.You might have been at the same school, but they would have moved through a different level of it—one that you would never have gotten close to.The nice ones probably just ignored you.To the ones that were less nice, you were a resource for exploitation—or entertainment.And they knew that no one would ever call them to account for it.”
“Bates threw a viscount into the River Cam once,” Neil countered.
“He probably wasn’t that important of a viscount,” Constance declared.“And anyway, they couldn’t have gone after Bates for that if they’d wanted to.He was one of them.”
Neil stiffened with indignation.“Bates was nothing like those fellows!”
“I’m not talking about his personality,” Constance returned steadily.“I’m talking about his family.They’re definitelygreat men.Adam might have marched to his own drum, but at that point, he was still George Bates’s son.And George Bates isn’t the sort of man you cross.”
Constance looked thoughtful.“Honestly, it’s a miracle Adam turned out the way he did—or that he managed to get away from that world at all.But I think you can still see the scars if you look closely.”
Neil reeled from the notion.Scars?Adam had always seemed like an immovable force, so sure of himself that it would take an avalanche to budge him.
But maybe there was more to it than that—something Neil might have caught onto if he hadn’t been so busy wishing he had half of Adam’s confidence.
“How do you know all this?”he asked, bewildered.
Constance looked back at the glittering lights of the club.“My mother throws every remotely viable man she finds at me.And as I’m a pretty face with a plush dowry, there are plenty of them willing to try.Most are simply bad—dull or self-obsessed, treating me like a luxurious accessory they want to dress up their drawing rooms.But the ones from the Order of Albion’s world… I’m supposed to be awash with joy that they’ve even noticed I exist.The notion that I might not be—that I might have my own thoughts and ambitions and dreams—is beyond their power of comprehension.”
Neil reeled from her revelations.Most of the powerful men at Cambridge had simply ignored him—once the bullies among them had realized that Bates would give them hell if they made Neil a target.
What Constance was describing sounded far worse.He thought of what it might feel like to have one of thosegreat mentake an interest in you—and wonder whether you’d be allowed to refuse.
