“I’ve brought yourmessages.” Ned set a silver tray down near Wesley’s plate. There were two letters and a telegram stacked upon it, along with his monocle.
Wesley fit the monocle between his eyebrow and cheekbone. In his most private spaces, he opted for reading glasses, which were more comfortable and better served his vision. But for even his own ground-floor rooms, he used the monocle. Monocles were mistaken for an affectation, not a necessity, the way a man smoking cigars was considered cultured, not an addict.
It was obnoxious, to be a champion sharpshooter who needed a reading aid at thirty-two, but then, life was obnoxious, as Powderpuff was intent on proving.
He picked up the first letter, glanced at it, then held it out to Ned with a curl of his lip. “Dispose of this one. I have no intentions of selling any properties at this time and no amount of thinly veiled wheedling will guilt me into marriage. I have my own solicitor I’m already ignoring; I don’t require advising from Geoffrey’s.”
“Yes sir,” said Ned, without any sass for once, because Wesley suspected his footman didn’t care for Cousin Geoffrey any more than Wesley himself did. His living relatives were few and distant, but to a one they all wanted the same thing—for Wesley to either marry and produce an heir, or for him to give them all his money and properties. Wesley hoped they enjoyed disappointment.
The second letter was no better—an invitation to a gala of decorative arts, apparently inspired by the world’s fair still carrying on in Paris.
“Ugh.” Wesley held it out without looking at Ned. “Who on earth believes I would willingly choose to spend my time around art and bohemians?”
“Art’s lovely, sir,” Ned said, as he took it. “We’ve got that painting from your American friend, Mr. Kenzie, downstairs by the room where he stayed with us. Brightens the whole basement up, it does. Makes little Elsie smile every time she sees it.”
Wesley’s ex-lover Arthur had stayed with them in the spring, and because he was a sentimental sot he’d gone and gifted Wesley’s staff for having him as a guest. Some kind of art, apparently, that had left the cook’s eleven-year-old daughter Elsie squealing.
Wesley had let the staff hang it up, but he’d never bothered to go down to the basement to see it. Why torture himself? He didn’t need the reminder that he hadn’t had a regular lover since Arthur—hadn’t taken anyone to bed at all in a frustratingly long time.
And he most certainly did not need a reminder that Arthur had thrown him over for a surly twenty-year-old antiquarian who looked and spoke like a guttersnipe.
One who made Arthur happier than Wesley would ever be capable of making another person.
As Ned put the two letters into the morning room’s fire, Wesley picked up the telegram. It was sent from a London office.
And it was from Jade Robbins.
Seeing her name was like catching the scent of spring flowers in winter. Wesley had met Jade only a handful of times, but he enjoyed her company—a surprise in and of itself, as he could count tolerable companions on one hand. A spy during wartime, she now ran a Harlem speakeasy with her siblings, where he’d spent a remarkably excellent night drinking bootlegged Canadian gin and listening to her sister sing like an angel. He’d been a pathetic fool to make that trip to America, but the Magnolia had been an unexpected delight, and the men who’d been with him still reminisced about that night like giddy schoolboys.
MY DEAR LORD FINE STOP IN LONDON NOW AT GREAT EASTERN STOP MAY I SEE YOU STOP
Wesley read the telegram again, but the words didn’t change. Jade was in town and wanted a visit. “Ned,” he said slowly. “I need you to send a message to the Great Eastern Hotel, and to make a reservation for dinner tonight.”
Ned’s eyebrows flew up, but he gave a short bow. “Of course, my lord,” he said, and left the morning room.
Wesley’s gaze stayed on the telegram. It was also something of a surprise that things weren’t unbearably awkward around Jade, considering she was his ex-lover’s best friend. But instead, Jade was lovely company: warm and interesting, and always giving him the sense there was even more to her than it seemed on the surface.
But then, he got that same sense from Arthur’s new lover Rory. It seemed patently ridiculous that a scruffy, penniless antiques dealer like Rory could have enemies, but Wesley had heard the man get kidnapped out of his own antiques shop by bootleggers.
Wesley hadn’t seen the kidnappers’ faces, but his too-sharp memory had snapped up their names and voices in perfect detail: Hyde, an Englishman with a feral edge to his words; Shelley, an American woman with a dreamlike voice; and a man with a honey-sweet Spanish accent who the others had called Sebastian. They had spoken in strange code that night, using nonsensical phrases likesubordinate paranormalto describe Rory—bootlegging code, that’s what Arthur had said it was.
So yes, Rory was more interesting than he appeared, and Jade the ex-spy turned bootlegger was certainly one of the most interesting people Wesley had ever met.
Maybe Jade would know another interesting man.
A fresh burst of yaps cut through Wesley’s thoughts. He gave the garden wall a scorching look through the morning room’s window and went back to his breakfast.
Rise and shine, de Leon.
Sebastian’s eyes wouldn’t open.
His body continued to breathe, calm and slow, in a terrible contrast to his heart, which raced like a frightened mouse in a cage. The air was icy on bare skin he wanted to cover, and he itched to see the morning light he could sense on his still-closed eyelids. But his limbs refused to move, as if bound by an invisible straitjacket, and despite his frantic heart, his blood moved too slow, like oily magic still clogged his veins.
Wake up, de Leon. This isn’t your tropical paradise, and I need your magic.
The paralysis dragged on—maybe seconds, maybe an hour, Sebastian couldn’t tell. Sweat beaded on his skin and his brain frizzled like an electric circuit shorting out. At some point, his eyes would open themselves, and the Puppeteer would be standing in front of him—
Sebastian’s eyes did open. But instead of the Puppeteer, there was Isabel’s painting, directly across from his bed on the wall over his table, the brilliant colors of tropical San Juan brighter than ever in the gray morning.
