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“I think he would forgive you for anything.”
Matthew rose to his feet, nearly knocking over his glass. He stood for a moment, holding on to the back of his chair; his hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat, and his eyes looked glazed.
“Matthew,” Cordelia said in alarm. “Matthew, what—”
He bolted from the room. Gathering up her wool skirts, Cordelia raced after him, not bothering to retrieve her coat.
She found Matthew outside the Ruelle, on Berwick Street. Bright light from naphtha torches stabbed at her eyes, throwing him into sharp relief against the snow-frosted carriages rattling by. He was on his knees, being sick in the gutter, his shoulders shaking.
“Matthew!” Cordelia started forward in horror, but he waved her back.
“Stay away,” he said hoarsely. He was shivering, his arms wrapped around himself as his body spasmed. “Please—”
Cordelia hung back as passersby swirling around her, none of them giving Matthew a second look. He wasn’t glamoured, but a gentleman being sick in the gutters of Soho was hardly a rare sight.
At last he clambered to his feet and went over to a lamppost; he leaned his back against it, and with shaking hands, he slipped a flask from inside his jacket.
“Don’t—” Cordelia started toward him.
“It’s water,” he said hoarsely. He drew a linen handkerchief from his breast pocket and cleaned his hands and face. His sweat-damp hair hung into his eyes. There was something intensely painful about watching him, Cordelia thought. About the contrast between his expensive clothes and monogrammed handkerchief and his bruised eyes and trembling hands.
He put the flask away, balled up the handkerchief, and hurled it into the gutter. He raised his bloodshot green eyes to hers. “I know what you said inside. That you wanted me to stop drinking. Well, I’ve been trying. I haven’t had alcohol since—since yesterday.”
“Oh, Matthew,” Cordelia said, wanting to go to him, to put her hand on his arm. But something about his posture—spiky, defensive—held her back. “I don’t think it’s quite that simple. One cannot just stop.”
“I always thought I could,” he said emptily. “I thought I could stop anytime I liked. Then I tried, in Paris, our first day. And I was vilely sick.”
“You hid it well,” she said.
“I could barely manage twelve hours,” he said. “I knew—in that state—I could be of no use to you. It’s not an excuse, but it is why I lied about stopping. I had not brought you to Paris so you could spend time watching me convulse and clutch the floor.”
Cordelia knew she could tell him how foolish that had been, how she would have preferred to hold his hand as he screamed out for brandy than to be lied to. But now did not seem the time; it would be like kicking Oscar.
“Let us get you back to your flat,” Cordelia said. “I know things that can help—I remember, the times my father tried to stop—”
“But he never did succeed, did he?” Matthew said bitterly. The cold air ruffled his hair as he let his head fall back against the lamppost. “I’ll go home,” he said wearily. “But—alone.”
“Matthew—”
“I don’t want you to see me like this,” he said. “I never did.” He shook his head, his eyes closed. “I can’t bear it. Cordelia. Please.”
In the end, all he would allow her to do was flag down a hansom cab and watch while he climbed inside. As it drove off, she saw, illuminated by gaslight, that he was hunched over, his face in his hands.
Cordelia turned back toward the Hell Ruelle. She needed to find a runner who could deliver a message—several messages—as quickly as she could.
Jesse was not at dinner that night. Which, Will and Tessa said, was entirely to be expected: he’d had his protection ceremony done that day, in the Silent City, and though Jem had said everything had gone well, it was natural for him to be tired.
But Lucie still looked worried, though she tried to hide it, and James was even more sure that Jesse’s mood had something to do with Grace. He picked listlessly at his food as his family’s voices rose and fell around him: the Christmas tree had been misplaced by Bridget and she and Tessa were checking every closet in the Institute one by one; also, Tessa and Will agreed that Alastair Carstairs was a very well-mannered young man; also, remember when he and James had to deal with the unpleasantness at James and Cordelia’s wedding, hurrying a drunk Elias away from the reception party before he made a scene. Which only reminded James of Cordelia, as everything did these days.
When dinner had ended, James retreated to his room. He shucked off his dinner jacket and was in the process of unlacing his boots when he saw a piece of paper stuck into the corner of his mirror.
He plucked it up, frowning. Someone had scrawled the word ROOF on it in capital letters, and he had a fairly good idea who. James caught up a wool coat and headed for the stairs.
To reach the roof of the Institute required climbing up through the attic and unlatching a trapdoor. The roof was steeply slanted in most places; only here, at the top of the stairs, was there a flat, rectangular space surrounded by an iron fence, whose finials ended in pointed fleur-de-lis. Leaning against the dark fence was Jesse.
It was a clear night, the stars glittering like diamonds made of frost. London lay spread out under a silvery moon, the smoke from chimneys rising in black columns to stain the sky. Rooflines were crusted in sugary white.
Jesse wore only his dinner jacket—an old one of James’s, it was much too short on him, the sleeves coming only halfway down his forearms—and no coat or scarf. Here, the wind blew off the Thames, bringing with it an icy chill, but if Jesse noticed, he gave no sign.
