March tried the door, checking it was locked, and looked up at the contacts with a frown. “It shouldn’t have done that.” He gave it a small push, then shoved harder. “Doesn’t seem to be loose. Now, why would that have gone off?” He looked round at Curtis again, eyes assessing. “There’s nobody else in here, is there, sir?”
“I’d suggest there’s a generous sufficiency of people as it is.” Da Silva sounded light and mocking, without a hint of shame or guilt. “An excess, even, so I shall remove myself at once. I do beg your pardon for, ah, arousing you from your beds.” He gave Wesley the briefest flutter of his long lashes. “And I shall return to mine. Or someone’s, anyway. Come, my dear.” That was to Curtis, with a taunting smile.
March gave him a long look, which da Silva ignored, and nodded to his underlings. “Wesley, Preston, make sure the gentlemen find their way.”
Da Silva tapped Curtis on the arm in summons and led the way along the corridor and to the main stairs, hips swaying outrageously. Curtis followed. He could feel March’s suspicious look until he left the room, and the gaze of the others as they tracked him up the stairs, along the corridor, past the glass cases of dead hunting birds. The presence of the guns seemed almost physical behind his undefended back. The hairs on his neck were standing straight.
The servants stopped at the entrance to the east corridor, watching them as they headed down the dark passage in silence till they reached the two adjacent bedrooms. Curtis opened his own door and switched on the light.
Da Silva shoved him in, kicked the door shut with his heel, and launched into a low-voiced and uncomplimentary assessment of Curtis’s intelligence, abilities, sexual tastes and parentage. For a poet, he had the vocabulary of a costermonger.
“I know,” Curtis got in, when da Silva was forced to stop for breath. “I’m a damned fool. I forgot all about the alarm. That was jolly quick thinking of yours, we’d have been sunk otherwise.”
“We’re not watertight yet. Listen.”
Curtis listened. There were very soft sounds of movement, but not from outside the door. The noise was coming from the other side of the opposite wall, the side with the mirror, the secret spy corridor. He heard a slight scrape.
“They’ve come to watch,” da Silva said, voice low and tense. “I’m not sure March believed me. You’re too bloody soldierly. Shit.”
Curtis set his jaw. He’d got them into this; he’d get them out. He kept his voice very quiet, turning away from the mirror so his lips couldn’t be read. “If it comes to a scrap, I’ve my Webley in the wardrobe. Are you armed?”
“I don’t use guns. You think you can fight our way out?”
Two armed men watching them and another waiting downstairs. His revolver packed away and unloaded. A thirty-mile night trek over rough unfamiliar terrain even if they got out of the house without pursuit. And da Silva was not the partner he’d have chosen for either fight or flight. “The odds aren’t good,” Curtis admitted. “But if it comes to that—”
“If it comes to that, we’ve lost. We might get away, but the evidence will be long gone.” Da Silva hesitated. “Oh, hell. Get on the bed.”
“What?”
Da Silva snaked an arm round his neck, gave him a provocative smile, hooked a foot round his ankle and shoved him backwards. Curtis stumbled, and sat heavily on the mattress.
There was a whisper of silk as da Silva shed his dressing gown and stood, naked to the waist. The little ring gleamed silver against his dark nipple.
“What the devil are you doing?”
“Smile, we’re being watched.” Da Silva sank to his knees and tugged Curtis’s gown off his shoulders. “Just try to enjoy it, I’ll do the work.”
“Work?” said Curtis hoarsely. “What—?”
“If they decide we were faking, that you were at that bloody cabinet, we’re probably dead.” Da Silva ran his mouth up Curtis’s neck, towards his ear. “So we’re going to make it convincing, understand? Or”—he trailed a finger back down Curtis’s chest—“you can sit there like a sack of potatoes till they decide you weren’t poncing me in the library and come back with shotguns.” He looked up, head tilted at a flirtatious angle. “Do you have any better ideas? Because I don’t.”
Curtis had no ideas at all, because da Silva’s hands were on his waistband now. He made a choking noise in his throat.
“It’s only a mouth. They’re all the same,” da Silva hissed. “Come on, you did this at school, didn’t you? Pretend you’re back at Eton.”
“You can’t do this!”
“What’s your alternative?”
Curtis didn’t have an alternative. Da Silva was kneeling before him, dark eyes snapping, that outrageous ring twinkling with the rise and fall of his chest, skilful hands hovering over Curtis’s buttons and the hard swell of his groin.
“Well?”
Curtis shook his head, the smallest movement. He wasn’t sure what he was refusing.
“Then lie back and think of England.” Da Silva tugged at his trousers, and Curtis shifted up to allow him to pull away the fabric. He shut his eyes, felt da Silva’s hands on the buttons of his drawers. Light fingers brushed the tip of his cock.