Robin’s blood froze. He couldn’t have heard that correctly.
Beside him, Courcey had gone absolutely still. Robin looked at him, and knew instantly from the look on the man’s face that he had, in fact, heard exactly those words emerge from Hawthorn’s mouth. It was unthinkable. Nobody would confess offhandedly to that particular crime in front of a complete stranger. Unless Hawthorn had somehow guessed—somehow recognised— A calmer, less terrified part of Robin pointed out that even if Robin had been the kind of person to clutch at the pearls of disgusted morality and run straight to the police, there was no real evidence. It would be the word of an impoverished baronet against the word of Baron Hawthorn, son of an earl. Based on a single lewd joke.
“Then again,” Hawthorn went on, “perhaps I wouldn’t. Pallid little librarians were never really to my taste.”
Furious humiliation washed Courcey’s expression like a pail of tossed water. Robin glanced away, and anger flared in his chest.
“Don’t pay me any mind,” Hawthorn added, directed at Robin now. “I’m just riling him up. Can you blame me? It’s so easy to do.”
“I rather think I can blame you, my lord,” said Robin, “given you’re being a complete arse for no reason at all.”
After another frozen eternity—during which Robin’s skin crawled with the knowledge that he’d likely just made an enemy of the one person Courcey thought could help them—Hawthorn gave a crack of rough but genuine laughter.
“Good luck with your curse, Mr. Nobody,” he said. “Never fear: Courcey here just loves a good puzzle. He goes far wilder for figuring things out from books than he ever did for anything that I—”
“You bastard,” said Courcey, a strained whisper. “You fucking bastard, Jack.”
“The curse,” said Robin, striking out desperately for a change of subject—and finding one. Looking anywhere but at Courcey had meant he’d looked more closely at the pattern on his own arm. “It’s changed.”
“How?” said Courcey. He frowned down at it. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. There’s more of it,” Robin said. “More lines—it’s more intricate. And it’s covering an inch more skin than it was last night.” He swallowed against a new rise of trepidation. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing good,” said Hawthorn. His shrug, when they both turned to him, was insouciant. But his eyes had sharpened.
“Jack,” snapped Courcey.
A deep, put-upon sigh. “A rune-curse that replicates its own pattern in situ is a bad sign. Whatever its purpose is, it’ll keep getting worse.”
A spasm of icy dismay made Robin’s shoulders twitch. “How do I get rid of it?”
“I don’t know—no, Courcey, I don’t.” Hawthorn’s sharpness now had an edge of—not pity, else Robin would have found himself throwing some more unwise punches. But a frank sympathy. “I do wish you luck with it. But I’m not whatever solution you’re looking for.” His gaze wandered to Courcey and Robin waited for another piece of off-colour humour to emerge from that smirking mouth. Instead his lordship gave a small bow.
“Good to see you, Edwin, old chap. Don’t give my regards to your family. I never liked any of them.”
Courcey turned on his heel without returning either bow or farewell. He was halfway down the corridor when Robin, still in the doorway, felt sickly heat spread beneath his collar. Blotches of light danced at the corners of his vision; he clutched at the doorframe. The peppery sensation on his tongue was the same as it had been last night. He could smell caramel on the edge of burning, and a sudden wild flare of salt and flowers, like a summer breeze distilled— The ocean sliced the scene in half, an endless horizon of sea against blushing sky, the watercolours of sunset fading up to a darkening blue. Lord Hawthorn stood with one elbow leaned on a railing, looking outwards, nodding as though in response to speech. He turned suddenly and pulled a watch from his pocket by its chain, glancing down to check the time. He looked up and then gestured. Pointing to something.
Even as the image began to fade Robin was aware of a burning curiosity as to what was happening, as it were, just out of the frame. He tried to sink further into it, as one did with the waking dregs of a dream. His eyes stung. Move, he thought, show me, and the image lurched, and Robin could almost see— He was, he was surprised to learn, still upright. His hand was a pale claw on the doorframe. His legs felt like damp feathers. Someone was supporting him with a grip on his other arm.
“—with us. There.”
The support, Robin realised once his eyes focused, was Hawthorn. The man must have crossed the room at speed. Courcey was a few feet away, frowning.
“I’m fine,” Robin said. “Sorry.”
“Was that another attack?” asked Courcey. “The same pain as before?”
“No,” Robin said, before he could muster his thoughts enough to say yes, and seize on the excuse. But the immersive image had involved no pain in his arm or anywhere else. One mercy at least. “No, I just felt faint. I’m—recovering from a flu.”
A thick eyebrow arched. Robin waited for some sort of disparaging comment about swooning like a schoolgirl. Hawthorn had startling eyes, the sort of bright blue that might be called merry in a woman. Up close, he really was unfairly handsome, and his grip on Robin’s arm was strong and careful. But that willingness to wound was visible in the curve of his mouth. Robin would have rather kissed a fresh-caught pike.
“Try not to faint onto anything breakable on your way out” was all Hawthorn said.
Makepeace, not looking at all like a man whose position was imperilled, showed them to the door and helped them into their coats. The butler and Courcey exchanged a rueful look.
“New York,” said Courcey. “For how long?”
“Goodbye, Mr. Courcey.”
“Yes, all right.”
The door closed behind them with finality. New York, Robin thought. A trip across the ocean. He shivered a little as he followed Courcey back down into the street.
Courcey glanced at him. “Are you—”
“I’m fine,” said Robin yet again.
He wondered if coming clean about the visions would have made a difference, back there in the house. Somehow he doubted it. If Hawthorn hadn’t been prepared to even look at the physical evidence of the curse, there was no reason to think that hearing about effects beyond pain would have budged him further.
Courcey nodded and lapsed into a silence as brittle as the first freeze of a river. Robin could only guess at what he was thinking. A thawing comment of some kind was needed.
“What an utterly charming fellow,” Robin said.
The sound Courcey made was small, a clearing of the throat. If it had started as laughter then he’d caught it early. “Yes. That’s the way Hawthorn is. Can’t get through the simplest conversation without taking the chance to insult everyone in the room.”
Robin managed, narrowly, not to point out that Courcey hadn’t been doing himself any favours by reacting in such an obvious way. Indeed, Robin had been surprised at how easily Hawthorn had dismantled Courcey’s shell of competence and reserve.
Or perhaps it wasn’t surprising. If Hawthorn’s joke, which hadn’t sounded much like a joke, had referred to a true—liaison? relationship?—between the two men.
Robin glanced sideways. The shell had certainly hardened again. Courcey’s face was set and pale and unflinching, framed between collar and hat. When Robin overlaid that image with the one of Courcey sprawled bare and panting on a bed . . . it was preposterous. The man was like a porcelain figurine. There was the sense that if you tried to remove his clothes you’d find them painted on.
Robin shifted his jaw, uncomfortably aware of his own clothes. It had been—some time, that was all, since he’d been sexually intimate with another person. And he’d been accosted quite against his will by lurid visions of this one.
“I knew he’d be like that,” Courcey muttered.
“Thank you,” Robin said.
Another of those wary looks, bracing for mockery. “For what?”