The cab to Westminster wasn’t the most awkward enclosed space Jack had ever been in, but it was muscling its way towards the top spot. Summer had squeezed a muggy morning over the city. Jack’s hairline prickled with sweat, and the heat was already battling Oliver’s best efforts at starching his collar. Ross sat across from him and stared fixedly out the window with discomfort written in the clench of his hands on his knees. Those hands were ink-stained at the edges of the nails and were a shade darker than the olive complexion of Ross’s face. Turned to the side, his sharp profile was shown to good advantage.
Not that he seemed to have any unattractive angles.
Jack could hold a silence with the best of them. And Alanzo Rossi, Alan Ross, was in Jack’s five-day experience of him a pitch-dark room scattered with mousetraps. Almost any topic of conversation could become a fight.
It had been an age since Jack had been in a proper fight. Not many people argued with the Earl of Cheetham’s heir; most of those who did had been at breakfast in Spinet House. He was not yet reduced to the indignity of turning up on his own doorstep and picking a fight with Makepeace, if only because his butler knew him far too well. Makepeace would have the argument, but it would be a kindness, and they’d both know it.
Jack stretched his leg out across the carriage. It wasn’t hurting any longer, but knocking his knee against Ross’s gained him a suspicious dart of the eyes.
If anything was going to be a fight, then Jack could pick his poison, couldn’t he?
“Why the Morning Post?”
“The Post’s readers have been closely following the debate in the Lords over Mr. Lloyd George’s bill,” said Ross.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Forgive me, my lord. I’m used to spending my time with people who pay attention to the clarity of their words.”
Snap went the trap. Jack almost wanted to snatch back his toes.
“How did you come to work there?”
“How and why are different questions. And I think the words you’re looking for are educated above my station.”
“And here I was going to call you a workhouse brat with delusions of vocabulary.”
That hit something, somewhere. It flashed like a distant lighthouse in Ross’s expression and then vanished. When he spoke again, his accent had dropped some polish and found some geography. There were probably linguists who’d be able to place his origins precisely within one of London’s neighbourhoods.
“I write for the Post because the Post had an opening. I read a month of back editions in an afternoon and wrote the editor a stuffy, bloody-minded column about how hardship is good for the soul and government charity only encourages laziness and breeds sin.” A smile with no humour. “He started me the next day.”
Jack did not take the Post, merely glanced over its front page at newspaper stands, but that was certainly in keeping with their philosophy. They’d probably been delighted to condescend to a working man who fit their ideal pattern of gratitude.
“Writing advertising copy on the side was a step up on the ladder of truth,” added Ross dryly. “And…” He looked out the window again. There was a rearranging sort of pause. “And one day I’ll either choke to death on it or get booted aside in favour of someone’s nephew. I need the security of a better position.”
“And for that you need connections.” Thus the quid pro quo. Thus Ross in Spinet’s breakfast room, saying I want Lord Hawthorn’s escort to the House of Lords, and the promise of his help.
Jack steadied himself as the cab took a corner at speed. Ross’s mouth was a thin, unhappy line. On the Lyric he’d tried to hurl every generous gesture of Jack’s back in his face and been forced into acceptance by circumstance. Being here, asking this of Jack, was clearly solidifying his personal dislike into crystal.
“Mr. Shorter liked the society piece I did about the voyage, but I’ll never be invited to the right sort of parties to write for Tatler. He’d take me for the Sphere if I could get a sub-editor position at the Post. Or at least some more prominent stories.”
“Prominent meaning political.”
“Right. The People’s Budget is out of the Commons, now—it’s all about the fight in the Lords. And I can be educated up to the bloody rooftops and talk like it too, but as soon as someone asks about my people, I have to admit that my dear papa was a Clerkenwell ice-cream seller and his parents were farmers who came over from Italy when the alternative was starve to death in the famine. You,” he said, shimmering with loathing, “probably rubbed mud into rugs belonging to half the peers in the House when you were a tiny lordling. I don’t need to be invited to tea, but I want introductions. Contacts. I want a few peers who’ll recognise my name and let me flatter a juicy statement out of them. There.”
Jack faked a yawn. “Tedious. Are you sure you won’t take jewels instead?”
“Oh fuck off, you overbred streak of goat’s piss,” Ross snapped.
The silence was tight as cradling string. Ross’s hand made a motion to cover his mouth before he shoved it back down and kept glaring.
After an enjoyable moment, Jack drawled, “I can’t imagine why you’ve had such trouble making connections in civilised society, Mr. Ross.”
“Let me rephrase.” All the polish came back, cloyingly mocking. “I strongly dislike you.”
“And do you think I enjoy the company of an unrelentingly hostile East End criminal?”
That lighthouse expression flashed again. Jack pulled air over a catch in his own breath. But Ross, out of mousetraps for the moment, didn’t step on Jack’s. Didn’t say: Yes, it’s terribly obvious that you do. Didn’t say anything else for the rest of the trip to Westminster.
The palace and its grounds were crawling with robes and suits, briefcases and bowler hats, as the work of Parliament began for another day. Jack took them through the main public entrance into St. Stephen’s Hall.
Ross seemed determined to be unimpressed by the marble politicians who bracketed their progress down the hall, as well as the robed and wigged flesh-and-blood versions of the present day. His eyes roamed sharply, a faint crease between them, and he gripped his hat to his chest.
By the time they reached the Central Lobby, Jack had already exchanged nods with several people, none of whom had paid any attention to the shorter man at his elbow.
“I can find you some Post-friendly voices, if you think you can resist the urge to erect a guillotine beneath the mosaic of Saint George.”
“I’ve managed not to bite you yet,” muttered Ross. “Can’t hardly get any worse.”
The Viscount Austin, who was nearing eighty and wheezed when he spoke, was in discussion nearby with two equally ancient peers. Jack was on the verge of directing them across to join that group when—