“It hurt,” said Jack. “I don’t know your points of comparison. And I am not about to start lovingly reliving it, if that was what you had in mind. No matter how much you might enjoy the idea of me in pain.”
“I—don’t.” Alan’s mouth twisted as if that had been difficult to get out. “I only wanted to say that I understand now what you meant about having reasons to be angry. The world’s done a bloody number on both my sisters, but it hasn’t killed them yet. I’d been wondering, if you had something like this, like magic, why you’d give it all up. Leave it behind. But it makes sense.”
“I didn’t give up magic.” It was easier to admit here in the half shadows of night.
It gave me up. But that wasn’t quite true either. Jack had been hurt and abandoned, and had wanted to hurt and abandon in return. Magic had been torn from him; and his twin, who was the best part of magic, as well. It had taught him a useful lesson about needing anyone or anything too badly.
And his decision had barely felt like running away. It had felt necessary, practical. Like exiting the ruins of a house gone to rot and dereliction.
“I suppose I’ve been building dream-castles,” said Alan. “Can’t help it. I keep thinking that if my family had power like this, we wouldn’t have to be in service at all, and I wouldn’t have to fight for connections to scrape my way into a better job, but that’s not true. Your valet. Violet’s servants. They’re magical, but they’re still in service.”
“If you’re looking for more footmen to question about their reading habits, you could come back tomorrow.”
Alan huffed, halfway to laughter. “The plain fact is, the world’s the world, and your title’s still likely to do me more good than any amount of magic that might have been wrung out of me by a rosary. And yes, your lordship, I do hate that.”
They weren’t touching. Jack wanted to sip at that hatred and let it pour down into his fingertips. And yet he didn’t want Alan Ross to hate him, except in ways that they both enjoyed. The knowledge jarred him. He hadn’t cared about anyone’s opinion of him for years.
But Alan Ross’s opinions were deeply considered and strongly held, grown like hardy weeds in the difficult soil of his upbringing. If he judged Jack wanting, then Jack would deserve it.
“The world is the world,” Jack agreed. “Most success happens through connections, no matter your station. There’s no magical law of inheritance that means someone pulls out a drawer in their desk, when they retire, and there’s a contract of employment naming the ideal man for the job, handily giving his full name and address.” Jack was hoping for another almost-laugh, but didn’t win one. “People talk. People do favours. That’s how it works.”
“I know,” said Alan bitterly. “Magical or not, people use one another.”
A rash, aching feeling crested in Jack. He found the words quid pro quo behind his teeth and imagined spitting them out onto the ground, to be trodden into the dirt and forgotten forever.
“And I’m a card to be played, you said. So tell me what else you want. Use me.”
Alan’s silence had a suspicious cast to it. But he looked up at Jack, and swallowed. Ruddy lamplight played with the shadows thrown by his curls onto his forehead.
“You’re writing me a blank cheque?”
“You’d tear it up and tell me to eat the pieces,” said Jack. “And I know you have more imagination than that.”
Perhaps Alan’s cheeks darkened with blood. Jack wanted to put a hand there, to check.
“Use you. All right,” Alan said hoarsely. “I will.”
13
The office of the Morning Post was a piece of music played by an orchestra. Or perhaps Alan needed to resist Spinet House’s influence and find himself some new metaphors. Either way—the office of a daily newspaper began slowly and then accelerated throughout the day, reaching its climax when the paper was put to bed in the evening and the steady racket of the printing presses, housed in wooden sheds in the dingy yard of the building, began.
Every story was an instrument: the political commentary, the notices and reviews of opera and theatre performances, the dispatches from foreign correspondents, the society pieces with their gossip dressed up in fusty speech. Each contributed to the sound of the whole.
It was midmorning and therefore relatively calm. That was the only way one could catch the Post’s editor for a leisurely conversation. Alan led Jack through a room crammed with typewriters on desks, only half of them in use at the moment, and towards Kenyon’s office.
The sound of many people typing was a comfort to Alan, no matter how frenzied the orchestra grew as deadline approached. He’d grown up in a loud family and a series of dismally thin-walled rooms. It took a lot more than a bellowing sub-editor, directing spittle into the red face of a journalist who’d skidded in too close to deadline with a story five inches too long, to put Alan off his work.
“Sir?” Alan rapped his knuckles on the door, and Randall Kenyon lifted his frown from reading to beckon him inside. “I’ve brought someone keen to meet you. Lord Hawthorn—”
“Yes, charmed,” drawled Jack. He was carrying a stick today, something Alan had only ever seen him do once on the Lyric, and seemed to actually be leaning on it. He exaggerated that effect as he strode into the office and extended a hand.
His cufflinks had diamonds in them. Alan tried to look humble and non-murderous as his lordship’s plummiest tones sailed forth.
“How d’you do. Kenyon? Wanted to meet you face-to-face, express my appreciation for the work you do. Read the Post religiously, of course. First one I pick up over breakfast.”
“Well. I—delighted, my lord, of course. Thank you. Thank you.”
Kenyon turned red above his moustache as he shook Jack’s hand. When he’d first taken over the Post the occasional whiff of reformist thought had floated weakly into his editorials, but under Lady Bathurst’s ownership of the paper he’d settled back into producing a solid Tory rag.
Unlike Lady Bathurst, he was easily cowed by titles. And unlike Lady Bathurst, he was not a personal friend of Lord Cheetham, and was therefore unaware that Jack’s politics were those of a class traitor.
Alan had primed Jack like a cannon and was now ruthlessly firing him at the man. This was the last chance he’d get, while he and Jack were still engaged in the same business and while Jack still had reason to express gratitude with favours. It wouldn’t last. Nothing did. Everything would change in a few days’ time if they found the knife at the Barrel.
“And very good of you to give Ross here a chance to shine. Offering opportunity to the deserving poor. Shows an eye for talent as well as the editorial eye, hey?”