He was turning around within himself a private resolution that if anyone had to die for this nonsense—if Edwin’s transformation or negation did require it—then it would be him. But Jack had grown past his old gift for melodrama. Everyone had someone who would grieve them. Jack had promised his father, on returning from the Boer, that he wouldn’t deliberately put himself in harm’s way again.
He thought of his mother, who’d only just been granted his company again—thought of Oliver, who needed guidance—and thought of Alan. Who’d never needed Jack at all, but wanted him, in that artless and ferocious way that Jack found so devastating.
It’d destroy me, Edwin had said, of losing Robin.
Jack had already been destroyed by a loss once. Instead of letting anyone else pick up the pieces, he’d taken them away on his own and let them heal at strange angles.
But he had healed, while he wasn’t looking. He’d been sitting on a folded-under limb so long it had gone numb. And then, when forced to run, he’d found it perfectly capable of bearing his weight.
Jack Alston might not have magic, but he was moving through the world again, and had people relying on him again, and it was blood rushing back into the numb flesh of his feelings. Forcing him to live.
18
“This was a terrible idea,” Alan said. He stood on the doorstep of his own house with misgivings kicking him in the chest. “I’ve changed my mind. Go away.”
Perhaps Jack would have obeyed and turned on his heel. More likely he would have found something sardonic to say. Alan would never know.
The front door opened inwards without his touching it, and his sister Bella stood there. They startled in guilty unison. Alan felt his face fall into exactly the narrow-eyed look that Bella was giving him, as they both tried to work out what the other was feeling guilty about.
For Bella, who stood with their ma’s old coat buttoned over her belly like an ill-fitting tent, the answer was obvious. Alan got his oar in first.
“You’re leaving the house?” he demanded.
“Shh, Mamma’s napping. What’re you playing at, dawdling on your own step? Who’s this?” Bella shot back, pink with annoyance. She craned around him to look at Jack, her face changed colour, and her knees performed a reflexive servant’s bob.
“I asked first,” said Alan. He could feel Jack’s amused gaze on the back of his neck. “What were you going to do, sneak out to the greengrocer’s and tell anyone you met that you’ve been eating too many sweets?”
“Soffgh,” said Bella. Alan snickered. That had started as sod off, and she’d tried to swallow it. Her face sagged. “I want some air that’s moving faster than a slug. I’m so hot.”
“Mr. Ross,” said Jack patiently, “are we preventing the young lady from leaving? Or shall we perform introductions inside?”
“Who is this?” Bella hissed in Italian, complexion shifting yet again to something in the tomato family.
“What’s that? Caro? Bella? Who is at the door?” came floating down the stairs. It seemed Mamma was no longer napping.
“Sainted Mary,” muttered Alan, and got them all inside the grimy brick-fronted place and the door closed while Bella fought her way out of the coat and bundled it into a ball behind the coat stand. The entryway was gloomy and stifling—late summer had spitefully turned from pleasant to hideous—and their ma’s eyesight was poor enough that she wouldn’t spot it.
There was nothing wrong with her ears, though.
Alan and Jack had argued about this yesterday, and argued some more about it today. George had last seen Alan memoryless and possibly dead in the collapsing Barrel. Perhaps he would strike Alan Ross, blackmailed traitor journalist, completely off his mental list of things to concern himself with.
Perhaps he wouldn’t.
“What would it matter now if George does find out?” Jack had said. “You’ve served your purpose. You’ve no magic and no power over him. Even if he somehow discovers you’re at Cheetham, he’ll assume I dragged you back into things to spite him.”
“But why do you need to visit?” Alan returned, and couldn’t drag a good answer out of him, and it wasn’t until Jack was sitting at their kitchen table with an air of impeccable courtesy that Alan realised what this was. Jack was simply being nosy. He’d seen Alan’s workplace, he’d heard half the secrets of Alan’s past, and now he felt entitled to waltz into Alan’s house and play the lord with his family.
Alan should never have kissed the bastard at all.
The official story, for the Rossi family’s benefit, was that Alan had been inside that anonymous office building. When it collapsed he must have had a bad knock on the head, because he couldn’t remember anything about why he’d gone inside in the first place. And a very kind (“Ha.”) aristocrat had heroically pulled him from the rubble and saved his life, and now his lordship had decided to show an interest.
The Rossis understood that. Showing An Interest was something that toffs did from time to time. Especially the women. They might turn up with charity baskets and make appalled noises about the damp or sit by the kitchen stove and ask how much you spent on fuel and how much on food, and maybe you told them that our Emma worked in a big restaurant kitchen and snuck broken rolls out the back door when times were tough, and maybe you didn’t, because nobody who wore that much lace on their clothes could be trusted, not really.
Jack had not brought a basket, but he had stopped at the baker’s on the corner and bought a dozen buns. Alan’s ma boiled the kettle for tea, Caro came in with Lizzie on her hip and Tom underfoot—Emily wouldn’t return from school for hours—and the natural cowing effect of being in the presence of Lord Hawthorn lasted all of ten minutes before Alan’s relatives were shouting happily over one another.
Indeed, the Lord Hawthorn in the room was very different to the one who’d charmed Kenyon. This man was clean-spoken and curious and displayed an eloquent Liberal sympathy for the conditions of the working poor. Even the taciturn Dick came out of his shell and was made to laugh, and Maria Rossi kept patting Jack’s hand and telling him that he was an angel sent by the Virgin Mary to rescue her Alanzo.
Alan chewed angrily on his mouthful of bun.
“I’m leaving town for a few weeks again, Mamma,” he said, when a lull presented itself. “More of that advertising work. For the railways, this time.”
It was the easiest excuse. He’d told Kenyon that Lord Hawthorn had invited him to the country to write an in-depth society piece on Cheetham Hall and the ball that Lord and Lady Cheetham were holding there—a very exclusive event—and Kenyon had agreed instantly. Hell, a few more posh parties and perhaps Mr. Shorter would take Alan for Tatler after all, though if he had to start reporting on polo matches he’d die of boredom.
If he returned from the country at all.
Alan’s rash anger, his desire to leap in and help, was curling fretfully at the edges now that he was near the dear flame of his family. What if he did pretend to have forgotten magic, and returned to his own life? What if he refused to get involved in the fight against a power-grabbing plot that might do harm to a lot of magicians, of which Alan was not one?