He used to have nightmares about being forced to eat stones until his feet sank into the earth, then knees and then hips and chest as he kept getting heavier and heavier, the weight shoving him all the way down to where the fires were.
He said, “It was simple enough. After my pa died, I was a forger and a thief and a pornographer, and it meant everyone else could stay respectable. And then one day I stopped believing in God. Like that.” He snapped his fingers. “So I told myself, well, that’s something, now stop believing in sin as well. Just drop it on the ground and leave it behind. I thought—I thought it’d be such a relief.”
“But it’s hard to rid yourself of something you’ve been swallowing since you were too young to be revolted by the taste,” Jack said softly.
Alan eyed him in case this was another filthy joke. It didn’t seem to be.
“Yes.”
Christ, he was so tired, and Jack was so unbearably solid. If Alan went over and hit him, or flung obscenity in his face, or leaned his forehead against Jack’s sternum—that stupid broad chest clad in expensive wool and silk and cotton—Jack wouldn’t shift.
Alan had never needed to lean on anyone. It was intolerable that he now kept turning out the pockets of his soul and finding caught in their seams the desire to let someone else take his weight. The desire to be held, even kissed.
He couldn’t bring himself to ask. And Jack would only do it if Alan asked him to, and it was Alan’s own rule, but for a moment he hated Jack passionately for obeying it.
Luckily there was something he could ask, and would. He could squash his pride when it wasn’t for himself.
“I want to ask you a favour. I know I don’t have the right. I know you don’t owe me a thing now. Take it as a chance to lord it over me, if nothing else.”
A long look. Alan was uncomfortably aware that Jack saw through all of that.
“When you put it like that, how can I resist?”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help. I meant it. But if this ends badly for me, I want you to tell my family, and take care of them. They’re all I have.” And he was all they had, which was too obvious to point out. This was a much bigger favour than an interview for the papers. Alan clung to the memory of Jack, mocking and cruel on the Lyric, saying: You didn’t ask for enough from me.
Now Alan was asking. Alan would fucking beg.
“Tell them what? Perhaps your train came off the rails?”
“Yes. Tell them it’s an insurance payout from the railroads. Anything, but…” Alan swallowed. “They’ve been on the streets before. I won’t have that happen again. I will haunt you if that’s what it takes.”
“That won’t be necessary. You have my word,” said Jack. He walked over, extended his hand, and shook Alan’s, and not a hint of mockery spoiled the gesture.
19
Jack arrived at Cheetham two days after Edwin and the others. Adelaide was still in Gloucester; Alan was still in London. Both were expected within the week.
Before leaving Spinet, Jack had written a letter for Edwin to carry to the Countess of Cheetham, begging her hospitality and her silence and explaining … not a great deal.
Ask Edwin to explain everything, he’d written. And then, awfully—Ask him to answer all the questions that I can’t.
It was unfortunately not the sort of task that Edwin was suited to, but he did enjoy explaining. And he had the support of Maud and Robin, both of whom could handle difficult conversations with near strangers with the ease of a waiter handling an armful of plates.
For all its necessity, the letter felt like an act of enormous cowardice. A sharp lump of salt developed in Jack’s throat as his luggage was transferred into the house by Oliver and Cheetham Hall’s footmen. He climbed the front steps.
“Blake,” he said, greeting the butler in the entry hall.
“M’lord.”
“Is Lady Cheetham—”
“Thank you, Blake,” said Lady Cheetham.
Blake slipped wisely away. The front doors closed, cutting off a sharp slant of sunlight, and Jack stood alone with his mother. Her white hair was in one of its severe styles today, her dress sashed tightly and her throat girded with coral beads. The fact that she’d had to arm herself to receive him made Jack feel like a smudge of grime on the world’s boot.
“Edwin told you,” Jack said, to be sure.
His mother’s eyes turned for a moment to bleak gashes in her face. She came up to him, the layers of her petticoats a soft swish against the floor.
“Show it to me,” she said.
Jack never thought of refusing. He arranged the words that had rattled unsaid within him for years, hollowing him out with their force, and which he never would say. Your brother and nephew came onto this land when you were away. They tried to use my magic, and Elsie’s, and it left me with nothing and Elsie with more pain than she could bear.
Heat filled Jack’s mouth like blood when he tried to speak. The pain was trying to climb down his throat. His eyes watered as he let his jaw fall open and his mother’s hands cupped his face. She was nearly his height; she didn’t have to crane to see the secret-bind where it would be glowing on his tongue.
“I see,” she said.
A bronze horse statuette hurled itself from its marble plinth and fell to the ground with a hollow bang. Jack pulled away.
“Polly.”
“That’s nothing, my dear. Half the wallpaper came off in the yellow drawing room when Edwin was explaining.” Her smile was level. “No matter. I’d been meaning to redecorate that wing soon. I wish you’d shown me at the time, instead of letting me believe the two of you had finally done something too big and too dangerous to handle.”
And that was something she’d never said, although Jack had always known she believed it. His father had raged at him for his silence. His mother had kept saying, over and over, that whatever it was, it didn’t matter, he could tell them. He could tell them anything.
Of course it had looked like Jack’s fault. Neither he nor Elsie would speak a word about it, and when she died he dragged himself away from magical society as if his conscience couldn’t bear the reminder.
He said, “We’re still hosting the gala. We must, if we’re to intervene.”
“Oh, yes,” she said calmly. “I will extend guest-right to my nephew George and his friends. I will be the perfect hostess.”
Lady Cheetham hand-fed orphaned ducklings and would walk out of her way rather than tread on a spider, and yet Jack wouldn’t have been surprised if the silent half of that sentence was and then I will tear out his spine.
“Where’s everyone else?” he asked. “I assume you’ve put them all to work.”