Putting his coffee down with a snap of china, he flicked the paper open. The headlining article ran the length of the front page. He was so intent on his thoughts that when Finn dropped a cool, damp kiss on the back of his bent neck, he started violently.
“Sorry.” Finn laughed and ran a hand through Aristide’s curls. Aristide tipped his head back and let Finn kiss him properly. Water spiked the younger man’s freshly barbered hair. He had a towel wrapped around his hips, and that was all.
Utterly delicious, and Aristide had no patience for him. He turned back to the paper while Finn settled into the seat across from him.
Hebrides was scratched. Amberlough had always been very polite about looking the other way, but no one could ignore embezzlement and graft so blatant, not when hard evidence was presented in the trial of the decade. Because there would be a trial. And that was leaving out possession of controlled substances and soliciting unlicensed prostitutes. The hounds had been thorough; someone must have been egging them on, coaching them, encouraging them. Someone with a stake in Hebrides’s downfall. The Ospies, of course, but who among them could manipulate the ACPD so deftly? This was someone who understood the intricate web of mutually assured destruction between lawmakers, lawbreakers, and Amberlough’s police.
“Wind blows cold, your face’ll freeze that way.” Finn applied butter to a scone with brisk strokes of his knife. “No good for a man who trades on his looks. What’s in the paper that’s got you so pestered?”
“The same thing that’ll be p-p-pestering you at office today, I imagine.” Aristide folded the paper back on itself and handed it across the table. He watched Finn’s bright eyes flick back and forth across the words.
“Holy stones of the Lady’s cairn.” He set down his buttered scone and dusted his fingers clean on the edge of the tablecloth.
Aristide pushed back his chair. “Ilse’s brushed your suit,” he said. “Can you show yourself out?” When Finn looked up, trying to hide his wounded expression and failing, Aristide added, “No rush.”
It didn’t take the hurt out of Finn’s face. Exasperated, Aristide bent over the table and pressed his lips to Finn’s forehead. “Terribly sorry, but we’re both going to be b-b-busy for a while. And anyway, if I spend all my time with you, I’ll wear off your shine. So scurry along, my dove, and g-g-get to work.”
*
When Ilse came in to take the breakfast tray and told him, “There’s a young woman calling, sir,” her expression communicated quizzical disgust.
Aristide wondered who on earth it could be. “Show her in.”
Within minutes, a dirty-cheeked girl of maybe twelve was sitting on Aristide’s brocade chaise. She held one of the leftover breakfast scones and was gnawing it to bits. Crumbs showered down into the canvas sack of newspapers at her feet.
In his own cupped palm, Aristide held a matchbook from a grisly dive just north of Eel Town. He flipped it open and saw one match missing, and one torn in half. At the corner of the cardboard flap was the message TIED UP till then, written in smudged pencil and block letters to disguise the hand.
He took a coin from his pocket and tossed it to Cyril’s messenger. “Thank you. Go see Ilse in the kitchen.”
There was lots to do before half one: people to see and plans to make, all over the city. The weather was fine enough for springtime plaid—a heather ground crosshatched with pale green and blue. As a final flourish, on his way out the door, Aristide stuck a cheap gold rosette in his hatband. It had come last week in one of the endless bouquets punters sent backstage, and he’d been trying to figure out what to do with it since. He wasn’t worried about looking too gaudy in the rough neighborhoods where he was headed—in Amberlough, people knew who he was. And if that failed … the cut of his suit might telegraph money, but the tailor who’d constructed it had done so with respect for hidden holsters.
Reflected sunlight bounced off the Heyn. When Aristide ducked into the Little Camphor Bar, he had to blink spangles from his eyes.
Cross was in the private dining room upstairs. She nodded Aristide into the seat opposite hers and started talking, without preamble.
“I’m not staying in the Foxhole,” she said. “Not now. Things are going sour like milk.”
“I didn’t imagine you would,” he said.
“Question is, do you have a full-time spot for me? I can probably get myself back to Liso, if you need somebody there. But to be honest…”
“You’ve been there two years and you’d like to stay at home a while longer, yes. Even with things as they are?”
“Amberlough is where I hang my hat,” she said. “I’d like to stick by her while she wades through this mess.”
“Then this may be a tricky sell.” He’d been turning it over for a while, this idea. Even before Cyril scratched the regionalists. The Ospie threat had been looming for some time, and Aristide always liked to be prepared.
“You want me abroad?” Tired lines pinched the corners of her mouth. “I thought you would.”