The Gilded Scarab (45 page)

“I know that, sir.”

He smiled and nodded. “Have a little patience, Rafe Lancaster. Let Ned come to you.”

I thought about the last few months, the long winter I’d spent thinking about Edward Fairfax and the spring months in which I’d learned to love Ned Winter. I smiled back.

“I always have,” I said. “That’s the way it works.”

H
IGHGATE
ON
a June afternoon is a rather beautiful place. A somber and restrained beauty, of course, with its broad paths meandering around the steep hillside overlooking Londinium, and the splendor of carved marble monuments. With the sunlight slanting down between the low branches of the cedar of Lebanon that is its focal point, it is a pleasant spot to spend an hour or two.

Or eternity.

If one must.

I don’t know what species of church could claim Daniel on its baptismal roll, and in the end, it didn’t matter. The service was held in the small chapel at the cemetery gates. Ned was there, of course, with Sam at his elbow as usual. The Gallowglass sat at his right side. I didn’t recognize the other men near him, except for Flinders Petrie and his massive beard. Other archaeologists, I supposed, come to pay their respects. Mrs. Carr, Daniel’s landlady, had a pew to herself, in all her black-bombazined grandeur. I would have to make a point of speaking to her at the end of the service, when the women would be left in the carriages while Daniel was carried to the grave.

Ned saw me come into the chapel but glanced away again, his face set. I slid into the rearmost pew, bowed my head to hide what I felt over killing Daniel and about Ned’s dismissal of me, and fell back on my expletive of choice when it came to Ned Winters.

Damn.

Not that I had much time to dwell on my disappointments. I had timed my arrival to a nicety, and a commotion at the door signaled the entrance of the coffin. We all stood, turning to watch as Daniel was carried in on the shoulders of six undertaker’s mutes, each of whom had one hand on his fellow’s shoulder to balance the coffin, and the other hanging by his side clutching a tall hat wreathed with long black streamers. It was a very handsome coffin. I was willing to wager a week’s takings that Ned had paid for it.

The service was brisk. Almost businesslike. I spent much of it carefully not looking at the coffin, but at the ceiling—painted an incongruous dark blue and scattered with the stars of heaven in stenciled white—while Petrie spoke of Daniel’s competence as an archaeologist, and how much the profession would miss him. A thin, ascetic-looking man, who appeared to be Daniel’s cousin, spoke for the family. Ned said nothing at all. It was a damned relief when it was over and we could file out into the cemetery’s inner courtyard.

The sun was bright and hot, reflecting back into the courtyard from its colonnaded walls. Mrs. Carr remembered me, and appeared glad to take my arm and totter into the shade of one of the chapel buttresses. She sobbed alternately on my shoulder and into a large, black-edged handkerchief, with many an “Oh, sir! Oh, sir!” I patted her back and made soothing noises. I really wasn’t very good at that sort of thing. Not very good at all. But she seemed comforted when I handed her back into the undertaker’s carriage.

Time to see this to the very end.

Daniel’s grave was in the Eastern cemetery. One of a little knot of mourners, I walked out of the cemetery’s main gates and crossed Swain’s Lane to the smaller entrance to the Eastern part. Daniel would make the crossing in the tunnel that ran beneath the road. The Gallowglass, Ned, and Sam were nowhere to be seen. I supposed they were with Daniel.

“He’ll be a great loss to the profession,” said the dark gentleman walking beside me. “Are you an archaeologist, sir?”

“No. No, I’m not.” I walked with him along a pathway curving away to the right. “I knew Meredith, quite well. I’m here because… well….”

Because Daniel Meredith and I might have been friends, if we’d both been less petty.

And because I killed him.

The dark gentleman shook his head. “Dreadful business, the attempt on the museum. Dreadful. Meredith’s a hero, what?”

“Yes,” I said. “A hero.”

We fell silent as the cortege emerged from the tunnel. Daniel was carried now by six of his colleagues, Ned and Flinders Petrie partnered as the first pair. Sam walked at Ned’s side. I glanced at Ned’s set face. He didn’t appear to see me.

The Gallowglass, accompanied by Joe Brennan, broke away from the cortege and came to join me. “Rafe. I’m glad to see you.”

The dark gentleman looked startled and faded away. I nodded. “Good day, sir.”

The cortege paused and waited for us all to line up behind it to follow Daniel to the graveside. Brennan stood behind the Gallowglass and me, keeping us a little apart from the rest. The undertaker paced slowly before the coffin, calling the dirge-like beat in a soft voice until the pallbearers caught the right rhythm. His six mutes, hats donned and crêpe scarves streaming, walked behind. We moved off slowly, following the mutes. Painfully slowly. Indeed, the cortege crept along until I ached to walk at my normal pace. Holding back was hard.

We didn’t speak. There wasn’t anything to say. The Gallowglass watched Ned, instead. Indeed, he hardly took his eyes from his son all the way down the winding path with its avenue of trees and marble angels. By contrast, I could barely make myself look. Each glimpse of Ned’s pale, strained face was a jab at my conscience.

Daniel’s grave had been dug at the bottom of the cemetery, up against the fence separating Highgate from the quaint little enclave of Holly Village. We came to a halt a few yards from the graveside. The mutes came up beside each of the pallbearers, lifting Daniel from their shoulders. Daniel had not been a big man, but I suspected he had weighed heavily on one pair of shoulders at least.

The mutes lowered the coffin to ground level, held in place above the grave on a metal grid overlaid with broad leather straps. The pallbearers, Ned included, stepped up to take a strap each.

“I had better join Ned,” the Gallowglass said. He patted my arm as he went. “Until our next meeting, Rafe. Keep well.”

I nodded. He went to a spot a little to the left of where Ned stood, head bowed, waiting for the signal to lower Daniel into the ground. One of Sam’s broad hands rested between Ned’s shoulder blades. If Ned looked up, his father would be the first thing he saw. I envied him that.

The undertaker’s voice was soft as he gave them instructions. First the pallbearers raised Daniel up while a mute deftly slid the grid away, and then slowly they paid the straps hand over hand, and, just as slowly, Daniel disappeared from sight.

I saw the look on Ned’s face as the straps moved through his hands, and a coldness settled in my chest. We’d had a lot in common, Daniel and I. We both loved Ned Winter.

The first clod of earth fell onto the coffin with a hard thump. Ned stepped away into his father’s embrace.

Poor Daniel. Poor, foolish Daniel.

I was surprised to realize how much I would miss him.

Chapter 30

T
HE
NEXT
two weeks dragged.

I’d reopened the coffeehouse two days after events at the museum, citing the blackout as our reason for closing. Clearing accumulated clinker out of the coffee furnaces took time, don’t you know. It sounded a reasonable excuse, anyway.

After that, I threw myself into work. I had a business to manage, after all. I couldn’t always be running off to have adventures in sub-subbasements. There was coffee to make and Will’s cakes to sell, profits to garner, and evenings spent over the books trying to work out when I could make the final payment to the Stravaigor and get free of my House altogether.

That last sentiment may have been provoked by a visit from Peter. I don’t pretend to understand the House mentality. If I’m angry with someone, then I let him know it. I don’t leave him alone for two weeks before remonstrating with him for his behavior. It reminded me all too much of sitting in my little chair in the nursery, with my nurse telling me I should reflect on my naughtiness. The only reflecting I ever did was on how to do it better next time and how not to get caught. If Peter’s delay in coming to see me was in the nature of a nurse-type scolding, he was not having the precise effect he intended.

He was pleased to approve of the coffeehouse, although disappointed Ned wasn’t there so he could practice his sycophancy. Not that he needed the practice. He was a master at fawning flattery.

“Very nice coffee, too, Rafe. I am impressed. Although a little disappointed that we haven’t seen you at the House, for you to make amends to John. He’s still rather upset about your not telling him that you knew the Gallowglass First Heir. Very remiss of you. Rather disloyal, really.”

I nodded and smiled. I hadn’t felt so cheerful in days. Peter was a godsend in the matter of raising depressed spirits. “Peter, do you remember how you got that bend to your nose?”

His expression hardened. But I was delighted to see that his left hand covered the organ in question in undoubted protection.

“Because,” I said, “I would be very happy to bend it back for you.”

“Queer things, brothers,” observed Alan, when Peter had departed the premises in a state of fraternal wrath. “Threw mine down the well, once.”

“What a good idea! Remind me to have a well installed to give me the option, should that lickspittle ever return.”

I felt quite braced up. Energized. I think I smiled for at least an hour before it wore off. And I was determined that if I were ever to offend John Lancaster again, I’d try to do it a great deal better. And I didn’t care about getting caught.

H
UGH
HAD
been quiet for a day or two after the museum adventure. I let it alone. If he were chewing over the realization that I was an invert and deciding his reaction to it, then that was a nettle I’d rather not grasp. If that was indeed the case, he didn’t let it bother him for long. He was his old self in a day or two, and if he occasionally mentioned, in the long fortnight that followed, that it had been a while since we’d seen Mr. Ned, and gave me a sidelong look of sympathy as he said it, there was no malice in it. He was, I thought, sympathetic, and he didn’t allow it to make any difference. He was still my dear, dependable Hugh. I may possibly have lost Ned, but I hadn’t lost Hugh as well.

About a fortnight after Daniel’s funeral, Hugh left me alone for the evening. He had gone to slaughter Clayton at the Plough in one of their regular games of dominoes-to-the-death. Personally, I thought the real attraction was Miss Prudence Clayton, the landlord’s comely daughter. Not to my taste, but heigh-ho. Hugh was tolerant to me. I could return the favor.

I didn’t hear the street door open. I was lounging on the sofa, reading Virgil and trying not to fret. The first indication I had of visitors was the sitting room door opening and Ned’s head appearing around it.

I did not shriek. I may have made some noise eloquent of my surprise and consternation, but it wasn’t a shriek. A manly exclamation.

Ned looked apologetic. “Hello, Rafe. May I come in?”

I jumped up to greet him. He took the hand I held out to him in both of his.

“Rafe.”

He’d come. Of course he’d come.

I opened my arms, and he walked right in.

I
LOOKED
at my bedroom door in some astonishment. “Ned, did Sam really lock us in here?”

Ned nodded.

“And he’ll be next door all night?”

Ned nodded again. “Across the hall. Didn’t you say you had some sort of bed-sofa in there?”

“Does he usually lock you in and sleep so close?”

“Don’t worry about it. He knows I need a little privacy. He promised me he’d only blow the door down and burst in here if it were a real emergency.”

We stared at each other. I suspect I looked exactly as Ned did—eyes wide, face pale but for the flush along the cheekbones, mouth a little agape at the image of Sam and an exploding door. And then we were laughing and laughing, and we fell onto that wonderfully big four-poster bed, which I’d never yet had the chance to christen. Ned rolled us both until I was underneath him. His face was flushed and his eyes wide and dark. My breath came short.

“Ned,” I said. “Oh, Ned.” And I kissed him.

The kiss set me on fire. Ned’s hands fanned the flames. They caressed my neck, they had somehow got me out of my jacket, they were inside my shirt and smoothing over my chest, leaving little crackles of lightning wherever they went until, bewildered by the shocks the sensations had fizzing throughout every vein and sinew, I could only feel and not think of anything but touch, and skin, and want and need. My heart sped up, beating fast, and my breathing hitched and gasped, so uneven that my chest started to hurt.

I barely realized he was unbuttoning my trousers, but his touch on my cock hit like the thunderbolt. I had both hands occupied in a campaign of touching and exploring of my own, but I whined through my teeth into Ned’s mouth, lifted my hips, and allowed Ned to slide my trousers down, giving him unfettered access. He slipped his hand into the gap in my drawers to plant little butterfly touches on the length of my cock. Every touch was the kiss of a flame.