A Restless Truth (The Last Binding #2)

Chapter 4

4

The steward who escorted Maud to Lord Hawthorn’s cabin was not, alas, the young and impressionable Rogers. Instead he was a cool-mannered man called Jamison, with sleek hair and overlarge teeth, who pocketed Maud’s American dollars with alacrity. He thawed somewhat on the journey as Maud asked breathless questions about the ship, most of which she already knew the answers to from her exploring earlier in the day.

Some of it proved useful though: once he had the money in hand, Jamison informed her of the presence of a directory, displayed in the first-class elevator foyers, which would save her the bother of asking after an acquaintance’s room number in the future.

“Is there a similar list for the second and third classes?” Maud asked.

A full list of her suspects and their cabin locations would be something. Although it still wouldn’t include the ship’s staff, would it? On the other hand, did she really believe that a murderous magician would go to the trouble of gaining employment as a deckhand or steward?

Well— she was playing at being in service, of a sort. No reason to think someone else wouldn’t. And they might have better access—

“A full passenger manifest?” Jamison interrupted Maud’s thoughts. “Not on display. I suppose the chief officer would have one. Begging your pardon, but why would you want to see such a thing?”

Maud hastily dropped that line of questioning and moved on to showing an interest in Jamison’s own career with the White Star Line. A new frisson of nervousness had alighted upon her, alone in his company, now that she’d moved the entire crew of the Lyric into the category of “possible killer.”

“You’re near as bad as that journalist we have on board, miss,” said Jamison after a while. “Here we are. His lordship’s expecting you, you said?”

“He’s a family friend.” Maud deployed her dimples. “I had hoped to surprise him.”

Knocking produced no answer, and Jamison shrugged an apology. “He mustn’t be back from dinner. The gentlemen often retire to the smoking lounge at this hour.”

Maud had been counting on the fact that Lord Hawthorn might be that sort of gentleman. “Then I shall wait for his lordship in more comfort than this corridor is currently affording. Open the door, please.”

A blink. “I can’t do that.”

“Nonsense,” said Maud briskly. “Of course you can.”

He frowned. “If you’re a friend of the family, why don’t you—”

“Oh, dear.” Maud put a hand to her mouth and gave a silent laugh. “Look, perhaps I wasn’t quite honest about why I’m here. You see, someone told me the most intriguing story about Lord Hawthorn at dinner. And I would very much like to find out for myself if that story was true.” Maud’s tongue wanted to rattle on, loose with nerves, but she forced herself to bite down on it and give what she hoped was a suggestive smile.

She’d have been the last person to call herself a believable coquette. But Jamison’s eyebrows shot up, and for a moment he looked almost paternal, as if he were going to demand that she produce a relative or chaperone who could hustle her away from this potential den of sin.

Maud thought of what Robin would say if he saw her in this situation and swallowed a hysterical gurgle of laughter.

“Do you think his lordship will object to finding me in his room, under these circumstances?” she added. “More to the point, do you think I could possibly do him any harm ?”

Jamison’s face admitted that he thought this doubtful, but he shook his head.

“More than my job’s worth, letting anyone into the parlour suites who shouldn’t be there.”

Maud didn’t want to stand here arguing while the other occupants of this hallway began trickling back from dinner. She tugged the earrings from her ears. Each long teardrop pearl fell from a cluster of smaller ones set in gold. They were Mrs. Navenby’s, and she felt sure the old woman would have approved of the use to which they were now being put.

“Please,” she said, and held them out.

Jamison’s eyes locked onto the lustre of gold and cream.

“If his lordship objects,” said Maud, “and makes a report to ship security, I’ll say it was someone else who helped me. Is there someone you’d like me to name? Some unpleasant bully among the ship’s staff, perhaps?”

A different light entered Jamison’s face. “Galloway. Service supervisor. He’s lazy and a drunk, and he always blames the new hires when his sloppy work’s discovered.” He looked startled to have said it, and eyed Maud warily, as if she’d done a magic trick.

She hadn’t, of course. There was always a bully.

“There you are, then.” She jiggled the earrings in her palm. “And if you’re prepared to give up half the fee for the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Galloway dismissed, you could always plant one of the pearls in his belongings, and it’ll be more evidence that he accepted it from me.”

Jamison’s mouth opened, then closed. “And what if, as you say, his lordship doesn’t object?”

“Then pretend another passenger reported the pearls missing,” Maud said impatiently—really, did she have to do everything herself? “Or, if you’d prefer, steal it back again. Now, do you think we might hurry this along?”

Jamison let her into the cabin. Maud threw her most approving smile at him through the closing door.

Lord Hawthorn’s parlour suite had a large sitting room, with a view through an open doorway to the smaller room containing the bed, another door that probably led to the bathroom, and—Maud drifted over, delighted—the round porthole was set in a door leading out to a piece of private deck enclosed by glass, like a pretty little patio. The sitting room contained a proper plush set of sofa and chaise longue and armchair set around a low table, a writing desk tucked next to a credenza with gorgeous marquetry, and a higher table with two sleek, narrow-backed chairs. In the centre of this table stood a brassy vase of which the twin handles were diving women, their arms outstretched.

All in all, it was far grander than the stateroom allocated to Mrs. Navenby and Maud. Luxury was to be expected: the man was the only son of the Earl of Cheetham, and bore a courtesy title of his own. He had a dead sister, an uneasy relationship with his parents, and an even uneasier one with the society of magicians within which he’d been raised. And he had lost all of his own magic, as far as anyone knew.

Those were the plain facts within the briefing on the Baron Hawthorn that Edwin Courcey had given Maud before she left London. The more colourful facts boiled down to this: Lord Hawthorn, in Edwin’s firm opinion, was an arrogant, insulting, self-absorbed bastard.

Robin, who’d only met the man once, had agreed with this assessment.

“Though at least,” he’d added, “he’s the kind of bastard who wears it on his sleeve.”

The Blyth siblings had exchanged a look of perfect understanding. Honest unpleasantness was to be chosen, every time, over hypocrites and liars.

Thanks to his visions, Robin had been certain that Maud would encounter Lord Hawthorn on one of her voyages. Most likely the return one, as Hawthorn had been in America since the previous autumn. For his part, Edwin had reluctantly admitted to enough faith in Hawthorn’s character that he could be trusted not to be on the side of the murderous villains.

“Go to him if you’re in trouble,” Robin had told Maud. “He might not have magic, but he knows it, and he has more than enough of the ordinary kinds of power.”

“It sounds as if he’s likely to laugh in my face and tell me to go away.”

“Probably,” Edwin agreed.

“Maudie,” said Robin, with a grin for his sister, “can be remarkably persistent when the mood takes her.”

Maud ran her fingers over the polished blond wood of a chair’s back. Yes. She could. Now that she was alone and in the quiet, the bubbling energy of improvisation that had carried her through the conversation with Jamison was ebbing.

Voices sounded on the other side of the door, and there was the first clack of key in lock. Maud took a deep breath, preparing herself, and then froze. Voices. Plural.

She’d planned to have a private conversation with Lord Hawthorn and refuse to leave until he agreed to help her investigate Mrs. Navenby’s murder. She had not planned for anyone else to be present.

There were no large, Maud-friendly wardrobes in this room; nor was there a convenient floor-length tablecloth. The quickest route of escape was through the doorway and into the bedroom. She took it, just as the cabin door began to open.

“How impressive,” said the non-Hawthorn voice, female and abruptly clear. “Does it come complete with someone to fan you with palm fronds, as well?”

Maud bit very hard into her lip, leaned against the tiny space of wall available between the doorway and the boxy frame of the bed, and shook with laughter. The manic energy was back, as if she’d reached out to metal after walking on wool.

It was Miss Debenham. Of course it was.

Lord Hawthorn, when he spoke, had a deep voice that didn’t sound as though it had ever been excited about anything in its life. One dressed it immediately in broad shoulders and a slight sneer.

“Keep it up if you must,” he said, “but is there a reason you’re insisting on that ghastly accent, Violet? Or do you simply enjoy tormenting my ears?”

Violet Debenham laughed. When she spoke again, her voice was entirely different. Now she sounded like the English lady her aunt had desperately described her as, though with vowels that had passed under the flattening iron of America.

“It wasn’t you it was supposed to torment.”

“Delighted to hear it. I’m having a drink.”

A spike of panic hit Maud until she remembered that she’d seen the decanter atop the credenza, not in here with her. Glass clinked on glass.

“Oh,” said Miss Debenham.

“Did you want something?” said Hawthorn.

“I don’t remember you being so obtuse, your lordship. When an old friend goes to the trouble of practically groping you at the dinner table and then asks if you’d like company for the evening, it’s not exactly a subtle signal.”

“We are not friends.” Not quite hostile, but an audible warning. “And I’d no idea if you planned anything more than leaving the dining room visibly attached to my arm. You may help yourself to my sitting room. Leave after whatever you think is a suitable time period. For my sake, you might make it at least half an hour.”

“I thought we could amuse each other.”

“What did you have in mind? Chess?”

“I hate chess.” She paused. Maud hoped that Miss Debenham would take the man’s amused disinterest as a cue to leave now, but instead she added, curious: “If you didn’t think I was offering to go to bed with you, why did you let me in?”

“Have I hurt your pride? I thought you were here because you had none.”

“Oh, up your arse, Hawthorn.”

Now it was Hawthorn who laughed: a short gunshot of a hah! that reminded Maud for a painful moment of Mrs. Navenby. “I agreed for the same reason I agreed three years ago.”

“Three years ago,” said Miss Debenham, “you told me that you don’t fuck virgins or people who don’t know what they’re asking for.”

There was a girl whose first adventure into obscenity had definitely not been mere hours earlier. Maud mouthed the word to herself, trying to make it comfortable, like doing determined circuits of the house in a pair of overstiff new boots. Fuck . Her teeth caught in her lower lip, satisfyingly, at the start of it.

“Yes. And you didn’t,” said Hawthorn. “But I added, if I recall, that I had no objection to being used as a pair of sharp scissors if you were so desperate to shred your reputation. And that, Miss Debenham—it is still Miss, I’m assuming?—still stands.”

There was a longish pause. A slight rustle of fabric. Maud bit her lip again, not in service of any words this time.

“Though I admit,” Hawthorn went on, “I’m curious whether any pieces of your reputation remain intact enough that you’re once again in need of my services.”

“I’m not, really,” said Miss Debenham. “Well, the prospect nearly gave Aunt Caroline a fit of apoplexy—that’s something. But I’m curious about what I missed out on by being too virginal and too naive for your tastes. I approached you because of your reputation, after all. And I have several points of comparison now.”

Another untranslatable near-silence. Maud had the twin longings to be anywhere else in the world, and to be one of the flying bats she’d heard of when attending a lecture on natural history: they could send out invisible bursts of sound and know, from sensing their return, the exact shape of what was happening in front of them, even if they couldn’t see it.

Perhaps there was a spell that allowed that to happen. She’d have to ask Edwin.

Hawthorn sounded even lower and more amused now. “I haven’t any pride either, girl, so you needn’t go trying to pique it. Just ask, if you’re going to.”

“Oh, for God’s—” Miss Debenham sighed. “Lord Hawthorn. I’m bored and intrigued, you are an extremely attractive man, and I wish—for my own reasons—to cause as much scandal as possible. So I’d consider it a favour if you would fuck me.”

Maud wondered morbidly if there were a limit on how many times one could blush in a day. Perhaps at a certain point it would become permanent.

Miss Debenham was still talking, as if making a list for a shopping expedition. “Nothing that could get me pregnant, and I’d prefer to avoid any diseases. Other than that, I’m game for whatever you fancy.”

“I very much doubt that,” said Hawthorn. “But we won’t dwell on it. You set sensible conditions. I see this is how you’ve gathered these points of comparison without finding yourself in trouble.”

“I can’t say I avoided every kind of trouble.” Miss Debenham’s laugh was almost too light, as if it took effort. “But yes.” A beat. “That, and fucking women more often than men.”

Maud’s cheeks overflowed; the heat rushed into every far crevice of her, to the end of each finger, to where her feet now felt in their shoes as though they would ignite if she moved them.

Robin had described how it felt to have one of his visions imposed on him from nowhere. Something like this, Maud thought. She didn’t have her brother’s clairvoyant gift, nor his artistic imagination. But her mind was a train hurtling down tracks without her consent, insisting that she consider Miss Debenham’s words and attempt to put images to them.

It was not enormously successful. Maud’s knowledge of sexual acts was purely academic. She felt like a musician trying to reproduce a sonata by ear, when it had been heard only once, underwater.

Now she could hear soft, breathy sounds from the adjoining room, as well as the rustle of fabric. Oh God . Miss Debenham had asked, and Lord Hawthorn had obliged. Sooner or later they would move proceedings to the bed—surely?—and as Maud was not a magician and could not turn herself invisible, she had a vanishing window to put a stop to this herself before she ended up looking like not only a sneak-thief but also like… the sort of perverted voyeur she clearly was .

The sooner the better, she told herself. Just do it.

She screwed her eyes half-shut, pushed herself away from the wall and around through the doorway in one awkward motion, and came to a stumbling halt in front of a tableau that was—even viewed through her trembling lashes and the haze of mortified nerves—not academic in the slightest.