Jerry disappeared after they’d walked the upstairs, having particularly noted the main corridor past the state bedrooms. He didn’t emerge till luncheon, another endless, dreadful meal with the ill-assorted company. Jerry was charming, inevitably. Susan sat, uninteresting and invisible, not speaking until spoken to. Alec made courteous conversation with his fellow guests, asked polite questions and pretended to listen to the answers, smiling, smiling.

He was going back to his attic after this, he decided. He would settle back into illustration, make up the ground he’d lost with the picture papers in the last couple of months of inaction, build his reputation with the book publishers. He’d forget his title and position; their price was far too high. He never wanted to come to this house again.

After lunch he settled in the gardens—not the walled garden—with a sketch pad, in the hope that it would discourage people from approaching him. He had about half an hour of peace, and then footsteps crunched on the gravel, and Miss Hackett came up with Susan.

“Lord Alexander.” Miss Hackett looked down at the pad on his knee. “In my day, drawing was the pursuit of young ladies. I was under the impression your father preferred you not to indulge this hobby.”

Susan shut her eyes. Alec said, as calmly as possible, “I like to draw and I don’t think it’s harming anybody if I do so.”

Miss Hackett sniffed. “My sister the Duchess might differ, considering the unfortunate past to which I should not care to refer. Come, Roy.”

“I think I’ll stay outside,” Susan said. “You go in.”

“Miss Roy—”

“We had this conversation,” Susan told her, very softly. Miss Hackett drew herself up and marched off. Alec let himself sag.

“Good God, she’s awful,” Susan said, sitting by him.

“I don’t understand it. Why can’t people let everyone else get on with their lives? What possible reason is there for seeing someone not doing any harm, taking a bit of pleasure, and deciding to ruin it, for nothing?”

“It’s not for nothing. She can tell herself she’s better than whoever she’s condemning, and get a thrill of power while she does it. It’s not about principles, or people, or anything except a demonstration that she’s higher on the ladder than whoever she’s picking on. If I were actually her companion I’d have put a pillow over—” Susan clamped her mouth shut, too late.

“It’s all right,” Alec said.

“No, it isn’t. Sorry. That was awful.”

“Then it fits right in with everything else. I don’t know if I can do this much longer.”

Susan scowled. “What’s Crozier done?”

“Nothing. I almost wish he would. I feel so guilty.”

“I really do think he’ll survive,” Susan said drily.

“Oh, I’m sure he will. Only, he trusted me. I think he...cared, even, and I don’t think he does that often, and I shouldn’t have spoiled that. Not for me, but for him. He was kind to me, and this is what I did in return, and I’m afraid he won’t be inclined to kindness again.”

Susan was uncharacteristically silent for a few moments. At last, and carefully, she said, “You do know that bad people aren’t generally redeemed by the love of a good woman, or man, don’t you? Most people don’t change, and if they do, it’s not because of someone else. Crozier’s acts aren’t your responsibility.”

“I don’t agree. What we do affects other people. If we teach other people that they won’t be loved, or they can’t trust anyone, then that’s how they’ll be.”

“Your father did his damnedest to teach his children that, and I don’t recognise you or Cara in that description,” Susan said. “We’re not helpless. Do you know about my guvnor?”

“Only that he’s a private detective.”

“He is now, but he was a flim-flam man before that, in the Spiritualist racket. Bloody good, too. People called him the Seer of London and believed he had magic powers. Made a fortune.”

“Good heavens. Really?”

Susan nodded. “I grew up in the Golden Lane rookery. My mother died when I was, I don’t know, six or so, and then I was on my own until Justin took me out of the gutter and made me his accomplice. I was eight or nine by then, probably. He taught me how to pick pockets and fool marks, how to do the tricks that made the fraud work. We took hundreds of pounds off people who thought he could talk to the dead.”

Alec’s mouth was hanging open. He closed it.

“And he also taught me to read and write and talk proper,” Susan said. “He fed me and housed me and looked after me—and took in my friend too, because I asked, even though she wasn’t any real use to him. I wanted to work with him forever, to become a medium myself. I can still do it, you know. I could hold a seance now and you’d swear the dead were speaking.”

Alec had a sudden picture of Susan presiding at the seance table, summoning up his mother’s spirit, or that of the Duchess’s first husband, intoning ghostly accusations. He almost wished she would. “So how on earth did you become private detectives?”

“Long story. We got mixed up in a murder case, and everything went arsewards in the most spectacular way. But as part of that, the guvnor met a good—well, a good man, actually.” Alec swung round at that. She gave him a quick smile. “Nathaniel, the other guvnor. He’s got principles, and lives up to them, and once they’d found each other, it changed everything. The guvnor walked away from Spiritualism, from all of it, went straight, and the next thing I knew he was sending me to school. He paid for me to have the best possible education so I could have a respectable occupation or a nice middle-class marriage. And then he took me on in the agency anyway because that was what I wanted.”

“But he and, uh, your other guvnor. Are they still together?” Please, Alec found himself thinking. He wanted to know it was true, that it was possible. Please.

Susan grinned. “More than twenty years, and they haven’t stopped arguing yet. But listen, Alec. Anyone would look at all that and say, well, the good man reformed the bad one. Yes?”

“I suppose so.”

“But everything Justin did for me, he was doing it long before he met Nathaniel. He looked after me in his own way from the moment he saw me, even if it wasn’t the right way by most standards. Nathaniel didn’t find one single thing in Justin that wasn’t already there, and nobody on earth could have redeemed my guvnor if he hadn’t felt like redeeming himself. I say redemption,” she added, “but he’s still the devious bastard he always was. He just turns it against different people now.”

“I see,” Alec said, nonplussed.

“The guvnor never changed: he just did things differently. And if I’d told him to stick his school up his arse and gone to work for another spiritualist—and I could have, I was really good at my trade—or even if Nathaniel had walked out on him, I don’t think he’d have gone back to the table-rapping. He made a decision and he stuck with it, and that was all him. And the reason I’m telling you this is, when someone was going to become a better person, but you didn’t do what they wanted, so now the rotten things they do are your fault?” She tapped Alec’s knee lightly. “Pile of shit. If Crozier wants to dig up some human decency from under whatever rock he’s buried it, he’ll do it with or without you. And if he doesn’t, nothing you could say or do would change him. Don’t flatter yourself.”

Alec blinked. “You don’t mince your words, do you?”

“You should meet the other guvnor.”

He could see why Cara had liked her so much. Susan’s sharp intelligence and fearsomely uncompromising nature must have felt like a lifeline to a woman raging against a wrong the world refused to acknowledge. “I’m still not sure I agree, though. It’s asking a lot to say people shouldn’t be affected by others.”

“I didn’t say not to be affected. You might feel and think a lot of things you can’t help. But the only thing that counts is what you do, and we’re all capable of controlling that. Crozier, and my guvnor, and the Duchess, and you.”

Alec rubbed his face. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know if I’ve done terribly well. Certainly not by Jerry.”

“Crozier’s first instinct when he realised what was going on was to hit you where he could hurt you worst. I dare say he knew I wasn’t going to make a fuss about who you share a bed with, but that was still the act of a stone-cold bastard, and I’d bear that in mind if I were you. He’s lost nothing but a bit of pride and a lot of diamonds that weren’t his to take. Don’t waste any tears on him. He’s not worth it.”

Alec sighed. “I’ll try.”

“Good. May I see your drawings?”

Alec handed over the sketchbook. Susan flipped through it, and Alec winced to see quite how often he’d drawn Jerry’s face, but she made no comment until she came across a pencil sketch of Cara. “Oh. When did you do this?”

“Last month. It’s from memory.”

“It’s very good.” Susan looked at the pencil image, the corners of her mouth pulling down for a second. “Very like her. At least, in some moods.”

“Like Mother too,” Alec said. He hadn’t intended it, but he’d thought of Cara on that evening when he’d haltingly confessed kissing another boy and the growing, terrifying certainty it had brought. She’d held him then, whispering comfort and reassurance, just as Mother had when he’d fallen and knocked out a tooth. They’d both said, I love you, and Everything will be all right, and even though he’d known the words could do nothing, they’d meant everything. “They were very alike.”

“She looks tired,” Susan said. “God, I miss her.”

“So do I.”

Susan touched the corner of the picture. “We’ll nail them, Cara, me and your brother.” It came out bruvver, her accent slipping steeply and unexpectedly down the register. “Like we promised.”

“Yes,” Alec said. “It’s what we’re here for.”

They sat in silence together, then Susan gave herself a brisk shake. “Right. I’ve a meeting with the steward to talk about security for the dinner. Chin up. We’ll be through it soon.”

She left Alec sitting in the garden, wondering what to do. He’d known he had no part to play beyond getting the men they needed to Castle Speight; for all Susan’s “me and your brother”, he was just one of the tools with which she was constructing her trap. Even so, excluded from Jerry’s council and with nothing to offer Susan, he felt himself to be as useless as any Lord Alexander drifting around the clubs and racetracks, and that feeling didn’t dissipate throughout the afternoon.

More guests arrived: a railway magnate named Ayres who seemed overwhelmed with the grandeur of his surrounds, and Sir William Cooke. The latter was standing in the hall as Alec came downstairs, miserably arm in arm with Jerry, for pre-prandial drinks. He was looking at the Stubbs paintings, and Alec recognised the expression on his face at once.

He disengaged himself from Jerry and went up to the older man. “That is rather a beauty, isn’t it?”

“The racehorse?” Sir William enquired with a touch of sarcasm.

“Well, yes. The anatomical accuracy, the sheen of the coat, and on the hooves. I’ve heard a story that when Stubbs was finishing his painting of Whistlejacket, the canvas was propped against the stable wall and the horse took one look at the raging stallion depicted and tried to attack it.”

“It’s certainly a masterpiece of realism.”

“More than that, though. There’s the emotion, the sensitivity. We can see the feelings in his animals’ eyes, as well as in the twists and tensions of their bodies.” Alec indicated the canvas. “This isn’t only a racehorse, it’s a sportsman, or even a performer. Poised to run, all tension and excitement.

Sir William’s brows were raised. “You seem to know what you’re talking about. Lord Alexander, is it?”

“That’s right. I studied at South Kensington. I do illustration work for some publishers.” He didn’t mention the papers.

“That’s right,” Sir William said. “His Grace mentioned that. You know I bought these for him?”

“I did not.” Cooke was an art dealer, one of the “gentlemanly patron” sort rather than the “sordid financial transaction” variety. He looked prosperous on it, nevertheless. “I associated you more with the Peaks and Lakes painters. Romney, Raven, Ansdell.”

Cooke nodded. “That’s right. Ansdell is sadly underrated to my mind.”

They moved into the drawing room, discussing landscape artists. Lady Cooke, who was evidently as knowledgeable as her husband, joined in, and so, somewhat to Alec’s surprise, did Lady Maitland, who turned out to collect watercolours. Since the Ayres and the Forbes were acquaintances, by the time the Duke and Duchess made their entrance, the party was lively and even noisy.

It continued so. Alec rather thought that Mrs. Forbes had had her fill of patronage yesterday, and simply having more people present made it harder for their Graces to insist that everyone hang on their pronouncements. Sir William Cooke even made some remark congratulating the Duke on Alec’s knowledge, and suggesting that artistic sense must run in the family, which the Duke greeted with a small bow and the Duchess with a stony lack of response.

“I’d be proud to think so,” Alec said. “I must say, the Castle Speight collection has become something quite extraordinary under Her Grace’s direction.”

“You don’t have anything on the walls yourself?” Sir William suggested jovially.

“Oh, I don’t think I could aspire to any such honour.”

“You do underrate yourself, old fellow,” Jerry said, across the table. “I dare say you haven’t told anyone that Sir Frederic Leighton himself advised you to submit to the next Royal Academy show.”

Alec had indeed not told anyone, because it wasn’t true. His immediate open-mouthed reaction was drowned in a chorus of congratulations; he clamped his lips shut and tried to look modest.

“And you probably haven’t mentioned the portrait either,” Jerry added as the hubbub died down. “Really, when it comes to hiding one’s light under a bushel—”

“What portrait is this?” Sir William asked.

“Of the Moreton family,” Jerry said promptly. “I believe Alec drew Lady Penelope—for some reason.” He flickered a wink. “The Earl was immensely taken with the work and has asked him to paint the whole family.”

“You are a portraitist?” the Duke asked, with a little frown. Alec saw Miss Hackett draw herself up, anticipating.

“That’s very interesting,” Sir William said. “Very interesting indeed. Do you work with an agent?”

“Er, no,” Alec said, with perfect truth. He had no idea what Jerry was doing. “Really, I haven’t done many at all. The Earl is very kind—”

“Undue modesty again, old man,” Jerry said. “I do try to tell him. Sir Frederic said you had a natural skill at seizing a likeness that he’d rarely seen.”

“But there’s so much more to portraiture than likeness,” Alec protested. He was beginning to panic.

“I’m sure you’re right. I make no claim to artistic appreciation; I only know what the experts say.”

“That’s a shame,” Lady Cooke remarked. “I was reflecting you’d make rather a good art dealer.”

Jerry joined in the general laugh at his expense with apparent good humour. “I don’t know about that, but I may tell you, I’ve had Alec sign a couple of sketches for me as an investment for my old age.”

That got another laugh. Jerry smoothly moved the conversation on to the Stubbs painting, and thus to racing. Alec sat back, wondering what that had been about, aware of his father’s eyes on him. It felt like he was being regarded with approval.

When they went up to bed at last, Jerry paused in the corridor and said, “Nightcap?”

“I think I’ve had enough.”

“Keep me company then,” Jerry said, with a friendly smile, and opened the door to Alec’s room, not his own.

Alec went in; Jerry shut the door behind them and turned.

“Right,” he said. “You need to draw the Duchess, or rather to have her sit for you. Talk to your father and confirm everything I said. He needs to think of you as an up-and-coming artist, not a jobber. Keep up the good work with Cooke. He’d give good money to act as agent to a lord painting lords, and your father trusts his judgement. Tell him about your paintings, get him on your side.”

“You seem to have missed something,” Alec said. “I’m an illustrator, not a portraitist! I haven’t completed a canvas since I was twenty.”

“Balls. You’re good enough.”

“Yes, well, thanks, but since you don’t know anything about the subject—”

“I know my subject. I need uninterrupted access to the Duchess’s rooms for at least an hour and a half and better two if you want the safe opened, searched, and left looking untouched, so you are going to pin the bloody woman down for me, however it suits you. Preliminary drawings for an oil painting, charcoals or sculpture: I do not care, so long as you keep her out of her damned rooms.”

“What if the servants come in?”

“Leave that to us. You just handle the Duchess.”

“But she hates me,” Alec said. “She truly does, she can scarcely look at me. She won’t want to sit for me.”

“She won’t want Lady Moreton having something she doesn’t, or for you to paint someone else here before her. Especially if there are other people clamouring to see you draw, which there will be. This is the dullest house party I’ve ever encountered: there’s no shooting, or hunting, nothing organised, and we’re miles from anywhere. Offer something interesting and people will leap on it. Get her jealous.”

Alec tried to imagine a scenario in which the Duchess would sit for him. “I could ask Father if I could draw her, as an anniversary gift?”

“Do that. And take your sketchbook downstairs to be admired tomorrow. Don’t wait to be asked.”

“Right.” Alec couldn’t stop his eyes from darting guiltily to the book. Jerry followed his gaze and picked it up. “It’s not ready!” he blurted. “I mean, I can’t, I need to—”

“Rubbish,” Jerry said, flicking back through the pages. “This looks just right. You can simply—” He stopped. Of course he did, because he was looking at a picture of himself.

Alec gave a second’s thought to wresting the book from him physically. He knew damned well he couldn’t, and in any case, he seemed entirely unable to move.

Jerry leafed through the book, page after page, unspeaking. There were the face studies, various sketches of eyes and eyebrows, and then he turned the page to reveal that accursed full-face drawing, and Alec decided he really did now want to die. He’d tried to catch Jerry’s expression in that long moment after they’d made love kissing—that intent look, the tenderness—and he’d put so much of his own yearning on the page that he didn’t believe any viewer could miss it.

Jerry looked at that picture for what seemed hours, face unreadable. He didn’t speak, he didn’t move, and Alec watched him, throat as constricted as though Jerry’s hand was gripping it tight.

At last he closed the sketchbook, though he still didn’t look up. “You’ll have to take a few of those out.”

“Yes,” Alec said, stifled.

Jerry nodded slowly, and then his head rose, his eyes met Alec’s, and Alec couldn’t breathe at all. They stared at each other for seconds, or hours, and then Jerry stepped forward, taking Alec’s chin in his hand, forcing his head up.

“You owe me,” he said, very softly.

Alec tried to nod against the pressure of the firm hand. Jerry’s eyes narrowed. Alec swallowed, and felt his throat move against Jerry’s palm. “Yes.”

Jerry was entirely still for a few seconds longer, poised and tense, then he released Alec’s neck, grabbed his shoulder, turned him and pushed. Alec found himself stumbling against the door, bracing himself with his hands.

“Just how you like it,” Jerry said in his ear, almost below hearing, and a hand came down to his waist buttons.

“There’s people,” Alec breathed. This was a corridor of guest rooms; the Maitlands and the Ayres were both along here.

“Then you’d better not make a sound.” Jerry’s fingers were working fast, pushing Alec’s drawers down. He kicked off his shoes and trousers, widened his stance, braced his forearm against the door, pressed his mouth against it. His heart thumped as though he’d been sprinting; he felt airless, overheated, and he couldn’t help a hiss as Jerry’s palm drew over his prick.

“I said quiet.” Jerry was barely audible even with his mouth at Alec’s ear. His hand slid over Alec’s stand. “I see you’ve been waiting for this. Are you going to be silent? It’s your disgrace at stake.” Alec nodded frantically. Jerry snarled in his throat. “Good. Stay.”

He stepped away. Alec stood, braced, bare, and as Jerry came back behind him, he heard voices in the corridor.

“Good,” Jerry said again, in his ear, and Alec felt the pressure of his prick seeking entrance. No preparation, except that he’d slicked himself liberally with something, and Alec bit down on his forearm, because the Chief Constable of the district was on the other side of the door, just up the corridor, chatting to Mr. and Mrs. Ayres. He could hear them quite clearly, and if he or Jerry made the unmistakable, guilty sounds of sex they’d hear him.

Jerry thrust, hard. Harder than you would if you wanted your partner to be quiet; punitively hard. Alec bit back the noise he wanted to make, aware of his breathing as horribly too loud, and felt Jerry’s arm round his chest, his other hand gripping Alec’s thigh. Jerry pushed in until he had Alec pinned, and then he started moving, in and out, and Alec couldn’t help a whimper.

Jerry let go his thigh, tugged at his hair to bring his head off his arm, and Alec had half a second to inhale before a hand came over his mouth.

And this was real control. Jerry was at once pinning him, silencing him, taking him ruthlessly hard, so all Alec could do was brace himself against the door and try not to let it bang. Jerry fucked him, his hand a hard intrusion over Alec’s mouth, his arm round Alec’s chest so tight he feared for his ribs. Nowhere near his stand, no relief given to Alec’s desperate need, and he stood used and helpless as Jerry drove savagely into him, and bit down on his shoulder as he spent.

It had taken no more than a minute or two. The other guests were still talking in the corridor.

Jerry took a long, soundless breath, his chest heaved, then he pulled out. Alec didn’t move. He didn’t think he could bear to turn and see Jerry’s face; he didn’t want to know. He was painfully hard, and he wasn’t sure he wanted Jerry to know that.

He heard the sound of water—Jerry cleaning himself up—and felt a wet cloth pressed into his hand. He’d be doing that himself, it seemed.

When he did finally turn around, gathering his clothes up in front of his groin as though that might confer some sort of decency, Jerry was leaning on the dressing table, both hands braced on the surface. His head was bowed.

“Er,” Alec said.

Jerry’s shoulders rose, taking a breath, then he straightened, turning away from the mirror. “Well,” he said, voice cheerily casual. “Thanks for the nightcap, old man, but I’m for bed now. Sleep well.”

“Goodnight,” Alec said automatically, and Jerry slipped out into the now-empty corridor without meeting his eyes.

Alec stood in his room, alone, naked from the waist down, aching and aroused. He’d expected to be left that way; he wished to God it had been accompanied by the menacing promises Jerry had given him on the train, the ones whose taunts were bound up in the fact that there would be a next time and something to wait for. Had Jerry denied him pleasure because he wanted to leave Alec frustrated, or simply because he didn’t care?

It didn’t matter. Or if it did, there was nothing to be done about it. Alec stood for a few moments, breathing deeply. Then he opened the window to let the smell of sex dissipate overnight, sat carefully down on his bed with his stupid bloody sketchbook, and began the slow process of tearing out everything that didn’t fit.

***

IN THE MORNING HE SPOKE to his father.

“You did not mention work as a portraitist,” the Duke said. Alec had hung around near the breakfast room until his father had emerged, and asked him for an interview. “I understood you were...” He made a little distasteful gesture to convey the degradation of paid employment.

“Yes, sir. I’ve been supporting myself with illustration, which hasn’t left as much time as I’d have liked for painting of this sort, but it’s something I have a great ambition to pursue, having had such kind responses to the work I have done.”

If they didn’t pull off their intention, this was going to be the most embarrassing and easily identified lie in the world. He couldn’t believe Jerry had let him in for this. Or perhaps he could.

“I hope that meets with your approval, sir,” he went on. “I don’t presume to compare myself with Sir Frederic, naturally, or Sir John Everett Millais. But they have both been honoured by Her Majesty for their art, and I do believe it isn’t an inappropriate field for a gentleman. As a, an interest, an occupation, rather than a livelihood.”

“I am glad you understand that,” the Duke said. “You say you are to paint the Countess of Moreton?”

“And her family, yes.”

“Hmph. I suppose this is related to your interest in the Moreton girl.”

“It all rather came up at the same time,” Alec said, with an embarrassed smile.

“You realise you will need my support for this marriage, if it is to take place. Or is she wealthy?”

“Not by your standards, sir. The estate is prosperous but not a great holding. I...would, yes, sir. I should wish to keep my wife in the manner to which she has been brought up. Of course, this is all rather thinking ahead; I haven’t yet spoken to her on the subject.”

“More importantly, I have not been fully consulted,” the Duke reminded him. “I shall consider the Moretons and let you know my opinion in due course. Meanwhile, I suppose there is no harm in you pursuing this interest. Many Pyne-ffoulkes have taken an active and distinguished role in public life.”

“Sir,” Alec agreed. “Thank you. Uh, there is one more thing. I wondered if you would consider it appropriate or welcome if I sought permission to paint Her Grace.”

“My duchess?” The Duke looked, for once, slightly startled. “Why?”

“Well, I would like to offer my effort as a token of my respect on your wedding anniversary. It won’t match your own tribute, but I can’t help that.” Alec actually elicited a small smile at that bit of flattery. “And for another—well, to be honest, sir, I’m desperate to paint her. She has such a fascinating face, from an artistic perspective—the planes of her cheeks, the character expressed in her features, along with the beauty of maturity, which is so much more interesting than young women’s beauty because it’s, oh, personal, and shaped by experience and by her innate nature. Do you know what I mean, sir?”

The Duke did not look at all as though he knew: he was staring at his son as though Alec were speaking Greek. Alec cursed internally: he should probably have praised the Duchess’s beauty as untouched by the ravages of time and left it there, instead of getting carried away. He pressed on. “It’s why I’m looking forward to painting Lady Moreton much more than Penny, because Penny is a blank canvas still, really, and her face shows that. Whereas a woman like the Duchess, grown into her character through adversity, in the dignity of her position and the experience of her life—well, that’s where faces become truly wonderful. Developed beauty. Don’t you think?” he finished desperately.

The Duke didn’t respond for another moment, then shook his head. “That is... That is extremely interesting, Alexander. Women are so determined to keep their youth, but I have always said my wife becomes more beautiful by the day. I have told her again and again that she is lovelier now than when we met. I didn’t realise other people saw it, that anyone else might recognise...” His voice trembled slightly as he tailed off. “Could you paint that? Her?”

“I don’t know if I’d be able, sir. But I can see how she should be painted—the spirit within the features, the eyes. I know exactly what I’d do, if I had the talent to match my subject.”

The Duke nodded. “We have never had a satisfactory portrait. She greatly dislikes the Burne-Jones work.”

“Could I do a sketch? If she’d sit for that, for me, and I could show you both what I mean?”

“I shall speak to her.” The Duke hesitated, then added, “Thank you, Alexander. I am most pleased we had this conversation.” He offered a small smile, one that looked almost hopeful, and Alec looked at his father and smiled back.