Chapter 13
“Mr. William Harcourt, Your Grace. He says he wrote to you regarding a manuscript.”
Evander looked up from the estate ledger.
He had a vague memory of a letter, something about a first edition of Selden’s Table Talk, the copy his grandfather had acquired at auction, which had been gathering dust in the library for the better part of forty years.
An academic inquiry, polite and formal, with the kind of careful penmanship that suggested a scholar accustomed to making requests of men who outranked him.
“Send him in.”
Harding stepped aside, and a young man entered the study.
He was perhaps twenty-seven, lean and fair-haired, with the kind of face that would have been unremarkable in any university reading room in England.
His coat was well-made but not expensive, his boots polished but showing wear at the heels.
He carried a leather satchel over one shoulder and held his hat in both hands, turning it between his fingers.
“Your Grace.” Harcourt bowed. “Thank you for seeing me. I realize this is an imposition.”
“You mentioned Selden.” Evander gestured to the chair opposite the desk. “Sit.”
Harcourt sat. His eyes moved briefly to the study door, then to the corridor beyond it, before returning to Evander. The glance was quick, but Evander noticed it.
“I’m completing a study on seventeenth-century legal philosophy for the Royal Society,” Harcourt said.
His voice was steady, but his fingers had not stopped working the brim of his hat.
“Your family’s copy of Table Talk is one of only three first editions known to survive.
I was hoping you might allow me to examine it and take some notes on it. ”
“You’re welcome to borrow it. I doubt anyone in this house has opened it since my grandfather died.” Evander rose and crossed to the bookshelf behind his desk.
The Selden sat on the top shelf between a volume of Blackstone and a Latin Bible that no one read. He pulled it down and blew a layer of dust from the spine.
“Return it within the month.”
Harcourt stood to receive it, and his satchel slipped from his shoulder, spilling a sheaf of papers across the carpet. He dropped to his knees to collect them, his face coloring.
“Forgive me, Your Grace. I’m not usually this clumsy.”
Evander studied the young man as he gathered his papers.
The nervousness was disproportionate to the situation.
A scholar borrowing a book from a private library was a routine enough transaction.
Harcourt’s hands were shaking, and his gaze kept drifting toward the open study door as though he expected someone to walk past.
“Is something the matter, Mr. Harcourt?” Evander asked.
“No. No, nothing at all.” Harcourt stuffed the papers into his satchel and stood. He accepted the Selden with both hands, holding it against his chest. “You are very generous, Your Grace. I will take excellent care of it.”
“See that you do.”
Harcourt bowed again, deeper this time, and retreated toward the door. On the threshold, he paused, his eyes cutting once more to the corridor, and Evander saw a shadow of worry and impatience cross the young man’s face. It was gone before Evander could assess it further.
“Good day, Your Grace.”
Harcourt left. His footsteps retreated down the corridor at a pace that suggested a man eager to be elsewhere. Evander heard Harding open the front door, and then the house settled back into its usual quiet.
Curious.
But a nervous academic borrowing a dusty book hardly ranked among his concerns at present. The Bow Street runner’s latest report sat unopened on the desk, and the Madame Fontaine lead needed pursuing, and the stitches in his arm pulled every time he reached for his pen.
Evander dismissed Harcourt from his thoughts and returned to work.
“You’re smiling.”
“I am not smiling.”
“Your mouth has moved. I saw it. That little upward twitch at the corner that you think no one notices.” Quentin leaned across the table and squinted at Evander with exaggerated scrutiny. “There. It happened again.”
“That is a grimace. I am grimacing at you.”
“A grimace goes downward, Blackholm. I attended Eton. I know the difference.”
Evander took a sip of his whisky, the only glass he would allow himself tonight, and set it down.
The club was busier than usual, the card room full, the billiard table occupied by two young lords making more noise than their game warranted. He and Quentin had secured their usual corner, two leather chairs angled toward the fire with a small table between them.
“You look less terrible than last time,” Quentin said. “The bar was admittedly low, but I’m choosing to take it as progress.”
“Your faith in me is overwhelming.”
“Someone has to have faith in you. You certainly don’t.” Quentin stretched his legs toward the fire and crossed his ankles. “How is the arm?”
“Stitched.”
“Dare I ask how it came to need stitching?”
“You may ask. I may not answer.”
“Naturally.” Quentin swirled his brandy. “And the wife?”
Evander’s fingers tightened around his glass. He relaxed them before Quentin could notice, which was pointless because Quentin always noticed.
“Mary is well.”
“Mary is well. Two weeks ago, she was ‘the Duchess.’ Now she is ‘Mary.’” Quentin raised his glass. “At this rate, you’ll be using pet names by Christmas.”
“I will throw this drink at you.”
“You will not. It’s a twenty-year single malt, and you’re only allowing yourself the one. You’d sooner throw me into the fire than waste the whisky.” Quentin grinned. “Am I wrong?”
Evander felt the corner of his mouth twitch again and covered it with another sip.
Quentin had the rare ability to make him feel human in spite of himself. They had known each other since they were twelve years old, two boys placed in the same house at Eton, and Quentin was the only person alive who had seen Evander cry.
Once. At fourteen, after a letter arrived reporting his father had dismissed the last of the senior staff in a drunken rage.
Quentin had sat beside him on the dormitory floor and said nothing for an hour, and then he had offered Evander half a stolen pie and told him his father was an ass, and the friendship had been sealed.
“Any word on Richard?” Quentin asked, his tone shifting.
“The Bow Street runner traced his debts to a boxing ring in Southwark. The bookkeeper there pointed me toward a pleasure house past Hampstead. I’ll go this week.”
“The arm came from the boxing ring, I take it.”
“The bookkeeper’s associates took offense to my line of questioning.”
“How many?”
“Three.”
Quentin nodded, as though three men in an alley were a minor scheduling conflict. “And they fared?”
“Worse than I did.”
“Good.” Quentin’s smile faded, and the easy charm gave way to something more serious. “Evander. You know I have to say this.”
“Then say it.”
“Richard may not want to be found.”
The fire crackled. Evander turned his glass on the table, watching the amber catch the light. He had considered this. In the small hours, lying awake with his stitches throbbing and the house silent around him, he had turned the possibility over and examined it from every angle.
“He left a child on my doorstep,” Evander said. “A child, Quentin. Whatever Richard wants, that boy deserves a father who is present and a mother who stays.”
“You’re giving him that. You and Mary.”
“I am not his father.”
“You’re the closest thing he has.” Quentin held up a hand before Evander could argue.
“I know. You don’t want to hear it. But from where I sit, you have a wife who is raising that child as though he were her own, and you are spending your nights getting knifed in alleys looking for a brother who left because he did not want to carry the weight.
At some point, you have to ask yourself whether finding Richard will actually solve anything, or whether it’s just another way of avoiding what’s already in front of you. ”
Evander said nothing for a long moment. The fire settled. The billiard players argued about a foul shot.
“You know why I married her,” Evander said.
“I know why you told yourself you married her. I was at the wedding, remember? I saw the way you looked at her when she walked toward the altar.” Quentin took a long pull of his brandy. “You looked the way men look when they realize they’re in far more trouble than they planned for.”
“You are imagining things.”
“I am imagining nothing. I am observing. It is what friends do when other friends are being idiots.” Quentin set down his glass and leaned forward.
“I have known you for almost twenty years, Blackholm. I have watched you manage an estate, a scandal, a brother who cannot stay out of trouble, and a household that would buckle under a lesser man. You are the most capable person I know. And you are using every ounce of that capability to avoid the one thing that actually matters.” He met Evander’s eyes.
“You are afraid. I suspect you would not tell me of what, if I asked. But whatever it is, it is costing you more than it is protecting you.”
Evander stared at his friend. The fire threw warm light across Quentin’s face, and the easy humor had gone entirely, replaced by something steady and unflinching.
“When did you become wise?” Evander asked.
“I have always been wise. You simply refuse to listen because I am also charming, and you find the combination suspicious.” Quentin picked up his glass again and leaned back.
“Go home. Kiss your wife. Hold the baby. Stop pretending you are made of stone, because I assure you, Blackholm, no one believes it. Least of all her.”
Evander finished his whisky. The glass was empty, and he would not order another.
One drink. Control in all things.
Except, it seemed, the things that mattered.
“Thank you,” he said.
Quentin raised an eyebrow. “Did you just thank me? Should I mark the date? Shall I commission a plaque?”
“Goodnight, Quentin.”
“Goodnight, you stubborn, infuriating man. Give my regards to your wife.”
Evander stood, collected his coat, and walked toward the door.