Chapter Eleven
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
That was Eve in demotic French, valet-clad with hair in a neat queue, walking into Nico’s bedroom at an ungodly hour. Or possibly a civilised hour if one hadn’t had an unreasonable amount of difficulty in getting to sleep because one had been fuming over people one should have punched in the face.
That, and half dreaming of other comforts he might have offered Titus.
Nico wasn’t used to self-restraint in these matters; it had never previously been required. People approached him, rarely with subtlety, and if he liked them, they went to bed. That was the advantage of a milieu of theatre and gambling hells: People weren’t fussy.
Titus was—not fussy, Nico didn’t think that, but flinching.
He was undeniably reserved and diffident by nature, but there was something else there, something holding him back.
Perhaps he wasn’t a man’s man usually, or had never acted on his desires?
Not that he’d ever voiced desires to Nico, but he didn’t have to.
Nico had a lifetime’s experience of being found desirable, and knew it when he saw it written all over an open, yearning face.
He didn’t think inexperience was the problem.
Rather, Titus seemed wary, almost fearful.
A run-in with the brutal, overbearing laws of this country?
Something bad in his past? Nico hoped it was no more than a concern that he might be rejected.
Titus clearly had no idea how appealing he was, how his shy smile could turn wicked, the big eyes intent, tantalizing Nico with the thought of how he would look when he fucked.
Maybe Titus needed a clear invitation. Maybe Nico should give him one.
No, he should not. He was living on Titus’s money while lying to him, which was bad enough; bedding him in the knowledge of how badly he was going to let him down would be the act of a scoundrel and a shit.
Nico was unavoidably the former; he didn’t want to be more of the latter than he could avoid.
And he could avoid it, he was sure, if he could just get the money elsewhere …
“Oi,” Eve said. “Are you awake? I said—”
“I heard. And I’m not doing anything,” Nico pointed out. “I’m still asleep. Are you bringing me tea?”
“Fuck off.”
“I hope you’re a better valet to the man who pays your wages.”
“Fuck off.”
“I doubt you’re being a valet at all. You’re too busy whispering in corners with the pretty maid.”
“Fuck off,” Eve said again, though this time with a grin. “She is beautiful, isn’t she? And clever with it, and so funny—”
Nico dropped his arm over his face. “Oh God, you’re in love again.”
“Really fuck off. She’s gorgeous, but it’s more than that. I can talk to her, Nic.”
“Not too frankly, I hope.”
Eve glowered. “I’m not a fool. We’re just—you know when you can rattle on for hours about nothing at all, and it feels like it was five minutes and every word mattered?”
Nico bit back thoughts of recent rambling conversations of his own. “Yes, yes, fine, she’s marvellous, you’re smitten, she’s the one. Noted. Just remember you’re a valet and she’s the butler’s daughter, all right? At least till we’ve paid off this debt.”
“I’m not the one hanging about on that.” Eve sat on the bed. “Seriously, what are you doing? Because it looks like you’re lolling about having fun with your new friend, but we only have a month, and it’s been more than a week already! What’s going on? Are you working on him buying the goods?”
They were speaking the tongue of the Paris back streets at a rapid pace, and Nico was quite sure nobody in the household could understand a word.
He still felt an urge to say, Keep your voice down.
“No,” he said. “I’m talking to those collectors you found, Sir James Roud and George Rankin.
I’ve written to Roud, and I had a talk with Rankin last night, at the Farjeons’ rout.
” He’d been applying flattery, hints, and cozenage with a lavish hand, thinking of nothing but selling the painting, while Titus, unprotected, had been robbed at the dice table.
He was unhappy about that. “I’m doing my best, but people don’t like to be rushed into spending stupid money. I have to give them time.”
“So in the meantime you might as well have fun?”
“Look, Titus is giving us room and board. I need to earn my keep. And I have to do something while I’m waiting.”
“Yeah, I know.” Eve sagged suddenly. “Sorry. I’m being an arse.”
“A bit.”
“I hate leaving it all to you like this. I’d rather be doing something. And I wish I wasn’t lying to Alma because she really is special, Nic. I wish you could talk to her.”
“I’d like to,” Nico said, not bothering to point out that Titus’s house guest could absolutely not seek out Titus’s housemaid for private conversation. Eve already knew that. “When this is over.”
“I want it to be over, so much. Jacky Gaskin scares the shit out of me.”
“Same.”
“I’m dreaming about it,” Eve said thinly.
“When Gaskin lent me the money, he had this woman brought in for punishment at the same time. I don’t want that to be me, Nic.
She was screaming, there was this man dragging her out, nothing I could have done even if I had the guts— Fuck.
Taking his money was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
I was so angry at Baynes, and it seemed such a brilliant idea. ”
“It always does,” Nico said. “Next time you have a brilliant idea, I’m going to sit on your head till you calm down.”
“And I am grateful for all you’re doing, truly; I just want you to do it faster. Can’t you wave a magic wand and make it happen?”
“Left it in Paris.”
“Typical.” Eve set slim shoulders, shrugging off the mood. “How was Rankin, anyway?”
Nico grimaced in lieu of reply. “They’re a greasy lot, aren’t they?”
“What, collectors? Yeah. It’s the drooling, isn’t it?”
“It’s revolting. You mention Marie Antoinette, and they go weird in the eyes.
The woman’s dead, for God’s sake, and she didn’t have a chin when she was alive, but from the way they talk about her— Baynes couldn’t stop slavering about her bosom, which was bad enough, but Rankin started on about her neck.
Her smooth white neck extended for the soft kiss of the guillotine. He actually said that.”
“Eurgh,” Eve said, with both accuracy and economy.
“I don’t know if that means they deserve to be cheated of a fortune, but—” Nico paused to summarise the ethical nuances of his position. “Fuck ’em. Look, don’t panic. I’ll follow up with Rankin, I’ll meet Roud soon, and—oh God—I’ll write to Baynes again.”
“Seriously?”
“I daresay he’s regretting letting the painting go by now. I’ll tell him the offer’s still open, see if we get anywhere. He can send the money by messenger, though: I’m not going near the maniac. I will make this work, Eve. I can’t make you rich—”
“I don’t care about being rich. I don’t even care about revenge. I just want to get out of this mess before Gaskin’s men hammer nails into my knees.”
“That won’t happen,” Nico said. “I promise.”
Nico turned over ideas and possibilities as he came downstairs for breakfast. Titus was already there, nursing a cup of tea.
“Good morning,” he said, with a diffident smile that was far more appealing than it had a right to be. “Let me ring for your coffee. Did you sleep well?”
“Very, thank you. And you?”
Titus sighed. “Not really. I thought a great deal about what you said, and I believe you were right. I am overwrought, and I need to restore my balance of mind and reconsider what I am doing. I wondered— But first, would it be very rude of me not to go to Mrs. Spode’s afternoon tea today? I did say I would attend.”
The Spodes had three daughters on the market, and a hefty sense of the respect due to their well-connected family. They would be enraged if Titus failed to present his purse for their consideration. “Not in the slightest,” Nico said untruthfully.
“Good. In that case— You see, I was fourteen when I came to London and had no money or time to explore. I have barely looked around or taken a holiday since. I have never had an ice at Gunter’s, or seen the Egyptian Hall, or the wild beasts at the Tower, or visited Westminster Abbey, or seen the Panorama, or walked in Hyde Park, or been to the gardens at Kew, or to Greenwich or any of it. ”
“You have seen nothing, and you should like to see—?”
“Everything,” Titus said. “I thought about what I wanted to do with myself, and I don’t quite know that yet, but I know I want a holiday. I have had quite enough of playing at being a gentleman.”
“But you have not been doing that,” Nico said. “You have been working at it.”
Titus gave a surprised huff of laughter. “Yes, perhaps that’s true. I’m so used to working, I scarcely know how else to go on. I’m not even sure I know how to take a holiday. Er, by which— Are you busy today?”
“A few letters I must write; nothing more. Why?”
“Well, I wondered—only if you’d care to, of course—might you like to come sightseeing?”
Titus looked hopeful, and determined, and he was wearing the deliciously violet waistcoat on which Nico had insisted, and really, after he’d sent his letters, he couldn’t do anything useful today. “Mon ami, there is nothing I should like more.”
Nico had never been a tourist of his own accord.
“Holiday” was not a useful concept to a man who lived on a combination of his wits and the skin of his teeth, and it had never occurred to him to go anywhere in London that wasn’t in service of his goals.
But he had once been obliged to act as a dragoman and show an English nobleman the sights of Paris, so he knew the sort of thing one did, and he was nothing if not resourceful.
A quick trip to the nearest bookseller secured a copy of The Picture of London for 1810, which was a little out of date but had an excellent table of contents.
Titus drew up a list while Nico composed his letters.