Chapter Twenty-Two
Nico had had a wonderful night, just him and Titus in a room together. It was the next morning, as soon as he’d headed downstairs, that things had started to go wrong.
Eve had grabbed him wordlessly in the hall and dragged him into the mews behind the house, where Alma stood, tense and tear-stained, with two large men. One held a knife too near her neck. It seemed that Jacky Gaskin wasn’t waiting for his money with patience.
“Take that knife from her throat,” Nico said with more calm than he felt. “Do it now.”
“It’s her throat or yours,” remarked a seedy sort of man leaning against the wall. “Want to volunteer?”
“What’s this about? I told Gaskin I’d get his money! I have till tomorrow!”
“He told you he’d remind you. This is the reminder.”
One of the thugs grinned and pulled on Alma’s arm. She gave a terrified, hiccupy gasp.
“Let her go,” Eve and Nico said in chorus, and Eve went on, “This is nothing to do with her!”
“You think Jacky cares whose fault it is? This ain’t the Bench, and he ain’t a magistrate. And if we need to prod your girl with a bit of cold iron to make the point—get it? Make the point?”
“Brilliant,” Nico said through his teeth. “You are Grimaldi himself. Get the fuck off her!”
He moved as he spoke, flicking out the navaja.
The vicious rattle took the knifeman’s attention, and Eve dived in, pulling Alma away.
The knifeman lunged; Nico recoiled, but not fast enough.
He felt the scratch of a blade under his chin, twisted, slashed, missed, and felt pain sear across his other, outflung palm.
“Oi!” the seedy man said. “If Jacky wants him dead, he’ll tell you! And you, Frenchy, stop pissing about.”
The knifeman growled and stopped his advance. He didn’t lower his knife, though, and Nico had no illusions about who would win if he restarted the fight. The seedy man shook his head in disgust. “What a fuss. Money, tomorrow. No more playing the fool.”
Alma had taken the whole thing surprisingly well.
That was to say, she cried a little, cursed Jacky Gaskin and his men at length, and then turned her fire on Nico and Eve with a really admirable vocabulary for a well-brought-up girl.
It was far better than going into a fit of hysterics, which was what Nico felt like doing.
He was out of time. Out of road. Nowhere else to go.
He’d left Eve to calm her down with kisses and promises that he hoped to God wouldn’t be lies. And then he’d come back to the house, braced to tell the truth and see everything fall apart, and realised that Titus wasn’t there, but Chilcott Baynes was.
Nico had suggested in his last letter to Baynes that Titus Pilcrow, the famously wealthy art collector, wanted to buy the painting, and the lie had only sodding worked. Baynes had turned up at the last minute, like a murderous deus ex machina. Nico could have kissed him.
And then Baynes had started rambling about the value of the painting, Augustus’s ears had pricked up, and out of nowhere Nico had two buyers competing.
He’d sell it to Baynes if he possibly could.
But Augustus would drive up the price, and Nico would have the money he needed, and in the teeth of all probability, at the very last minute, he was going to get away with this.
He’d played and held his nerve and won. Every nerve in his body was vibrating like a violin string with tension and excitement and fear.
Titus was examining the portrait closely. That was nothing to worry about. Titus always looked closely at paint, the texture and colour and brushstrokes, and the forger was, on Eve’s telling, the best Le Brun imitator in the business. He’d certainly cost enough.
Augustus had launched into an orotund speech about how Nico was Titus’s friend, which he probably hoped would get him a discount. Titus cut across him as though he wasn’t there. “When was this done? That is, to be evidence of the Queen’s involvement, it must have been painted from life, yes?”
“Excuse me, I was speaking!”
“The spring of 1785,” Nico said, ignoring Augustus. “The Queen received the necklace in February, I believe, and the scandal erupted in summer.”
Titus was looking at the painting, not at him. Nico felt a tiny cold prickle down his spine which he tried to ignore. “And when did your family get it?”
“I cannot say precisely. I have no provenance beyond my memories, gentlemen,” he added with a frank smile.
“My mother had it from the Queen, though when and how I do not know, and passed it to my father for safekeeping. It has been with us all my life. No matter how humble our lodgings, my father always hung it on the wall to remind us of the source of our misfortune. I will be glad to let it go into the history books.”
“Two thousand,” Baynes said.
“Two thousand, two hundred,” Augustus retorted.
“Augustus, I don’t think—” Titus began.
“It is scarcely your concern. Two thousand two hundred pounds, sir.”
“Guineas,” Baynes said through his teeth.
“Two thousand four hundred pounds,” Augustus said.
There was a short pause as everyone calculated the mathematics of pounds to guineas. Nico raised a brow at Baynes. Come on, come on, don’t make me sell it to Titus’s brother …
“I see the son of the harlot is as grasping as she. Two thousand five hundred pounds,” Baynes said.
“Guineas!” Augustus returned explosively.
“Ten thousand pounds,” Titus said.
Several jaws dropped. Nico said, “No—”
“Ten thousand pounds. You say it is worth several times the price offered today, and of course I trust your word.”
“May I speak to you, mon ami?”
Augustus had been gobbling like a turkey, speechless with outrage.
Now he exploded. “This is beyond anything! How dare you? It is the clearest spite! Because you are no longer a beggar, you must flaunt your wealth in this obscene manner and make a parade of your riches simply to score a point off me. Oh, you show your true colours now.”
Titus didn’t reply. He was looking at Nico. Nico would have liked to read the look as You are my prince, and I have made this wonderful gesture to save your family heirloom. He couldn’t make himself believe it.
Baynes’s mouth was working. “Mr. Pilcrow, this is a great sum. Will you not reconsider?”
“No.”
“But I came down from the country to buy it! I want it!”
Titus ignored that. “Ten thousand pounds, Comte.”
“This is a contemptible display,” Augustus said with spittle, turned on his heel, and marched out. Titus didn’t watch him go. His eyes were still on Nico.
“I feel an obligation to Mr. Baynes,” Nico said desperately. “I promised it to him; he should have first refusal—”
“Yes! I should!”
“I have offered you four times the nearest price,” Titus said. “If Mr. Baynes cannot match it, the picture is mine. If he can match it…” He shrugged slightly. “I can pay more.”
Mr. Baynes launched into an impassioned speech in which the importance of the painting, the moral character of the La Motte family, and the dead queen’s bosom all played significant if confused parts.
Titus stepped to the door mid-rant and called for Mr. Thorpe.
Mr. Baynes was escorted out without ceremony, and Titus and Nico were left in a room, staring at one another.
“Titus—”
“Why did you not tell me that you were in debt?” Titus said over him.
“Mr. Thorpe said you were attacked this morning—that Alma and Perreau were attacked because of you. I knew you were in need of money: I have been wondering how to broach the subject. But why did you not tell me, when I have not hesitated to pile all my problems on you? Why did you let it go this far?”
“Mon ami, I inserted myself into your troubles,” Nico said. He needed to be thinking ahead of wherever the conversation was going, but he couldn’t seem to focus. His thoughts were sludgy with panic. “I wanted to deal with my own debts.”
“I would have given you whatever you need. If you had told me, I am in trouble, I would happily have helped you. And instead, Alma was threatened!”
Nico’s stomach was a painful knot. “I didn’t want to ask you. It was a problem of my own making, which I intended to solve—”
“By selling the painting,” Titus said. “Your family heirloom. The proof of your mother’s innocence and the Queen’s guilt.”
“I don’t care about long-dead people fighting over diamonds.” He met Titus’s eyes, praying his own showed sincerity. “I just want to pay my debt and be done with it.”
“Then why— Oh, but you did try and sell it to me, didn’t you? When we first met, you told me all about it. Of course you wanted me to buy it then, but I wasn’t interested.”
“I had been looking for a buyer for some time,” Nico said. “Should I not have considered you?”
“It’s very natural you should, since I had inherited a fortune you thought would be yours.”
Nico wasn’t sure where that came into it, and didn’t like it. “I am not Laxton, Titus. I do not want your money, and I have not asked for it.”
“No,” Titus said. “No, that’s what I am finding very hard to understand.
Because you could have had what you wanted for the asking, as a gift or a loan or payment for a painting, as you pleased.
But instead you kept the truth from me all this time, and put Alma and Perreau in danger by it. How much do you need?”
“Titus—”
“I promised Mr. Thorpe I would deal with it. What do you need to pay this debt?”
His tone was implacable, and Nico could feel everything collapsing, even if he wasn’t sure exactly why.
Could he just admit everything now? But what if Titus declined to pay when he’d heard it all? What if he lost his last chance and his lover together, and couldn’t save Eve at the end of it?
He’d always known he wouldn’t get away with this. He’d just wished so hard he might that he had let himself believe it was possible.
“Two thousand pounds,” he said, and hated the weak, defeated sound of his voice.
“I will go to the bank,” Titus said. He hesitated, as though he wanted to add something, and then he left.
Nico would have liked to go to his room, curl up on the bed around the misery, and come to terms with everything falling apart. He couldn’t, because Augustus was still stamping around up there.
He sat on the settle for want of the energy to move, a ball of wretchedness, for what felt like hours.
He heard Augustus in the hall, making a great parade of the fact that he intended to leave without bidding his brother farewell, and took a tiny bit of comfort from Mr. Thorpe’s blank “I’m afraid Mr. Pilcrow has gone out. ”
And then Titus came back in, and Nico’s stupid heart jumped even though he knew nothing had changed.
He looked tired and drawn, though at least he wasn’t worn down with the helpless misery Henry Morris had evoked. And if that was Nico congratulating himself on not having done worse to the man he loved, he probably deserved all the consequences coming his way.
They stared at each other, then Titus said, “Here,” and handed Nico a note on his bank. “Two thousand pounds for the painting.”
Nico took it, but didn’t pocket it. “Wait. Mon ami, can we—”
“I think you should settle your debts first. That seems to be the most urgent matter. We can speak later.”