Chapter Twenty-Four
Nico was gone by the afternoon, slipping out of Titus’s life as easily as he’d slipped into it.
Perreau went with him, a lack Titus didn’t even consider because it was nothing to the gaping wound of Nico’s absence.
Why would he need a valet, anyway? Why would he want to take care of his appearance?
The last thing he needed was another lover, now or ever, since he clearly couldn’t pick a decent man to save his life.
He wrapped himself in the beautiful, bright embroidered banyan he’d bought with such joy on Nico’s encouragement. It didn’t help at all.
Titus vaguely considered writing to Augustus, and decided he didn’t care.
He did not want to let him know that the Comte de La Motte was a fraud and liar, and he was disinclined to beg forgiveness where he would never receive an apology.
Titus had had quite enough of that. Not just Henry, but even Nico, trying to shift the blame onto him. He was sick of them all.
A few days passed in a haze of misery. Titus answered letters in a mechanical sort of way, and fended off Mr. Thorpe’s cautious expressions of concern, and Mrs. Thorpe’s increasing production of cake, which arrived in a variety of flavours as though she just needed to find the recipe that would make it all better.
Maybe she was really baking for Alma, who marched round the house with aggressive efficiency and a set face.
Titus had no idea if the Thorpes knew why he was devastated, and couldn’t summon up the energy to worry. He could hire more servants if these left him too.
He wished he had something to do. Work had been a refuge and a salvation through the turmoil of his relations with Henry; he simply hadn’t had the option to sit at home feeling sorry for himself.
He had that option now, so he cancelled his painting lessons and his appointments, even though he knew it would be better for him to keep them. He didn’t want to feel better.
Vespasian dropped by on the third day. Titus almost turned him away as he had turned away every other caller, but pulled himself together at least that far.
“Are you all right?” Ves asked almost as soon as he sat. “You look shocking.”
He wasn’t wrong. Titus had shaved in only the most perfunctory way, and made no effort with his appearance. He didn’t care to look in the mirror, because it would show him the lank-haired, downtrodden fool he thought he’d left behind. “I have been rather disappointed.”
Vespasian poured the tea without asking. That would have been an offensive assumption of authority from Augustus; it felt only like consideration from Vespasian. Just as Nico’s actions in finding Vespasian had been a gross overreach by any reasonable standards, yet had felt like an act of love.
He had to stop thinking about Nico.
Vespasian handed him a cup. “You argued with Augustus, I suppose?”
“No. Well, yes. He took very grave offence at something I did, but I had already asked him to leave, so I don’t really care. No, it was my friend—the Comte, you know—”
“Ah,” Ves said, as though he understood all.
“What does that mean?” Titus snapped.
“Well, to be honest, it means, ‘Ah, I thought he was a bit havey-cavey,’” Ves admitted. “What did he do?”
“He was lying all the time. About who he was, his past, everything.”
“Really? Damnation. After your money, I suppose?”
“No. Yes. I’m not sure. He was trying to sell Augustus a forged painting, and I had to buy it to stop him.”
“What did you do that for?” Vespasian demanded. “Serve that blowhard fool right to waste his money. So your fellow—the Comte—is a forger?”
“He’s a forgery,” Titus said. “He’s not a comte, or a La Motte, or anything. I think he’s probably an actor. He told me that he’d been one.”
“Oh, without doubt; we spoke a little on the subject. Well, that’s a damned enterprising fellow. But what was he doing if he wasn’t after your money?”
“He was after money. He was in debt to a moneylender. I’d have given him what he needed if he asked!” Titus blurted, on a rush of pain.
Ves gave him a compassionate look that hurt. “Did he not know that?”
“I … don’t know. He claimed he didn’t want to ask me for it.
He didn’t ask me for it, not until the end, and even then he looked— I could believe he didn’t want to steal from me, Ves.
I want to believe that. But then, I wanted to believe Augustus regretted our estrangement, and I wanted to believe— Well, it doesn’t matter.
I have spent too long telling myself that people who are mistreating me mean well. ”
“We were trained to lie down and be trodden on,” Vespasian said.
“And it is important not to do that. But, you know, I found that I was going rather too far the other way. I was so used to being pushed aside and so tired of it that I took to pushing people rather hard myself, sometimes people who didn’t merit it.
Well, I pushed you away for years. And Elizabeth had to have some very stern words with me when we started courting. ”
“You think I was wrong?” Titus said, trying not to feel a tiny surge of hope at the thought. “Are you saying I should forgive him?”
“Good heavens, Titus, I have no idea if you should forgive him. I have no idea what he’s done or why, and my opinion scarcely matters.
I merely observe that this forgery of a man put a lot of work into finding me, and making sure I was worthy to be found.
Maybe that was part of some sort of complicated plot to gain your trust, and he had nefarious intent all along, but I am still grateful he did it.
You needn’t call yourself a fool for trusting a man who went to such lengths to be good to you. ”
Titus’s throat was too thick with tears to reply. Vespasian reached out and gripped his hand, and they sat in silence, comforting and perhaps a tiny bit comforted, until Vespasian broke it with, “Anyway, tell me about Augustus. Is he as self-righteous as ever?”
It was a tonic of a visit. Titus washed his face afterwards, replied to an invitation from Mr. Angerstein that he had ignored for two days, and dressed with rather more care than he had taken in a while.
He ought to speak to Mr. Thorpe about finding a valet: Doubtless he knew someone.
Titus might feel as though all the colour and warmth had been leached from his life, but he still had friends, and interests, and a lot of things that would one day feel like pleasures again. He would pull himself together.
It helped that he felt a touch less stupid now.
As Vespasian said, Nico had given Titus good reason to trust him.
He’d been a stalwart support, rescued him from any number of situations, helped him put his feet on what felt like a new path in life, and never, until the end, made him feel lesser, or at fault.
Until the end. That still stung painfully. Why couldn’t you tell me the truth? he’d demanded, and Nico had retorted, Why couldn’t you tell me the truth about Henry? It was a tactic worthy of Henry himself, responding to any accusation with an attack of his own.
And it wasn’t remotely the same thing. Titus hadn’t been obliged to tell Nico about Henry: They hadn’t been lovers then.
He’d done nothing wrong by keeping it private, even if it would have been far more sensible to put the matter in Nico’s hands sooner.
The fact was, he’d been ashamed to admit the sordid truth to a man he’d wanted to think well of him, and it was impossible that Nico, who read him like a book, would not have known that—
Titus sat in his bedroom, with the realisation sinking in.
He’d said, Why couldn’t you tell me the truth? And Nico had replied, Why couldn’t you tell me the truth about Henry? to which the only possible answer was, I was ashamed.
It hadn’t been an accusation to deflect him.
It had been an admission: Nico hadn’t told him the truth because he’d been silenced by shame, in a way Titus knew all too well.
And Titus had heard it as a rhetorical weapon, and he’d cut off the conversation rather than let himself be sucked into the whirlpool of another manipulative man, and—oh Christ—Nico had left without argument or protest. He’d been told to go and he went, because he might be a forgery and a liar, but he wasn’t a Henry.
“Hell’s teeth,” Titus said aloud. Then he went to find Alma Thorpe.
She was dusting the parlour in a savage manner. Titus checked that Mr. Thorpe wasn’t in earshot, came in, and closed the door. “Alma?”
“Yes, sir?” she snapped.
“Er,” Titus said. “Look, I daresay this is awkward, but—did Perreau leave an address?”
Alma turned from her dusting with a comical look of incredulity. “A what? Sir.”
“I think I need to speak to Nico. The Comte. Well, he’s clearly not a comte, but—”
“They’re not anything, either of them. Rotten, lying pair of…” She finished that on a wordless snarl, and whacked a vase with the duster so hard it rocked.
“Yes, but I still need to speak to him. And he didn’t leave me an address so I wondered— I suppose they’re together? Unless they’ve left for France,” Titus finished with a pulse of alarm. “I would like to speak to him before they go.”
“If you think it will do you any good, sir, he did leave an address. But Pa will fly into the boughs if that pair come round here. He’d wring both their necks for a penny.”
“I respect your father’s judgement very much,” Titus said. “But—” He considered and discarded pointing out that it was his house. “I do want to talk to the—to him. I think I’m owed an explanation.”
“Aren’t we both, sir?”
It was a rhetorical question, which Titus chose to answer directly. “Yes. We are. So perhaps you can help us get it?”