Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Charlie struggled to make sense of everything that had been said since they’d met Margaret climbing out the window.
It seemed like she had made her flight years ago, though it could not have been more than half an hour.
Certainly not enough time for the maid to fetch any sort of policeman or constable.
Which meant there was no choice but for him and Jonathan to stay where they were and take their chances on their own.
“Pack up everything,” Jonathan said with a stony face, locking the door and heading straight for the table where his equipment was already neat and tidy. “I have no idea how we’ll manage it, but we need to leave this place as soon as we can.”
“How?” Charlie asked, rushing to help take all of the exposed plates down from the shelf where they were waiting.
Jonathan pinched his face and shook his head. He was exhausted, Charlie could tell, and struggling with choices he’d likely never had to make before. He was in the midst of his entire world collapsing around him.
Charlie knew how that felt.
He finished moving boxes of plates to the table, but instead of putting them straight into the satchel that sat waiting there, he turned to Jonathan, gripping his arm.
Jonathan froze as if Charlie’s touch were electric. Two seconds later, he let out a breath and sagged, turning to lean against the table.
“I feel as if the world has turned upside down and I’m clinging to the earth by my fingertips,” he confessed, burying his face in his hands.
Charlie shifted to stand between his spread feet. He grasped Jonathan’s wrists and pulled his hands away from his face.
“Did you truly not know what became of the young men you photographed?” he asked, hoping Jonathan was innocent. Either way, he’d still been a fool, but an innocent fool was better than a complicit one.
“I didn’t know,” Jonathan answered, the pain of truth in his eyes.
“What would you have done?” Charlie asked. “If you had known.”
Jonathan took a deep breath, glancing past Charlie’s shoulder at the bed. “I want to say I would have helped them,” he said. “But I think we both know that isn’t true.”
He met Charlie’s eyes again.
“You helped me,” Charlie said.
“Because I wanted you,” Jonathan confessed quietly. “I was selfish. I’ve always been selfish.”
Charlie shrugged, because there was a good chance that was true.
“You can leave now, if you’d like,” Jonathan said, turning his face away as if trying to hide how much saying that hurt. “You don’t have to chain yourself to me. I’m not your master, not really.”
Charlie’s throat squeezed and his eyes stung. He probably should have walked away. It could be argued that Jonathan had failed him, failed a great many people, and that he would be better off in the world if he left the man to his fate.
But he couldn’t. Despite his flaws, Jonathan had entered his life like a beam of sunshine breaking through bleak clouds. He’d stopped the hand of Death from taking him, and even though Charlie had other paths open to him now, he could not abandon the man who had changed the course of his life.
He couldn’t abandon the man he’d fallen in love with, no matter how flawed he was.
He dropped to his knees between Jonathan’s feet, gazing up at him and pressing his hands flat against Jonathan’s chest. Jonathan’s heart beat hard under his touch.
“You might have abandoned all of them,” he said, “but you did not abandon me.”
“Charlie,” Jonathan said softly, like he would give Charlie a list of reasons they should never see each other again.
“Yes, we’ve been caught in other men’s games,” Charlie went on. “Fabian has been taken away and bad men rule this place.” It frustrated him that he couldn’t articulate the things he felt more clearly than that. “But I still believe The Zagreus Den is good.”
Jonathan gaped at him. “Good? Still?” he asked. “When Brutus and Titus sent us into this disaster?”
“Still,” Charlie said with full confidence.
He thought of Valentine. He thought of the other young men who had seemed so happy and relaxed with their masters during the two times he and Jonathan had visited the Den. He thought of how contented the young man Brutus had brought to the studio for Jonathan to take his picture had been.
It was a stark contrast to the servants of Fairford House and the way Hammond had looked at him when he’d offered Charlie a place in his own den.
Something about all those memories taken together suddenly allowed Charlie to see clearly.
“We are in the middle of someone else’s war,” he said, kneeling a bit taller. “We need to be on the right side.”
“There are no right sides,” Jonathan scoffed, grasping Charlie’s hands and holding them tighter to his heart. “There are only you and me and then all of them. All of them.”
Charlie shook his head. “There is a war, and we’ve landed in the middle of it,” he insisted. “What is the war and who are the armies?”
Jonathan blinked at him. “I don’t know,” he said, then pinched his face tight. He glanced up at the ceiling, then said. “It’s all sin and slavery. And my father’s caught up in it.” His eyes went wide and he stared at Charlie again. “My father is caught up in it.”
“Why?” Charlie asked.
Jonathan shook his head and shrugged. “I have no idea. He prides himself on respectability. He has always abhorred me for my vices. I still cannot believe he shares them.”
“Does he?”
“He must!” Jonathan raised his voice and pushed away from the table, nearly knocking Charlie sideways and upsetting some of the equipment as he began pacing. “He must, otherwise why would he be here?”
Charlie stood quickly and reached for the box of plates Jonathan had shifted out of its neat place. The very last thing they needed was to break the photographs they’d already taken. They were the proof of who the bad men were, after all.
He sucked in a breath.
They were the proof.
“Your father is an MP,” he said, turning to face Jonathan, the box of plates in his hands.
“He is,” Jonathan growled, throwing out a hand in a useless, frustrated gesture. “A pious, pompous Member of Parliament who gloats every time he helps to enact a law that decimates the rights and welfare of working people.”
“He does?” Charlie blinked.
Jonathan laughed humorlessly. “He detests the ‘drudges’, as he calls them. He believes they should all be rounded up and stuffed into workhouses for the benefit of those who truly make the world turn.”
Charlie frowned as more pieces began to fall into place.
“Mr. Blythe owns half the warehouses in London’s docklands,” he said, remembering the things Jonathan had told him about the other guests or that he had learned from the servants in the house.
“Mr. Atherton owns factories in Spitalfields.” He glanced up from where he’d been staring at nothing.
“Mr. Chillington owns three workhouses.”
Jonathan stopped and whipped back to face Charlie. “Are you saying this is all connected? That Frome has gathered a cabal of industrialists and politicians so that they might band together to control the labor market of London?” His expression showed he did not think much of that idea.
Charlie stepped toward him, holding out the box of plates. “It’s Hammond,” he said. “He offered me a position. He is luring Mr. Copeland to join him. What if he is luring everyone to join him.”
A spark flashed in Jonathan’s eyes. “By why? What use would it be to him to have a group of prominent men gain membership to whatever den of his own he might operate?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said, breathless with the connections that were just out of his grasp. “But Brutus and Titus want us to stop him.”
Jonathan flinched back, then frowned. “Why would they do that?”
Charlie held out the box of plates again. “They won’t join if they fear they’ll be exposed. And if they don’t join, they won’t have the power to hurt people. The Zagreus Den is trying to stop people from being hurt.”
Jonathan just stared at him. But instead of sneering at Charlie’s theory, he studied him with a gaze that was a thousand miles away.
Finally, when the tension in the room was so sharp Charlie thought he would shatter, Jonathan breathed, “We need to get out of here. Immediately.” He marched toward the table.
“We’ll take the camera and the other equipment.
No, we’ll leave the camera behind.” He swore under his breath as though he despised that idea.
“It has to be done,” he sighed, gathering the boxes of plates and putting them in the already half-full satchel.
“Leave everything else behind. We must leave now.”
Charlie jumped into action, knowing Jonathan was right.
The only material thing that mattered now were the exposed plates.
They had to get them away so they could be developed and delivered to Brutus and Titus.
Charlie did not need to know the full plan or the nature of the war they’d stepped into to know Hammond and the men he was attempting to recruit needed to be stopped.
As soon as they had the plates packed away, Jonathan gathered up his lenses and packed those away in a second case. “These are too expensive to leave behind,” he said, one eyebrow arched, as if he was beginning to feel the excitement of their mission again. “The rest can be purchased anew.”
They tucked a few items of clothing around the lenses and boxes of cases, for padding if nothing else, then Jonathan slung the satchel over Charlie’s shoulder. He took the other case himself and moved to the door. Everything else was abandoned.
For several long minutes, Jonathan listened to the door. Charlie wasn’t certain his nerves could withstand the suspense. Finally, Jonathan pulled away from the door, turned the handle, and gestured for Charlie to follow him out into the hall.
The upper floors of Fairford House were silent. Charlie fought not to make a single noise as he and Jonathan crept on to the grand staircase, then made their way down to the front door.