Chapter Ten
With a full two days before her next evening with Ashbridge, Vesper decided to attempt to put the matter of the contaminated potions out of her mind.
This would have been easier to manage if her family had not been behaving like utter lunatics.
On Monday evening, no sooner had Ashbridge and Freddie left than Simon had appeared at the club, pretending he was there merely for a drink and a hand of cards with some of his friends from university and a couple of fellow politicians.
This would have been more convincing had he not begun yawning around nine o’clock and looking longingly at the exit.
Vesper had never seen someone so happy to hear the clock chime midnight as Simon was that evening.
The next night, however, things were even worse, because in Simon’s place was her father.
He was greeted like a king returning from exile by all and sundry, and spent most of the evening holding court at one of the choicest tables in the library by the fire, receiving one well-wisher after another, keeping the waiters and the kitchen staff busy long past the point that the kitchens usually stopped serving food, and generally charming the knickers off everyone he encountered.
He was, in other words, being his usual Lucian Holloway self.
“You know, I really think I have this under control,” Vesper said around eleven, dropping into the seat next to him, miraculously vacant for a few seconds.
“I’ve not the slightest doubt,” her father said, nursing the glass of red wine that he’d been sipping for the past couple of hours.
His gaze was alert, and she wondered if the other occupants of the room realized how closely they were being watched.
Likely not—part of the power of Lucian Holloway was his ability to give the impression, most of the time, of being a lazy, charming cad, while actually keeping a sharp eye on everything that happened around him.
“No potions tonight?” Her father was particularly fond of a First Word—which guaranteed a witty reply to every query—though he’d become a less-frequent imbiber with age.
“I needed a clear mind.”
“But nothing’s gone wrong, as you can see,” she said, gesturing around her. It was a Tuesday evening, and as a result, the club was fairly sedate; the telltale sliding sound of the bookcase admitting clubgoers to the backdoor bar had only been heard occasionally.
“And I’m delighted to see it,” he said, not budging from his seat. His gaze on her was keen. “Your mother told me that you asked her to cover the club in your place tomorrow. More plans with Ashbridge?”
Vesper mentally cursed, even though she’d known there was no chance that Amelia wouldn’t have shared this information with Lucian. “Yes. We’re going to Plenus Venter, and then to Grenoble’s on Thursday.”
Her father’s expression darkened at the second name. “Don’t try too hard, there. If the Fleas want to shut down that one—”
“It will be bad for all of us, and you well know it,” she said, even though she shared his particular distaste for the club in question.
The Holloways and the Grenobles had never been bosom friends—there was bad blood dating back to the Georgian era, allegedly over some sort of romantic entanglement that had resulted in a duel and a missing thumb—and Vesper’s unfortunate inability to make intelligent decisions about her love life was merely the latest iteration of a decades-long feud.
“Hmm.” Her father sounded unconvinced. “Well, Ashbridge looks like he could throw a punch if necessary.”
“There will be no punches thrown, thank you,” Vesper said, a bit nettled. “And if there were the need, I’m perfectly capable of throwing them myself.”
Her father’s expression softened a bit. “I know you are.”
“Do you?” Vesper asked.
Lucian frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Everyone in the family seems to think I can’t do much for myself these days.”
“This is a serious matter, and we don’t want you to get in over your head.”
“I’m not,” she protested. “But I have kept this club running for the past four years, I’ve performed all the magic we need, and nothing has gone wrong on my watch until last Friday.”
“Vesper.” Her father turned to face her fully, his expression very serious.
“Your tenure at the club has, in truth, gone far better than your mother and I expected. I don’t mind telling you that we had no notion of how this would go, allowing you the day-to-day running of Holloway’s, particularly since, at the time, you were… not quite yourself.”
This was a diplomatic way of putting it.
She’d been twenty-one, and had spent the three years prior allowing her head to be turned by every handsome face that had come her way.
As the beautiful youngest daughter of the storied Holloway family, she’d had no shortage of men interested in taking her to dinner, to drinks, and yet she’d made a string of terrible decisions in a row.
It had started with the engaged man at Freddie’s twenty-third birthday party whom Ashbridge had so humiliatingly rescued her from, but that had only been the beginning.
There had been the man a dozen years her senior who’d wooed her in a whirlwind romance featuring bouquets of roses, candlelit dinners, and heady nights at a series of posh hotels, implying but never quite promising a rosy future between them—because, it transpired, he had a wife and baby at home.
Then there had been the pair of brothers who had got into a public brawl on Marylebone High Street when they realized that Vesper had been seeing both of them, trying to make up her mind about which she preferred.
(It had been particularly annoying because she had just decided, too.
Unfortunately, the man in question had informed her—while pressing a handkerchief to his heavily bleeding nose—that their courtship was at an end.) The final blow, however, had been the young mundane aristocrat, the fourth son of a viscount with a town house on St. James’s Square and a romantic, possibly haunted country estate on a Cornish cliff.
He was the first man Vesper had thought she could happily marry; he was pursuing an advanced degree at Oxford and was only in London periodically, kind and serious and yet he still, still seemed to like her, just the way she was.
Until he didn’t anymore. Until he’d fallen in love with someone else—some meek aristocratic daughter of an old family friend whom he’d not seen in years.
The worst of it was that he’d been so decent about it; he’d called things off with Vesper immediately, had taken her on a walk through Regent’s Park and spoken so beautifully of not wanting to hurt her, told her all the things he admired about her.
Told her he wished to be friends, of all things.
Vesper had said all the right things, and kissed him on the cheek, and then had gone home and cried for two days.
It was at this point that her parents had decided that she needed a distraction—and Holloway’s had been just that. She threw herself into the running of the club, finding that the work suited her, that she liked having something she was responsible for, for the first time in her life.
She’d also promised herself that she would not fall in love again—would not even allow herself to grow particularly attached to a man. That she would be the one to leave in the mornings, rather than the one who was left. It had proved an easy enough vow to keep.
“However,” her father continued, drawing her out of her maudlin thoughts, “the stakes at the moment are incredibly high. If Simon can get this bill through Parliament, it could be only a matter of months until we can operate openly again. We can’t risk something else going wrong—not when we’re so close to a victory. ”
“I know,” she said, grinding her teeth. “What do you think Ashbridge and I are playing detective for, a lark?”
He dropped a kiss on her head. “I know that you’re doing your bit. Just humor me, and let me ensure that you’re not in over your head—and that means that you’ll have someone else with you at the club, until things settle down.”
It seemed futile to argue the point further, but Vesper could not help but wonder, as she fell asleep that night, if anyone in her family took her even the slightest bit seriously.
“Let me be certain I understand this,” Max’s mate Will Chamberlain said late Tuesday evening as he and Max lingered over whiskies, a fire burning low in the grate in Will’s sitting room.
Will’s flat was on a quiet street in Bloomsbury, a stone’s throw from the British Museum and not too lengthy a walk from the luxurious town houses in Marylebone where the old magical families resided in considerable splendor.
It felt, however, a world away. “You, of all people, are visiting magical clubs with Vesper Holloway?”
“Correct,” Max said curtly, already regretting confiding in his friend.
Will grinned. “Vera is going to be furious she missed this,” he said, naming his wife, who was out to dinner with a friend and not expected back until late. “I wonder if she knows Miss Holloway.”
“She might,” Max admitted; Vera was from a posh old once-magical family, and was extremely well-connected as a result.
She didn’t move as frequently in that world as she had prior to her marriage—her family did not approve of Will, given that he was a member of the (to quote Vera’s mother) “muckraking press”—but she had an enormous number of friends.
Max had always, frankly, found Vera mildly terrifying, but she undoubtedly made his friend happy, which was good enough for Max.
He and Will had been friends since the war; though their paths had diverged after they’d returned from France, with Max heading to Cambridge while Will took up employment on Fleet Street, they’d rekindled their friendship once Max moved to town after finishing university, and Max now counted Will as his closest friend.
“Well,” Will said philosophically, “this at least sounds more interesting than whatever it is you’re doing the rest of the time—reviewing licenses.
Issuing fines. Paperwork.” He gave a dramatic shudder; given that he was a crack reporter for The Times who’d managed several spectacular scoops in the past few years, Max could well imagine that “paperwork” would indeed sound rather dull by comparison.
But that was fine. Dull was fine. Max didn’t need excitement at work; he simply needed…
To prove a point? said a sly voice in his head.
As if reading his thoughts, Will shook his head. “Weren’t you happier before, stamping passports?”
“That job didn’t come with the potential advantages of this one.”
“Annoying your father, you mean?”
“Making it crystal clear that I won’t be having anything to do with his rosy-eyed vision for my future, yes,” Max agreed, his jaw tightening automatically at the mention of the man who’d sired him—a man whose existence he liked to forget as much as possible.
“Surely there are better ways to do it than—”
“There aren’t, actually,” Max said, the words coming out more sharply than he intended. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. I just—”
“I know.” Will’s gaze on him was warm. “He gets your hackles up—and I don’t blame you. He’s a wanker.”
“To say the least. However,” Max added, realizing Will’s position might make him useful, “you might do me a favor. Would you let me know if you hear anything unusual about any of the magical clubs?”
“Unusual how?”
“We’re trying to track down the source of a couple of… accidents. At the clubs. Word doesn’t seem to have spread too much just yet, but I’d be curious to learn about anything you overhear.”
“All right,” Will said, sounding curious.
“Is it related to the vote on Forbiddance repeal in Parliament? I’ve heard a lot of chatter about that from magical and mundane people alike in the past week.
Sympathies seem to be swinging toward Covington—particularly after that story in The Spark a couple of weeks ago, about the woman whose husband drank himself to death after he turned to the bottle, since he could no longer use potions. ”
“Christ.” Max blinked. “That’s grim.”
“It was. Good reporting, though.” Will grinned, and leaned forward in his seat. “It was Cecily Covington who wrote it, actually.” He allowed a dramatic pause, then added, “Vesper Holloway’s sister.”
Max gave Will a speaking sort of look, which only caused Will’s grin to widen. “You know,” Will said, “I really think I’m going to enjoy this.”