Chapter Fifteen
Max had known he was going to regret this scheme, but he hadn’t been quite prepared for how quickly he’d regret it.
“This is never going to work,” he pronounced, the moment he met Vesper at the corner of Blandford Street and Marylebone High Street later that evening.
“Stop being hysterical—you’re going to give us away, carrying on like this,” Vesper protested.
“Yes, ‘hysterical’ is often an adjective that is applied to me,” he agreed, shaking his head. “Your brother has at least four inches on you.”
“How fortunate, then, that he’s not standing next to me for people to compare me with,” she said.
She did, he had to admit, bear more of a resemblance to Freddie than he might have expected; she was wearing a pair of black trousers and a well-tailored black jacket, complete with a tie, and she’d hidden her own hair beneath a wig (he assumed—otherwise, she’d had a very dramatic haircut at some point in the past ten hours).
He wondered, briefly, how on earth she had produced all of this on such short notice; there was no telltale sheen around the hairline indicating she’d consumed anything magical, leaving him all the more (reluctantly) impressed.
“Ready?” he asked wearily.
“Of course I am,” she said, and began to walk down the street.
Max watched her for a moment, then caught up to her in a couple of long strides. “Er,” he said politely. “What’s this, then?”
Vesper glanced up at him. “I’m walking.”
He shook his head. “No, you’re… swaggering? Your brother doesn’t walk like that. Men don’t walk like that.”
“Yes, they do.” She took another oddly swaying step. He noticed that she was walking a bit bandy-legged, as if to accommodate the enormous size of the male anatomy she allegedly possessed, and he felt the strangest urge to laugh.
He reached out to grasp her elbow and draw her to a halt. “Here—just watch me walk for a moment.” He took a few steps down the street, feeling oddly self-conscious now that he knew her eyes were on him. He stopped and turned. “See?”
“That’s what I was doing.”
“I can promise you it isn’t. Try again.”
She tried again, doing better this time—at the very least, she looked less likely to drunkenly stagger into a lamppost.
He sighed. “That’ll do.”
Around the next corner was the Duke and Earl; Max realized, as they drew up to its imposing oak doors, that he’d passed it multiple times without clocking what it was.
It was stodgy-enough looking to be a bank—or, at the very least, a mundane club, though its presence in Marylebone clearly implied the contrary.
An elderly man in a somber black suit and top hat was standing at the front entrance. Max inhaled slowly, then—against his better judgment—allowed Vesper to take the lead.
“Hello, old chap,” she said to the man at the door, her voice a full octave lower than usual.
It should have sounded ridiculous but she was actually, Max had to concede, a decent mimic; her walking might have been atrocious, but she did have something of her brother’s mannerisms, and she didn’t sound entirely unlike him.
Reaching into her coat pocket, she produced a card. The elderly man inspected it through enormous spectacles, then nodded. “Very good, sir, and welcome.”
“This fellow’s with me,” Vesper added, jerking her head in Max’s direction, and the doorman nodded reverently.
“Of course, sir. Enjoy your evening, sirs.”
And, as simple as that, they were in.
“I knew it,” Vesper hissed, as soon as they were through the doors.
“Be quiet,” Max muttered, though a smile tugged at his own lips. “We’re just lucky they’re employing a doorman who’s half blind. You could have waltzed in wearing a ball gown and he likely would have allowed you entry.”
“Freddie does look quite fetching in a dress,” she confided. “Looks rather like me, in fact,” she added, preening, and Max gave her a severe look.
“If you’re fishing for a compliment, find a different pond.”
“I should never dream of it, dear Ashbridge,” she said, and then led him deeper into the club.
It was a rather different atmosphere here, compared to others they’d visited; if he’d walked in unknowing, he wouldn’t have guessed that there was anything magical about the place.
They passed through room after room done in wooden paneling, the floors covered in heavy Oriental rugs.
There was a fire crackling in every fireplace, the windows were covered by thick curtains in shades of dark red and blue, and everywhere there were men—an older set, here—drinking glasses of amber liquid and deep in murmured conversation, looking solemn.
The lack of women was a bit of a weight upon the room, Max thought, making it feel like a relic from the previous century. He disliked it immediately.
“Stop scowling,” Vesper murmured as they made their way to the back corner of the lounge, where there was a small door at the edge of the bar. She leaned toward it, clearly stated, “Frederick Holloway,” and the door unlocked itself with a faint click and silently opened.
Max tried not to gape. “Another residual spell?” he asked quietly, as he followed her through the doorway.
“Precisely. We’re lucky it’s not one of the ones that recognizes fingerprints, or we’d be in a real pickle.”
“Recognizes—hmm. That actually sounds useful.”
Vesper shot him a speaking sort of look over her shoulder. “Yes. Magic generally is, if half the population could bother to pull their heads out of their own arses and see it.”
He didn’t have a good reply to that, so instead he looked around the room they’d entered.
At first glance, it didn’t appear any different from the rest of the club—more oak paneling, a marble fireplace, squashy leather armchairs arranged before it.
There was a long bar against one wall, seemingly identical to the one in the room they’d just passed through, the dark wood gleaming in the firelight and the old-fashioned gas lamps on the wall.
However, Max could see the telltale glimmer at the hairlines of most of the room’s occupants that indicated they were consuming more than mere spirits.
“What was this room for, originally?” he asked curiously. “Why the spell on the door?”
“Private parties, I think,” Vesper replied.
“Though the idea of going to a private party with this set seems rather…” She trailed off with a grimace, her gaze on a group by the fire.
It comprised five men, gathered in chairs in a loose circle, their heads alternately gray and bald, each sporting an impressive set of whiskers.
It did not, he had to admit, seem like an atmosphere conducive to raucous debauchery.
“Dull,” he suggested.
“To say the least. I don’t think Freddie ever comes here.”
“It doesn’t quite seem like his sort of place,” Max agreed.
She cast him a look. “Are you two going to attempt to become friends again?”
“What? No.”
“It’s just—” She broke off, shaking her head. “I don’t know why I’m bothering to try to convince men to admit they have feelings about something. But you clearly knew each other quite well, once.”
“We did,” he agreed. “Once.”
“Are you still angry with him about whatever it is that you fell out over?”
“I—” He stopped, taking a moment to consider the question properly. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Hmm,” she said, tilting her head at him. “I don’t think he knows, either.”
Silence fell, and Vesper evidently decided not to push him further.
Instead, she led the way to the bar, where she ordered, in that ridiculous-and-yet-somehow-not-as-ridiculous-as-it-should-have-been attempt at Freddie’s voice, a glass of champagne, a glass of whisky, and a packet of something called the Fact Checker, which she selected after a casual perusal of the menu, which was on heavy, embossed paper that Max guessed had cost the entirety of one of his paychecks.
Claiming their drinks and the brown envelope sealed with a wax crest, they retreated to a pair of armchairs situated before a small occasional table.
They set their drinks down on the table, and then Max watched with considerable amusement as Vesper flung herself into a chair and proceeded to spread her legs with wild abandon.
“This is incredible,” she said, practically in raptures. “I don’t think I’ve a single dress that would even stretch this wide.”
“You look ridiculous,” he said, trying to be severe but spoiling the effect when he failed to prevent a small smile from twitching at his mouth.
He did not consider himself an easily amused man, generally speaking; one of his university friends had once told him that he considered it a great victory when he managed to make Max laugh.
But with Vesper, even when she wasn’t in disguise as her brother and spreading her legs like a threepenny whore, he found himself smiling more readily than he had in quite some time.
She straightened in her seat a bit, though she still kept her legs spread far more than would be considered polite for a woman, and leaned forward to snatch up the paper packet she’d procured at the bar.
“What does that one do?” Max asked warily, though he couldn’t imagine the magic sold at a place like this could be all that dangerous. This simply didn’t seem like the clientele for anything risky.
Vesper ripped the packet open, breaking the wax seal. “It’s supposed to give you specific knowledge regarding a topic your companions are conversing on.”
Max blinked. “So if I say—”
“Wait, wait, let me take a bit,” Vesper protested, tipping the packet into her champagne and swirling it around. It dissolved easily, and he watched as she took a healthy gulp.
“You don’t like to lick it?” he asked, and then immediately realized how that question sounded, out of context.
Vesper cackled. “I do, frequently,” she assured him with mock gravity, her eyes twinkling. “But for spell powder, I prefer it in drinks.” She wrinkled her nose. “The people who snort it are mad.”
“That makes it take effect more quickly?”
“Yes. But it’ll give you a nosebleed, more often than not, and occasionally it reacts to that method of consumption in… unpredictable ways.”
“Such as?”
“Since it speeds things up, it can sometimes make the effects occur so quickly that it’s dangerous—or ruins the fun, at least.” They sipped their drinks companionably for a few minutes, and then Vesper nodded at him. “Go on, then.”
He looked at her consideringly for a moment, then crossed an ankle over a knee, holding his glass up to the light. “This is a nice vintage of scotch—a fifteen-year, I think.”
“Twenty-one, actually,” Vesper said immediately, with a decisive nod. “Aged in an oak cask in the Inner Hebrides. That one’s particularly known for its notes of pepper and anise.”
Max shook his head. “It does lead to an interesting conversation, I suppose.”
“Depends on what your drinking companions want to talk about,” Vesper said, looking unconvinced.
She took another sip of champagne. “It’s making this champagne taste odd, too.
This is why I prefer making proper potions—you can select flavors for the syrup that interact nicely together, and you can tailor the ingredients used in the potion until you find something that works properly and tastes lovely.
But if you just dump spell powder in a glass of whatever you’re drinking, it’s not as nice. ”
“Why don’t they do potions here, then?”
“Too flashy and modern. They’re very stuck in their ways.”
“You don’t say.” He leaned back and surveyed the room, trying to project the sort of casual comfort that never came naturally to him in places like this.
He could never quite forget that he was the out-of-wedlock product of a liaison across class lines and that he’d been raised relatively modestly.
He’d gone to school on a scholarship—Cambridge, too.
He’d considered turning down his spot, since that was where his father had gone, but his mum had intervened, telling him that she couldn’t bear the thought of him passing up such an opportunity simply to spite the man who’d fathered him.
“Succeed in his world, darling, that’s the best revenge.”
And now, here he was, working a job that he was growing less certain that he entirely agreed with, philosophically speaking, and one he knew perfectly well his father would despise—that was the entire reason he’d taken it.
“I can’t work you out.”
He met Vesper’s eyes, realizing that she was considering him thoughtfully. It seemed like a non sequitur, and yet somehow didn’t, at the same time. “How so?”
She shook her head without breaking his gaze.
“I don’t know. It’s very annoying—men are usually so easy to figure out.
They’re either terrified of you, or they want to go to bed with you, or they think you’re a chum, or they’re…
completely disinterested.” She shrugged.
“It’s usually easy enough to work out which category men are sorting you into. But you… I can’t tell.”
“Do I strike you as being terrified?”
“No,” she said, her mouth quirking up at the corners. “It might make my life easier if you were.”
“I don’t find myself terribly interested in making your life easier.
” He meant it to sound light, teasing, but something about his tone was too warm.
He sounded… fond. He was many things in regard to Vesper Holloway: irritated; frustrated; yes, damn it, attracted.
But fond, somehow, felt by far the most dangerous.
“I’ve noticed,” she said, very dry, and he couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him. “Well, then, which one is it?”
“Which what?” he asked, his voice coming out a bit hoarse.
“Which category,” she said, very deliberately. She leaned forward in her seat, bracing her elbows on her knees. “Which category do you think you’d put me into, if you’re not terrified?”
“Nor,” he said evenly, “completely disinterested.” The memory of the kiss at Grenoble’s hovered between them, unacknowledged—a kiss that should have meant nothing, and yet one that he couldn’t get out of his head.
He looked at her, and she looked at him, and for a long moment silence stretched between them, like an elastic band slowly being pulled until it was taut.
“Well,” she said at last, leaning back in her seat and breaking the spell, “I suppose I’ll just have to work it out for myself.”