Chapter Eighteen
Vesper wasn’t often at a loss for words, but for several long moments, she could do nothing more than gape at Ashbridge, her mug of cocoa suspended halfway to her mouth.
“I wish you’d say something,” he said after half a minute or so of wary contemplation of whatever expression was on her face.
Vesper found her voice. “Well, I wish you’d seen fit to share this little morsel of information at—oh, I don’t know, any point in our investigation up till now.”
“It wasn’t relevant.”
“Bollocks. You know it was.”
“My father and I—Grimme-Nox, I mean—we don’t speak.”
“You still might’ve mentioned that you’re the illegitimate offspring of one of the magical families, just so I knew what I was getting myself into.” She was growing more indignant by the moment; give her another couple of minutes, and she could work herself into a proper fury.
“I have not allowed anything about my… my personal politics to impact my judgment.” His voice was cool and measured, and he set down his mug with a thunk, as if the conversation were too serious to be conducted while one was drinking a cozy warming beverage.
The impression of getting down to business, settling into the meat of the discussion, was somewhat ruined by the fact that he still had a faintly purring Sheep on his lap.
“No,” she said, not bothering to disguise the curtness of her voice. “Of course you wouldn’t let anything personal be a consideration for even a single second.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“When you came to Holloway’s that first night, did you feel even the faintest bit of guilt about what you planned to do?” Vesper asked—the question she’d been wanting to pose to him for the past ten days.
“It was an assignment,” he said evenly.
“And I don’t suppose you paused for even a single second to reflect on the fact that it was a bit dreadful of you to waltz into the business of a family you had once known and try to shut it down?”
“I did, actually,” he said, his voice quiet. He didn’t get loud when he grew angry, she had noticed; he merely grew even more self-contained. “But it was made clear to me that my connection to the family was—”
“Was what?” she asked sharply.
“Was considered an advantage.” His gaze was lowered, seemingly on Sheep, who was still purring away happily and no doubt shedding approximately half a ton of cat hair onto his trousers. After a moment, however, he looked up and met her eyes.
“I didn’t like it,” he said, frustration in his voice. “It felt like a piss-poor way to repay your family, when they’d never been anything other than kind to me—your father took me and Freddie to lunch, you know, that weekend of Freddie’s birthday.”
Vesper didn’t need to ask which birthday this was; it was a relief to know that particular weekend clearly lingered vividly in Ashbridge’s mind as well.
“I was nervous beforehand,” he continued. “Based on my experiences with my father… I wasn’t sure what to expect from yours. But he was brilliant—never made me feel less than, for being mundane.”
“Because we don’t consider you less than,” Vesper said, fury rising in her once again. “You’ve decided this about the magical world, based on—”
“Based on my experience of it,” Ashbridge interjected. “If your introduction to magic had come courtesy of my father, I don’t think you’d feel so rosy toward it, either.”
It struck her, then, that she and Ashbridge were not so unalike; both had strongly held feelings about magic and Forbiddance based, as he said, only on their own experiences. The gap between them—which she had felt narrowing in recent days—suddenly felt like a chasm.
“Why did you and Freddie quarrel?” she asked, and Ashbridge blinked, clearly not having expected the question.
He considered her for a long moment. “At Cambridge, I could… pretend. It was after the war—we were all glad to be alive, and the magical-versus-mundane distinction felt… irrelevant. It was like we lived in an enchanted kingdom, but after moving to London in the wake of the Forbiddance law… I realized that Freddie and I lived in different worlds.”
“How so?” she pressed.
Ashbridge was silent for another few seconds, long enough that she began to wonder whether he was going to answer her at all.
“The first night I saw Freddie, after we’d both moved back to town, I had spent the day sending letters of introduction to various departments within the Foreign Office for civil service positions.
After the war, I thought it would be good to have principled people working for the government, trying to ensure nothing like it ever happened again.
I was particularly interested in the Foreign Office, but I saw that the Home Office was hiring someone for the F.L.E.A.
—it was quite newly formed then—and I… well, I considered applying.
I needed work—I was staying with my parents, because I didn’t have a paycheck yet.
After the war, and going away to university, it was quite an adjustment to return to my parents’ house, with my siblings pestering me around every corner.
We were all working each other’s last nerve.
So when Freddie invited me for a night out, I accepted without asking what he had in mind. ”
“Magic?” Vesper guessed.
“Magic,” Ashbridge confirmed. “He had me meet him at Holloway’s, but the evening went wrong almost from the start—I wouldn’t go into the backdoor bar with him, which annoyed him immediately.
I was tired, and frustrated, and just wanted a bloody job that would pay me enough to let me get my own flat while also putting to use the degree I’d worked so hard for, and Freddie waltzed in having spent the entire time since he’d arrived in town going to auditions and fucking half of London, it seemed, and then I mentioned that I was considering applying to the F.L.E.A.
, which went down as well as you’d imagine with him… ”
Vesper shook her head, able to imagine it all too well.
Freddie had a quick temper, which had been even worse when he was younger.
She could see it so clearly: Ashbridge, distrustful of magic, frustrated by his circumstances, walking into Holloway’s and despising everything it stood for.
Everything her family—with its name and money and conviction that a silly law wasn’t going to stop them—stood for.
“In hindsight, I might’ve picked the fight,” Ashbridge said, sounding thoughtful now. “Mentioning it while I was at Holloway’s with him—it was stupid. But once we’d started arguing about it, I wasn’t going to back down, and we were both too stubborn to apologize after we’d cooled off.”
“But you didn’t even go to work for the Fleas—not then, at least.”
Max shook his head. “I got an interview with the Passport Office first, and was only too happy to take the position they offered me.”
“Then why,” Vesper asked, frustration creeping into her voice, “did you end up with the Fleas in the end?” Ashbridge suddenly cut his gaze away, and comprehension dawned.
“It’s your father—that’s what all of this is about, isn’t it?
You’ve got me sucked into some scheme in which you wind up shutting down the Grimoire? ”
Heat flashed in Ashbridge’s gaze, and Vesper found the sight rewarding. He was so cool, so impassive, so difficult to rile that it was maddening, when she so often felt as though she wasn’t entirely in control of her emotions, and how she reacted to them. She wanted him to be angry.
“Last I checked, I was trying to help you, and the Grimoire didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.
” He sounded weary, which Vesper found infuriating—he was the one who’d shown up here on a Sunday night, while she was fresh out of the bath, and he was looking particularly handsome.
He had on a cozy cable-knit white jumper, and a pair of brown wool trousers that had clearly seen some wear.
Evening stubble shadowed his jaw. His dark hair was a bit unruly; he had a cowlick, she saw now, that he must ordinarily keep ruthlessly suppressed with pomade.
She liked this version of him far too much.
“I don’t think I believe you. I think you’ve got me swept up in some sort of demented scheme for revenge—”
“Don’t make this sound like a cheap novel, Vesper. I’m trying to help you—”
“By using me to gain entry to clubs you’d never be able to set foot in?
” she interrupted. “Oh, yes, what an enormous help you’ve been.
And I suppose that eventually you’d oh-so-casually suggest that we go to the Grimoire, and the next thing I knew you’d be telephoning your friends at Scotland Yard and putting them out of business—”
“I gave you my word that I wouldn’t,” he interrupted, his voice flat.
“You did,” she agreed. “And now I’m thinking that I was the biggest idiot in London to trust it.”
“You didn’t simply have to trust it, though,” he said. “Or did you forget about that envelope I gave you?”
Vesper blinked; she had forgotten, locked away in her desk as it had been. Understanding dawned. “Is this what you wrote on that piece of paper?” she asked. “That Grimme-Nox is your father?”
He nodded once, a single, sharp gesture.
“If word got round at the F.L.E.A. that I was the natural son of one of the most powerful men in Marylebone, I don’t think I’d be trusted ever again.
It’s one thing to have been friends with Freddie at university; if they knew Grimme-Nox was my father, however, they’d never have thought I was anything other than some sort of spy on behalf of the magical world. ”
“And I suppose no part of you hoped that our investigation would find out something incriminating about Grimme-Nox? You weren’t hoping at all that you’d have an excuse to shut down the Grimoire?”
He was silent, his eyes locked on hers, frustration written into every line of his body. “I don’t know how I feel anymore, Vesper. It’s all grown… complicated.”