All is Fair (5 page)

She gave a hesitant smile. “We have a lot to talk about, don’t we?”

He nodded. “I’ll ring for tea and have the fire lit. Come and see how comfortable these chairs are.”

It felt good to rest. Her legs were trembling like she’d run a marathon, not just got out of bed and gone down one flight of stairs. One of the maids came and lit the fire and Cathy wondered what Miss Rainer was doing. Every time she thought of her former governess she felt sick. She couldn’t abandon the most important person in her childhood to the life of a scullery maid. Then she wondered how the maid lighting the fire had come to work for the Agency. She’d been surrounded by servants practically all of her life and never once thought to ask.

Weeks of lying in bed had left her feeling disjointed and disoriented. Now she’d decided to stop running away and actually do something, she needed a plan, and allies. She needed to decide what to tell Will and how to bring it up in conversation with Margritte. Cathy was certain she and Bartholomew were progressive enough to discuss the need for change in Society. Bartholomew must have become Duke whilst she was recovering and they would be the most influential couple in Londinium. They could help her set trends and change minds. She breathed as deeply as she could. Everything was going to change now.

Morgan brought tea and gave a warm smile when he saw her. Once he’d poured the tea and left, Will sat in the chair opposite her.

“I feel terrible about what happened,” he said. “I was warned. I should have protected you and Sophia.”

“Who warned you?”

“Cornelius. He said Tulipa would do anything to take the throne. He was right.”

“Bartholomew?” Cathy shook her head. “That doesn’t sound right. You didn’t accuse him, did you?”

The cup stopped halfway to Will’s lips before being set back down on the saucer. He closed his eyes for a moment, the pink fading from his cheeks. “I challenged him to a duel. I killed him. And I took the throne from him.”

Cathy missed the saucer as she let the cup drop and a little tea spilled onto her robe. “What?”

“I’m the Duke of Londinium. You’re the Duchess, Cathy, just as Lord Iris wanted. You don’t remember me telling you about that?”

“No. It’s the bloody sleeping Charms… they…” She looked at him, trying to imagine him killing Bartholomew, but it had the quality of a silly film in her mind, something utterly unbelievable. Could the same man who was so kind to her, so gentle when she was in distress, be capable of killing their friend? It was as horrifying as it was frightening.

“Don’t look at me like that! He sent a man to murder you.”

“But that was a Rosa. There were thorns, Will, I thought I told you.” She was worried she’d dreamt that.

“You did tell me, and the man
was
a Rosa, but Bartholomew sent him to kill you.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“That’s the truth! Lord Iris and Lord Poppy supported me, I took the throne, it’s done now.”

Cathy focused on her tea cup, unable to look at him. How could this have happened? Bartholomew was a cultured, reasonable man. There was no way he would have done such a thing. How could Will have made such a mistake? Or was it that he wanted an easy excuse to murder the man between him and the throne? Lord Iris was terrifying; had he driven Will to such desperate measures? She swallowed the lump in her throat. She didn’t want to show Will how upset she was. “What about Margritte? Has she stayed in Londinium?”

“I have no idea. I haven’t convened a Court. I wanted everything to calm down. I didn’t want to sit as the Duke until you were well enough to be sworn in as Duchess.”

“Oh, bollocks.” Cathy squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m Duchess. I really didn’t think that would happen.” How in the Worlds would she cope with the Court? She’d planned to persuade the Duchess of Londinium to help her change things, not
be
her! How would she be able to use the position to influence behaviour and engender social change when she couldn’t even function in public?

“I’ll help you. I know it’s a shock. It wasn’t ideal, but it was a legitimate way to take the throne.”

He seemed too calm. “A legitimate… Don’t you feel bad about it?”

“Of course I do! He was the first man I killed. It wasn’t… I had to keep reminding myself what he did. Besides, once I was committed, there was nothing else to be done.”

“Did he admit guilt?”

He looked into the fire. “No. He said he was innocent, right up to the end.”

“This is awful,” she whispered. “What will Margritte do now? Will her family look after her?”

“I don’t know.”

“The house she lived in was Bartholomew’s… she’ll have nothing now, unless he left it to her, I suppose. My God. I can’t believe this has happened. I liked Bartholomew, I could actually have a conversation with him. And Margritte. There’s no way he would have paid someone to kill me. You must have got it wrong.”

“It’s done now!” Will hit the arm of the chair, the anger bursting out as if she had lanced an emotional boil. “We have to move on.”

An awkward silence filled the space between them. She looked at the books but the joy the library had brought her seemed such a frivolity in light of Margritte’s loss. As soon as she was able to leave the house she had to find her and make sure she was provided for, although Margritte would probably hate her now.

Will set his cup down and leaned across the gap between them. “I can’t do this without you, Cathy.”

It was clear he didn’t want to talk about the Tulipas any more and Cathy realised she had to focus on moving forwards too. Nothing was going to bring Bartholomew back and somehow she had to live with what had happened. “I’m here,” she said. If she was going to stay in the Nether she needed him too. She had no idea what she was going to do about Miss Rainer and the Agency or even where to start when it came to the patriarchal hell of Society, but she did know that Will would be the best ally she could get. And despite her doubts and the shock of what he was evidently capable of, she didn’t want him to struggle alone. She knew what that was like.

“There’s something I wanted to discuss with you,” Will began hesitantly. “I have to choose the next Marquis of Westminster. The current one has too much history with the Rosas.”

Cathy dredged up one of the tedious lessons from Dame Iris on the structure of the Londinium Court. The position of Marquis was the second most powerful in the domain and was a critical component of the Duke’s rule. The Marquis was supposed to keep an eye on threats from outside of the domain and keep the Duke informed as well as help defend against them. Of course, in practice most of those threats came from within the Court itself.

“You need someone loyal,” Cathy said. “Someone who isn’t going to use the position to undermine you.”

“Quite,” Will replied. “As you can imagine, there are few men I trust absolutely in Londinium.” He poured them a second cup of tea. “Actually, there’s an added complication. Cornelius gave me a lot of help when we first moved here, explaining who was who and how the social wheels spun here. I did tell him that if he helped me take the throne, I’d make him Marquis.”

“But he doesn’t have any status in Society,” Cathy said. “He doesn’t have any wealth of his own any more, I assume?” He shook his head. “Then you’ll have to tell him the deal’s off.”

“I don’t like breaking promises.”

“Hang on, you said you took the throne from Bartholomew… he was already Duke?”

Will nodded. “I found out what he did and I went into Exilium to appeal to Lord Iris and Poppy was there too. Our patron returned me after two weeks had passed here. Bartholomew had just become Duke.”

Cathy realised how truly absent she’d been since the attack. “Why did Iris do that?” she wondered out loud. “Why deny you the chance to win the throne… normally?”

Will’s eyes were dark. “I’ve wondered that myself,” he said in a low voice.

Cathy didn’t want to dwell on talk of Iris and his schemes for them; it might remind Will of the pressure to have a child and she couldn’t face that as well as everything else. “Well, you could argue that Cornelius didn’t help you take the throne, if he makes a fuss. I’m sure he’ll understand the plan has had to change. The Rosas weren’t popular here and if you put a disgraced one into the position of Marquis you’ll only be making it harder for yourself.”

He smiled. “Listen to yourself.”

“Yeah, what do I know? Do what you want to do.”

“No, you misunderstand. You’re giving me good advice. Like a Duchess.”

“Woot,” Cathy said flatly.

Will stared at her for what seemed a horribly long time. “There’s something else we need to talk about.” His tone was serious. “When you were–” He gripped the arm of the chair and turned a pale shade of green.

“Are you all right?” Cathy took his cup from him as he clutched his stomach.

“I’m being summoned,” he said. “I have to go.”

“We’ll talk when you get back,” Cathy said and he left her to sit amongst the books she had always wanted but was afraid to accept.

4

Max had just stretched out on the bed, found a position that alleviated the ache in his leg and closed his eyes when he felt the gargoyle’s stare from the corner of his room. “Go on, ask.”

“What?”

“You’ve been wanting to ask me something all day,” Max replied.

“Why aren’t we doing anything?”

“I haven’t had any orders from Ekstrand.”

The gargoyle clicked its stone claws on the floorboards. “We were stuck here for three weeks before he pulled his finger out and took the Agency. It might be another three months before he decides what he wants us to do next.”

“And do you know what we should be doing?”

“Yes. We need to go back to London. Now Dante is dead we don’t have to worry about putting his nose out of joint.”

“Mr Ekstrand doesn’t think it’s a priority, otherwise he would have sent us. We don’t know what Petra’s finding even means. The Fae aren’t in the habit of animating the dead. He needs time to think the implications through.”

“Oh, right. I see. Sorry, it must be the stone between my ears but I thought it would be a priority to look into the corrupt Chapter that tried to kill us and let one of the bloody Fae try to murder someone in broad daylight. Stupid me.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Oh, so you just can’t be arsed to go and find out what went wrong there?”

“We can’t just leave.”

“We so can. Ekstrand is more than a few elements short of a periodic table, he wouldn’t even notice we were gone. The news about Dante is worrying, granted, but it’s just another reason to look into London. If the Sorcerer of Essex was dead before the moot, who was in charge when we were shot? Is that person still there? Is he the root of the corruption? And we need to know that what happened to the Chapter hasn’t happened anywhere else, or the Fae will be titting about with the innocents faster than you can say, ‘Look at the pretty sparkles’. And we should find out if Cathy recovered from that attack.”

“Why? We don’t need her any more. We found Thorn, we know the Sorcerer of Mercia is behind everything, we’re now at war. That puppet can be left to live her life as she sees fit.”

The gargoyle’s frustration rumbled out of its throat. “Thorn tried to kill her. Don’t you care? Actually, scratch that, of course you don’t. But
we
do, really, deep down.”

“No, I don’t,” Max said.

“But she needs Ekstrand’s help to escape Society. She’s been clear about that all along. And we need to do that before her husband–”

“Her husband,” Max interrupted, “is the Duke of Londinium now. Mr Ekstrand is never going to risk helping her escape from Lord Iris’ control now she’s Duchess.”

“What difference does being Duchess make? She’ll still want out.”

“She’ll be in the public eye more than ever now. You should forget about her and focus on what we need to do to stop Mercia.”

“We are not going to forget her,” the gargoyle replied, its stone chin jutting out.

Max turned onto his side, signalling that he’d prefer to sleep.

The gargoyle sat there sulking, then bounded across the room to Max’s bedside. “We can’t stay here waiting for a madman to tell us what to do next. We need to remember what we’re supposed to do.” It grabbed Max’s arm. “It’s not just following orders.”

Max gripped the sheets as the rush of frustration assaulted him. His heart banged as he struggled to manage the urge to leave the house immediately and get his investigation back on track.

“Sometimes knowing how you feel is a good thing,” the gargoyle whispered.

Max shrugged off the gargoyle’s hand and sat up on the edge of the bed as his head cleared. The gargoyle was right; he did need to go back to London, it had been left hanging unresolved for too long now. Even though the puppet wasn’t an innocent, the brazen attack was too much to ignore. “I’ll ask Ekstrand for permission to pursue the London investigation again.”

“No, let’s just go. It’s Sunday, he’s shit on Sundays – he’s scared of everything. On Mondays he only wants to talk about stupid stuff and eat cucumber sandwiches with Petra. Let’s face it, it’s going to be a week before he’s even remotely decisive again and who knows what could have happened by then?”

“We can’t just go without telling him.”

“Yes, we can. He won’t even notice. And when we report back we’ll tell him he sent us in the first place. He won’t remember.”

Max couldn’t argue with that. “We’ll go and see Cathy,” he said, getting onto his feet.

The gargoyle’s stone features rearranged themselves into something approximating an agonised grimace, but Max knew it was supposed to be a smile. “Great!”

“She could still be useful to us.”

“Wow, for a moment there I thought you might have actually wanted to know how she was.”

“I want to know if she’s well enough to help me. She’s the only person we have in London, and if we’re going to investigate corruption, who better to help than one of the puppets they’re supposed to police?”

As if he’d been sleepwalking and had suddenly woken up, Sam found himself standing next to a table laden with a buffet, a plate in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. The room was filled with the strangers who’d been at the funeral. He watched them talking to each other and listened to the guilty pauses after they laughed.