Jem looked well, but Kite had a feeling he would look well enough even if he were in the throes of a malarial fever. There was a nervousness to the way the tendons in his hands moved when he poured the wine.
Kite wanted to ask how he had found the boarding house, because there must have been some shaky moments. He’d written out a manual of things that Jem would need to know – the value of money, how to swear normally, what was and wasn’t reasonable behaviour in a boarding-house landlord – but it had not been exhaustive. He would have bet all the marzipan in London that Jem wouldn’t tell him the truth, though. He still couldn’t persuade Jem that it was all right to be worried, or to have some symptoms of melancholia. Jem seemed to think that a successful human was a thinking machine and anything else was a repulsive failure, even in such extreme circumstances as his own.
Jem noticed Kite was studying him and looked rueful, as though he might just confess to something ordinary. He pulled off his jade bracelet and spun it between his fingers. He did it in the way other people wrung their hands. Kite saw him lose heart. ‘Missouri … there is a woman coming this way with paperwork.’
Kite looked. ‘It’s a dance card.’
Jem watched her suspiciously. ‘Is there a polite code for I’d-prefer-to-drink-this-wine?’
‘No.’
He cut his eyes across to Kite, which felt a lot like having the sudden attention of Lawrence’s tiger. ‘No one’s bothering you. There must be a hand signal or something.’
‘I’m ugly and poor,’ Kite provided. He took Jem’s wine. ‘Do you good. Run free, be with your own kind.’
Jem kicked Kite’s chair, but then turned on his charm and seemed delighted to go away with the girl. Dancing would do him good, and talking to women. The women here would be better conversationalists than the taciturn men who usually populated boarding houses, and Kite believed strongly that, whether you liked it or not, five minutes with someone kind and clever was cleansing, like green tea, or confession.
Kite only had time to get a few atoms of enjoyment at the view before Agatha took Jem’s chair. He sat up straighter.
‘You’re looking handsome,’ she said. Spanish had two words for you are. One, es, meant you are always; the other, estas, meant you are now, contrary to form. He’d just been estas’d. ‘Shall we dance?’
She took his hand and led him out to the end of a line. His heart started going harder, and nerves that he didn’t feel even when he gave orders to gun crews made his wrists feel weak. He had to keep his eyes down. He could never meet hers for long; she was taller than him, and that black stare reminded him too much of being five and guilty of something stupid.
She put her fan under his chin and pulled upward. ‘If you’re angry, then say something. You’ve been boiling since Harding’s.’
She was right, but he still had to take a deep breath to work up the nerve. ‘Jem’s in a dangerous position. A pamphleteer stopped us five minutes after we left you. Jem’s name is all over the news-sheets now. Mysterious gentleman from Caribbean sugar money seen with heiress. The French have his description, and they know they’re looking for someone who just appeared from nowhere one morning … we’re all but advertising him.’
‘He was in a dangerous position already,’ she said, unexpectedly gentle. ‘The Admiralty leaks like a sieve. A man tried to jump him in an alley the day before I sent that note to come to Harding’s. Didn’t he tell you?’
‘What?’ Kite said, dismayed.
‘So the thing now is to make sure that nothing can happen to him without all of London noticing.’ She shook her head a little. ‘You’re right, anonymity would be much better, but that’s off the cards. This was the best I could think of.’
‘Oh,’ he said. He felt stupidly betrayed that Jem hadn’t told him.
‘Anyway, I’m hoping that if I’m seen out enough with a devastatingly handsome and mysterious bachelor then the Earl of Wiltshire will give up.’ She tried to make it sound offhand, but her collarbones tightened. ‘One would think that at my age one would be rather above suspicion on that count.’
It twisted a stiletto in him to hear what she thought she was like, and it twisted even deeper when he remembered how angry he had been with her before. He’d thought she was careless. He should have known better.
‘Not the way you wear it,’ he said. He glanced over the hall towards Jem. ‘Speaking of Jem, he needs rescuing. You’d better sort that out.’
After an hour, he went outside to escape the heat and the friends of Agatha’s who thought they ought to make an effort to see what he was like, but who felt worried about anyone without a title. There were long gardens, and a fine walk down to the Thames. The cold was sharp after the hot hall, and the gravel on the path squeaked and splintered as the frost broke. He was only halfway to the river when Jem caught up with him.
‘Miz. Are you all right?’
Kite looked back, intensely glad to have been missed and followed, but confused too. ‘Just too hot. You? Didn’t Agatha find you?’
‘She did, but then her paperwork piled up.’
Kite laughed, though it came out forced. They walked for a little while, up the river. There were no lights there except the reflections on the water from the ships. Jem sat down on the low railing to look back at the hall.
‘You could have told me,’ Kite said. It was too abrupt, but he couldn’t hold it in. He nodded at Jem’s bruised hand. ‘My profession is punching Frenchmen.’
Jem watched him for a few seconds, then sighed. ‘I’m sorry. It just seemed so grubby, and in my head you’re so pristine, I just wanted not to … to get anything on you. Does that make sense?’
‘No,’ said Kite, but he felt a happy warmth rush right through him.
Jem pulled him close. He was warm, and his clothes smelled both new and of his cigarettes at the same time. Kite didn’t want to come up. Jem was holding the back of his neck under his collar, and it felt safe and good.
Jem made a soft sound against his hair to make him look up and then touched his lips to Kite’s temple, then his mouth, just ghosts of kisses, before he rested their heads together. Until right then, Kite had always thought of a kiss as a definitive thing, but he couldn’t tell what Jem meant by it. He didn’t dare ask in case it meant nothing at all.
Lord Lawrence was in the sitting room at Jermyn Street when Kite, Agatha, and Jem got back, both stockinged feet tucked under his tiger. He twisted around.
‘You know, my dear,’ he said in the careful way he always started his fights with her, so that he would have the appearance of reasonableness later, ‘you’ll set tongues wagging.’
‘They are. It’s doing wonders for the hospital fund.’
He frowned. ‘Don’t be glib, it’s unfeminine. The Earl of Wiltshire cornered me today. You’ve made him deeply anxious, trusting man though he is—’
She was undoing the complicated pins of the jewelled band in her hair. When it came off, it looked heavy. She dropped it in the glass bowl where the house keys lived. It was one of the things Kite loved about living with a woman: they left treasure in odd places round the house. ‘Lawrence, that was your agreement, not mine. At first it was something you implied to him, knowing full well I had nothing to do with it, and by a fascinating process of erosion you have convinced yourself in the intervening months that I am now bound to him by contract. I am not, and while I know it would be agreeable to have the Earl on your side in Parliament, there are ways to charm a man like that which do not involve parting with my entire inheritance.’