James spent the remainder of the afternoon in the drawing room poring over photograph albums. Lilah had returned from Plymouth in a palpably edgy mood but with a brand new electric fire, and now the drawing room was, if not warm, then at least borderline comfortable. Martha sat near the fire, mending a shapeless garment, and Lilah perched by the window, smoking a cigarette. Even Sir Anthony was quiet, reading the newspaper and smoking an endless series of cigarettes at the desk. Camilla was half asleep on the settee. Mr. Trevelyan had arrived that afternoon and was next door in the library. Only Madame Fournier was absent, having declared herself in need of a rest before dinner.
“I was wondering something,” said James, not meeting the eyes of anyone in the room. “Rose turned twenty-one in May of 1927. That’s when she would have inherited Aunt Charlotte’s fortune, wasn’t it?” The Sommers family had been enormously wealthy; very little of his father’s share had made its way to James, his mother having had expensive tastes and a penchant for roulette, but Aunt Charlotte’s inheritance ought to have been more or less intact. “Do any of you know what happened to it?”
He didn’t expect an answer. Leo said that Rose hadn’t been declared dead, so either that money was still sitting around somewhere or someone in this room had figured out a way to get a hold of it.
“Rather crass to declare people dead just to get money,” Camilla murmured sleepily from the sofa. “Father and I were of one mind.”
“Quite right,” agreed Sir Anthony. “Vulgar.”
“Wait. Are you saying she had only just inherited? Only months before she—before whatever happened to her?” Lilah asked. There was a sharpness to her voice that James hadn’t heard before. It seemed to surprise Camilla too, because the older woman was now sitting straight, all traces of sleepiness vanished from her face. She looked at her daughter and something seemed to pass between the two women.
“Well, yes,” said James, slightly surprised. He had assumed that they all knew this. But Lilah could hardly be expected to know the details of Rose’s inheritance if nobody ever spoke of her. “She turned twenty-one that spring. Right after your mother got married.”
“Can we find out whether she cashed it all in? All at once? Would the bank still have those records?” Lilah asked. The question seemed to be addressed to the room, but she was looking at her mother, and her mother was returning the gaze.
“You’d have to ask Mr. Trevelyan,” said Martha. A wrinkle had appeared on her brow. “He’ll be here again for dinner.”
Had Mr. Trevelyan known about the state of Rose’s finances twenty years ago? Had he, perhaps, had something to do with her missing money? What if Rose had found out? Before James could decide whether these were reasonable suspicions, Sir Anthony cleared his throat.
“I wonder, James,” said Sir Anthony, breaking the quiet, “that you’re still practicing medicine, even in such a modest way.”
James kept his gaze on the photograph album, which was open to a picture of Camilla in tennis whites. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Martha’s needle had stilled. “I’m a doctor. It would be a wonder if I didn’t practice medicine,” he said when he could trust his voice to remain even.
“But—well, it can be a trying profession. When you came to see me in ’45, I believe I counseled rest.”
Mostly, James was furious that Sir Anthony was doing this in front of Martha and Lilah. “I believe you did,” James agreed, flipping the page so he now saw a photograph of Rupert Bellamy and some men James didn’t recognize. “But I sought a second opinion.” Somewhere behind him, he heard a sound from Lilah that could have either been a laugh or a gasp. “Feeling useful is its own therapy.”
James didn’t have to look at Sir Anthony to know the man was furious. It radiated off him so James could feel it as surely as he felt the heat from the fire.
“By exposing yourself to situations that bring on your fits, you risk a relapse. You probably heard what happened to Peter Mayhew. Went stark mad after hearing a gun discharge during shooting season. Quite insensible now. Worse than your father ever was.”
He wanted to say that he didn’t have fits, that he wasn’t going to go mad, that he was no longer afraid of turning out how his father did. But there was a glimmer of truth in the poison Sir Anthony tried to pour in his ear. Sometimes a case that was particularly bloody or violent did bring him close to the edge of panic. He would always worry about ending up like his father.
But now he knew those worries were baseless; where another person might lie awake worrying about burglars or housefires, James worried about his mind. The worry would always be there, but he knew it to be far-fetched.
Two years ago, though, he hadn’t known. He had fainted while attempting to put in stitches and was terrified that his career as a surgeon—and his life as he knew it—was over. He had been vulnerable and frightened when he sought Sir Anthony’s help.
He had spent years thinking that Sir Anthony must have meant well. But now he knew that this wasn’t the case. Sir Anthony meant to make him feel as bad as possible. He didn’t know why, and at the moment he didn’t much care.
“I wonder that you speak so freely about your patients,” said James, finally lifting his gaze to look at the darkened countenance of Sir Anthony. He got to his feet and tucked the photo albums under his arm. “I also wonder if my father might have fared better with a different course of treatment.”
That parting shot might have been unfair, but James was beyond caring. He needed fresh air. He stowed the albums on top of the wardrobe in his bedroom, out of sight, and decided not to think too much about why he thought this precaution was necessary. He grabbed his coat out of the wardrobe and went downstairs, then stepped outside just in time to see Leo walking down the drive.
“Why on earth do you look so surprised?” Leo asked. James supposed his face was just that readable. Or maybe Leo had simply learned to read it.
“Not surprised, just pleased to see you,” James said in a wild understatement. But the truth was that James was always a bit surprised when Leo returned. Not because he didn’t trust Leo or because he thought Leo didn’t care enough for him to come back, but because it seemed completely fantastical that a person like Leo came to James not only once, not only twice, but again and again. It was as if some rare bird had alighted on James’s finger—it would be mad to expect it to become a regular occurrence. “I’m delighted, if we’re honest.”
Leo gave him a startled we’re in public look even though James’s voice had been pitched low, and even though a heated homosexual affair on the front steps would be the least peculiar thing to have occurred at Blackthorn in the past twenty-four hours.
“Do you fancy a walk?” James asked, shoving his hands in his pockets so he didn’t accidentally touch Leo.
“I would indeed,” Leo responded, in a tone suggesting that he understood exactly what James meant by a walk.
While James buttoned his coat and put on his gloves, Leo watched him, as if making sure he did up all the buttons properly, as if he wanted to check for himself that James was sufficiently bundled up. The thought made James’s heart squeeze in his chest.
As they walked, they told one another what they had learned that afternoon. James told Leo about what he had seen in the photographs and his uncle’s bedroom. He told Leo what Sir Anthony Marchand had said to him, and Leo had responded with a gratifying string of profanities and darkly glinting eyes. Leo in turn told James about the contents of the newspaper, his talk with the grocer’s wife, and his certainty that Madame Fournier was in fact Camilla’s former lady’s maid, who had disappeared from Blackthorn at around the same time as Rose.
“In short, you probably flirted with everyone from the owner of a tea shop to an elderly librarian—” James began.
“—and I hardly learned enough to fill a calling card,” Leo lamented.
James had seen Leo gently pry information from people, and it wasn’t exactly flirting, but it wasn’t far from that either. “What do spies do when they’re less accomplished flirts than you?”
“Must be tedious.”
“Is it ever more than flirting?” James had perhaps let himself wonder about this once or twice, or maybe a few dozen times.
“Not really. Not lately, at least. My specialty is rooting out information, and taking people to bed is really not the most expedient way of going about things.” He cleared his throat. “Would it bother you?”
“No,” James said immediately. It was mostly a lie.
“Liar.”
“I mean, to be perfectly frank, I don’t want you to…” He made a vague gesture.
“To fuck other people?”
James felt his cheeks heat despite the cold. “I know we never talked about it.”
Leo snorted. “Did we have to? I rather thought the latchkey to your house meant—”
“It did.” They had never talked about this—about what they were doing together, about what this meant. James didn’t have the words for it; he hardly had the emotions for it. All he knew was that when he thought about the future, he wanted it to be with Leo. And now they had just—James was pretty sure they had just promised one another fidelity, and the thought made him feel almost lightheaded with some combination of relief and fear.
“In any event, you don’t have to worry about it. As I said, it’s not an issue that arises anymore. And even if it did, I have other means at my disposal.”
“The flirting, though,” James said, and immediately wanted to hide behind his muffler.
“Are you jealous?” asked Leo, with obvious interest.
James took a moment to consider. “Just a little.” He paused and adjusted his own muffler, then turned to tighten Leo’s. “But it doesn’t exactly bother me.” Some primitive part of him wanted to lay claim to Leo, wanted to snarl at anyone who got too close to him. That was a mortifying thought; besides, Leo was a flirt by nature and James didn’t want him to change. “Leo, I—” He was aware of Leo’s gaze on him and knew that whatever he said next had to matter. “I know what we are to one another,” he said, and then immediately regretted it when Leo didn’t respond. “I mean,” he went on, “I know you like me best. Which makes me sound like a petulant child, and I do wish you’d say something or that perhaps a tree would fall on my head to shut me up because—”
Leo pulled him behind a high garden wall and took his face between cold, dry hands. “To say that I like you best may be understating the case.” The sun was now low in the sky; they were sheltered from view by the wall and given privacy by the fact that few people would choose to take a stroll on a February evening that was getting progressively colder. “I like you so much that I feel certain you shouldn’t allow it. Somebody, at least, ought to stop me.”
“That,” James said, before brushing his lips across Leo’s, “is one of the stupidest things you’ve ever said.”
“I say a lot of stupid things.” Leo wrapped his arms around James’s neck. “You’re just blinded by affection.”
There was a question lurking behind Leo’s words, but James didn’t know what it was. Throughout this whole conversation there had been a current running beneath everything Leo said, some secret meaning that James wasn’t subtle enough to grasp or brave enough to ask about. “Am not,” he said, speaking the words against Leo’s skin, his lips barely touching the corner of Leo’s mouth.
Leo leaned closer, trapping James between the stone wall and Leo’s chest. The wall was cold and rough but Leo was warm, his heart thudding reassuringly against James’s own. He gave James the sort of kiss that was right at home in shadowy secrecy and against rough stone walls—hard and deep and a little filthier than James was expecting. Leo was rather horrifyingly good at this sort of kiss.
“Where are you spending the night?” James asked. “And why can’t it be in my bed?”
“Tomorrow we’ll be—we’ll be back in Wychcomb St. Mary,” Leo said, and James had the distinct impression that he had been about to say home. He hadn’t realized how much he wanted to hear Leo say that word until now. “I don’t care if ten uncles leave you cryptic bequests and I don’t care if twenty cousins disappear into thin air. I’ll cart you away from here even if I have to chloroform you,” Leo went on, his voice rough and his breath warm against James’s cheek.
Their lips met again, only hungrier. James decided it was a good thing that he was too old and too prudent—not to mention too cold—to take things much further. He slowed the kiss down, letting some of the hunger dissipate, letting the heat become replaced with something less urgent.
“I should go soon,” Leo said. “My car is ready. Come up with an excuse to invite me in for supper, though? Mrs. Carrow is making beef stew and I won’t stop thinking about it until I’ve had some.”
“I also need to show you the photographs I found,” James said. “And we need to talk to Madame—or Gladys, rather,” James said.
“Immediately,” Leo agreed, but gave James another kiss before heading back to the house.