CONSTANCE ESTIMATED THAT THE conference between the three of them could not have lasted over twenty minutes. When all the necessary points had been covered, Diogenes rose.
“I believe we’ve talked enough,” he said. “I’ve completed the lion’s share of my assignment already—cutting off Leng’s supply of victims from the workhouse. But just to be sure: Constance, you said that—given Leng’s methods—we have until January ninth to get all the chess pieces in place?”
She nodded. “Within a day or so, yes. After that, Leng will have made ironclad arrangements for my siblings that... effectively, will render everything we’ve done, or tried to do, useless.”
Diogenes thought a moment. “This deadline—unfortunate word, under the circumstances—doesn't leave us much time. However, since there are no other options, I'll proceed with arranging an emergency signal, in the manner we've just agreed on—with the hope that all goes well for you both in the interim. Yes?”
Constance nodded, and after a moment Pendergast did as well. It was clear to her they all believed that—however necessary—this assignment for Diogenes remained an exercise in wishful thinking.
“Just so the two of you know,” Constance said in a low voice. “Even if we fail, and the deadline comes and goes—there is one thing that I will be certain to accomplish.”
“And what is that?” Pendergast asked, a note of alarm in his voice. “Why spring this melodrama upon us now—once we’ve already gone over our plans?”
Constance did not reply.
“I am allergic to melodrama,” Diogenes said. “And Horace was right when he said: Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus. Let me deal with this accursed signal, so I can return my full attention to debauchery once again. Can you not hear it, crying out from the haunts of iniquity and demanding my attention? Such a delicious world this is! So for now, adieu.” He walked over to the coatrack, donned his cape with a flourish, gave a low bow, and left the suite.
Pendergast remained silent for a long moment. Then he glanced over at Constance. She could see an unusual flush of anger in his pale face. “Constance, I find your attitude to be, frankly, not only willful, but ungrateful.”
“‘Ungrateful’?” she repeated acerbically as she stood up. “That would be ungenerous of me indeed, given how poorly I was making out before you arrived here … neither invited nor expected.” She held up a fist before his face—aware that her limbs were trembling with repressed emotion—and began raising her fingers, one after another. “What had I accomplished? Oh, yes. First: I had established an identity as a European duchess, with the pedigree, household, and wealth necessary to maintain it. Second: I had rescued both Joe and Binky and brought them safely under my wing. Third: I had contacted Leng directly, put him off balance, and made my demands clear. Had you not blundered into my carefully laid plans, the four of us would already be far away from here: a family once again, sailing for lands where he’d never follow. Never—because as soon as I had made Mary safe, I would have killed him.”
Pendergast stood as well, listening in icy silence. Then he placed his hand over hers, folding her fingers back down into her palm. “Fourth,” he said, “instead of this fantasy you fondly imagine, a more accurate picture would be this: all of you dead by now, tortured at the hands of Leng—or, worse, awaiting the bite of his scalpel into your lower back.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You blame me for blundering in and confounding your plans. That’s clear enough. But what I ‘blundered’ into—at that ball where you literally danced with the devil; and later, when you flirted with him at lunch—was the spectacle of a woman unknowingly headed for the slaughterhouse door.”
Constance was taken aback. This was Aloysius as she had never heard him before—brusque, lacking the courtesy with which he habitually treated her. From the meeting just concluded, she’d already sensed he was acting with uncharacteristic recklessness—destroying Shottum’s basement, flooding the subterranean tunnels of the Five Points. She realized this impulsiveness stemmed from anger, even fury.
And yet she felt her own anger rise at this presumption—Aloysius, daring to be angry? He had disregarded her express intentions, entered her world, and spoiled her plans. His irritation was as hypocritical as the swordsman who, upon decapitating Marie Antoinette, grew annoyed when her blood stained his shoes. And it was the last straw.
Snatching away the hand he’d just forced closed, she slapped him. His face went pale, with just a blush where her hand had struck him, and his eyes glittered dangerously.
“It was all going perfectly until you came. I had Leng precisely where I wanted him.”
“You had him as a doomed rabbit has a fox when caught in its jaws. Leng, where you wanted him? Quite the reverse. He was simply enjoying the spectacle, toying with you, as you foolishly exulted in your so-called success.”
“Spectacle?” she raged. “This was my home, my world—” Her throat grew tight with emotion, and for a moment she could not speak. “Make all the excuses you want, but your meddling is what ruined everything … and killed Mary.”
He stood his ground. “This is not your home,” he said. “It is not your time. It’s not even your universe. This delusional image you paint of your ‘family,’ sailing happily off to lands unknown … it never would have happened. The decades you spent in his house have left you blind to how consummately clever Leng is, and—”
“This is my home—as much as I can ever have one! You think my home is back on Riverside Drive, with you? I had to escape. You were cold. And what’s worse—indifferent.”
“Cold? Indifferent? I’ve been good to you in every way.”
“Is being good to me sharing only a sliver of your life—denying me the part of you I most wanted?”
“I always treated you with the utmost respect and decency.”
“Decency?” She was almost crying. “If only you’d showed me a little less of your damned decency.”
“What would you have me do?”
“Be human. Give in to impulse. Be indecent for a change, and not such a weak-kneed prude!”
She could see from his expression this had struck home, and she was glad. Before he could respond, she went on. “And then the heartlessness you showed by following me to this place, even as I was trying to put the misery and loneliness behind me. Didn’t the note I left make it clear? Did you even read it?”
She raised her hand to strike him again, but this time he caught her wrist. The ferocity of her intended strike unbalanced her, and she tipped forward against his chest. When she tried to pull back her arm he continued to hold it in a grip of iron.
“Let me go!”
He said nothing, pulling her closer to him, his face inches from hers. She felt the sudden warmth of his breath; she could see his pupils dilate in the ice-chip eyes, see the mark of her slap blossoming on the alabaster of his cheek.
“I read it a thousand times,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “I know it better than you do yourself.”
“Prove it.”
“I see my own lonely, loveless future,” he said, voice lower still. “If I can’t have you on my own terms, I can’t have—”
But he was abruptly silenced as Constance pulled him still closer, joining her mouth with his. There was the briefest of intervals—brief, yet strangely limitless in its counterpoise of anger and hunger—and then they came together in a passionate embrace.