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They gathered in the drawing room to listen to the musicians. Philip had made a small wager with himself as to whether Frisby would use his sister as an excuse to run and hide, and was pleasantly surprised to lose. The man didn’t look precisely confident as he slipped in behind David, but he was there, even if he didn’t quite manage to meet Philip’s eyes.
“Not scared him off yet, then,” Corvin breathed in his ear. That required standing extremely close, so Philip turned, gave him a fond smile, and ground his heel in a slow emphatic movement on Corvin’s toes.
“Touchy,” Corvin said, with a provocative grin, extracted his boot from under Philip’s foot, and went to take a seat. Philip cast him a look and turned back to see Frisby was now looking at him with the sort of shock that suggested Philip had slapped him in the face.
What on earth—? He couldn’t have heard Corvin unless he had ears like a bat, and a man standing on his friend’s foot was surely nothing to get upset about. One would hardly be shocked by the informality after that exchange of looks earlier.
He considered that as they settled to listen to the new sonata, George on piano and Ned playing the violin. Philip liked music well enough, but he lacked whatever sensibility it was that caused people to go into raptures. Ned’s face as he played was that of an angel on the verge of spending, and Corvin could sit entirely absorbed through concerts that lasted hours; Philip tended to find it a reasonably enjoyable background noise while he thought about something else.
Frisby was evidently one of those who liked music properly, because the slapped look and the self-conscious awkwardness had both fled. He sat and listened to the musicians with wide eyes and slightly parted lips, and since it was, for once, possible to watch him without sending him scurrying, Philip did.
He wasn’t in the habit of approaching unknowns. Corvin and John had been there since he was ten for the needs of body and soul, and Philip counted himself one of the luckiest men in Britain on that account alone; if he wanted variety, he could rely on Corvin’s supernatural ability to discern on sight if someone might like to share his bed. Asking the wrong man risked violence, denunciation, extortion, or a panicked flight to the nearest magistrate, and Philip did not like any of those prospects.
He was as sure as he could reasonably be about Frisby, and absolutely sure Corvin would have told him if he was barking up the wrong tree, but that didn’t exclude the possibility of the aforesaid panicked flight. That might even be more likely if the man was one of those terrified to acknowledge his own nature. It would be a glaring stupidity on Philip’s part to do anything but ignore the fellow until he took his sister home, never to pass Rookwood Hall’s threshold again. The man was nervy, under a great deal of strain, doubtless inexperienced, and a Frisby. Each of those factors suggested Philip should leave the fellow well alone; together the conclusion was inarguable.
And yet.
He kept thinking of what he’d heard that first night. The way Frisby had sat by his sister and spoken to her, never stopping or giving up. The way he put her first and stood for her in the face of his own obvious fears. Perhaps other people would shrug and say that was natural in a family, but Philip had no experience of that, direct or indirect. His own family had hated the sight of him and said so; Corvin’s parents had been so uninterested in their offspring that they made stray cats seem nurturing; John couldn’t name his country of origin, far less any relative.
He would, he thought, sit by John or Corvin’s bedsides, were such a thing required of him. He didn’t believe that family love was of a superior kind to the affection one gave by choice. But still he’d stood in the halls of the home where he’d been loathed for existing, and listened to Frisby weep for his sister, and his heart had twisted like wet washing with a childish, agonised longing for something he’d never have.
He’d thought for several terrible moments this morning that Amanda Frisby had died. He’d been sure of it, and startled by his own distress at the thought of Frisby’s bereavement. Nobody who loved another person so much should lose them so cruelly. And then the man had said, “She’s going to be all right,” and his face had looked like Ned’s when he played, or Corvin’s when he fucked.
Because it turned out that Guy Frisby was in fact rather more than just pretty when he wasn’t grey with worry and exhaustion; that there were fires banked under that unassuming polite-to-a-fault exterior; that his eyes widened at new ideas even while his lovely lips pursed. And that he looked at men, because Philip had rarely been so looked at. Corvin hadn’t needed to kick his ankle to alert him to Frisby’s fascinated stare, although he’d done so anyway. Philip had felt that gaze on his skin.
And he ought, he really ought, to leave Frisby well alone, but when a man made it so clear what he wanted, it seemed rude not to offer.
Frisby had a compact form, not lean or gangly. Habitually rounded shoulders of the type one saw in men who spent their days bent over a desk, although not in the way Philip might like to see him bent over a desk. Dark brown hair, straight and short and cut with competence rather than flair. Dark brows too, over hazel eyes of that flecked green-brown type that looked like nothing much from a distance but rewarded close inspection. A pleasant face, of the sort with which one became comfortably familiar rather than the sort that left one breathless, except for the mouth. That was beautifully shaped, with an elegantly curved top lip and a full bottom lip. A sensitive mouth that moved apparently without the man’s conscious awareness, as though he were used to reading aloud or speaking his thoughts to himself. It had moved silently while Sheridan and Harry had spun pictures of their monstrous ancient world, and Philip had wondered what Frisby saw in his mind’s eye.
He was sitting rapt now, upright, as the violin soared and trilled. George wrote for Ned’s playing, pushing him harder with every piece, and Ned’s bow seemed to flicker with the speed of its dance. He was almost on his toes, rigid with physical tension as he controlled the bow, and Philip wondered why, if you loved a man, you’d make his life so difficult. George gave Ned’s gift no quarter, forcing him to live up to the music of his partner’s imagination and the outer limits of his own skill, increasing the tension every time until the surely inevitable day a string would snap.
Doubtless they made better music that way; doubtless it suited them. It would not have suited Philip. Corvin had never asked him to be more than himself. He’d simply loved, warts and all, without hesitation or qualification as he always did, since the day ten-year-old Philip had been deposited in the Corvin household to spare his parents the sight of him. He’d lived by his friend’s generous affection, the first he’d ever known, gulping it like a thirsty man plunging his face into sweet water.
Perhaps he and Frisby had more in common than met the eye, in fact, when it came to mothers who cuckolded their husbands and abandoned their children, and fathers who didn’t care if one lived or died. Not that Philip knew much of the deceased Mr. Frisby as a parent except that he had drunk himself to death while wasting his substance at the gaming tables, but that didn’t suggest a deal of consideration for his offspring. Doubtless people had clucked disapprovingly and thought the less of the children for the father’s selfishness; they always did. No wonder the brother and sister were close. No wonder Frisby preferred not to be looked at.
Then again, Philip had once wished with all his heart to go unnoticed, and then Corvin had seen him and refused to look away. Perhaps Frisby needed to be seen the right way too.
Why, it’s all but an act of charity, he imagined Corvin saying, and found he was smiling as the musicians finished and they all broke into applause. Those who knew about music clustered round to offer superlatives; the rest of them gave congratulations. Frisby hung back a little, looking uncertain, and Philip drifted over.
“Don’t feel shy about saying you liked it,” he remarked, and saw the man twitch at his voice. “And don’t feel shy about saying if you didn’t, come to that. George prefers intelligent criticism to ignorant applause, which is why I’m keeping back.”
“Don’t you like music?”
“I like it well enough but that’s all,” Philip said. “It doesn’t transport me in the way it does some. You, perhaps?”
“I, uh, I don’t know about transport,” Frisby muttered. “I thought they were very good.”
“I think you thought more than that. Or, if you didn’t, you ought to rent out your face for the benefit of artists, because you looked enchanted.”
Frisby went delightfully pink. Philip took his shoulder, feeling the muscle tense, and gave him a gentle push toward the musicians. “Speak your thoughts, that’s the purpose of our gathering. George, our guest appreciated your work.”
“It was marvellous,” Frisby managed. His manners clearly forced him on when his preference would have been to flee. “The melody line was remarkably beautiful. Thank you for letting me hear it. And the playing—it was exquisite.”
George bowed, starting a response. Philip stepped away and found himself knuckled hard in the back. That would be John.
“Something to say?” he enquired.
“Just wondering what you’re playing at. If even Corvin’s letting something lie, shouldn’t you?”
“The day I measure my behaviour by Corvin’s standards, you may begin to rebuke me.”
“I’ll rebuke you when I please.” John slipped an arm through his and dragged him to the window. “Don’t be an idiot. You’ve enough bad blood with that one for a lifetime, and if you give him grounds to make an accusation—”
“I think you’re too severe.”
“I think you’d be a fool to foul your own nest. It’s a bloody stupid way to go on, and if I want to see my friends being bloody stupid—”
“—you’ll have no trouble finding examples,” Philip completed for him. “Yes, all right. I grant your argument has some merit.”
“Good. Oh, and while I remember, sitting tomorrow.”
“I’ve my steward all morning, but the afternoon is yours.”
John let him go with a nod. Philip turned back to the room, and was somewhere between relieved, unsurprised, and unreasonably annoyed to see that Frisby had gone.
***
HE NORMALLY RATHER enjoyed his meetings with his steward. Lovett was not an original thinker, but he made up for that in practical intelligence, competence, and obedience. Philip had read a few recent works on theories of agriculture after he’d succeeded to the title, decreed that repairs were to be done promptly and tenants treated as knowledgeable partners, then not come back for three years. He’d returned to discover that Lovett had obeyed him to the letter and was generally considered to be robbing his master for the benefit of his tenants, who would therefore appreciate it if he remained an absentee landlord all his life. He’d gravely displeased the other local landholders by failing to sack Lovett and double the rents, but confirmed his reputation as an eccentric by introducing various modern ideas in the way of equipment and crops, leaving Lovett to deal with the actual business of arguing the farmers into it.
The latest idea, thanks to an enthusiastic agriculturalist of his acquaintance, was new to the point of madness: the extraction of sugar from beetroot. A factory had been established for the production of beet sugar in Silesia, and Bonaparte had decreed that France too must begin growing the crop, to reduce his nation’s dependence on imports and guard against the possibility of a British naval blockade cutting off supply.
It could be done in England, and should. A domestic sugar industry would surely be able to beat the prices of sugar imported from the West Indies, and reduce the profitability of slave sugar, and while Philip didn’t delude himself that would be the end of the plantations, it would be something. So Corvin was funding the construction of England’s first beet sugar extraction factory, Philip had set aside several fields to grow the latest strain of Silesian white beet, and the sense of limitless possibility was thrilling. Or had been.
“They all think you’re mad,” Lovett said. “The stuff’s useless.”
“It’s not useless, it’s the future. Tell them Bonaparte’s growing sugar beet.”
“I’d rather not, Sir Philip. It wouldn’t help.”
“Then tell them I’m a violent eccentric and their very lives depend on doing this properly.”
“Mmm,” Lovett said. “Perhaps there’s a middle way?”
Philip sighed. “Tell them whatever you like as long as I get my beet. Why they must be so hidebound...”
“People like the old ways, Sir Philip. They like what they know.”
There was an explosion of laughter from up the corridor, sufficiently loud that they both turned instinctively towards it. Evidently Philip’s friends were enjoying a joke. “In ten years’ time sugar beet will be the old ways that they know. Then someone will discover a new means of extracting sugar from sea water and the farmers will cry, But beet was good enough for our forefathers! It’s how progress works. The printing press was a modern innovation once. So was fire.”
“Yes, Sir Philip,” Lovett agreed, in a tone that very clearly meant, Please stop talking.
Philip sighed. “Look, just assure them that this is my idea and as such I’ll bear the consequences if it’s a stupid one. If the factory doesn’t work and the beet rot in the fields, that’s my problem.”
“And a year or two of their lives and hard work for naught,” Lovett said. “It makes a difference, Sir Philip. To put your labour into something that will, as you say, rot in the fields and you know it as you work...” He tailed off, searching for words to articulate the concept, and concluded, “They don’t like it. They don’t want to do it, paid or no. They won’t refuse...”
“But they won’t be enthusiastic. Or attentive.”
“Well, if a man’s asked to do a pointless task, he doesn’t generally break his back over it, that’s all.”
Philip opened his mouth to reply, but was distracted by another roar of laughter, this time even louder. Lovett glanced at the clock. “I will ensure the men know your mind, Sir Philip. Unless there’s anything else, you will want to return to your party.”
Philip forbore to smile. He was aware that his steward considered his infrequent visits an irritating obstacle to the smooth running of the lands, and didn’t resent it since he had no desire to take on the day-to-day tasks himself. “Thank you. I shall see you on Monday.”
He showed Lovett out himself, then hesitated in the hall. He hadn’t seen Frisby at breakfast as the man had been with his sister. It would be courteous to drop into the sickroom and offer a belated welcome to his lady guest. Then again, his interest in her might well be misinterpreted, so he should ask Frisby to make the introduction himself. Pleased with that as a neat solution to two issues, he headed for the drawing room to find out what the noise was about.
Sheridan was on the settee, Harry next to him, legs out and head thrown back, laughing like a drain. Corvin and John were both leaning on the back of the settee. Sheridan held a book, which he was pulling out of Corvin’s reach. “Get off, I’m reading it. Phil! Oh, listen, listen!”
“What on earth has caused this riot?” Philip demanded.
Sheridan flipped through the book. “Just a moment... Here we are.” He cleared his throat and began to read aloud. “‘Sir Peter Falconwood was a fair man to look upon, yet thus we see how fairness may be outward only, for his character was as vile as his features were pleasing, and his flaxen hair and blue eyes hid a cruel, cold heart. Though handsome, Sir Peter was no rival to his bosom friend Lord Darkdown in his pursuit of the gentler sex—they might consider themselves blessed by his abstinence! Instead he devoted his energies to strange sciences, cultivating unknown crops on the advice of philosophers rather than that of honest countrymen steeped in English soil’—”
“Excuse me, what?” Philip demanded. “What was this fellow’s name again?”
“Sir Peter Falconwood,” John said. “He’s not the main villain though. That’s Lord Darkdown, his best friend, a disgraceful rake, and, wait for it, red-haired.”
Corvin scowled dramatically. “This is a damned libel. My hair is russet. At most.”
“Oh my God,” Philip said. “What is this book? Let me see it.”
“Mine,” Sheridan said, snatching it away. “Well, Miss Frisby’s, but she lent it to me. Buy your own.”
“I’m going to buy hundreds.” Corvin was bright with glee. “The Secret of Darkdown. I adore everything about it.”
“I hope you know you’re all going to die,” John said. “Poisoned by mistake, or stabbed by a ghostly nun, or falling off a cliff into hell.”
“Well, so are you, if that’s who the swarthy henchman is,” Sheridan pointed out.
“The— You’re sodding joking.”
“Sorry,” Sheridan said, unapologetically. “You’re six feet tall and devoted to Lord Darkdown.”
John gave a hiss of exasperation. Corvin poked him in the shoulder and said, “Henchman.”
“I’m not your bloody henchman.”
“You are now.”
John got an arm round his neck. Sheridan and Harry ducked out of the way of the brawl. Philip demanded, “Who the devil wrote it?”
“It just says By A Lady.”
“I’ve a pal who can probably find out if you want,” John offered, slightly breathlessly, since he’d more or less got Corvin’s face into the back of the couch.
“Let me go, you oaf. Ouch. If it’s a success I expect we can wait for the rumours,” Corvin said, straightening and rubbing his neck. “Nobody ever keeps these things quiet for long. God, I hope it’s a success. Let’s make it one.”
Philip rolled his eyes. “You’ve been waiting your whole life for someone to write a Gothic novel about you, haven’t you?”
“It’s a small tribute to my genius,” Corvin said modestly. “But Sir Peter the strange scientist is good too. He probably intends complicated villainies which I trust and pray will involve root vegetables. Can I have it when you’ve finished, Sherry?”
“Not a chance,” John said. “I asked first.”
“I’ll send for more copies,” Philip put in. “One each. Go on, read me the bit about Corvin.”
***
PHILIP PINNED FRISBY down after luncheon, as the man came into the hall. He’d had a feeling that Frisby had been lying low, and the man’s blush suggested he was right. “Good afternoon,” he said breezily. “How is Miss Frisby today?”
“Uh, better, thank you. She had a bowl of beef broth this morning, which Dr. Martelo says will be restorative. Your cook is wonderful.”
“Not mine; Corvin supplies the household.”
“Oh. Of course,” Frisby mumbled.
“Excellent news, though. I rather wondered—if you feel it appropriate—if you would care to introduce me to the lady. When she is well enough to receive visitors, naturally.”
“Oh. Yes. Yes, I am sure she will want to thank you.”
“Please tell her not to,” Philip said. “My contribution is simply that I own the property, which is accidental anyway, so hardly praiseworthy. Have you been for a walk?”
“Dr. Martelo ordered me out, yes. He’s very keen on fresh air.”
“Oh, I know, it’s so tiresome. I wish I had done the same, since I shall be obliged to spend the latter part of the afternoon sitting perfectly still.”
“Why will you need to sit perfectly still?” Frisby asked.
“For my portrait. John is working on a commission for Corvin. Do you know that he is an artist?”
“Mr. Raven? I had no idea.”
“He does engravings mostly, satirical ones. Highly satirical. Usually about two inches to the left of a prosecution, in fact, which is one reason we’re here now and he has leisure to work in oils. The word horsewhip came up in conversation with one of his recent victims in London, and discretion is the better part of valour in these cases.”
“Oh!” Philip had meant only to entertain, or possibly shock, but Frisby seemed to have found something to chew on. “Oh. So...”
“So?” Philip prompted.
“Well, that is, many people would take great offence at seeing themselves depicted satirically or—or unfairly,” Frisby said in something of a rush. “You don’t mind that Mr. Raven does it?”
“He picks deserving targets. Then again, ‘use every man after his deserts and who should ’scape whipping’? I am of the opinion that one must be the sole judge of one’s own value. There is no point listening to the opinions of others: the world always has its thumb on the scales.”
Frisby’s mouth rounded. It really was a very expressive mouth. “Can you do that? Ignore people?”
“Given practice, it becomes second nature.”
Frisby gave an abrupt little gasp, as though he’d intended to say something and stopped himself. He shook his head instead. “Perhaps. If you can afford to ignore them, if you don’t need them, or you have enough friends to be shocking with. If you didn’t grow up with people always talking about—about you, or your family—”
“But I did,” Philip pointed out. “And ‘talking about’ understates the matter considerably, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“You mean your brother? Yes, I suppose that must have been a great scandal for you too.”
“I don’t mean my brother. You are aware of my family situation, yes?” Frisby shook his head. “Good Lord. I would have assumed it was known to every man, woman, and dog in the locality.” He examined Frisby’s face. “Oh dear.”
“What?”
“You’re visibly teetering between the urgent need to ask and the awareness of how very rude it might be. Curiosity at war with courtesy. It’s like watching a morality play on your face.”
The colour washed into Frisby’s cheeks. “I beg your pardon,” he said stiffly. “I had no intention of prying.”
“Good God, man, unbutton yourself.”
Philip hadn’t actually meant it as a double entendre, let alone a command, but there was no question of how Frisby heard the words. He went from pink to scarlet in a second, eyes widening visibly.
“Which is to say, please don’t feel constrained by civility,” Philip went on as calmly as though the man hadn’t reacted at all, because he had a sudden vision of Frisby running out of the house screaming for help. “You must have gathered the nature of our society by now.” Christ, he was making it worse. “The pursuit of knowledge, I mean. We like to discuss things as we please and we tend to speak frankly. If I wanted to keep my family scandal a dark secret I shouldn’t have raised the subject. I would have to burn quite a few portraits to achieve that, though.”
Frisby blinked, though at least his colour was returning to normal. “I don’t at all know what you mean by that. But if you’d like to explain then yes, I am curious.”
“I wouldn’t precisely say ‘like to’ but it really seems only fair,” Philip said. “Have you seen the family gallery?”
Frisby shook his head. Philip gestured him upstairs, along to the corridor where the pictures hung, just near the pleasant little parlour where he and Corvin had enjoyed each other yesterday. Frisby lagged noticeably behind, steps slowing as though expecting attack, for reasons Philip couldn’t guess at and decided to ignore.
“Here,” he said, indicating a painting. “Sir George Rookwood, who held the title before James.”
Frisby frowned. “You mean, your father?”
“Well, no, I don’t. That’s rather the point.”
Frisby looked at him, and then at the dark-haired, red-faced, stocky man with the jutting chin, and up the line of portraits at two more dark-haired, red-faced, stocky men with jutting chins. “Uh. Do you take after your mother?” he tried, a desperate last stab at decency.
“No. I take after my father.”
“Oh.”
“His name is Sir Donald Hamlyn,” Philip said. “I’m his living spit. My mother’s connection with him was a matter of notoriety, but the birth of a child quite so marked with his looks—”
“Oh.”
“My supposed father had never troubled to keep his own vows; nevertheless he did not appreciate the cuckoo in his nest. Nor did my mother, actually. After some years of very public estrangement they reconciled, and I was left as an unwanted reminder of her error. I lived in the Corvin household from the age of ten, which was best for all concerned, since the Rookwoods are cousins of the family.”
“So you and Lord Corvin are related?” Frisby asked, and then, “No.”
“No indeed.”
“But you still inherited?”
Philip shrugged. “I was born to the wife of Sir George Rookwood. In law I’m his son. I dare say he might have attempted to disinherit me if he’d dreamed James would die without issue, but he was a stupid and unimaginative man. And James was evidently not thinking about posterity, given his passion for a woman he couldn’t marry. So the Rookwood estate is mine, greatly to the distress of my—or rather James’s—cousin, who is next in line. He attempted to get up a lawsuit, with no success. He can have the place when I’m dead.”
“I’m so sorry, Sir Philip,” Frisby said. “It must have been dreadful for you, all of it.”
Philip was sure he hadn’t sounded distressed enough to evoke such a response. His illegitimacy had been a lifelong insult, but he had long ago vowed not to feel it as an injury. His parents’ failings were not his fault. That was not the popular view, and people mostly reacted with embarrassment when he mentioned it, or shock. Frisby’s quick, open sympathy was unexpected.
“I dare say that I might have had some of the same experiences,” Frisby went on. “People talking about one’s mother, and making remarks. It’s vile.”
“It is rather,” Philip said. “And then I decided I didn’t give a damn for such people or their opinions. I had no hand in my own conception, any more than you played a part in your mother’s decision to follow her heart. I am, myself, of the opinion that if anyone deserves condemnation for the acts of Mrs. Frisby and Lady Rookwood other than the ladies themselves, it would be—”
“This Sir Donald and your brother,” Frisby completed. “Yes.”
“Actually, I was going to say the ladies’ husbands. Perhaps your father was blameless, though my one encounter with him was not at all pleasant, but I knew my mother’s husband well enough, and I wouldn’t have wanted to be yoked to him.”
“You said they reconciled?”
“My mother became an adherent of an extremely religious sect,” Philip said. “She felt it her duty to return to the marital home, where she bemoaned her sin on a frequent basis. The Bible does tell us that the sins of the parent are to be visited upon the child.”
“The New Testament tells us that children belong to the kingdom of God,” Frisby said. “And that the erring woman was forgiven, and that only he who is without sin is entitled to cast a stone at her. I’d rather hold to that.”
He spoke with a slight hesitation, but he said it all the same, and Philip felt a mild satisfaction at having elicited a bit of spine from the man. Standing for his beliefs suited him a great deal better than the scurrying.
“You’re quite right.” He enjoyed the look of confusion that brought. “That is how it should be. I don’t believe in divinity, but I hope I can appreciate a solid moral precept when I hear one. If only more Christians were guided by Christ.”
“Well. That’s true.” Frisby’s shoulders dropped a little.
“I don’t mean to compare our situations,” Philip added. “I know what it is to have one’s family talked about, especially when one’s mother commits the cardinal sin of behaving in a way that is only acceptable for fathers, but it must have been far worse for you.”
“No: it was worse for Amanda,” Frisby said. “Not for me. I had boys calling my mother names and—well, that sort of thing. But Amanda... She went to London for a Season and people assumed—they thought, because of what our mother had done more than a decade before—”
“Ah.”
“How dare they,” Frisby said low. “How dare people make assumptions about her character because of what someone else did when she was five? But they did. And I don’t care what other people say is all very well when you’re a man with an independent income, but it isn’t all very well for women, because what other people say is all that counts. If enough people repeat that Eleanor Frisby’s daughter is just like her mother, it becomes true. And you may think Dr. Bewdley a fussy old fool, but I know why he was concerned, because he saw it all happen before. He knows perfectly well that if there’s the slightest breath of scandal, it will taint Amanda forever because nobody will ever give her a fair hearing thanks to Mother, and it’s not right!”
He was standing tall now, chin up and back straight, self-consciousness burned away by anger. Frisby was roused for his sister, and those green-flecked eyes were wildly expressive when they were lit with passion. This was what he ought to look like, Philip thought: not shuffling back into the shadows because to be noticed was a misery. He ought to be noticed, and Philip was bloody well noticing him now.
Frisby shifted slightly, hackles settling. “I beg your pardon. But that’s what I think.”
“Will you do me a service, Frisby?”
“Of course,” he said at once, and then his expressive eyes widened as though he was wondering what he’d let himself in for.
Philip tried not to smile. “Will you please never again beg pardon of me for having an opinion? Under my roof, you are welcome to think and speak as you please, and I hope you will. It suits you.”
And there it went again, the betraying flush of colour in his cheeks. Philip had once heard a naturalist lecture at the Royal Society on animals that changed colour as a means of communication to their kind; Frisby was evidently of that species. He looked pink and startled and pleased, and Philip wondered—
“Oi! Phil! Get your baronet arse along here!”
Frisby blinked at John’s bellow from a nearby room. Philip sighed. “The artistic temperament. Apparently my presence is required for the sitting. Would you care to watch?”