“Yes! I should!”
“I have offered you four times the nearest price,” Titus said. “If Mr. Baynes cannot match it, the picture is mine. If he can match it…” He shrugged slightly. “I can pay more.”
Mr. Baynes launched into an impassioned speech in which the importance of the painting, the moral character of the La Motte family, and the dead queen’s bosom all played significant if confused parts. Titus stepped to the door mid-rant and called for Mr. Thorpe. Mr. Baynes was escorted out without ceremony, and Titus and Nico were left in a room, staring at one another.
“Titus—”
“Why did you not tell me that you were in debt?” Titus said over him. “Mr. Thorpe said you were attacked this morning—that Alma and Perreau were attacked because of you. I knew you were in need of money: I have been wondering how to broach the subject. But why did you not tell me, when I have not hesitated to pile all my problems on you? Why did you let it go this far?”
“Mon ami, I inserted myself into your troubles,” Nico said.He needed to be thinking ahead of wherever the conversation was going, but he couldn’t seem to focus. His thoughts were sludgy with panic. “I wanted to deal with my own debts.”
“I would have given you whatever you need. If you had told me,I am in trouble, I would happily have helped you. And instead, Alma was threatened!”
Nico’s stomach was a painful knot. “I didn’t want to ask you. It was a problem of my own making, which I intended to solve—”
“By selling the painting,” Titus said. “Your family heirloom. The proof of your mother’s innocence and the Queen’s guilt.”
“I don’t care about long-dead people fighting over diamonds.” He met Titus’s eyes, praying his own showed sincerity. “I just want to pay my debt and be done with it.”
“Then why— Oh, but you did try and sell it to me, didn’t you? When we first met, you told me all about it. Of course you wanted me to buy it then, but I wasn’t interested.”
“I had been looking for a buyer for some time,” Nico said. “Should I not have considered you?”
“It’s very natural you should, since I had inherited a fortune you thought would be yours.”
Nico wasn’t sure where that came into it, and didn’t like it. “I am not Laxton, Titus. I do not want your money, and I have not asked for it.”
“No,” Titus said. “No, that’s what I am finding very hard to understand. Because you could have had what you wanted for the asking, as a gift or a loan or payment for a painting, as you pleased. But instead you kept the truth from me all this time, and put Alma and Perreau in danger by it. How much do you need?”
“Titus—”
“I promised Mr. Thorpe I would deal with it. What do you need to pay this debt?”
His tone was implacable, and Nico could feel everything collapsing, even if he wasn’t sure exactly why.
Could he just admit everything now? But what if Titus declined to pay when he’d heard it all? What if he lost his last chance and his lover together, and couldn’t save Eve at the end of it?
He’d always known he wouldn’t get away with this. He’d just wished so hard he might that he had let himself believe it was possible.
“Two thousand pounds,” he said, and hated the weak, defeated sound of his voice.
“I will go to the bank,” Titus said. He hesitated, as though he wanted to add something, and then he left.
Nico would have liked to go to his room, curl up on the bed around the misery, and come to terms with everything falling apart. He couldn’t, because Augustus was still stamping around up there.
He sat on the settle for want of the energy to move, a ball of wretchedness, for what felt like hours. He heard Augustus in the hall, making a great parade of the fact that he intended to leave without bidding his brother farewell, and took a tiny bit of comfort from Mr. Thorpe’s blank “I’m afraid Mr. Pilcrow has gone out.”
And then Titus came back in, and Nico’s stupid heart jumped even though he knew nothing had changed.
He looked tired and drawn, though at least he wasn’t worn down with the helpless misery Henry Morris had evoked. And if that was Nico congratulating himself on not having done worse to the man he loved, he probably deserved all the consequences coming his way.
They stared at each other, then Titus said, “Here,” andhanded Nico a note on his bank. “Two thousand pounds for the painting.”
Nico took it, but didn’t pocket it. “Wait. Mon ami, can we—”
“I think you should settle your debts first. That seems to be the most urgent matter. We can speak later.”
Chapter Twenty-Three