Until the end. That still stung painfully.Why couldn’t you tell me the truth?he’d demanded, and Nico had retorted,Why couldn’t you tell me the truth about Henry?It was a tactic worthy of Henry himself, responding to any accusation with an attack of his own.
And it wasn’t remotely the same thing. Titus hadn’t been obliged to tell Nico about Henry: They hadn’t been lovers then. He’d done nothing wrong by keeping it private, even if it would have been far more sensible to put the matter in Nico’s hands sooner. The fact was, he’d been ashamed to admit the sordid truth to a man he’d wanted to think well of him, and it was impossible that Nico, who read him like a book, would not have known that—
Titus sat in his bedroom, with the realisation sinking in.
He’d said,Why couldn’t you tell me the truth?And Nico had replied,Why couldn’t you tell me the truth about Henry?to which the only possible answer was,I was ashamed.
It hadn’t been an accusation to deflect him. It had been an admission: Nico hadn’t told him the truth because he’d been silenced by shame, in a way Titus knew all too well. And Titus had heard it as a rhetorical weapon, and he’d cut off the conversation rather than let himself be sucked into the whirlpool of another manipulative man, and—oh Christ—Nico had left without argument or protest. He’d been told togo and he went, because he might be a forgery and a liar, but he wasn’t a Henry.
“Hell’s teeth,” Titus said aloud. Then he went to find Alma Thorpe.
She was dusting the parlour in a savage manner. Titus checked that Mr. Thorpe wasn’t in earshot, came in, and closed the door. “Alma?”
“Yes, sir?” she snapped.
“Er,” Titus said. “Look, I daresay this is awkward, but—did Perreau leave an address?”
Alma turned from her dusting with a comical look of incredulity. “A what? Sir.”
“I think I need to speak to Nico. The Comte. Well, he’s clearly not a comte, but—”
“They’re not anything, either of them. Rotten, lying pair of…” She finished that on a wordless snarl, and whacked a vase with the duster so hard it rocked.
“Yes, but I still need to speak to him. And he didn’t leave me an address so I wondered— I suppose they’re together? Unless they’ve left for France,” Titus finished with a pulse of alarm. “I would like to speak to him before they go.”
“If you think it will do you any good, sir, he did leave an address. But Pa will fly into the boughs if that pair come round here. He’d wring both their necks for a penny.”
“I respect your father’s judgement very much,” Titus said. “But—” He considered and discarded pointing out that it was his house. “I do want to talk to the—to him. I think I’m owed an explanation.”
“Aren’t we both, sir?”
It was a rhetorical question, which Titus chose to answer directly. “Yes. We are. So perhaps you can help us get it?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Nico arrived at Carey Street the next morning at eleven prompt, as arranged by letter. Titus was waiting in the hall to answer the door while Alma had Mr. Thorpe distracted in the kitchen. She turned out to be very efficient at covert assignations, which felt like something Titus ought not to know.
Not that this was an assignation, but it felt like one.
All such thoughts fled his mind when a soft rap sounded, knuckles rather than door-knocker, and he opened the door to see Nico. He was wearing the brown suit, and it flattered him as well as ever, but he looked tired.
“Good morning,” Titus said, feeling horribly stilted. He wondered if he would regret this. “Come into the parlour. Uh, I would offer you refreshments, but Thorpe doesn’t know you’re here.”
“I hope he doesn’t learn that Perreau is here,” Nico said. “That, I suspect, would be more infuriating. Mon ami—”
“If I’m your friend, I should know your name.”
Nico flinched visibly at that. “Yes. I’m sorry. Uh, it’s Kemp. Nicholas Kemp.”
“Nicholas Kemp? Are you even French?”
“My mother was, and I grew up there. My father is English.” His voice was different as he said that. English, Titus realised. It didn’t sound right without the familiar accent. Titus didn’t like it.
“Well,” he said. “I asked you to come here because—because I think I understood what you were trying to say to me when we parted, about why you didn’t tell me the truth.”
“The Bible says the truth will set you free,” Nico said wearily. “But sometimes it just makes you look like the swine you are.”
“I’d like to know it now,” Titus said. “I want to understand. Because you did so much for me while you were lying to me so horribly, and I can’t make that fit. I want to be able to understand so I don’t have to wonder what happened for the rest of my life.”