Titus didn’t think it was as simple as that. He was also aware that it might have felt that simple to Nico. “Well. Go on.”
“Where was I? Masquerading in Society. The idea was that my presence in the news sheets would make the story credible to Baynes, and also, we thought he would not dare assault and rob a nobleman. Ha. Alors, I posed as the Comte and eventually met Miss Whitecross.”
“And lied to her too?”
“She didn’t believe me for a minute,” Nico said. “No fool, la Whitecross. But she found me entertaining, and needed to marrysomeone, and she liked the idea of making it a foreigner: It would have incensed the Laxton. So—”
“You’re speaking French again,” Titus said. “With a French accent, I mean.”
Nico shut his eyes. “Sorry. Habit. I have been doing this a while. I’ll try to stop.”
Titus wished he wouldn’t. It had felt, just briefly, like having his Nico back. “Go on,” he said.
“Well, I had the prospect of my rich marriage, and Bayneshad agreed to five thousand pounds for the painting, which was far more than I had thought possible. Too easy; I should have realised. I went to make the exchange, and everything was going well until he produced a pistol. We scuffled; I took the first opportunity to jump out of a window and got away. I returned to my inn to collect my things, and the damned fellow followed me there, brandishing his pistol. I had to go out another window and down a drainpipe, and he shot at me as I fled. It was ghastly.”
“But why would he do that?”
“An economical method of increasing his collection, perhaps, or a deep dislike for la famille La Motte and what we—they—did to Marie Antoinette. Who cares? The man is a violent bedlamite, and I hope you are not corresponding with him.”
“Well, I wrote back,” Titus said uneasily. “He offered me five thousand for the painting, and I said it was not for sale at any price.”
“Good. Stay away from him. Well, I fled with no money and no vengeance, but it was all right because we had Miss Whitecross’s fortune to come. I hoped she would give me the funds to pay Gaskin at once, but I could have persuaded him to wait if need be, knowing I was to be rich. Except that when I returned to London, she was dead.”
“Ah.”
Nico looked up at the ceiling. His face was tense with remembered stress. “It was a catastrophe. We owed Jacky Gaskin close to two thousand pounds we had no way to repay—”
“How ‘we’?” Titus asked. “You said this was all Perreau’s idea.”
“What should I do, leave my cousin to a moneylender’s mercy? Gaskin hurts people. Eve said we should find another collector to buy the painting and pay him off. Me, I wantedto flee the country, but we needed money to do that. You had taken the fortune that was to be mine, so I came to see you in the hope of a few pounds. You know the rest.”
“I do not know the rest!” Titus yelped. “That’s where it begins! What did you mean to do? What did you want from me?”
Nico rubbed his face with both hands, hard enough to redden the skin. “I wanted money, bien sûr. I wondered if I might sell you the painting. Then I thought I might— Well, help us both. You needed assistance, and I could delay payment of my bills by taking you to the right shops—”
“I did realise that. I was quite ready to pay you for your assistance.”
“And instead you opened your home to me. You treated me like a man, a friend, a person of worth. Not a dubious foreigner, or a harlot’s son, or a pretty fool. I have got very tired of being the Comte de La Motte in England. But you were good to me, and I wanted to do my best for you while I took your kindness. And I got caught up in you, Titus. It has been such a joy to see the world with you—” He broke off there. Titus saw his throat move convulsively before he began again. “It is not a great virtue that I didn’t want to cheat you further than I was, or for you to stop seeing me as the hero I am not. But I did not want those things, so I pretended.” He gave a twisted smile. “I pretended I was worth you while I set out to cheat someone else, because I told myself that if I could pay Gaskin off, if I did not have to ask you for the money, then I could explain everything. I thought that might give us a chance. I would say,I lied, and I am sorry; please forgive me, and you might even have listened. You have no idea how close I came.”
“But I would havegivenyou the money,” Titus said hopelessly. “And you needed it, so why could you not have asked?”
“Because once I asked, you would have doubted me,” Nico said. “And not the things you should have doubted. You do not have a high opinion of yourself, mon ami. Could you truly have handed me two thousand pounds and not started to wonder,Is that what he always wanted? Is that why he is in my bed?”
It hurt staggeringly. “I am not Miss Whitecross!” Titus protested. “I don’t think everyone is trying to cheat me. Do I?”
“You would have reason if you did,” Nico said, with that sharpness in his voice that so often meant he was defending Titus. “I felt quite sure that if I put out my hand—like your brother, the Laxton, the Morris, all the rest—you would have wondered again how I came into your life, and asked yourself what I really wanted with you, and reached the worst conclusions. Am I wrong? Would you not have looked for the shadows in the picture?”
“At least I would have known they were there. It would have been better than finding you trying to steal from my brother.”
Nico started to respond, stopped. There was a tiny, miserable silence.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Perhaps. I have made a damned mess of this and I know it. I can only say that I did not want you to doubt my feelings for you, and I wish you will not doubt them now. I am a liar and a charogne and everything you care to say, but I love you, and you were never, ever wrong to believe that.”
He had spoken with a fair amount of composure throughout the conversation, but his voice cracked on that last. Titus had to swallow hard himself. He couldn’t reply, and after a moment Nico went on. “You need not say there should have been nothing between us while I lied to you. I know that. I have not done well by you and I regret it bitterly, but it hasalso been everything I wanted, and I would almost certainly do it all again. I’m sorry.”
Titus stared at him. At Nico, who had fought for him, and given him strength in a hundred ways, and helped him find his path, and even discovered Vespasian. And lied and cheated and been part of a criminal conspiracy to defraud people for thousands.
“I need to think,” he said. Nico nodded. Titus took a turn about the room, trying to make it make sense, fighting back the competing urges to rage and rebuke, to assure him it was all right, to beg him to sayI love youagain, to let it go.