“It will be safe with me. It is mine. I had an agreement with the whore’s son.”
Which you broke, Titus did not point out. He was beginning to feel that Nico had, if anything, understated Baynes’s peculiarity of mind: The man’s expression as he spoke of Jeanne de La Motte was pure hatred.
“I’m surprised you would have wanted to do business with him,” he said. “As the son of such a notorious woman.”
“Oh, I had no intention of letting her spawn profit from the Queen’s misfortune,” Baynes said, and chuckled. It was a perfectly normal, pleasant sort of chuckle, and it brought up every hair on Titus’s neck. “No La Motte will ever get a penny from me, or any hanger-on who tries to enrich themselves at my lady’s expense. They think they will profit, but they soon find their mistake.”
“You won’t pay for items relating to the necklace,” Titus said, thinking of small, slight Perreau being kicked on the ground, of broken ribs and terror, of a pistol pointed in Nico’s face. Perreau had walked into a pit of vipers when he approached Baynes, and now the snakes were hissing around Titus’s feet. “Then what are you offering me?”
Baynes’s mouth opened and his expression darkened. Titus hastily revised his approach. “Not that it is relevant, because you cannot have the painting at any price. You are not the only man who cares for the Queen’s reputation,” he added, in a burst of improvisation. “The picture will not see the light of day while it is in my possession. In fact, it will go into my bank for safekeeping tomorrow. Now I must ask you to leave.”
Mr. Baynes did not excuse him. His voice rose in protest, and then in threat, and Titus did not have to stand for this in his own home.
“I said, leave.” He went to the door as he spoke, and threw it open. “Mr. Thorpe!”
“There he is!” came a slurred shout from the front door, and Titus saw Matthew Laxton attempting to get under Mr. Thorpe’s arm. “You, Pilcrow, I want to talk to you!”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Titus said. “Absolutely not. Get out. You, Mr. Baynes, leave immediately, and you, Mr. Laxton, ifyou don’t go away, I will summon a constable. Neither of you will have anything from me at all, and the pair of you may go to the devil and stay there. Out!”
Baynes and Laxton were bundled out, amid much protest. Titus slammed the door on them himself and put his back against it.
“Are you all right, sir?” Mr. Thorpe asked.
“No, I am not. I wish the Comte was here,” Titus said, then realised that had sounded far, far too truthful. “I mean, to deal with these dreadful people. He was better at it. I think I will go up to the Lake District shortly.”
“On your own, sir?”
“I suppose so, unless you and Mrs. Thorpe would care for a trip. It will be very pleasant.” Titus wasn’t convinced about that. He liked peace and quiet and he wanted to spend time in greenery, so the Lake District with Nico had seemed perfect. Now he felt that he would be not just solitary but lonely. “I’m sure it will be lovely.”
Mr. Thorpe contemplated him a moment. Then he put a hand on Titus’s shoulder, a silent gesture that could only be called fatherly, and Titus let himself take the unfamiliar comfort. He needed it.
The next day was Mr. Thorpe’s day off, so he and Mrs. Thorpe were going to visit a relative in Wandsworth. It left Titus rather unnerved. The house in Carey Street felt vulnerable without either Nico or Mr. Thorpe as his guard dogs.
He advised James, the new footman, that he was Not At Home to anyone except his art teacher in the morning and his brother Vespasian for tea. It didn’t help settle the fearful anticipation that had taken residence in the pit of his stomach.
That wasn’t just about Baynes or Laxton or any of the people he didn’t want in his life. It was about the one he had wanted, still did. It was about Nico, leaving the country today, and the knowledge that everything was over forever.
It had to be over. He could not just tell Nico he’d changed his mind; hehadn’tchanged it. Nico should not have slandered a dead woman or tried to defraud people, although in fairness Titus could quite see why the cousins had taken against Baynes. He shouldn’t have lied. Those things didn’t feel so stark and raw now the shock had receded, but they were still wrong, and Titus had too much experience of how easy it was to persuade himself,It wasn’t that badandHe didn’t really mean it, when it was and he had.
If Nico had just asked, Titus thought for the hundredth time. If he had said, when Titus offered,Why yes, mon ami, I am in urgent need of two thousand pounds, Titus would have given it to him. He’d intended to share his wealth; he hadn’t expected such a vast sum, but he would not have begrudged it for his Nico. He wouldn’t have reacted like Miss Whitecross, full of suspicion, assuming the worst.
At least, he hoped he would not.
Except he knew very well that every time Nico had refused money, every time he turned away Titus’s clumsy efforts to broach the subject, it had felt like a proof of his affection.He must care for me, Titus had thought again and again,because he doesn’t want my money. He’d cherished that, letting it soothe the many stings of the people who very clearly did just want the money.
If Nico had asked for a vast sum, would Titus really have handed it over and thought no more of it? Or would it have started a worm of insecurity and self-doubt, a questioning of Nico’s motives, a reversal of the inference?If he wants my money, that means he must not care for me…
He ought to have questioned Nico’s motives, of course. They were highly questionable. But he had a horrible feeling that he might, rather, have questioned why such a beautiful, confident, wonderful man could possibly want Titus Pilcrow. It had always seemed implausible, after all.
Perhaps Nico hadn’t been trying to manipulate Titus so much as trying to avoid hitting him somewhere he knew would desperately hurt.
Titus stared at the wall, thinking of that, and Nico taking a ship for France today, disappearing into Paris and out of his life, and clenched his fists against the thought that he’d got this terribly, terribly wrong.
It was a brief relief when Gideon arrived for their art lesson, though Titus produced nothing of any value because he kept finding himself wondering how one might go about visiting Paris and hiring someone to search gaming hells for a short, handsome doorman. Nico would know how to do it, he thought, and could have wept.
He stayed behind to tidy up when Gideon left, rather than seeing him to the door, and was sitting among his paints, taking what comfort he could from the familiar sharp scents, when the footman James came upstairs.
“Mr. Pilcrow, sir. You have guests in the parlour.”