Chapter Seven

Cassian was delightful when he was flustered. Daizell felt an overwhelming urge to fluster him some more.

He needed to resist it. Cassian was clearly conventional, whatever he might claim, and you never knew when a conventional gentleman might decide he didn't associate with erratic elopers of notorious family. That was a horrible prospect. Daizell needed the fifty pounds, but far more than that, he wanted the growing friendship and purpose he had with Cassian. He'd been more desperate than he realised for something to do, and someone to do it with, and, most of all, someone who wanted to do it with him.

He could forget how lonely he was for a lot of the time, because he was mostly lonely in company. He was very good at drifting with the tide, washing in and out of inns and tap-rooms and other people's homes with the rest of life's flotsam. Making himself pleasant, never showing he felt directionless and useless because that wasn't what people wanted to hear. Enjoyable temporary company was the most that anybody wanted of him, and he went along with that because crying and struggling didn't do much good. But just now and then he couldn't avoid feeling the great echoing void of his life, and it hurt unbearably.

Cassian was making it hurt. This companionship was so joyous, it reminded Daizell forcibly of how alone he'd been before and how alone he'd be again. But he had become adept at living in the moment, so he tried to focus on the pleasure of having someone to travel with, sharing meals and making plans. Cassian's quiet conversation, and the smile that lurked in his eyes far more often than it made its way to his mouth. Cassian's warmth, constantly near him. Daizell liked physical closeness and affectionate touch: waking up with his arm over Cassian had been perfect.

Nearly perfect. Perfect would have involved him moving his hands down and pulling Cassian round, and finding out what those curved lips could do, how his sun-and-rain eyes might widen, what that neat, compact body felt like and how it responded. Unfortunately, Cassian was a conventional gentleman. Unless he liked someone enough , he'd said, and Daizell wasn't sufficiently sure about that.

And since he wasn't willing to risk their companionship for a chance at physical gratification – really, he was becoming terribly mature – he had better leave well alone.

He took a long pull at his ale. ‘What about you, then? Any luck today?'

Cassian took a second to register what he was talking about. ‘Ah. Yes. No. No, I've visited every inn here, not just coaching inns, and asked questions till the words lost meaning, and got nowhere. If he came through here, he didn't stay, and nobody remembers. Of course, that doesn't mean he didn't—'

‘Just that we won't know where he's gone. Although, presumably you confined your search to the town. If he changed at one of the staging-posts further out—'

‘I thought that too!' Cassian said, with the oddly pleased look he often had at such moments, like a schoolboy who had the answer to a question. ‘But I visited all of those within walking distance. I thought we might try the rest tomorrow.'

Daizell felt a pulse of guilt. ‘We could have done it today if I hadn't been playing the fool with a vicar.'

‘Miss Beaumont needed your help, and a person is more important than an object.' He said that as though he thought Daizell might argue. ‘The ring matters a great deal to me, but if we'd gone looking for it, even found it, and then heard Sir James had tracked her down when we could have prevented it . . . No. No, you did the right thing.'

‘It might not slow Sir James down at all. We don't even know he'll come this way.'

‘This was the best we could do; we can't do more. We oughtn't do less, but we can't do more.'

He said we , and he thought Daizell was doing his best, and Daizell felt his ever-hungry heart thump. ‘I still want to find your ring, though. We'll ask at the further-flung inns tomorrow, and failing that, we'll make a plan.'

‘We'll do that,' Cassian said, tapped his glass to Daizell's, and smiled.

They were sharing a bed again. It was torture.

At least they'd both been exhausted the previous night. This evening Daizell was wide awake as he surreptitiously watched Cassian moving around the room, wide awake as he noted the lines of that smooth, near-hairless back and chest. (The man shaved once in two days, he'd noticed, and that seemed optimistic.) Wide awake when Cassian got in the bed next to him, his lighter weight meaning it would be so easy for him to roll towards Daizell, which he did not.

He didn't, but Daizell was so very nearly sure he wanted to.

The way he looked, the way he blushed, the glances he stole. None of which constituted an invitation to touch, or at least not a conscious one, and the problem with deciding that people were unconsciously inviting was that you could be wrong and in fact you weren't invited at all. And then there would be outrage, or dismay, or alarm, and none of those were emotions Daizell would care to evoke.

Cassian was breathing softly, shallow and even. It sounded as though he'd gone straight to sleep: Daizell had no idea how, unless of course Cassian wasn't at all troubled by the nearness of bare legs, the possibility of reaching out, hands meeting, exploring skin. He wondered if he could toss himself off without disturbing his companion's rest.

‘Are you awake?' he murmured, very quietly.

There was a short silence. ‘Yes.' It sounded a touch reluctant. ‘Why?'

Marvellous. Now he'd started a conversation. ‘So am I.'

Cassian made a noise of mild exasperation. ‘Have you considered sleeping?'

‘Good idea.'

Cassian shifted, turning towards him. ‘Is something wrong?'

‘Wrong? No. Why?'

‘I don't know. You seem . . .' He paused there. ‘I hope I didn't offend you earlier.'

‘What? How?'

‘Asking questions. I've no right to interrogate you and I dare say you might not wish to rehearse events which doubtless were very distressing.'

Daizell deciphered that. ‘The elopement? It wasn't distressing. Somewhat wounding to my pride, and very tiresome, that's all.'

‘You looked, when you spoke of it . . .' Cassian paused again. ‘Not yourself.'

Cassian thought he was lying awake because he was upset? That was charming in its way, even if wrong. But perhaps not entirely wrong in every aspect because Daizell found himself saying, ‘Well, it's not much to be proud of.'

‘What isn't?'

‘Any of it. Eloping with a woman I didn't know. Failing to elope. Being fooled by a schoolgirl, in fact. Sir James. All the rest of it.' He paused. ‘My father.'

He was sure Cassian knew, and the silence confirmed that. After a moment, his bedmate spoke cautiously. ‘I did hear about your father.'

‘You could hardly not.'

George Charnage had capped a career of gambling, extravagance, unpaid debts, and almost continual inebriation by losing a fortune he didn't have at whist. He'd invited the two men he'd played with for another match at his house the next night, offering as stake all he had left: the house and its contents. They came with money in their pockets, ready to reduce George Charnage and his family to beggary for their night's entertainment. Instead, he and Daizell's mother had held them at gunpoint, stripped them of everything down to their clothing, and shot one of them when he resisted.

Daizell had come home late the next morning after a night's debauchery in south London to discover an enraged man in his drawers bound and gagged in the drawing room and another lying on the floor in a pool of blood. George and Anna Charnage had left Mr Henry Haddon untended, unconscious, and bleeding all night. When Daizell had knelt to help him, the bone had been visible in his shattered shoulder. He died a few hours later.

Apart from a furious man and a dying one, the house had been bare. Daizell's mother and father had packed up everything they owned of value plus the proceeds of that candlelight robbery, and fled the country.

They hadn't told their son of their plans beforehand and they hadn't invited his company in their escape or exile. They had left him as the only one of the family there to blame, and he had been blamed. His father was cousin to the Marquess of Sellingstowe, who had given him an allowance on the basis of family obligation; at the scandal Sellingstowe had publicly repudiated the connection, cutting off Daizell too. His name was bloodstained and disgraced. George Charnage's other victim had claimed the house in lieu of the debt. Daizell found himself with nowhere to live, no income, no skills, and no connections who would give him work, if there was any work he might be fit for given his curtailed education and lack of adult occupation.

He had been left with nothing but a tenuous claim to be a gentleman, a decent wardrobe, a likeable manner, and a knack for cutting profiles. He'd survived for seven years on those things and the tolerance of hosts which, like the wardrobe, became more threadbare every year. He was unwanted, aimless and useless, and though he'd always thought he'd somehow find a way out of the mess, it had never come to pass.

He swallowed all that down. ‘Well, it can't be helped. He did what he did. I would prefer it if people didn't blame me for his acts, that's all.'

‘Do they?' Cassian said. ‘How? That is, you were not involved, were you?'

Daizell hated the question in his voice. He'd been asked too often. ‘No. I wasn't.'

Cassian didn't reply. Daizell blinked into the dark, reminding himself that he was a provincial gentleman, that he wasn't to know and had every right to ask, that it was all a long time ago and a life away.

‘I was in Vauxhall Gardens all that night,' he said, slightly less harshly. ‘A friend had a small party. I had no idea what my parents had planned. They didn't tell me Father had lost everything at whist the night before; they certainly didn't advise me they'd be enlivening the evening with robbery and murder. I came home to an empty house and a dying man. They didn't even leave a note. They just did it and fled.'

‘But – they said nothing? Not even goodbye? Have you not heard from them since?'

‘No.' He had never received a letter. Perhaps his parents had written to the house he no longer lived in, or care of friends or relatives Daizell no longer saw. Or perhaps they hadn't written at all. He'd given up wondering a while ago, because wondering meant hoping and he couldn't do that any more.

Cassian was eloquently silent. Daizell sighed. ‘I told you about my name: well, my father was always like that. He was loud and he drank and I'm not sure he fully understood that other people were real too. He was convinced that anyone who behaved in a way he found inconvenient must be doing it out of personal malice towards him. We were all minor actors in the play of which he was the star.'

‘Even your mother?'

‘Oh, she agreed with him,' Daizell said. ‘I expect it was the only way to live with him, but he was the heart of her world. She worshipped him, whatever he did. She loved me too, but only in the space he left for that, and he didn't leave much. A jealous god, my father, and didn't like to share. When he said, Take a gun and help me commit a robbery , she would have done it without hesitation. I expect she wept over leaving me behind, but that didn't stop her going, or leaving me to take the blame for their mess.'

‘But why should you take it?' Cassian demanded. ‘How could you be blamed when you weren't there?'

‘Someone had to be. Vier very much wanted a scapegoat.'

‘Vier? Sir James?'

‘He was the other man in the house. He and his friend Haddon came ready to play deep. Apparently they intended to strip my father of everything he had left down to his home and, according to some rumours, my mother's person. Instead Vier lost two thousand pounds that night, as well as his friend, so one can quite understand he wanted vengeance. And since I was the only Charnage available, he took it out on me.'

‘What did he do?'

Daizell shut his eyes, feeling the backwash of bewilderment, distress, injustice, helplessness. ‘It seems my mother wore breeches and a kerchief over her face while holding the gun. Vier claimed to believe it was me. He told everyone I was my father's accomplice.'

‘But you were in Vauxhall.'

‘I know . I had witnesses. But I never had a day in court to say so, since he never tried to press charges. Instead he made a lot of remarks about how he couldn't see the face of the second robber, about the hair – my mother's was like mine – about drunken evenings and lying friends protecting me and how he can't prove it but he knows. All implications, but he's been whispering them so long – and what was I meant to do? Slam my hand on the table and say, No, sir, I did not conspire at robbery and murder, that was my mother ? I'd lost everything – the house, the money, my parents – and Vier was spinning lies and sowing doubt, and people looked at me differently and I didn't know what to do. I just didn't know what to do.' He felt his voice fade in the darkness. ‘One of the men I was with in Vauxhall went to the wars and died there, and another I barely knew and wasn't much in society himself. There was nobody speaking for me, whereas Vier was always there. And I suppose many people found it easier to believe that I had held up a man with a pistol than that my mother had. Or they didn't really believe it but enjoyed the gossip, or perhaps nobody wanted my company anyway, with my father a murderer. In any case, people turned their backs.'

‘I'm so sorry, Daizell.' Cassian's voice ached. ‘That is dreadful. I quite see why you loathe Vier.'

‘Oh, that part only made me dislike him,' Daizell said. ‘The loathing came—' He glared at the night. Cassian was so close, and a hundred miles away. ‘I suppose you ought to know, if you're in my company and all that. It wasn't – shouldn't have been – dreadful, but . . . The thing is, I stay with people, you see, as one does when one is a gentleman lacking any means of support. A few weeks here or there. One has to be an entertaining guest, if possible, so I cut shades. My one talent. I sing for my supper with profiles, as an entertaining little trick for a gentleman which is quite different from being a jobbing artist. But some house parties are less reputable than others, and people have different ideas of entertainment, and to cut – as it were – a long story short, I have done some rather risqué scenes, for people who wanted them.'

‘Oh.' Cassian sounded startled. Daizell would bet he was blushing, could picture how his cheeks had pinked. ‘I didn't realise – that is, can you, with profiles?'

‘Lord, yes. Full-length ones, you know, and scenes. You'd be amazed.'

‘I probably would. I had no idea.'

He sounded intrigued. Daizell hadn't taken up his scissors in days – it had been a relief not to – but he had a sudden urge to snip something that would make Cassian really blush. Even more, to ask him what he'd like to see, and to watch his face as the figures emerged from the paper.

Stop it.

‘It was a gentleman's entertainment,' he said. ‘Something for groups of men without ladies present, or with ladies who weren't being ladylike. Entirely private. But then a couple of months later I was staying with some rather strait-laced distant cousins, who felt an obligation to me despite my father's behaviour, and they held a soirée and invited their neighbours, who included Miss Beaumont and Sir James Vier. They knew of Sir James's grudge against my father, of course, but they believed that I wasn't involved, and said they wanted amity restored. And Vier smiled at me in the most unpleasant way, and an hour or so into proceedings he took me aside and informed me he had obtained some of my more disreputable shades. He had shown them to my cousins, and told them I was secretly making obscene postures for the young people at the party. Corrupting them.'

‘What? Why?'

‘Why did he do it? Revenge. Why he told me: possibly because he wanted to see my face, but also so I couldn't look surprised or innocent when my cousins confronted me about it. It was a well-laid trap. I denied cutting anything unfit at their house, but they had the profiles as evidence, and there we are. That was why I agreed to elope with Miss Beaumont. Vier had cut me off from the last members of my family who'd speak to me, out of sheer spite, and I was drifting around the place wondering what on earth I'd do.'

‘Great God, Daizell. I'm so sorry.' Cassian's hand groped for his, sliding under the sheets, fingers warm and close and comforting. ‘This is appalling. I had no idea. Vier is a vile, hateful man and I'm disgusted, though not surprised, but your father . How could he do that to you? He ruined you as much as his other victims, and people blame you for it?'

Everyone had blamed him, if only by contagion. He'd been cut so often it had felt like real cuts, each turned head or blank look a blade on his skin.

Daizell was a companionable man. He'd thought he had plenty of friends, just as he'd believed in his father's careless affection and his mother's love. But when it came down to the bone, people didn't help, and they didn't stay. They looked to their own well-being and left you behind.

He hadn't helped himself, of course. He'd been tainted by his parents' crime, but he'd blackened his own reputation as thoroughly as he had ever blackened paper for a profile, in a slow steady slide out of the Polite World and into disreputability that he couldn't seem to stop.

‘It's my own fault,' he said aloud. ‘Well, and my parents', of course. But I haven't helped myself. I was expelled from Eton, you know.'

‘I did hear. A gambling ring?'

‘Quite a lively one,' Daizell admitted. There had been a few running at Eton; his syndicate had, unfortunately, taken rather too much of various young noblemen's allowances, and an example had been made. Like father, like son. ‘I made plenty more mistakes too. I was a careless fool before the robbery, and after I was a drunken one for a while, and perhaps if I had stood up for myself better, people wouldn't have found it so easy to tar me with the same brush.'

‘But none of that is a crime!' Cassian sounded really angry now.

‘The profiles were definitely dubious. It's hardly surprising people don't think much of me.'

Cassian's hand tightened. ‘Well, they're wrong. And I do.'

‘Why?'

The word tore itself from a throat that was already hurting with control. Cassian took a moment to answer. With another man, Daizell would have pulled his hand away at that pause, but he was getting used to the little silences as Cassian thought about what he was going to say.

‘Because you're kind,' he said at last. ‘I quite believe you would make impulsive decisions, or unconventional ones, or bad ones. But you go out of your way to help people. You risked your neck in a coach crash to protect someone else's baby. I would never believe you were involved in a robbery or corrupting youth, or anything like that, and if anyone does, they're a fool.'

He squeezed Daizell's fingers hard, and relapsed into silence. Daizell lay, eyes stinging in the dark, not entirely knowing what he felt except that it hurt, but also that it hurt in a good way, like the picking off of a tight, ugly scab.

It didn't really matter if Cassian, a gentleman of wealth but no account, thought he was a good person. The world had decided him to be a not-quite gentleman of bad stock and poor character, and one man's opinion wouldn't change that. But all the same, here in the quiet of the room, it felt like everything.

Cassian's fingers were still entwined with his, sufficiently relaxed that he could pull away if he wanted. He didn't, and the touch was a comfort in the dark.

This time, Daizell woke up with his arm over Cassian, and his face buried in the man's shoulder.

Cassian was breathing evenly under him. Daizell allowed himself a moment to enjoy the physical contact, then peeled himself off and rolled onto his back. He tried to do it without shaking the bed or waking his bedmate, but Cassian grunted.

‘Morning,' Daizell said, with determined cheer. No more soul-searching: they had a job to do. ‘Are we going round the outskirts today?'

‘Chasing a man in a mulberry coat. Ugh.'

Daizell rubbed his face. ‘You know, if he changes his coat . . .'

‘That has occurred to me too. Am I wasting our time, Daize?'

‘I don't have anything better to do with mine.'

‘And I've got a month off, so—'

He couldn't help asking. ‘A month off what?'

Cassian stilled. It was a tiny quiver of tension, which Daizell wouldn't have noticed if they hadn't been so close. ‘Oh, normal life and duties and whatnot. I'm not expected back for a month is what I meant, so like you, I've nothing better to do.' He paused. ‘I suppose . . .'

‘What?'

‘I was wondering if it would be a dreadful dereliction to look at Stratford while we're here? There's the church, and I believe Shakespeare's birthplace is preserved.' He sounded longing.

‘You should absolutely see them while you're here,' Daizell said. ‘If you want, I can go around the staging posts on the outskirts while you visit the sights?'

‘No,' Cassian said reluctantly. ‘That would be very tedious for you, and not very fair.'

Daizell knew an impulse to suggest they both forget the whole thing since his faith in their chances, never high, was more or less exhausted. He bit it back, and thought about what a useful and efficient person might say. ‘Perhaps we could try to track your quarry down today? If we get a good lead, we'll follow it, and if we don't, we take tomorrow as a holiday and decide what to do next.'

‘That's a good idea,' Cassian said, perking up. ‘Yes. I don't want to feel consumed by guilt at not looking, but this travelling business is rather tiring.'

‘Do you spend a lot of time consumed by guilt?'

‘A certain amount. I was brought up to take my responsibilities very seriously.'

‘I wasn't. Perhaps we could . . .' He waggled a hand. ‘Strike an average.'

‘That's an excellent idea,' Cassian said, a laugh in his voice. ‘So we will be exceedingly responsible today and take a holiday tomorrow.'

They did precisely that. It made for a blasted long day. Cassian hired a couple of hacks, and they rode out along the cross roads from Stratford to the first stage on each, asking at inns, talking to coach-drivers, searching for the man in the mulberry coat. They had, to Daizell's entire lack of surprise, no luck at all: nobody had seen their quarry, or remembered him if they had. It was a great deal of riding for nothing, if you counted quiet, easy conversation and companionable silences as nothing.

They were everything. Daizell needed people, needed friendship and talk and laughter and touch. Solitude drained his soul, leaving him bleak and joyless; companionship had him fizzing with energy. He tried to restrain that, since Cassian was clearly the opposite, and made sure not to babble when his companion lapsed into one of his many thoughtful silences, not wanting his own presence to grate. He didn't need to be always talking anyway. He was quite happy looking around, watching the world go by, as long as he had someone to do it with.

Not just someone. Cassian, with his gentle voice, murmuring enchantments to his blasted lucky horse: Daizell could listen to that all day. He also rode superbly and made some fairly cogent criticisms of Daizell's seat, which indicated more clearly than anything yet that he was an exceptional horseman. A horseman, with things to do he didn't care to discuss, and knowledge that Daizell wasn't sure how he came by.

‘How did you know about the gambling ring?' he asked as they rode back.

‘The . . . ?'

‘At school. That I was sacked for that.'

‘Oh. Um. Actually, I was at Eton myself, a few years below you. So, you know, I heard it mentioned.' He looked a bit pink. ‘I'm sorry. I know it's not pleasant to be gossiped about.'

‘I had it coming. You were at Eton? Is that how you knew me?' Daizell couldn't remember if Cassian had mentioned it on their first meeting. He hadn't paid much attention.

‘I was. Didn't I say? But it hardly matters: you wouldn't have noticed me.'

Probably not. Daizell's friends at school had been as loud and boisterous as himself and he hadn't troubled to acquaint himself with younger pupils. He might have thought the name would ring a bell, though, unusual as it was. Vernon Cassian . . . no, he could not for the life of him remember any such boy. He did, now he thought about it, have a vague memory of some undersized shrimp with a pale face whom he was meant to have noted for some reason or other. It tugged at his mind a moment, then he lost the thread.

But, as Cassian said, it hardly mattered. If he didn't want to tell Daizell things, he probably had good reason, and Daizell didn't intend to spoil the companionship they had with pushing where he wasn't invited.

A long day on horseback, a pleasant, tired evening afterwards. The White Swan was a comfortable inn, rather better than the kind of place Daizell normally stayed. He enjoyed feeling like a man of means, even if they weren't his means, and Cassian had lost his initial air of a visitor at the zoological gardens, and seemed very comfortable.

‘Should we talk about what to do next?' Daizell said as they addressed an excellent veal and ham pie. ‘I know we're declaring a holiday tomorrow, if you still want to do that.'

‘I do. Afterwards . . .' He made a face at his plate. ‘Do you think we've any hope? Really?'

‘Of finding John Martin? Honestly, no.'

‘Oh.'

‘If he was more distinctive in appearance, or if we had been sooner on his track, we might have stood a chance. Or not lost so much time to the crash and then Miss Beaumont.'

‘Those couldn't be helped.'

‘Not much of it can be,' Daizell said. ‘Including being robbed in the first place.'

Cassian gave an unhappy little laugh. ‘On the contrary. That's the only part I could have controlled.'

‘In retrospect, yes, just as I could have discovered that my parents were planning to commit a violent crime and abandon me. If either of us could see the future, we'd be a deal better off. As it is, sometimes things just don't go our way. Are you going to treat everyone as a possible thief now? I'm not going to treat everyone as if they're keeping some cursed great secret from me.'

Cassian's mouth dropped open. He looked like Daizell had slapped him for a second, the colour rushing to his face, then he said, ‘Well, yes – no . . . That is, I see what you mean, but one can't disavow responsibility. It was my duty to keep the ring safe, and I lost it.'

‘You can take responsibility for that. You have . What you can't do is magic the thing back onto your finger by sufficient application of guilt.'

‘If I could, I'd have retrieved it days ago.'

‘I believe that. Look, I don't think we'll find the man, but there's a decent chance he pawned or sold the ring straight away, as we said at the start. And it's the ring you want, yes? So we take tomorrow to recover our energies, and then we retrace our steps to where we know he was, and try the pawn shops, and find out how one gets in touch with sellers of stolen property. We'll keep looking as long as you like. No stone unturned.'

‘Yes,' Cassian said. ‘Yes, that's a plan. Thank you, Daize. I don't know what I'd do without you.'

Daizell did his best not to glow. He very much liked the feeling of being useful, and knew a powerful desire to earn it by finding this blasted ring. ‘I'm sure you'd manage, but I'm glad I can help.'

They smiled at each other across the food, warmth lighting Cassian's sun-and-rain eyes, and another bit of Daizell's fool heart slipped out of his control. Tonight was going to be agony.