Page 33 of Confounding Oaths
“Who is this Lady?” asked the younger Mr. Caesar. He knew in general, of course. Just not in particular.
“My patron.”
Miss Anne gave an uncharitable giggle. “Mary, that makes you sound like—like a woman of questionable reputation.”
“Anne”—Lady Mary gave the girl a very reproving look—“you have been warned.”
“But she does sound dangerous,” the younger Mr. Caesar observed. “Mary, what do you really know about this”—his hesitation to use the wordpersonwounded me to my core; fairies are people too—“individual?”
“I know,” replied Miss Caesar, “that she heard me when nobody else would. That she helped me when nobody else would.”
Lady Mary’s hand tightened around the bindings on her wound. “Are you really sure that this is help?”
Miss Caesar’s eyes being pupilless, I could not quite tell where she was looking, although her focus seemed to be on the blood still seeping through her mother’s bandages. But she had come a long way, and passed a timeless while amongst the Other Court, and so whatever doubts or uncertainties she may even then have harboured she still answered: “Yes.”
And in the moment, she meant it.
Chapter Seven
Strictly speaking, Mr. Caesar hadno reason to return to the Folly. The captain and his men had done more than enough for his family already, and even when Mr. Caesar was in a mood for rough trade he did not ordinarily frequent quite such dangerous locales.
He had tried, on his way over, to ignore the figures huddled in doorways. Or at the very least to view them with compassion, as his parents might, rather than fear. But having come close to dying at the end of a blade once already he could not help but see knives up every ragged sleeve and in the folds of every torn skirt.
Had he not recently spent the night with Mr. Ellersley, he would have considered this quite the most self-destructive thing he had ever done.
It was early evening when Mr. Caesar arrived at the Folly, and so he found the place crowded but not raucous. Which was a shame. I for one would have preferred at least a touch of raucousness. Poking his head through the door, he scanned the room for the captain and, finding him absent, realised that he had not plannedfor that contingency. Of late he had been spending much of his time feeling a fool, although for reasons he could not quite articulate it was a foolishness he did not find wholly unpleasant.
As he stood dithering on the threshold, a voice called to him from a corner of the room. “Staying, or leaving?”
The voice had enough of Eton about it that it could only have belonged to Kumar. And sure enough, it did. While around him the ne’er-do-wells of St. Giles went about their business, he was sitting quietly beside them reading what from Mr. Caesar’s angle appeared to be a copy of Voltaire’sCandide.
Now that he had been seen, Mr. Caesar had little choice but to choosestayingfrom the offered alternatives. And I stayed with him, in the hope that he might amuse me by getting himself stabbed.
Kumar folded his book closed. “Take a seat. We don’t often get gentlemen here. It’s almost refreshing.”
“You don’t consider yourself a gentleman?” asked Mr. Caesar. What people did or did not consider themselves was, he knew, a thorny question, but Kumar had a gentleman’s manners and a gentleman’s education.
“I’m a gentleman’s bastard, it’s quite a different thing. We’re more likely to wind up in the army, for a start.”
Mr. Caesar nodded his understanding. “But for the indelicacies of the wealthy I’m sure the regiments would be empty.”
A smile played across Kumar’s lips. “I see why the captain likes you. He’s always had a weakness for a sharp tongue.”
“Oh yes?” Mr. Caesar’s tone became instantly guarded. It didn’t seem decorous to ask further questions, but he wanted to rather badly.
“That and a challenge,” Kumar added. And I could not help feeling that a tale hung thereby, though it was not one I had collected. “I assume itishim you came here looking for.”
“Would you believe me if I said I was just keen to mingle with the salt of the earth and the pride of the British army?”
“Not for a moment.”
“Good, because it would be a spectacular lie.”
Kumar drummed his fingers on the cover of his copy ofCandide.“Well, he should be along presently. He doesn’t like to let us go too long unobserved. You never knowwhatwe’d get up to.”
A pale shadow detached itself from the wall a few feet away, and Mr. Caesar saw Jackson, who must have been listening in the whole time.
“I could almost take that,” Jackson said, “for a besmirchment of my honour.”
