Page 40 of Confounding Oaths
“We’ll see the lady home,” suggested Captain James, “then I’ll head back to the Folly and see if the lads are up for a fairy hunt.”
Miss Bickle, who had drifted away from the conversation to gaze at the sunlight, the grass, the trees, passing wasps, and anything else nearby that could conceivably be gazed at, brought her attention back to the company with some effort. “Oh, you needn’t escort me. I go for walks unaccompanied quite often when I am in Cornwall.”
“Cornwall isn’t London,” insisted Mr. Caesar. “And given how many terrible things have happened to ladies of my acquaintance in the last year, I will not leave you to roam the streets alone.”
Miss Bickle was not an easily rankled person, so the implication that she could not take care of herself caused her no especial concern. “Oh, John,” she said with an indulgent smile, “it’s sweet that you’re being protective, but, well, your presence didn’t prevent either of the first two terrible things happening, did it?”
It was a fine day and had followed a fine night, but the words still struck Mr. Caesar like a knife, all the sharper for having been meant entirely without malice.
“Even if it didn’t,” the captain replied on his behalf, “it might stop you getting a blade in your ribs. And it’ll make the gentleman feel better, so how about you let us take you and then if you want to go for a stroll you slip out after we’ve gone and nobody’s the wiser.”
This, Miss Bickle agreed, was an eminently sensible compromise, and a short while later she was delivered safely to her grandfather’s city residence. That left Captain James and Mr. Caesar alone on a major public thoroughfare, trying to navigate parting.
“I can see you back as well, if you want,” the captain offered. “Wouldn’t want you getting stabbed either.”
“I think we’re out of the worst parts of town now.”
“Maybe.” Captain James gave half a shrug. “But you might get lost.”
They remained standing for a moment. Then Mr. Caesar said: “Actually, if it’s all the same to you, I might accompany you to the Folly. I’m not sure I can quite face returning home while I still don’t know what we’re going to do about Mary.” This was, in a sense, true. Although it was far from his only reason. As a shape-shifter I understand the appeal of wanting to be somebody else for a time. It is one of the few things about Mr. Caesar I can empathise with. “Besides, if there’s a plan to be made about this Lady character I should probably be part of it.”
Once again, I dislike Captain James on principle, but the look in his eye warmed me. “Then,” he said, “I shall have Mistress Quickley make you up a room.”
Rather than being a euphemism, Mistress Quickley was indeed the moniker of the proprietress of the Lord Wriothesly’s Folly—although almost certainly an adopted one. Adopted, I note with some distaste, from that bastard from Stratford. But I should not hold this against the lady herself. Mistress Quickley was, by Mr. Caesar’s doubtless impeccable judgement, a woman of the flash sort whose fingers were in far too many pies. That also not being a euphemism. She was welcoming enough, and when Mr. Caesar explained that he would need to be boarded while he and the Irregulars worked on what he called apersonal issue,she asked no questions save about payment and offered instead to send a runner to tell his family he would not be returning.
“Theymightrob you,” Jackson explained, leaning back against the bar and twirling an old-fashioned plug bayonet against the surface with his free hand. “But I’ll have a word and let them know you’ve nothing worth taking.”
“You wouldn’t even be lying,” said Barryson, who was lazily etching some symbols into a table that I worried were a runic ward to prevent me from accessing the Folly but which, on closer inspection, proved to be a generously proportioned cock and balls. “I’ve been to their house, there’s hardly anything.”
Callaghan made a great show of disappointment. “And there’s us thinking the captain’s bagged himself a rich one.”
“Excuse me”—Mr. Caesar was finding it curiously easy to adapt to soldier’s banter; it wasn’t so very different from a molly-house—“nobody has bagged anybody. And I am not rich. I am … adequate.”
Sal settled herself into Mr. Caesar’s lap and gazed deep into his eyes. “And what does that make us, sweet thing?Inadequate?”
“Boy William is,” said Jackson. He had the kind of lips that made a sneer look like a blown kiss.
“Piss off,” replied Boy William.
Captain James gave him a stern look. “Not in front of the children.”
“I’mthe children,” Boy William protested.
Sal slipped herself free of Mr. Caesar and draped her hands across Boy William’s shoulders. “Thenthat,” she said, “makes it evenworse.”
“What I don’t quite understand,” Callaghan wondered aloud, in a way that implied strongly to Mr. Caesar that he absolutely understood, but wanted to talk about it, “is if you’re not rich—”
“How’s he afford all that fancy neckwear?” asked Jackson. “There’d be money in that if you could filch it.”
“How did you get the captain off at the hearing?” Callaghan finished.
That was, at least, a relatively easy thing to answer. “Mygrandfather’s an earl,” Mr. Caesar explained. “But the money goes mostly to his eldest son, not to my mother. And my father has no wealth of his own. I get the occasional invitation but fewer than, for example, my uncle. He’ll be at the Earl of Semweir’s ball this evening. None of my immediate family will.”
Captain James clapped Mr. Caesar on the back. “Hear that, you lot, he’s a man of the people. Sometimes an earl will have a ball and hewon’tbe invited.”
“I’m aware it’s a … somewhat trivial concern. But it affects my sisters very strongly.”
“You know what my sister does?” asked Callaghan.
