The Gilded Scarab (13 page)

He had one hand playing with my balls, the other smoothing the inside of my thigh, or sliding down between my legs. Somehow, I don’t know how or when, he had managed to reach one of the bottles of oil. He pressed a slick finger into me and then another. And when I bucked and perhaps whimpered a little more, I could feel him laughing as he mouthed my cock. Then suddenly the world whited out. I bucked harder, yelling, and his fingers were in me, hooking and rubbing as fire lanced through me, the heat and pressure too much, and I was coming and coming, writhing, my hips rising and falling to match his rhythm, my breath catching in my throat. Meredith drank me down, pulling and sucking on me as I came.

When, a moment or two later, I had stopped yelling and lay back, trying to get my breath, and wriggling to get more benefit from the fingers still rubbing up against the little pleasure nub inside me, Meredith—Daniel now, I supposed, after that sort of intimacy which moves us swiftly past society’s polite norms—sat back on his heels. His free hand moved to sheathe his own hard cock, and he fisted himself for a second or two. His hand gleamed with oil.

“My turn, Rafe,” he said.

Well, there was only one thing I could do in the face of that. I reached down and hooked my hands behind my knees, pulling them apart, and invited him in.

Chapter 9

A
FTER
REPINNING
the House insignia on my left shoulder to a better position a bare quarter inch to one side of where I had placed it, Cousin Agnes consented to give her approval when I arrived at her door before noon on Christmas Day to escort her out to the waiting autohansom. She examined me in the way Commander Abercrombie might have done before a royal inspection. She put her lorgnette to her eyes and looked me up and down minutely.

She nodded. “You look very well in that suit, Rafe. Quite the thing.”

A compliment from Agnes made me blink, but I thanked her gravely and offered my arm to support her down the steps to the street. Dammit, did the old lady blush? She certainly didn’t hesitate to hook her claws around my arm, anyway. She creaked as she walked, and smelled of lavender water. Thankfully the usual odor of mothballs was muted, possibly in deference to the festive season. She was massively corseted and upholstered, and her cap was a miracle of jet beading. Settling her into the cab for the journey to Kensington, I complimented her on it and was treated to another blush. The amusement was enough to sustain me all the way to Stravaigor House and lasted until I was shown, not into the drawing room, but into the Stravaigor’s study, with a bow from the butler and a soft-toned “The master gave orders you were to be shown straight in on your arrival, sir.”

That did not bode well.

That did not bode well
at all
.

I relinquished my cloak and top hat, but kept my cane handy. It required all the Lancaster nonchalance I could muster to pass the guards armed with primed harquebuses and laser pistols, and walk down the hallway with its marble terrazzo floor to the back of the house where the Stravaigor awaited me. I twirled the cane around in circles to show them how nonchalant I was.

The current princeps of House Stravaigor is a tall old man on the shady side of sixty, with a shock of white hair and very cold dark eyes. He’s a sort of uncle. His father’s second marriage was to my grandmother, herself a widow with one son, my father. House lineage is complicated, and my grandmother was also the Stravaigor’s second cousin. So he’s a sort of stepuncle and a sort of cousin. I find it easier for my peace of mind not to consider him much of a relation at all, really.

His study at the back of the house was a pleasant room, lined with books and with a large desk set before windows that looked out onto the garden behind the house. The desk itself held two or three books and some loose papers, and a small analytical engine—a portable datascope whose transparent aluminum screen was turned toward the Stravaigor. He sat behind the desk in a large leather armchair and watched me walk across the room, his eyes hooded and unreadable.

He didn’t get up but favored me with a nod when I paid my respects. He lifted thin hands from the typewriting machine attached to his datascope and held out his right. I bowed over it—be damned to kissing it!—and tried out my most charming smile, while those cold eyes raked over me, head to foot, with rather less approval than Cousin Agnes had shown. But I’d had ample reassurance of the effect of my new evening suit on Daniel Meredith, and I was conscious Agnes hadn’t lied and the Bloomsbury Square tailor hadn’t let me down, so I wouldn’t allow the old man to intimidate me. Of all the members of the House gathered there that day, I sought nothing and expected nothing from the Stravaigor in any financial or social sense and had no reason to fear the old man’s frowns or seek his favor. Independence was a fine thing, and Mr. Pearse would approve. I let my smile broaden.

The old man’s mouth twitched. He waved me into a seat, and took a pinch of snuff. “It’s been a long time since I saw you last, Rafe. You’ve improved.”

“My father’s funeral, sir.” I refused the snuff but happily accepted a glass of scotch and a cigar. The cigar passed the sniff test. Very nice indeed. I nipped off the end with a fine enameled cutter inset with diamonds, and had to look down to hide the grin. A bejeweled cigar cutter! I usually bit the ends off.

I let the Stravaigor lead the conversation, murmuring responses to each sharp jab of a question, surprised the old man apparently knew quite a lot of what I’d been doing this last decade. “Yes, thank you, sir, I didn’t do too badly in the service. It was an honor to serve Her Majesty, and I’m gratified to know you don’t think I brought shame on the House. Yes, sir, it is a pity my eyesight has cut short my career there, but the prospects for further advancement were not great without the purchase money for a majority. When do I see the oculist? Next month, sir. A Doctor Carrington was recommended by the surgeon on the
Ark Royal
as the man to see about my eyes, although I don’t anticipate he can do much except, perhaps, prescribe lenses that will more precisely help my eyesight. Yes sir, in Harley Street. No, sir, I don’t know what I want to do next. I have been looking about for some business opportunity but nothing has arisen yet that appeals to me.”

The Stravaigor took another pinch of snuff. “Do you look to the House for a preferment, Rafe?”

“Not at all, sir. I prefer to stand on my own feet.”

Again the old man’s mouth twitched. Smile or sneer, I couldn’t tell. “You owe the House for your education and your commission. Without that, you’d have no feet worth standing on. And not a penny in repayment have we seen.”

I loosened my grip on the cigar. Squashing it into ruin wouldn’t do much to preserve my attitude of polite disinterest in anything the Stravaigor had to say. This was not good. This was not good at all. It was never an encouraging sign when the House princeps started talking about debts and obligations. “My father paid his House dues all his life, sir, to provide for his sons. I suspect the House is still in credit on that score.”

The Stravaigor allowed the twitch to turn into a smile. A cold smile, to be sure, with little humor or comfort in it, but I scored a point when I got a nod in acknowledgment. “You haven’t improved much, then.” He shook out his sleeves to shed the loose snuff and sat up, folding his hands upon the desk, any hint of benign interest gone. He was all business now. “I had considered whether there were something the House might do for you. Not on your own account, you understand. Your indifference to the House has been noted. But your father was my stepbrother as well as one of my most valued advisers, and I owe him a debt. However, these are straitened times.” The old man tightened his mouth and shook his head.

“Cousin Agnes told me the House was doing well in Far East trade, sir.”

“She’s a woman. What does she know about business? Besides, I wasn’t speaking of that.” The old man’s mouth was definitely in a sneer now. “Having been away so long, you will hardly be up-to-date with developments here. Six years ago, the Gallowglass was assassinated.”

I frowned. “I remember reading about it in the newspapers, sir. But we aren’t allied to House Gallowglass. How does that affect us?”

“It affects all of us. It was some House Pannifex assassin, probably. No one could ever prove it, but Pannifex is the most resentful and ambitious man in the Convocation and can barely tolerate the notion that Gallowglass holds the government’s purse strings. The Queen—God bless her—was not pleased. She called all the Convocation Houses to Windsor and gave them what-for. Her tantrum had the Pannifex quaking for a month, I heard, and she banned advancement by assassination. Outright banned it. A Convocation House caught operating under our former custom and practice will be fined half its assets and reduced to Minor status. A House like ours would be fined out of existence. We’d end up as mere merchants and country squires, with no influence at all.”

“I hadn’t seen anything about that, sir. She didn’t take it well, then.”

“She liked the Gallowglass. The old one.” He huffed out a laugh. “You know, if she hadn’t been in such seclusion since the Prince Consort died, I’d wonder about just how much she liked the Gallowglass.”

The Queen was short, dumpy as a German knödel, eighty, and her health was rumored to be failing. She certainly wasn’t my idea of a femme fatale, even with my possibly skewed perception of the species. God bless her, of course, but really, no. “I expect all the Houses are chafing under the ban?”

“It’s an appalling breach of custom. The fact is, though, the ban is there, and the Prince of Wales has indicated he won’t rescind it when he ascends the throne.” The Stravaigor sneered. “He likes the peace and quiet, apparently. It allows him more time for his mistresses and the horse track. We have to rely on more covert means if we’re to destabilize the Convocation and reshape the government to gain a little more control.”

I said something usually spelled as “Mmmmph” and made it as noncommittal as I could.

“And, of course, we need the right intelligence about the doings of the other Houses, with an ability to strike when it’s to our advantage. The Houses are all operating in this quiet fashion. A little financial pressure applied here, a business deal there, and an accident or two that can be turned to account.” The Stravaigor chuckled. “I’m very careful these days. There have been two or three recent incidents that had my hackles rising, I can tell you. Several senior members of House Vacher died in a house fire in the summer, and the Gallowglass First Heir survived a bad autophaeton crash last year. Killed his wife, though. She was driving at the time, I hear. I don’t know what else he expected, letting a woman behind the wheel of an autocar.”

“It sounds as though it’s as well we aren’t allied with Gallowglass, if they’re having accidents and assassinations all over the place.”

“No more than the other Houses, and they’re stronger than most,” said the Stravaigor, with a casual indifference that chilled. “The point is, if we can no longer advance through frontal assault, we have to try more delicate means. And subtlety, Rafe, is expensive. Like the other Minor Houses, if we’re to further our ambitions, our focus has to be on building our funds to buy the right people and the right influence.”

If ever I needed a reminder about why I despised House politics, the Stravaigor had provided it. I said “
Mmmmph
” again, and retired behind a cloud of fragrant tobacco smoke.

“For the last ten years, you’ve been allowed to follow your own path—to stand on those two feet of yours—and no one here has asked anything of you. No requirement has been made of you to further House interests. We granted you the distance you wanted. That happy state of affairs may no longer be sustainable. In the years to come, the House will have to use every asset and resource available to it. You have skills I may need to use. You can still fly, I take it?”

And why did he care?

I nodded. “I will have to discuss it with Carrington when I see him and possibly I shall have to requalify on civilian aeroships, but yes. The
Ark Royal
’s doctor thought my eyes would recover enough for that. They’re already much better.”

“Good. You have experience of battle, Rafe. That too is useful. Too useful to ignore. I considered seeking a post for you through the Cartomancer, but it doesn’t appear there is anything suitable in any of our embassies.”

I laid my cigar down into the ashtray and stubbed it out with sharp little jabs. I was pleased to see my hand did not shake. “I’m hardly the diplomatic type, sir.”

“I don’t require the reminder, young man. But every embassy has a security post, and you’d do well in one of those and help build our reputation. In the Americas perhaps, or India.”

In other words, somewhere far away from Londinium.

“It seems academic, sir, if the Cartomancer has nothing to offer. Besides, I’ve barely set foot in the country for the last few years. I’d like the chance to stay at home for a while.”

The old man held me in that dark gaze for a moment, before nodding. “Very well. As you say, it’s academic since the Cartomancer doesn’t have very much available at the moment for the allied Houses. We’re considering House resources at the moment, and there may be some redistribution of postings, particularly in our Far Eastern ventures.”