The Gilded Scarab (28 page)

I
N
A
matter of weeks, I had gone from a life of idleness to one where I scarce had a moment to myself. I certainly didn’t complain about the increase in business at the coffeehouse—the sooner I could pay off the mortgage to my esteemed House, the better—and it meant I had little time for the ennui and gentle melancholia that had afflicted me since my return from South Africa. But the disadvantage was that for the last month I had worked twelve hours every day, Monday to Saturday. Sunday was my only day of leisure.

There was no denying that the Queen’s more upright and moralistic tendencies had deeply influenced society. Workplaces, museums, shops, and theaters were, of course, closed on Sundays, the biblical day of rest, to prevent the worker bees from frittering away their time enjoying themselves when they should be at prayer instead. I have never been moralistic. I was perfectly happy to be frivolous and risk the eternal damnation of my immortal soul if it meant I didn’t have to go to church.

The first Sunday after Ned Winter’s return, I eschewed my local place of worship, as usual, rose at the sinfully late hour of ten, and had lunch with Daniel. Which, on reflection, came pretty close to the sort of punishment that would warm the cockles of an evangelical’s heart. Daniel was still suffering nobly.

On reflection, I preferred prayer.

Still, it had to be done. Daniel could be tiresome, but I was obliged to let him know I had met Ned Winter at the coffeehouse and the world had not come crashing down as a result. I hoped I could persuade him he truly had nothing to fear, that I wouldn’t be indiscreet about either him or Ned. But I also felt obliged to point out that Daniel hadn’t exactly been discreet himself. I would enjoy that last part.

We met in the Trocadero’s Long Bar, relatively early. I didn’t want to spend the entire day with him, and I thought I was being considerate. Have lunch, discuss with him the awkward situation with Ned Winter, and leave him free to wend his way to one of the usual meeting places where he could find some congenial companionship. He, of course, took it that I couldn’t wait to get away and leave him again.

Which had a grain of truth to it. But Lord, the martyrdom was tiresome. I would have to buy Daniel an eternal lucifer for his birthday, all the better for him to light his pyre.

Still I was very polite. I greeted him with a peck on the cheek, inquired after his health, asked about his work, and flattered him by asking him to explain what on earth a
tet
was. He brisked up wonderfully as he enlightened my ignorance on that and other Aegyptian oddities, like a blossom opening its petals, to the point where he inquired about the coffeehouse of his own volition and with neither sneer nor sobbing.

“Well, it’s early days yet, of course, but I think I’m on the right track. There are a great many more visitors than there were, and business is quite brisk. I’m going to need to hire some help, I think. With luck, I can make it a real success.” I found myself fidgeting with the cruet, putting the salt onto the tabletop and back again into its silver holder. I did it twice before I stopped myself. “That’s the reason I asked to see you, actually.” Deep breath and just say it. “Ned Winter is back.”

Daniel stiffened. “I know he is. Has he been to the coffeehouse?”

I nodded. “Yes. It was a little awkward.”

The sneer was back. “My point exactly, Rafe, if you recall.”

Nothing was more irritating than a martyr convinced of his infallibility. I chose to ignore the provocation. “The thing is, Daniel, he’s quite sharp, isn’t he? He asked about you.”

Novelists talk about it all the time in their worst melodramas, but I’d never before seen the color literally drain from a man’s face. Daniel flushed red to the tips of his ears before it ebbed away again, leaving him gray and drawn. His hand closed on his wineglass, and he pushed it away abruptly, slopping claret all over the white tablecloth.

“You told him?” he demanded. “Rafe, how could you? You promised!”

“I didn’t say a thing. But you, Daniel, need to stop giving scarab watches to all your ex-lovers.”

He stared at me. The color flooded back into his face until he was mottled with scarlet. “Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.” I tapped my lovely scarab watch with a finger. “Do you consider it a kind of badge of honor, perhaps? Winter’s an astute man. He saw at once that his watch and mine could be twins.”

Daniel ducked his head, avoiding my eyes. He was red to the tips of his ears. “What did you say?”

I hunched one shoulder. “What could I say? I don’t lie very well, Daniel. I told him we were friends.”

“Is that all? What did he say?”

Was he expecting me to reproduce the entire conversation, word by word? “Not very much.”

“This is what I was dreading!”

And heavens, he didn’t know it all. If ever he found out about my night at Margrethe’s with the soi-disant Edward Fairfax, I could guarantee that the resultant explosion would flatten the metropolis. Or me. No, I had better practice some discretion there. “I’m sorry it happened, Daniel. But you’re prepared now. When you see him again—”

“Next week, when term starts,” said Daniel.

I wasn’t terribly concerned when it was, but if Daniel wished to be precise about it, so be it. “When you see him next week,” I amended, “you will know that I have met him and there is nothing more to fear on that score.”

“What did you think of him?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. Mainly because I didn’t actually have an answer. “He seemed pleasant enough. The second time he came in, anyway. His first appearance at the coffeehouse was colored by his shock at Mr. Pearse’s departure.”

“He was very fond of the old man.” Daniel drew one of his patented shuddering breaths, and made a noise and a kind of fluttering motion of his hands and upper body that put me forcibly in mind of the Dying Swan. “I told you that Ned and I… that I fell a little in love?”

“Yes.”

“I knew Ned wouldn’t defy his father and refuse to marry. He said that it wasn’t merely the immediate family, but all the hundreds of people who were linked to the House. Their well-being derived from the House’s. He claimed he couldn’t risk destabilizing Gallowglass and all the House’s dependents. It was his duty to do as his father asked. It broke my heart, Rafe.”

I cast a swift glance around the room to ensure no one had been injured by the tsunami of emotion flooding the place. Which was, I know, unkind of me. I liked Daniel, but I did wish he would rein back the histrionics. “I remember you told me so” was all I said.

“We stayed friends, and I’m glad for that. I didn’t really know Laeticia, of course. He kept family life quite separate, naturally. She gave him two sons, you know. Anyhow, she was killed in an accident two years ago. After she died I’d hoped… well, I’d hoped he’d turn back to me.”

I sighed very quietly, patted his hand, and prepared to be the perfect listener as he unburdened his woes, but not so perfect as to give him the wrong idea about being receptive to resuming the amorous element of our friendship. Because I wasn’t. Not in the least. It was a fine line to tread and took a great deal of skill.

Buddhists, I believe, think a soul lives many lives. If that’s the case, I think I may have been a high-wire walker in a previous life. I was probably very good at it.

N
ED
W
INTER
came back on Tuesday, midmorning. “First day of term tomorrow,” he said in cheerful greeting. “I must attend a faculty meeting this morning. I need a coffee to prepare me for that.”

“I’ll bring it over.” I glanced at Hawkins. “I got you some tea.”

Hawkins blinked. “Thank you,” he said. He sounded as if it hurt him to say it, and I hoped it did.

Ned was working on a manuscript when I took over the coffee and a mug of tea. It had been printed on flimsy paper, and the red corrections, of which there were many, had been inked in with such force that the pen nib had gone through the paper.

I caught a glimpse of “
Moron!!!
” scribbled on one margin. “Is that proper academic language?”

“Peer review,” explained Ned. “I’m allowed to be critical.”

I hitched up an eyebrow. This was a side of him I hadn’t expected. “I thought you intellectuals were all about higher thought and being.”

“Not when it comes to doing down a rival. Besides, the man’s an idiot and wrong in about ten different ways. He wouldn’t recognize a Saite mummy if it had him by the throat.”

I laughed, because really, would anyone other than a rabid Aegyptologist? “I hadn’t realized academics were so competitive.”

“It’s a cutthroat profession, believe me.” Ned waved the abused paper at me. “It’s a copy of a paper by Furtwängler at Heidelberg on Flinders Petrie’s latest finds at Armana, although what a man whose expertise is limited to Greek bronzes feels he has to offer to a discussion of heretical Aegyptian religion is beyond me. Petrie asked me to take a look at it.” Ned glanced down at the papers and grinned. “Oh well, Mrs. Petrie is his secretary and far too canny to retain the more pejorative comments when she drafts the formal response, but this will soothe Petrie’s troubled breast a little. But really. Furtwängler’s a
classicist
.”

“So am I,” I said, slightly nettled by the sly look Ned gave me.

Ned smiled and pushed his papers aside. “So I understand. Double first in Classical Moderations and Literae Humaniores. Very impressive, Rafe. You are definitely one for hiding lights under bushels.” He glanced around the coffeehouse. “It’s rather quiet this morning. Stay and talk.”

“The breakfast rush is over, but it will brisk up again around luncheon. But all right. Let me go and get myself some coffee.”

When I got back to the table, Hawkins had removed to the other side of the room, where he sat watching us, his mouth turned down unhappily. I raised an inquiring eyebrow in Ned’s direction.

“I tried to get him to go and visit Rosens and Matthews, so we could talk,” said Ned. “But that table was the farthest I could persuade him to go. Sam takes his duties very seriously.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t had a gun in my face for two meetings now. I think his standards are slipping.”

Ned laughed and shook his head. “You aren’t going to forgive that easily, are you? And yet you got him tea. That may point to a mood of Christian forbearance.”

I slid into the seat opposite him. “Not at all. Merely, I can’t afford to have him in here and not drink anything. He’s a drag on the profits.” We smiled at each other, and all I could hope was that I didn’t look as sentimental as I suddenly felt. It was quite ridiculous. I barely knew the man.

Ned hesitated a moment. “Rafe, I have to ask… are you still seeing Daniel?”

I had half expected he’d want to pursue this. I could appreciate he would be as keen as Daniel to get everything nailed down, so we all understood where we were. I would like to know myself. “We had luncheon on Sunday, but seeing him as in some sort of
amour
? No. We were involved for a few weeks, but we aren’t now. Still friends, I hope, but no more than that.”

He blew out a small sigh and nodded. “Daniel told you about me, I suppose?”

“A little.” I was a touch economical with the truth there. I’d spent Sunday afternoon lying down in a darkened room with a headache, following luncheon. Daniel had dissected and discussed every gesture made and every word spoken by Ned over the last decade, analyzing them minutely for their significance regarding Daniel himself, and demanding my opinion and support until my head was buzzing. I don’t think my aching head had anything to do with the quantity of claret I’d consumed to aid the process along, either. I did hope Ned wasn’t going to give me his side of the affair. I couldn’t afford the time for another afternoon, recovering.

“We were close once. I graduated from University College and went on my first dig in the winter of ’89-’90, with Flinders Petrie at Amarna. Daniel was his aide-de-camp. It lasted around a year, but then I got married.”

“A House marriage?”

“Yes. Arranged between my father and the Huissher, actually. Laeticia was his youngest daughter.”

Oh. Perhaps I’d been wrong about him not knowing who Commander Abercrombie was. Cousins by marriage, then. I winced at the thought of Ned and my ex-commander ever socializing and finding out they had me in common. Ned was very different from Abercrombie, but I had to think of them as being of the same class—which was above mine. A sobering thought.

“Mr. Pearse told me about the accident, not knowing that you and I had met already, when he explained why he would never sell to Philtre.” I added, as matter-of-factly as possible, “I was sorry to hear about your loss. It must have been very difficult for you.”

He grimaced and nodded. “Thank you, Rafe. I appreciate your kindness. Mr. Pearse is a very good and loyal friend. I don’t know that he would be very concerned about how you and I met, by the way. He knows Daniel. I think he had his suspicions there.”

“I know you and Daniel came here often. It’s one of the reasons why I am not in any sort of relationship with him any longer, as it happens. He tried to stop me from buying the coffeehouse. He objected very strongly to me meeting you at all. He doesn’t know about—” I waved a hand between Ned and myself.

Ned blenched. “Lord, no! I should hope not. I’m fond of Daniel, you know, but if he has a fault, it’s that he finds it hard to let go.”

My Sunday headache bore silent, if not uncomplaining, witness to that statement. “At least he now knows you’ve been in here since your return from Aegypt and that we’ve met. I hope there need be no further awkwardness.”

From his pursed lips and the slight roll of his eyes, I got the impression Ned didn’t share my hopes. “Daniel and I usually come in here weekly during the terms when I’m teaching or researching at the museum. You don’t mind if we continue?”

“Not at all.”

He nodded and glanced at Hawkins. “Although… perhaps, better not. I’ll see how Daniel reacts today. I had better be on my way, Rafe. I’m teaching all this term, so I expect we’ll see each other often.”