by KJ Charles
“And what are we going to do about it?”
“Watch from the stalls.” Kim leaned his shoulder against Will’s, his thumb gently brushing Will’s palm, a soothing stroke. “Chingford can take his consequences, and Father can take his grandchildren, and I hope he does a better job with them than he did with us. The mother sounds like a power-house, which should help. Maisie found her rather impressive.”
The coast was a lot closer now. Aurora was speeding through the waves, the up-and-down starting to feel like a reasonable sort of motion. It was bright and clean and fresh out here, and blessedly free of people.
“I’d like to do this again,” Will said abruptly. “Sail, I mean. Only not on a ship full of bastards.”
“It’s more fun on smaller craft anyway. We could go out just the two of us, if that doesn’t go against your stipulation. I could teach you.”
“I’d like that.”
“So would I. You can swim, yes?”
“No.”
Kim’s hand went still. “You can’t?”
“Is that a problem?”
“You climbed over the side of a yacht in full sail!”
Will shrugged. “He had a gun on you.”
“He had a gun on my father.”
“Whatever. You’d have shot him yourself if you didn’t care.”
Kim turned to glare at him. “You can’t swim, and you climbed over the side of a bloody yacht, and it wasn’t even— Jesus Christ, Will! Why would you do that?”
“You know why.”
Kim shut his eyes. His hand tightened on Will’s. “I do, yes. It’s because you’re a sodding lunatic with no sense of self-preservation.”
“Because I love you. Arsehole.”
“Which is what I just said.”
“No, that was why I started seeing you. It’s not why I’m still here.”
Kim put his other hand over the two already joined. Will covered that with his own, feeling Kim’s skin chilly against his, and they sat together in silence, four hands clasped like a promise, as the new day dawned around them and the yacht sped on.
THERE WAS A RECEPTION committee at the dock. Will watched with the ladies as Kim and his father brought Aurora in, working in what at least looked like wordless harmony.
“Who are they all, do you think?” Maisie asked.
“That’s at least two police cars,” Will said. “And—oh God.”
“What?”
“See the dark bloke with his arms crossed? The one that you can tell he’s pissed off all the way from here?”
“Yes?”
“He’s the head of the Private Bureau.”
“Gosh,” Phoebe said. “What does that mean?”
“We’re saved, or we’re dead. One of the two.”
Will’s legs felt decidedly wobbly when they got off the yacht. They made quite a sight: Kim in his superbly cut suit; Will smeared with coal-dust and sweat, with no shoes, one trouser leg hacked off at the knee, and a bloodstained bandage round his calf; Maisie and Phoebe in hopelessly bedraggled Paris fashion. Lord Flitby was grey-faced, as well he might be: he’d been up the whole night.
DS immediately buttonholed Kim. Maisie went to find a bench to sit on, and put her head between her knees while Phoebe fluttered around her. That left Will, propped against a post, and Lord Flitby, who said, “Mr. Darling,” in a voice like the creak of a coffin lid.
Will turned. “Yes?”
The old man looked exhausted but he stood straight. Will wondered what that was costing him. “Arthur told me a certain amount last night. I don’t pretend to understand your position, or his decisions. I don’t understand him. Bad blood on his mother’s side.”
“Mmm,” Will said, as an alternative to Oh, shut up.
“Notwithstanding, I cannot— I don’t—” He stopped, tried again. “My son—Chingford—has erred grievously. I must accept my part in that. I am grateful for your intervention, and your courage.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” Will said. “I did it for Kim. It was him who put blood and sweat into this business, and saved your life at the risk of his own. While Chingford was trying to get us all killed,” he added, because Kim wasn’t the only one who could put the knife in.
The Marquess’s mouth tensed. “I am aware of that.”
“Be grateful to him, then.”
“I shall—” Lord Flitby began with audible annoyance, and stopped himself. “Perhaps you will at least accept my apologies.”
“I’m not the one who’s owed them.”
The Marquess made an exasperated noise. “You are an extremely obstructive man, Mr. Darling.”
“Yes,” Will said. “If you want to feel better, I can’t help you. If you want to make amends, talk to Kim.”
The old man didn’t reply. Will shifted against the post to ease the weight on his good leg.
“I know what he did,” the Marquess said abruptly. “Arthur. I know he saved my life and whatever shreds remain of our family’s honour and I shall—I shall speak to him. But you helped him at your own peril, and for that I thank you.”
Will shrugged. His calf hurt and his feet were cold. “You’re welcome.”
An ambulance with a police escort arrived. One of the ambulance men took a quick look at Will’s wound, cleaned it again, and re-bandaged him, then they took Lord Chingford away. The rest of them piled into the cars and were driven back to the house.
They were allowed to wash, change—someone found Will a pair of shoes, which was welcome—and eat a very badly needed breakfast before Will and Kim were summoned to see DS. He had commandeered the Blue Drawing-Room, the one with the portrait of Kim’s mother, and looked right at home.
“Nice place you have here, Secretan.”
“Thank you,” Kim said. “There’s plenty of space, though it isn’t terribly convenient for the shops.”
“Good for harbouring fugitives, though. Hello again, Mr. Darling. I’d say you’re a hard man to find, but it was glaringly obvious.”
“Don’t tell me you came here to get him,” Kim said. “You must have seen through that absurd frame job.”
DS gave him a look. “We came up here once it was apparent that Knowle had slipped through our fingers, and your telephone line had mysteriously failed. Those two events together didn’t seem like chance, given your father’s possession of a steam yacht. We got here rather too late to stop you embarking, unfortunately.”
“Yes, that is a shame,” Kim said, with some restraint.
“Still, you saved the British taxpayer a couple of lengths of rope, so swings and roundabouts. Tell me all, Secretan. From the start, no prevarication, and no omissions. I know you too well.”
Kim gave him the story, with more or less complete honesty except that he presented Lord Flitby’s last pull of the trigger as emergency rather than execution. It took a while. Will filled in the parts about himself. DS asked a very few pertinent questions and otherwise stayed silent, making one or two notes, watching Kim’s face.
“A few questions,” he said at the end. “In no particular order: do you know why Anton came up here to attack you?”
“I assume that Knowle was concerned we’d work out what was going on. He did like his distractions.”
“Chingford told him you were here. Did he seem surprised when he learned you’d been shot at?”
“You think Chingford wanted us killed?” Will asked.
DS opened his well-kept hands. “You tell me. How much does he dislike you, Secretan?”
Kim didn’t answer. DS went on, “He was certainly involved in Knowle’s plans. The telephone line was cut where it enters the house and I cannot see how that was Anton’s doing. Lord Chingford will need to explain himself.”
“Is someone going to make him?” Kim asked.
“We’ll come back to that. Next question.” His voice hardened. “Why did you not bring Fairfax’s information to me as soon as you found it?”
“Because I wanted to use it as a bargaining chi
p,” Kim said, meeting his eyes. “I was hoping to exchange it for Chingford’s continued existence—a manslaughter charge, say. That was the appointment I made with you but didn’t show up to.”
“Fairfax knew everything,” DS said. “He had names of the entire Zodiac and many of their collaborators encoded in his ledger. Merton’s department has cracked it, and the remnants are being rounded up even now. If we’d had his papers earlier, we might have identified Knowle before he was able to make a run for it.”
Kim’s face twitched. “Before he had Quiller killed?”
DS rocked a hand. “Perhaps, though he knowingly gave a ruthless murderer a false alibi. That tends not to make for a good life insurance prospect. The point is, you should have handed it over at once and you know it. Instead you decided to use it to save your worthless brother.”
Kim’s face was rigid. “Yes, sir.”
“You really are a weasel,” DS said. “And you then gave it to Merton because—?”
“They’d framed Will.”
“Which was, naturally, your primary concern.” The Bureau chief sighed heavily. “Secretan, Secretan. I realise I told you to find something to live for, but there are limits.”
“Sir.”
“And what about your brother now? Having gone to these lengths for him—”
“I never did any of it for him,” Kim said. “And my current stance is, to hell with Chingford. If he hangs, we deserve the consequences.”
“Wouldn’t the consequences be you inheriting this rather magnificent pile?”
“Not any more. I don’t want it; I never did.”
“Really?” DS glanced around. “No accounting for taste, I suppose. What do you want?”
Kim looked at him, assessing, and Will had the sudden, odd sense that there was another conversation happening, one he wasn’t hearing. “I want Will safe, with the charges dropped and his name cleared. And we need the murder weapon back, his knife. It has sentimental value.”
“That’s you two in a nutshell,” DS said. “Nothing else?”
“Yes.” Kim’s shoulders straightened. “I want to come back to work. Sir.”
DS looked at him, unblinking, for a very long moment, then his lips twitched. “So I should hope. It’s about time you stopped lolling around: idle young men will be the ruin of this country. What is it, Saturday? Come to the office on Tuesday. Not before ten: I shall have to gird my loins and let the staff know to brace themselves. And—” His gaze flicked to Will. “It seems to me you’re in urgent need of occupation as well, Mr. Darling.”
“I’ve got an occupation,” Will pointed out. “I run a bookshop.”
“Run a bookshop, pave Secretan’s way with bodies, and hang off the wrong side of yachts in your spare time. I’m not sure who you’re trying to fool.”
“Possibly I could put this proposal to him in a slightly less adversarial way?” Kim suggested.
“Why would you bother? Come along on Tuesday, Mr. Darling. You can collect your lethal weapon then.”
“What about Chingford, though?” Will asked. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“Nothing he’s going to enjoy,” DS said, in a matter-of-fact tone that hit harder than any threat. “He has a very great deal to account for, and I shall see to it he does. I don’t tolerate attacks on my people.”
“Technically, at the time, I wasn’t—” Kim began.
“Don’t be silly,” DS said with a faint smile. “Of course you were.”
THAT AFTERNOON, WILL borrowed a walking stick and they wandered the grounds with Phoebe and Maisie, enjoying the summer sun and, in Maisie’s case, the stability of the earth beneath her feet.
“I’m never going on a boat again. We’re flying back to Paris. Planes are wonderful.”
“But you are going back?” Will said. “I wondered, with Phoebe’s title—”
“Oh, that won’t change anything,” Phoebe said airily. “Or rather, it will be wonderful for publicity—we thought ‘Waring’s’ for the boutique, supplying exclusive Maison Zie designs. I certainly shan’t be retiring to the country to hunt and shoot fish. I can’t imagine anything more ghastly.”
“Paris, then. But we’ll see you soon?”
“You’ll have to pay us a visit,” Phoebe said. “We want to show everything off and we can’t always be running around after you two. We’re professional women, you know.”
“I dare say we’ll manage the trip,” Kim said. “Thank you both for coming. For everything.”
Phoebe put her arm round his waist. Maisie threaded hers around Will’s elbow and tugged him backwards, so Kim and Phoebe could pace a little way ahead. “They’ve got a bit of sorting out to do still.”
“But it’s all right?”
Maisie squeezed his arm. “Course. She understands.”
“Kim said she talked to his old man on the yacht.”
“She had time,” Maisie said darkly. “Since I was mostly trying to keep my stomach where God put it. She told him what it was like finding out about her father, what Zodiac were, and that as far as she was concerned, Kim did the right thing with him. Even if it wasn’t nice, or good, or easy for anyone.”
“That’s Kim.”
Maisie glanced up at him. Will gave her a wry grin. “I’m not complaining. I’d rather have right than easy.”
“Yes, you would,” Maisie said thoughtfully. “Are you going to see this DS man on Tuesday?”
“I reckon so.”
“Good. You wouldn’t want to get bored.”
Will looked up ahead to where Kim and Phoebe walked, dark hair and fair together in the golden afternoon light. Kim threw back his head and laughed at something, and Will felt need scrawl itself sharply across his chest, like a fingernail on bare skin. “I don’t think I’m in much danger of that.”
They spent the whole afternoon out there. They explored the gardens, and ridiculed the topiary, and went through the pine wood where Will and Kim re-enacted the attempted murder with an unexpected lurch into hilarity that left Phoebe weeping with laughter and Maisie so weak she had to sit on a log to recover herself.
Around six they returned to the house to dress for cocktails. Lord Flitby would not be joining them for dinner but had ordered a grand meal to be served in the dining room. Will wondered if that was an acknowledgement of the viscountess in their midst, or of Kim, or what. Hastings the butler even turned up with a set of evening clothes that fit Will pretty well. They probably belonged to an under-footman but he’d take it.
“And we should be able to go home tomorrow,” Kim said, adjusting Will’s bow tie for him. “The charges will be officially dropped then, DS says. You’ll be in the papers again, but at least more favourably.”
“So will you. Your family, anyway.”
“A great deal less favourably, but there we are.” Kim didn’t sound concerned as he tweaked the corners of the tie. “Perfect. I do like you in evening dress. Sophisticatedly thuggish, I believe I said once.”
“You did say that. You also said ‘plenty more where that came from’.”
“Misdirection,” Kim said unrepentantly.
“And you said I was getting greedy.”
“You’re planning to move up to a duke. The truth hurts.”
“How would you know?”
The light in Kim’s eyes was pure joy, and Will couldn’t have wiped off his own grin if he’d tried. He reached out and tugged Kim’s perfect bow tie a little askew. “I’ll probably stick with the secret agent for now, but don’t get cocky.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Kim caught his hand and kissed the palm. “I couldn’t. You changed everything, Will. My life, my work, myself. It’s all changed—all better—because of you.”
“You did that yourself, you daft sod. I just shouted at you a bit.”
“A lot. God, I adore you.”
“Same.” He ran a finger over Kim’s jaw, up to his lips. “Jesus, Kim. I was on my own in a dusty bookshop and you turned up, and now it feels
like I’ve got the whole world at my feet.”
“And a hole in your leg.”
“And a scar on my arm and a broken hand, but who’s counting?”
“You are, clearly.”
“Yes, and I can’t help noticing you got away clean. Again.”
Kim’s hand slid into his. Will gripped it, feeling their fingers tangle in that familiar way. An intimacy, a promise, a physical touch that spoke of a far deeper connection. The pair of them heading into the future, together.
This was going to be fun.
<<<<>>>>
Acknowledgements
With huge thanks to the endlessly patient Jan-Piet Stuursma, who helped me get my head round 1920s steam yacht diagrams, and explained which way the pointy end goes. Hartelijk bedankt, JP.
Massive gratitude to the people who read this in early drafts, and helped me wrench it into shape and believe it could work. Elisabeth Paice, Charlie, May Peterson, Ali Williams, Moog Florin, I owe you all.
Tiferet’s wonderful covers have made this series for me. Courtney Miller-Callihan is an endless support as an agent, and Matthew Lloyd Davies / Cornell Collins a joy of a reader on the audiobooks.
Thank you to everyone who supported the first two books, and waited an unconscionable time for this one. Sorry about that.
PS: If you read White Stains, it’s at your own risk. I wasn’t kidding about the dog.
The Will Darling Adventures
A m/m romance trilogy in the spirit of Golden Age pulp fiction. It’s the 1920s and tensions are rising along with hemlines. Soldier-turned-bookseller Will Darling finds himself tangled up in spies and secret formulas, clubs and conspiracies, Bolsheviks, blackmail, and Bright Young Things. And dubious aristocrat Lord Arthur ‘Kim’ Secretan is right in the middle of it all: enigmatic, unreliable, and utterly irresistible.
Slippery Creatures
