“Come home, come home, just fucking come home!”
“Are ye all right there, lass?” She came around to the fact that there was an old man standing beside her, a look of concern on his wrinkled face, his ancient lorry chugging away behind her car. She had no idea how long he had been there. She hadn’t even heard the truck stop behind her. She wiped her face with one muddy, bruised hand. She must appear a lunatic to him, kneeling here, beating on the ground, rain running down her face, as she shouted at the air.
“I…yes, I’m fine,” she said, seeing the dubious look on his face and not blaming him in the least. She knew she looked a right virago—bloody, wet, filthy and furious.
“Well, if ye’re certain,” he said. She nodded and stood, brushed herself down as best she could and walked back to her car, got in and waved at the old man who still stood watching her through the rain that was falling in great silver sheets now.
Sitting in the car, she took a breath, turned the key in the ignition and pulled out into the roadway. And then she went home to where her children waited.
Chapter Eight
His Father’s Son
JULIAN HAD BEEN BORN WANTING. It was a condition that many were born into, some in poor countries, some with poor hearts; Julian was of the latter, ever wanting only those things which nature had not fitted him to have. Yet at first glance it seemed that this should not be so, for he was fitted, as the world saw to such things, to have everything upon which his glance might alight with desire.
Julian had always loved beautiful things, had seen them as a birthright. After seeing James Kirkpatrick’s home, he decided that it was something he had inherited from his father.
After he returned, in some small disgrace, from his attempted coup of his father’s home and empire, he had decided to finish out his degree at Oxford, as his father had done before him. His rooms at Oxford had been an attempt to recreate, in microcosm, some facet of Jamie’s gilded universe. His own magpie tendencies had overwhelmed the original décor. He liked the jumble as it made him feel oddly secure. He had added the books and globe after spending time in the comfort and warmth of Jamie’s study. He supposed the man had actually read the books in his study; he supposed he might actually read his own collection one day.
He found, however, that one could not recreate that patina, the steeped golden light that seemed to exist only within that strange study: the worn Bokhara rugs, the rump-sprung chairs, the jewel tones of floor and shelves, the frayed bindings of gilt-edged books, the worn edges of the big oak desk that had passed through countless generations, the sunlight that touched the edges of things and seemed to have woven itself into the very fabric of the iron and glass room. His facsimile of it was just that, a facsimile—one with slightly dark edges, as if some far more sinister thing crept and wove through his own rugs and chairs, books and shelves. It made him very angry.
He entered his room, thinking of the Kirkpatrick house and its sweeping grounds and of the ghost-like specter that hung over all of it—the man he had never met, his biological father, Lord James Stuart Kirkpatrick—only to find the man himself in the flesh there in his room. Julian stopped as though he had walked full tilt into a mirror, but a strange one that added years and changed coloring.
It had been one thing to see pictures of the man, to regard him theoretically as one’s father, as the precursor of the blood, at least in part, that one had running through one’s veins. To see him sitting in your humble parlor was another thing altogether. He had not been prepared, despite being duly warned, for the man’s physical presence.
James Kirkpatrick sat with one long leg canted over the other. He wasn’t a man who needed to stand in order to intimidate others. He knew what he was, he didn’t need cheap tricks to prove it. Dressed impeccably in a dark grey wool suit, tailored no doubt to fit him exactingly, with a black wool coat hung loosely over one arm and black shoes polished to a fine sheen, he was the epitome of a wealthy man who was entirely comfortable in his skin. His hair was gold, but not gold—it held every shade within it from caramel to honey to wheat, to a near white and a shade like that of newly minted guineas. His eyes were a cutting verdigris with little warmth in them at present. Julian felt his own sapphire eyes narrow in response. The man smiled, his lips finely-cut, but of the sort that women would like. Julian knew because he had the same lips.
“Lord Kirkpatrick, I presume,” he said voice as formal and chilly as he could contrive when his pulse was thumping madly. The man appeared utterly relaxed, as if he were here on a cordial call and hadn’t just broken into Julian’s room.
“So formal, Julian? Aren’t you going to call me daddy? I understand you haven’t been shy about shouting it from the rooftops in my absence.”
Fair enough, Julian thought. He had been warned that the man could be a cold bastard. But so could he, and he felt secure in the knowledge that he did not carry the same deficits as this man. He knew those deficits to a fault, for he had studied each of them tirelessly, as if he was expecting to get a degree in all the finer points of James Kirkpatrick’s weaknesses.
“What, no paternal warmth?” he said, matching his voice to Jamie’s and knowing it didn’t quite come off the way he had hoped it would.
“Do you feel you deserve any after the stunts you’ve pulled with my companies and home? Undermining my friends and trying to take over lock, stock and, as they say, smoking barrel? Not to mention your unholy alliance with the Reverend Broughton. That being said, I don’t expect any filial loyalty or warmth from you either. We will both of us have to earn that, if we choose to.”
Julian felt a little smacked off-center. Was the man offering to have a relationship with him? His opening salvo had not indicated such. He would have to proceed carefully, and yet the arrogance of the man assuming he wanted a relationship with him, when it was far too late for such things, irked him.
“We’re both adults and I will treat you as one. It’s too late for us to have a father to child relationship, so we will have to make of this what fits our circumstances. What you want from this will be for you alone to determine. Trust is something that will have to be earned on both sides.”
Julian had the discomfiting sense the man was reading his mind.
“Why should I have to earn your trust?” he asked haughtily, while inwardly steaming that the man should be so presumptuous as to instruct him in what was needed in order to earn his favor.
“Why? Because you went after a woman, who had more than enough to concern her, to whom I had entrusted the care of my business and home. That you also did it in cooperation with a man who hates me and would do anything to destroy those I love and that which I hold dear—all this I take as an overt act of hostility if not that of outright war on your part.”
“You’re very defensive of her,” Julian said, for he well understood that Pamela was a chink in this man’s armor; he had been assured of it. He had dealt with her himself and knew not to underestimate her influence over his father.
“Pamela requires no defending from me.”
“Doesn’t she?” he asked, and then sat for he felt oddly at a disadvantage, standing while the man sat, still looking as relaxed as a lion on a stretch of sunny veldt. It did not improve his humor to have to remove a hat, two books and dirty clothes from the chair before he could sit.
“Tell me, Julian, what is it that you want?”
“What makes you think I want anything from you?” he said, and knew even as the words left his tongue that he sounded like a sullen child.
“Don’t you? I am home now, and you are more than welcome to visit the estate, on the understanding that you are a guest and will be treated as such.”
To Julian’s own surprise, he found himself replying, “Is the invitation an open one?”
The man gave him a long look, the green eyes less cold, and more calculated. “Yes, it’s open. I think if we’re to get to know one another, that’s the best place to do it. You’re familiar enough with the house a
nd grounds to feel comfortable there, I think.”
“I am,” Julian said, fighting not to rise to the man’s words. Clearly he knew just how familiar Julian had made himself with the house and grounds that he had believed would be his own.
“With that, I will take my leave.” Jamie stood and Julian fought the urge to leap up and back away. He had a presence that Julian had not reckoned with, for it wasn’t quite as his mother had told him. She had described a man with a brittle glamor to him, but this was nothing like that. This was like a force of nature, barely leashed and disguised within the perfect suit, the impeccably cut hair, the indefinable accent. His mother had warned him that the man had a cunning which must never be underestimated, that there was always a secondary agenda when dealing with James Kirkpatrick.
‘He’s a master of figurative sleight of hand,’ she had said, ‘he distracts you with one hand while the other is picking your pocket.’
He wondered just what the man was distracting him with by this offer of a visit.
“What do you want from me?” he blurted out, his tone not the cool one he had hoped to convey.
The man paused in the doorway, the morning sun twining its gilding strands in his hair.
“Simply this; I am offering you a relationship. I am offering to find out if we can get along well enough to be friends.”
“Friends?” Julian said, increasingly off-kilter due to the man’s unruffled surface.
“Yes, friends. It’s not an offer I make to many people, but I am making it to you.”
“You think we can be friends?” The snarl was evident in his tone. He couldn’t seem to keep his temper in check.
“That,” said His Lordship, James Stuart Kirkpatrick the Fourth, “remains to be seen, Julian.”
“Yes it does, Your Lordship,” Julian said to the closing door, the whisper no louder than the hiss of a grass snake, and yet he was left with the discomfiting notion that somehow James Kirkpatrick had heard him.
Jamie walked swiftly through the grounds of the university. Memory spoke from every cobblestone and stone façade and from the bridges and curving streets. Some echo of his young self still resonated in the air here and he half expected to turn a corner and see himself and Andrei plotting their next bit of madness, most likely illegal and most certainly great fun.
He had not thought too much about Andrei since his return home. It wasn’t an easy task, given that he saw the outlines of his imperious face each time he looked at Kolya. There was too much going on at home, things that were both immediate and raw. Settling Kolya into a world where his mother was absent and quite possibly would always be, was just the beginning. Trying to help Pamela find her feet without Casey, was another. She was not the girl he’d taken in all those years ago, she had grown in his absence into something fine and resilient. She was also infinitely fragile just now and while he knew he could not mend that for her, he would still take care of her in whatever manner possible. Or, he thought, more accurately, in whatever manner the woman would allow. He had forgotten just how stubborn she could be. The fact that she had gone to Noah Murray for help infuriated him, but he knew to handle her gently. He understood, after all, the desperation behind the act. Still, he didn’t like it at all. She had never been one to shy away from danger, in fact she had actively courted it at times, but Noah was a beast of a totally different stripe. He only hoped she understood what sort of darkness lay within the man. And now by no means the least of that list of worries—a son, his son, a man grown, physically at least. That he was intelligent, Jamie had no doubt, but he thought much of the boy’s intelligence was of the low and cunning sort. He suspected this had been cultivated in him and that there might be something more beneath the surface anger and resentment that could be brought forth, with time and infinite amounts of patience.
He hadn’t been certain what he would feel when confronted with Julian, but he had not expected to feel angry, he had not expected to feel a faint, underlying revulsion that he was certain the boy had sensed on some level. And it had thrown him to see himself so exactly in counterpoint, like he was looking in a mirror that took away years, changed colors and gave him back himself in a way he did not like. The reflection was not less true for that dislike though.
Despite his harrowed-up feelings, he hoped that Julian would accept his invitation to visit. He wanted to get to know him, as much as was possible, in an environment where they could both relax, in theory at least. He also wanted the advantage of home territory and to be surrounded by those he loved, so that Julian might see what the Kirkpatrick house was in reality—a home. One that he might embrace if he could learn to stop conniving and hating.
Jamie looked down at his watch, aware that he was being followed. He assumed this fellow would follow him onto the train platform and then contact his colleague in London and then someone would be waiting for him when the train arrived in London. He smiled, he could use a bit of rough play, his skills needed sharpening. He couldn’t allow it to slow him down too much, though, for he had a meeting with an old friend which he could not miss.
Chapter Nine
The Lion and the Fox
HE LEANED AGAINST THE RAIL in the arrivals area, watching for the trains coming in from Oxford and sipping at a plastic mug of tea.
He had been assigned to follow the man while he was in London. Keep his distance, report back on where he went, with whom he met, what he did, and if possible get close enough to overhear his conversations.
He felt a touch smug when he spotted the man getting off the train. The target was dressed impeccably in a dark suit, dressed beautifully really, though it was his hair that was going to make it so Agent 274, also known as Gareth Jones in his daily life, would have an easy day of it. The hair shone like a bright golden coin, standing out in stark contrast to all the duns and blonds and blacks around it. The man carried a briefcase, and while he seemed sharply aware of his environment, Gareth thought if he hung back far enough the man would have no idea he was there. Gareth could blend into walls and curbstones if need be. He had been trained by the best and had improved on his teacher’s methods in the intervening years.
By noon he was no longer feeling smug, even if he was still grimly confident that he could keep up with the man through sheer dogged determination if nothing else. He had been on three buses and two trains and had to run through the muck of a riverbank, ruining his new shoes and twisting his ankle, still he had managed to keep on the man’s tail. He was sweating, his heart was pounding, he was a touch angry, having lost his spy cool some miles back, mainly because of a sneaking suspicion that the man was leading him around London like a calf with a ring through its nose. Whether he was doing it for his own amusement or had a more nefarious agenda, Gareth did not know, but he was getting frazzled, something which was heretofore unknown in his experience.
The man was heading down into the bowels of Charing Cross. Gareth heaved a breath of relief, he would at least get to rest on the train for a bit. He eased back a little, he would be able to see the man now in the limited space of the station, regardless of how many people were milling about. He didn’t want to tip his hand too far just yet. But when he got to the bottom of the stairs, despite the relatively low density of people, he could not see the man anywhere. Gareth swore and struck his fist into his other hand. It wasn’t possible. He turned in a circle, a thrum of panic starting below his breastbone. He was going to be in trouble if he lost him. He stood on the stairs, ignoring all the annoyed people having to walk around him, muttering impolite things, some just saying them outright.
“F’in wanker, move yer arse out of me way.”
He did move eventually, because he couldn’t see the man and needed to walk the platform. There was a thud of excitement when he saw a flash of that singular hair up ahead of him. It must be inconvenient, he thought, looking as the man did. It would make him recognizable anywhere. He walked swiftly toward the far end of the station, the color dancing on the air ahead of him like a t
antalizing mirage.
Gareth smelled the drunk before he saw him; the cloud of stench traveled ahead of him. Gareth caught sight of the man in his peripheral vision and turned his head. He had a dreadful limp, one leg must be a few inches shorter than the other to give him such a gait. He had matted grey hair, stuck to his head with what looked like several months worth of grime and grease. This was topped with a dreadful floppy hat, which would have looked more appropriate on a commune dweller’s head.
The man sidled up to him, giving him an obsequious smile. He wanted money, of course. Gareth blew out a breath of exasperation. He could not afford to be distracted for a second.
The man was tugging at his sleeve. “Please sor, can ye spare a wee bit of coin for a man. I’s hungry an’ have no place to put me head tonight.”
“You’ll only drink it,” Gareth said distractedly, pulling his sleeve out of the man’s bent claw. “Leave off, I haven’t got anything for you.”
“Jest a few coins, sor, I can sing for it if ye’d like.” Much to Gareth’s horror the man began slurring his way through the opening bars of Silver Dagger. Gareth dug frantically in his pocket for loose change and flung the bit he found at the man.
“Ten pee, s’bit sheep,” the drunk hiccoughed, a wave of cheap alcohol fumes wafting forth as he launched into the next bit of the song.
‘All men are false, says my mother
They'll tell you wicked, winnin' lies…’
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 9
