An Unsuitable Heir

by KJ Charles

  “Yeah. Let’s do that. I’m probably going to have to work late tonight, but I’ll send you a note.”

  “Of course.” Pen kissed him gently, on the brow, both eyebrows, nose, finally lips. “I’m sorry I can’t stay today.”

  “Me too. Watch out for yourself, eh?”

  “I always do,” Pen assured him with a smile that glittered like the sun on water, and Mark had to turn away.

  —

  It was past three when Nathaniel finally turned up, and he had Lazarus with him.

  “About bloody time,” Mark said ungraciously. “I see you brought the table-rapper.”

  “Get used to him,” Nathaniel retorted. “Also, he’s retiring.”

  He seemed different, to Mark’s mind. They both did. Lazarus had a somewhat stunned look, as if he’d been hit on the head recently, and a healthier tinge to his pale skin, like he’d got some much-needed fresh air. Nathaniel had an air of suppressed…something, pride or excitement maybe. He looked five years younger. Or, he looked like he had five years ago, when he’d been happy.

  “You, me, conversation, later,” Mark told him, and ushered the pair in.

  “Are you all right?” Nathaniel asked. “You look rather worn.”

  “So would you in my shoes. Not as worn as the Taillefers are going to look if we get Pen coronetted, but that’s not looking marvellous right now. Repentance, I mean. He goes by Pen and his sister’s Greta, and he doesn’t want to be earl. Not one bit.”

  “He does realise that he’s the heir to a fortune?” Lazarus enquired with some sarcasm.

  Mark clenched his fist in his pocket. You don’t understand. None of you understand. “He says he’ll go mad in a sixmonth.” It was so easily said, so frighteningly true. “I’m not sure he’s wrong.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about that, but it’s not a matter of preference,” Nathaniel said. “If he’s Moreton’s legitimate son, he is the earl, and a substantial amount of the estate, including Crowmarsh, is entailed. It can’t be given away. It’s his.”

  And there it was before Mark had even asked, that one faint hope refused. He felt his stomach plunge, made a last effort. “If he denies being Emmeline’s son, though, who’s to know otherwise?”

  “The killer,” Nathaniel said. “He tracked us down to Harpenden, and sent Jim Spim—the swine who fired Rowley’s shop—and Nestor Potter to murder us.”

  Mark stared at him, lost for words. Nathaniel appeared entirely serious, and not a little pissed off. “Wh—Oh, hell. When?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Bloody hell.” Mark had assumed Nathaniel and Lazarus would be safe, worrying only about Pen, how he felt, what he wanted. He’d relaxed in the absence of trouble. And it turned out Pen had been safe because the killer had still been going for Lazarus. Guilt stabbed at him.

  Lazarus told the story with admirable clarity, given how sick he looked at the memory of fear and violence. Spim and Nestor had turned up at Nathaniel’s country home looking for the doctor’s letter that proved Pen’s birth. Spim was muscle for hire; it sounded like Nestor had been working under some sort of threat. Mark imagined the Fogman: Get me that letter or I’ll do to you what I did to your brother. He’d sent them as proxies to keep his own identity secret, and Lazarus was of the opinion that Spim had been ordered to kill them both and leave Nestor there dead too.

  They’d never know. Spim had held a gun to Nathaniel’s head, forcing Lazarus to burn the crucial letter, but Lazarus had managed to distract the thugs long enough to turn the tables. In the fight that followed Spim had shot Nestor, probably by accident, and then fallen through some rickety banisters to his death. Nathaniel explained that bit in a slightly stilted way that made Mark think he wasn’t telling all the story. He didn’t care. Spim and Nestor were no loss, and the only significance of their deaths to Mark was that they wouldn’t be able to answer any questions.

  “What about the police?”

  “It’s being treated as a burglary with violence,” Nathaniel said. “My housekeeper witnessed the break-in and their attack. We had to answer a lot of questions, and will have to go back to Harpenden for the inquest, but the situation was abundantly clear.”

  “We didn’t mention the Taillefer connection,” Lazarus added, which was what Mark had actually wanted to know. He was reluctantly impressed by Lazarus. The man had sharp eyes, a good memory, and a fast mind. Nathaniel, who rarely let anyone else get a word in edgewise, deferred to him as though it was natural to do so. Plus, it sounded like Lazarus, evidently no fighter, had taken on armed and violent men to save Nathaniel’s neck. Mark watched the way the two kept glancing at each other, and knew he had to act. Nathaniel would not survive another loss.

  But Pen, Pen…

  “Is there any way to get Pen out of the line of succession?” he asked. “Legally, I mean?”

  Nathaniel frowned. “It would require an Act of Parliament, I imagine, and for that Pen would have to be confirmed as the earl in the first place. He can’t simply say he doesn’t want it, and if he did say so he could change his mind at any time. And, to be honest, I don’t give a damn what he wants. The killer sent men after Justin because of what he knows and the letter he held, and he can’t be sure the letter was destroyed with his men both dead. Justin is still in danger, and so will Pen be, as long as he lives.”

  Mark might have reacted to that. He wasn’t sure, he’d tried to keep his face still, but Lazarus’s eyes flicked to him, and he had a sudden and strong feeling that he’d been rumbled.

  “Everything that’s happened since the last earl’s suicide, or murder, has been aimed at preventing the lost heir from claiming his birthright,” Nathaniel went on, oblivious. “I see no way to stop that except for Pen to declare himself that heir. At that point, with such an obvious motive, the risk of moving against him will be overwhelming. And, more to the point, the killer’s reason to attack Justin will be removed.”

  “That ain’t ‘more to the point’ for me,” Mark managed, and saw a glint of amusement in Lazarus’s eyes, but there was no joking this away. “Pen really does not want this. I think he’ll deny being who he is, if he’s asked.”

  Nathaniel and Lazarus both reacted with incredulity. Mark wished he could explain, but it wasn’t his life to talk about. “He’s got good reason for saying no, and I think he’s going to try to get out of it if he can. And if he doesn’t cooperate, what can we do about that?”

  Lazarus cleared his throat, and took something out of his bag. A picture frame, holding a pencil sketch of three faces, one a woman of startling, ethereal beauty, and two younger likenesses that were similar, and very familiar.

  Mark grabbed for it, staring at the faces of young Pen and Greta. There was no question at all; you couldn’t mistake the twins, even if Pen at fourteen hadn’t yet developed his adult jawline. He looked not unlike Greta did now, in fact. Mark wondered if that was how Pen still saw himself, a face that didn’t insist on male or female, before the years had forced beard and broad bones on him.

  It was, Lazarus said, an excellent likeness of Emmeline Godfrey. He’d met her, and taken the picture off her in lieu of payment when the poor stupid booby had come to London seeking her children and enlisted the aid of a spiritualist instead of an enquiry agent. Emmeline’s sister still lived and could identify her, and Nathaniel was convinced that, along with the page from the marriage register, the chain of proof would be quite sufficient to convince a judge.

  Mark grimaced. “It would be better if it didn’t go to court.”

  “Naturally,” Nathaniel said. “Any particular reason?”

  Mark didn’t think he could face this. Telling anyone seemed a gross infringement of Pen’s privacy, not to mention that Nathaniel would be fucking furious, and rightly, to learn that Mark had taken the Earl of Moreton to bed. And since Pen was never going to want to speak to Mark again after this, he wasn’t going to spread around whatever they’d been to one another. “Ah, hell.”

  “Are you all rig
ht?”

  “Yeah. Nat, are you sure there’s no other way out of this? Any way that means Pen doesn’t have to be named as earl?”

  “Finding the killer.”

  “I’ve tried,” Mark snapped. “I’ve tried, the police are trying, but he’s covered his tracks bloody well. We got no useful description, no idea of where he is. The bastard came out of the fog and went back into it.”

  “We both heard him speak in the fog,” Lazarus said. “It muffles sound, of course, but I might recognise his voice if I hear it again.”

  “I doubt I can promise the same,” Nathaniel admitted. “But you may rely on Justin.”

  Lazarus’s grey eyes widened sharply, such that Mark was fairly sure that wasn’t a sentiment he often heard, but all he said in response was, “We’ll need to find the bastard first.”

  “No, we’ve got to get Pen to the earldom first,” Nathaniel said. “Everything depends on that. His inheritance, his safety, Justin’s safety, the best chance of dealing with a profoundly dangerous man before anyone else gets hurt. Not to mention Clem’s home and business, which his miserable uncle will take from him if he isn’t stopped, and justice for Emmeline Godfrey. I don’t know what scruples Pen Taillefer has—”

  “He’d prefer to stay on the trapeze, that’s all,” Mark said. “He doesn’t think he’ll be happy.”

  “He’ll be an earl. You aren’t asking him to undergo torture. And more to the point, he’ll live till the New Year this way and so will the rest of us. This business needs to be dealt with at once, and if you aren’t prepared to do that then I will.” Nathaniel thumped a finger on the arm of his chair for emphasis. “I am not seeing Justin or anyone else suffer further for Lord Moreton’s sake; the earls of Moreton have caused quite enough misery over the last few generations. It stops here.”

  “Masterful, isn’t he?” Lazarus remarked.

  Nathaniel shot him a look. Lazarus twitched a brow in response, and Nathaniel pressed his lips together as though trying not to smile. Mark knew that sort of wordless exchange; he saw it in Phyllis and Greg all the time; he’d started doing it himself with Pen. His heart hurt.

  “I’m going to speak to Mr. Hapgood and bring the Taillefer family together,” Nathaniel said. “Will you supply the twins or shall I?”

  “I’ll do it,” Mark said. If he was going to betray Pen, he’d do it in person. “Let me know where and when.”

  —

  He went to see Pen that evening. The landlady, a dodgy character if ever he’d seen one, was suitably cautious, keeping him standing outside a locked door in the cold while she consulted with the twins. He was glad of that.

  Pen greeted him with a radiant grin, Greta with a smile that warmed as she watched her twin’s pleasure. She’s a bloody good sister, Mark thought with a pang of gratitude. She’ll stand by him.

  “This isn’t precisely a social call,” he told them both. “I wish it was, but I need you to listen. This is important.” He went over recent events. “There’s two people dead because they knew something about your earldom, Pen, and it could have been two more if Lazarus wasn’t quick-thinking. I think—I really think you need to step forward and take this damn title before anything else happens.”

  “Mark—”

  “It wouldn’t be that bad,” Mark said over him. “And I can’t believe I’m saying ‘not that bad’ about a fortune and a massive house, people to do the mending for you”—he’d noticed the pile of darned socks by Greta’s elbow—“and never having to worry about where your next meal is coming from. All right, you’d have to give up the trapeze, but how long have you got doing that anyway? What do you do for the next forty years after?”

  “Not pretend to be someone I’m not,” Pen said. “I thought you understood that.”

  “You do know everyone has to do that? Lie to their parents and their loved ones, act a part at work, put on a smiling face when they want to scream or swear? We’re all bloody pretending, all the time!”

  “Yes, I know that,” Pen retorted. “Very well indeed, after fourteen years with the Potters. I’m choosing not to do it any more. I’d rather have freedom than money.”

  “And what about you?” Mark asked Greta.

  Her eyes narrowed lethally. “Don’t try to set me against Pen. Don’t ever.”

  “We’ve talked about it,” Pen said. “We made a decision.”

  Mark rested his head on his hand. “Look. Lazarus has been held at gunpoint and his house wrecked because of getting mixed up in this—”

  “Pity he put his nose in, then,” Greta said.

  “Yeah, but he did, and if he tells the police everything he knows, it’s all going to come out anyway. And if that happens, I’d be a lot happier if you were already earl, Pen. You’d be safer. From the police, for a start.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “That hasn’t stopped Inspector Ellis before. He likes results.” Mark wanted to argue further, but both twins were looking mulish. He’d sown the seeds; he could give them a bit more time to think. It would be so much easier if Pen would agree. “Look, I can’t stay. I’ve got more stuff to sort out yet. But will you think it over once more? Please? I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important.”

  Pen sagged. “No, I know. When will I see you again? It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow.”

  “Are you practising?”

  “In the morning. We’ll be finished by three.”

  “I’ll meet you at the Cirque, then,” Mark suggested. “And we’ll talk. But please, Pen, give it some thought?”

  —

  When he got back to Robin Hood Yard, there was a muffled form lurking in the shadows by his door. Mark groped for the blackjack he carried in his coat pocket, and released it again when he recognised the waiting man. “All right, Mystic Martha, what are you up to?”

  “I want a word,” Lazarus said. “Or two. Also, not to belabour the point, I’ve retired.”

  “So Nathaniel said. No more table-rapping?”

  Lazarus shook his head. Mark let them both in and turned on the gas. “What will you be doing instead?”

  “I don’t know yet. I dare say I’ll think of something.”

  “And in the meantime, Nathaniel’s rich.”

  “Go fuck yourself. If I’d wanted a wealthy protector I could have taken my pick.”

  That was, Mark had to admit, probably true. Spiritualists seemed to get a pretty tight clawhold on their clients, and there was undeniably something attractive about Lazarus, if you weren’t thinking clear. Nevertheless, Mark felt sufficiently ill-tempered to retort, “Looks to me like you got your pick.”

  “I don’t know why you think Nathaniel’s an idiot,” Lazarus said. “No, I take that back, I do know. If it’s any of your business, which it is not, I don’t intend to let him down.”

  “Yeah?” Mark said. “It ever occur to you, if you’re liable to make a bloody mess of someone’s life, the best thing you could do for him would be to walk away?”

  Lazarus tipped his head. “Was that addressed to me or yourself?”

  Mark took a second to manage a reply. “Aren’t you sharp. Drink?”

  Lazarus nodded. Mark gripped the gin bottle between his knees to work the cork out, poured a couple of measures, and brought one over. Lazarus took the tumbler. “Cheers. Nathaniel’s getting the Taillefer family lined up for tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “They’ll be going to their country house for Christmas Day and staying there for a week. Nathaniel wants this dealt with. He’s quite upset about being held at gunpoint. I’m quite upset about it. And a tall man wearing a muffler attempted to get admission to Nathaniel’s rooms while he was away, and I bet we know who that was.”

  “Shit.”

  “Quite. You need to deliver Pen Taillefer to St. Alban’s Place tomorrow, or let us know where to get him, because Nathaniel is going to have the Taillefers and their lawyers waiting for him. And, so you and I know where we stand, if he doesn
’t turn up I’m giving everything I know to the police and the newspapers.”

  “If you do that—”

  “Nathaniel will no longer be of interest to the killer, and nor will I.” Lazarus’s grey eyes were implacable. “I don’t want to be tortured to death, you see, or to have a maniac sniffing around Nathaniel’s life for what he can discover. I’m selfish that way.”

  “Jesus.” Mark shut his eyes and thumped his head against the back of the chair. “Hell and damnation.”

  “Why is this a problem?” Lazarus demanded. “For pity’s sake, I’d take an earldom if one was on offer, and I’ve got as much to be embarrassed by as anyone in London. Pen Taillefer’s going to be rich and safe, or certainly richer and safer than he otherwise would be. He’ll do very well. And you know this has to be done. I’m amazed an enterprising journalist hasn’t dug him up already.”

  “Yeah.” He was, enragingly, right. It did have to be done, and Pen could surely make his life work as an earl. As long as he was safe, as long as he was alive, he’d find a way to be happy. Without Mark, but Mark would far rather see Pen alive and rich and never forgiving him than to know anything had happened that he could have prevented.

  It had to be done, and there would be a lot to do. Mark would need help.

  He exhaled. “You say you’d take an earldom. Would you take work?”

  “That’s my intention, once I find out what a lifetime of table-rapping has qualified me for.”

  “I mean now.”

  Lazarus frowned. “What work?”

  “You’re bright, nosy, got a good memory. And you know what’s going on with all this business. I need to find the Fogman whatever happens, but there’ll be plenty to do to confirm Pen is who he says he is. I need help.”

  “You want me to work with you? As an enquiry agent?”

  “From what I’ve heard, you did a fair bit of that already.” Lazarus’s reputation as a spiritualist had depended on his compelling performance skills, his talent at reading people, meticulous note-taking and record-keeping, and thorough, unobtrusive investigations to equip himself with the information he needed. Mark was pretty sure he could use all of that.