was relief. At having it out it the open. At having it fixed and framed by words. The idea had lived in his head and nowhere else, growing but also festering, for over a year now. He’d guarded it like a treasure because he knew there was no one he could share it with for fear of being stopped. It had taken him two or three months to be sure this was what he wanted to do, and the rest of the time to find a way of doing it. That’s a long time to keep a secret.
“Right now I could do it without any help at all. But right now it doesn’t need doing. I enjoy my life—I don’t want to cut the good bit short. But if I leave it until it needs doing, I won’t be able to manage alone. I might not even recognize that the time has come. I’m going to need help. Someone who knows what needs doing and how to do it. Someone who knew me when I was rational enough to state unequivocally what I wanted.”
McKendrick let out a slightly uneven breath and his eyes dipped momentarily closed. Someone knew. Someone knew, and now he could talk about it. “And it can’t be Beth. I don’t know if she’d do it; but if she did, she’d be prosecuted. However sympathetic a court might be, mercy killing still counts as murder—she could lose everything. That’s why I need you. Of course I knew who you were, what you’d done—at least, what you said you’d done. I thought you were perfect for my purposes. Getting you on board was important enough to risk my own neck doing it.” He gave a wry little smile. “Mind, knowing what you know now, you may feel that wasn’t as big a gamble as it first appeared.”
“You had people out looking for me?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Four months. They’re top people, good at what they do. When they found you they let me know, but I didn’t want them to approach you. I wanted to talk to you myself—to find out if you’d left Alaska sufficiently far behind that my proposition wouldn’t interest you. When I saw a man with a gun shove you up a dark alley, I knew you hadn’t.”
Horn couldn’t argue with that. “When were you going to tell me?”
“I wasn’t going to tell you. I was going to offer you a job. You’re a carpenter, aren’t you? There’s always work to be done in a place like this. Once I’d made contact with you, and you had somewhere to work and a place to live that you didn’t have to leave in a hurry every few weeks, there’d have been time to get round to the other thing. As it turns out, we’ve been rather overtaken by events.”
There wasn’t much arguing with that, either. Horn was watching McKendrick’s face intently. “So, if we come through this, I get a job as your handyman and a cottage in the grounds. And one day, maybe years from now, you ask to see me in your study, and it’s not because you’re giving me the sack, or even a pay rise. It’s because your mind’s going and you’re scared you can’t hold things together much longer, and you want to tell me how and when you want it done. To get hold of a gun and ambush you in the Lime Walk. Or some of that blue stuff they put horses down with, and inject you while you sleep.” Horn looked him full in the face. “Is that what we’re talking about?”
McKendrick considered the details a shade gothic, but Horn seemed to understand the wider picture pretty well. “Perhaps not a cottage in the grounds. At least, not until Beth’s resigned to having you around. But I’ll set you up somewhere not too far away. Somewhere I can protect you from Hanratty.”
“What if I refuse?”
“Why would you refuse? You owe me your life. Why would you refuse me a favor that might cost you just a few years of it?”
“I don’t know, Mr. McKendrick.” The strain was audible, stretching Horn’s voice. “Maybe, because it’s wrong?”
“To rescue someone from fear and suffering? When that person has made it abundantly clear that it’s what he wants, and has done from the day he realized it was going to become an issue? How can that be wrong?”
“Don’t ask me,” snarled Horn, “ask the Lord Chamberlain. He seems to think it’s wrong!”
“No, he thinks