A forty-foot illusion painting took up the whole back wall, full of steps and sky, so that the hall seemed to open out onto a summer morning. At first, it was difficult to tell which of the people were real, and which were paintings. Everything was a whirl of silk and the smell of melting candle wax.
The second Kite and Agatha reached the hall, Jem appeared and hauled him away, stole an entire bottle of wine from a waiter, and set them up in the only two chairs near the fireplace that weren’t already filled with rear admirals.
Jem looked well, but Kite had a feeling he would look well enough even if he were in the throes of a malarial fever. There was a nervousness to the way the tendons in his hands moved when he poured the wine.
Kite wanted to ask how he had found the boarding house, because there must have been some shaky moments. He’d written out a manual of things that Jem would need to know – the value of money, how to swear normally, what was and wasn’t reasonable behaviour in a boarding-house landlord – but it had not been exhaustive. He would have bet all the marzipan in London that Jem wouldn’t tell him the truth, though. He still couldn’t persuade Jem that it was all right to be worried, or to have some symptoms of melancholia. Jem seemed to think that a successful human was a thinking machine and anything else was a repulsive failure, even in such extreme circumstances as his own.
Jem noticed Kite was studying him and looked rueful, as though he might just confess to something ordinary. He pulled off his jade bracelet and spun it between his fingers. He did it in the way other people wrung their hands. Kite saw him lose heart. ‘Missouri … there is a woman coming this way with paperwork.’
Kite looked. ‘It’s a dance card.’
Jem watched her suspiciously. ‘Is there a polite code for I’d-prefer-to-drink-this-wine?’
‘No.’
He cut his eyes across to Kite, which felt a lot like having the sudden attention of Lawrence’s tiger. ‘No one’s bothering you. There must be a hand signal or something.’
‘I’m ugly and poor,’ Kite provided. He took Jem’s wine. ‘Do you good. Run free, be with your own kind.’
Jem kicked Kite’s chair, but then turned on his charm and seemed delighted to go away with the girl. Dancing would do him good, and talking to women. The women here would be better conversationalists than the taciturn men who usually populated boarding houses, and Kite believed strongly that, whether you liked it or not, five minutes with someone kind and clever was cleansing, like green tea, or confession.
Kite only had time to get a few atoms of enjoyment at the view before Agatha took Jem’s chair. He sat up straighter.
‘You’re looking handsome,’ she said. Spanish had two words for you are. One, es, meant you are always; the other, estas, meant you are now, contrary to form. He’d just been estas’d. ‘Shall we dance?’
She took his hand and led him out to the end of a line. His heart started going harder, and nerves that he didn’t feel even when he gave orders to gun crews made his wrists feel weak. He had to keep his eyes down. He could never meet hers for long; she was taller than him, and that black stare reminded him too much of being five and guilty of something stupid.
She put her fan under his chin and pulled upward. ‘If you’re angry, then say something. You’ve been boiling since Harding’s.’
She was right, but he still had to take a deep breath to work up the nerve. ‘Jem’s in a dangerous position. A pamphleteer stopped us five minutes after we left you. Jem’s name is all over the news-sheets now. Mysterious gentleman from Caribbean sugar money seen with heiress. The French have his description, and they know they’re looking for someone who just appeared from nowhere one morning … we’re all but advertising him.’
‘He was in a dangerous position already,’ she said, unexpectedly gentle. ‘The Admiralty leaks like a sieve. A man tried to jump him in an alley the day before I sent that note to come to Harding’s. Didn’t he tell you?’
‘What?’ Kite said, dismayed.
‘So the thing now is to make sure that nothing can happen to him without all of London noticing.’ She shook her head a little. ‘You’re right, anonymity would be much better, but that’s