"You shouldn't permit her to take such advantage of you, Mr. Allen. It's undignified." The American was still gaping after Sebastien as the detective took his leave with a nod, before stepping into the corridor.
* * *
Jack was fretting in their stateroom, or rather, the cubbyhole that passed for it, but he was dressed for dinner and had Sebastien's evening clothes laid out and brushed. Sebastien paused with the curtain in his hand, and said, "Are you my valet, now?"
"No," Jack replied, turning to the mirror to settle his bow tie, "he's following by steamer with our luggage. Unless you sacked him, too. . .Oh. You did, didn't you?"
"Sacking, in your colorful idiom, would indicate I found some flaw in his service."
Jack sighed, giving Sebastien his shoulder. "I just thought you'd appreciate it if your clothes were ready. Tomorrow, I'll crumple them in the corner."
"I'm sorry." Sebastien let the curtain fall closed behind him. "I didn't mean it that way." He hesitated, and went to pick up the suit on its hangar. "Did you discover anything about Korvin úr and Mademoiselle LeClere?"
"She's going to have some fast explaining to do on her wedding night," Jack said, in Greek. "It would tell us why she didn't hear anything last night, if she slipped out of the cabin. And what if it was her nightgown that
wasn't rumpled? I suppose keeping Madame Pontchartrain silent about something like that would be as good a reason as any to kill her. You don't suppose Mademoiselle LeClere stands to inherit?"
Sebastien harrumphed. "We shall ask the captain for access to Madame's papers, again."
Jack raised a perceptive eyebrow. "What's upsetting you, Sebastien?"
"Is it so obvious?"
"To me," Jack said. He took the evening coat out of Sebastien's hands, set it aside, and began untying Sebastien's necktie and unbuttoning his collar. "You'll want a fresh shirt."
"Yes, dear," Sebastien said, and suffered himself to be dressed like a girl's paper doll. "Miss Meadows knows, Jack."
Jack paused in his work and looked up. He would never be a tall man, but he was a man, and Sebastien was never more disinclined to forget it than when Jack primped into his fey, adolescent persona. "Isn't that the point of all this?" A fluid, dismissive wave. "I'm of age, if anyone asks. And don't I remember you making me wait until I was. How many times did I offer before I turned sixteen?"
"One hundred and thirty-one," Sebastien said. "And no. I mean she's in the club."
"What about the matinees?" Jack stepped back, Sebastien's collar draped limp as a dead snake over his hand.
"Not of the blood." He let it hang until Jack's frown deepened from a pin scratch to a furrow. "An admirer."
"Oh, no you don't," Jack muttered. He tossed the collar aside and reached out, knotting his hands in Sebastien's hair. "Just because I've got to give you back to whatever court you assemble in New Amsterdam, Sebastien, doesn't mean this trip isn't mine. You promised."
And what would his blood brothers think, Sebastien wondered, if they could see him now, pinned down and soundly kissed by a courtesan two-thirds his size?
They would think he was eccentric, of course, and too lenient with his pets.
But Sebastien was old enough to be excused a certain measure of
eccentricity. And he'd long ago realized he preferred the mayfly society of humans to that of the blood. The blood took everything so seriously, as if they passed into that stage of human aging when mortals realized that the world turned like a wheel, and then through it, to a place where the natural cycles of success and catastrophe must be arrested. Before they could inconvenience—or worse, annoy—anyone.
Jack stopped kissing him before he'd rumpled his evening clothes, but after Sebastien's teeth—sharpening in reaction—had furthered their earlier damage to his own lips and gums. Fortunately, he healed fast.
Jack wouldn't have. And it was mad of him to tempt Sebastien so soon after a feeding; Sebastien could control himself, and—barring disaster—he wouldn't need more until they were well grounded in New Amsterdam. But Sebastien also needed far more than Jack had to give. Which was why those of the blood who did not care to hunt for their suppers had courts and courtesans, and not simply a favorite or two. A pint a month, any healthy adult could spare. The same twice a week was slow death—even though the blood, in Sebastien's considered opinion, was merely a metaphor for something more. . .exalted.