it in mid-air, then he put it down very carefully, turned off the gas, and said, “Gas is off,” aloud in case he couldn’t remember later. Then he went back to his desk, sat down, and opened the Blue Book again.
Viscount Waring, family name Stephens-Prince, family seat Etchil. Pronounced Eye-shull.
“Fuck,” Will said aloud. The word had a dead sound in the empty, book-lined room.
Kim had demanded Capricorn’s name of Fuller and he’d screamed what Will had taken for agreement to speak, because it hadn’t meant anything else. I shall! And Kim hadn’t waited for him to say more. Will had assumed he’d noticed it was inhuman to let the man swing there, as if being inhuman had stopped Kim before.
Christ, he’d even said it. The words of the dead. Will had assumed that was Leinster. Kim had meant Fuller.
And Kim wouldn’t, couldn’t tell him who Capricorn was, not at any price.
And Maisie was down at Eye-shull, Etchil, now.
“Fuck!” Will said again, louder this time, and lunged for the telephone.
He barked Kim’s number at the operator. The phone rang and rang and rang. He was on the verge of giving up and going over to kick the door down when there was a click and a near-snarl of, “Secretan.”
“It’s Will.”
“Oh God,” Kim said, sounding exhausted. “I don’t—”
“Shut up. Phoebe’s father’s house. How do you say its name?”
Silence. Long, damning silence.
“How do you say it?”
“Right,” Kim said, very calmly. “Listen—”
“Maisie is there!”
“What?”
“Phoebe’s taken her to this Etchil place. Lord Waring wanted her there badly enough to send a car. They’re there right now. And we just pissed Zodiac off badly, and they know all about me—I even took her to the fucking High-Low Club—”
“Will—”
“Is she safe, damn you? Is she safe?”
“Stop!” Kim shouted down the line. “Let me think.”
Will forced himself to be silent. The line hung empty in space for perhaps thirty seconds, then Kim spoke, more calmly. “Get over here. Come round to the mews entrance, I’ll order the car. But, and listen to me: shave first, change into something decent, pack your evening clothes. Do it carefully, don’t rush. And come armed.”
IT TOOK WILL ABOUT twenty-five minutes to get himself together, and an irritating twenty more on the tram to Holborn with his bag, telling himself it would not be quicker to walk. He more or less ran to the mews, where Kim was waiting with the Daimler. The last time Will had ridden in that, he’d been escaping from imprisonment at the hands of Zodiac.
“In you get,” Kim said. “I’ve called Etchil to let them know there’ll be extra guests.”
“I suppose you know what you’re doing. Why are we going as guests?”
“Because that’s how this is played.” Kim nosed the Daimler into traffic. “Waring pretends to welcome me as his future son-in-law, I pretend to think he’s a genial sort of chap, and we both pretend everything is normal. It’s why he’s going to win.”
“What?”
“When this blows up, he will not hesitate to use Phoebe as a weapon. I will hesitate, because I don’t want to hurt her, and he knows it. So I’m going to lose.”
Will needed to say it out loud, no possibility of misunderstanding. “Etchil is Lord Waring’s house. He’s Capricorn. Phoebe’s father is Capricorn.”
“Yes.”
“Does she know?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus Christ, Kim.” Will couldn’t begin to imagine what that meant. “Jesus. You must have been living in hell.”
There was a long silence. Will watched his profile. He could see the shimmer of his eyes, the tension of his lips, set hard against collapse.
“Yes,” he said at last. “I have.”
Will didn’t want to imagine it. He felt sick thinking about how it must have been: the growing fear, the knowledge that he might—would—hurt Phoebe, who Kim loved most in the world.
“Oh, hell,” he said. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”
“Don’t apologise,” Kim said harshly. “Please don’t. You were absolutely right. I deserved everything you said, and I’ve screwed you around far too much to merit any faith. I just—I didn’t do it to hurt you, Will. I was truly trying to do better.”
“I know.”
Kim grimaced. “Do you?”
“That’s why it hurt. You’ve made a flaming mess of things, yes, but I don’t know if I could have said anything either, in your shoes. Christ alive, what a business.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Why, though?” Will demanded. “Capricorn, Waring. He’s a viscount. Why would he do that?”
“Why not? He’s clever, persuasive, charming, and utterly without morals or scruples. I dare say a psychoanalyst would have a word for him. It’s not that he’s particularly cruel,