Pons gave an amused little laugh. Aria Chillany followed that one with her own. Mother Deare’s smile was unbroken, but she nodded ever so slightly. “Well said,” she told him. She motioned toward his chair. “Join us.”
Matthew took his place.
Aria sat to his right. A black servant in the sea-blue uniform and high wig emerged from a door artfully concealed in a wall at the far end of the room, bringing a basket full of various kinds of freshly-baked bread cut into slices. After he had served these to whomever desired them, he went around the table refilling wine glasses from bottles of red and white already on display. Matthew chose a glass of red, as that seemed to be the drink of choice among this bunch. When he took his first sip a thrill of terror shot through him…not at the sense that he might be taking a sip of poison, but at the fact that suddenly he was so damned comfortable in this masquerade. It astounded him, how far he had come from being a lowly law clerk, to being…what? It seemed to him that he wasn’t quite sure what he was on his way to being. And that too caused a kink of unease down where the red wine drifted.
Descending the stairs to the banquet room came Minx Cutter, wearing tan trousers, a dark blue waistcoat and a white blouse. She took her time about it, and then she seated herself directly across from Matthew as per her placecard. She nodded at Mother Deare and Pons but directed her attention to her choice of wine from the servant instead of to any of the other guests, and to his surprise Matthew felt a pang of envy toward the bottled grape.
A minute or so after Minx’s arrival, came a bellow of noise and the slamming of bootheels on the stairs and thus the Thackers arrived with Fancy held fast by either arm and pressed between them. The brothers wore identical red suits—a shock to any civilized eyeball—with black waistcoats and gray shirts. Fancy was draped in a dark green gown with a black bodice, and she wore elbow-length gloves of black cloth. She was manhandled along until she was shoved down in the chair between the Thackers, and they were laughing like hyenas and snorting like bulls all the way. Matthew noted with a certain satisfaction that Jack’s right hand was bound up with a cloth bandage. The two brothers took their places and sprawled in their chairs, and Fancy wore a blank stare on her lovely face and kept her head lowered.
Mack and Jack went after the bread and spilled as much wine as they poured. When Minx reached for the bread basket the servant had left on the table, Jack suddenly reached into his coat with his left hand, brought out a knife crusted with blood and, standing up and leaning forward, plunged it into the basket’s contents.
“There ya go,” he said sweetly to Minx. “Wanted to return what ya gave to me—”
“—so kindly,” Mack finished, and then he swigged a glass of red.
Minx’s expression remained placid. She pulled the basket toward her, removed the knife and chose a slice of bread marred by Jack’s crusty lifejuice. She ate it while staring at Matthew, after which she calmly slid the blade into her waistcoat.
The eyes of the Thackers settled on Nathan Spade.
“Hey, boyo!” Jack called. “Enjoy your coach ride?”
“Thrilling,” Matthew replied. “Thank you.”
“We wasn’t tryin’ to thrill ya,” said Mack, as he dipped bread into a bowl of brown sauce the servant had left. “We was tryin’ to—”
“—kill ya!” Jack finished, and he gave a harsh chortle. “Naw, just jokin’ there, boyo! We knew you wasn’t gonna go off the edge!”
“And how did you know that, please?” Madam Chillany had regained the fire in her eyes and the ice in her voice.
Mack answered, “Somebody as smart as he’s supposed to be, playin’ with the whores and all, he ain’t gonna go so easy as that! Naw, ma’am! ’Course, it helped him to have—”
“—a knife-thrower at his side,” said Jack, with a quick and disdainful glance at Minx. “Problem is, maybe she ain’t always gonna be at his side!”
“Maybe not.” Matthew took another drink of his wine before he spoke again. “What do you two gents have against me? You’re simply angry because I made you wait a few weeks?”
“They don’t like anyone with three attributes they don’t have,” said Mother Deare. “Good manners, good looks, and good sense. Pay them no further attention. You are feeding a fire that should be left untamped.”
“Listen to her, Spadey,” said Mack, with brown sauce on his chin.
“Yeah, she’s big enough to fight your battles for ya, ain’t she?” Jack grinned in the most sarcastic way. Then his eyes flared like flaming tinderboxes, he grabbed Fancy by the hair and kissed her mouth, Augustus Pons said, “Oh my God,” Toy squirmed in his chair, and Mack then grasped Fancy’s chin and smashed her lips with his own. After the bully-boys’ statement of ownership was done, they went back to their drinking and Fancy again lowered her head and stared at the surface of the table as if it were a new world she was fixated on either exploring or escaping to.
“Well, I don’t enjoy having to wait for anyone!” It was spoken by the hammer-crushing-gravel voice of Edgar Smythe. His face was a wrinkled mass of barely-confined anger. “Here nearly a month! After that damnable voyage from Plymouth! The seas so high I was swimming in my fucking bed! And then I get here and am told I have to wait for him before we can start our business?” A finger stabbed toward Matthew. “A damned boy?”
“Watch your words, please,” Mother Deare advised. “We are all equals here.”
“The money I bring in has no equal,” Smythe fired back, his bearded chin lifted in defiance. “You know that’s true, and so does he!”
He meaning the professor, Matthew surmised.
“Settle yourself,” Mother Deare said quietly, but the bludgeon was ready. “Have another glass of wine, breathe deeply of this exalted air, and remark to yourself how fortunate you are—as we all are—to be at this table.
“One month of waiting bothers you, Mr. Smythe? Here on this warm island? Really it does? My, my!” She touched her throat. “Such ingratitude, I would be ashamed.”
“Ingratitude my ass,” Smythe growled. He reached to refill his glass, which evidently had already been refilled several times. “I know my place here, and it’s far better than his!”
“I want to know,” spoke the soft and echoey voice of the nearly-invisible Adam Wilson, “when Matthew Corbett is going to be killed.”
Matthew had been lifting the glass to his mouth. The jolt that went through him almost caused a regrettable spillage.
“That Chapel disaster lost us all some fine young recruits,” Wilson went on. “He had a hand in that, and he caused the loss of one of my best men. I want to know when revenge will be delivered.”
Matthew was thinking furiously. Ah yes! He remembered! One of the older men captured at the Chapel estate during the Queen of Bedlam affair had been an expert on finances, and had been serving as an instructor.
Mother Deare’s voice was as steady and direct as her fierce stare: “The professor decides that, Mr. Wilson. Not you.”
“I’m only voicing my wishes, Mother Deare,” spoke the slender man, who even as he shrugged his shoulders seemed again to be vanishing away.
A clattering on the stairs announced the arrival of Jonathan Gentry, clad in a dark blue suit with a white shirt and stockings. Unfortunately he appeared to be under the influence of his own making, for his face was flushed and sparkling with sweat and the tail of his shirt was hanging out beneath his waistcoat. He came staggering down the staircase, gripping hard to the oak bannister, and at the bottom he hesitated and felt forward with one shoe as if he feared the floor was made of ice and might crack under his weight.