The Heartless City (15 page)

As she barreled across the dining room toward him and Cam, however, her heart was more alive than any doll’s could ever be, which was why he nearly spit out his champagne when she approached.

“Cambrian, is Andrew here?” she asked the moment she reached them.

Cam grinned and raised an eyebrow. “Good evening to you as well, Miss Blackwell.”

She groaned and rolled her eyes. “Don’t play with me. I’m serious.”

He raised his glass to his lips, his grin widening. “Unfortunately, Andrew will not be joining us tonight.”

“Blast!” she exclaimed, glaring down at the floor.

Cam chortled into his glass. Elliot smiled as well, in spite of the weight of her disappointment. The daughter of an Earl shouldn’t know a word like that existed, let alone shout it out in front of two gentlemen at a party.

“He promised he would play for me tonight,” she explained miserably. “The Lord Mayor said I could sing for the guests at the next formal dinner.”

“I’ll play for you,” Cam offered, but she rolled her eyes again.

“I’ve heard your
attempts
at the piano, Cambrian. You’re terrible.”

Cam clutched his chest and groaned as if her words were a physical blow. “My dreams have been crushed, Elliot. I’ll never play before the king.”

“Oh, stop it!” she said, smacking the side of his arm, but she was smiling. “I suppose I’ll simply have to wait until the next formal dinner.”

“I truly am sorry,” Cam said, holding out the drink in his hand. “Would you like a sip of champagne as compensation for your loss?”

Philomena’s eyes lit up. “My mother would kill me,” she said, but then she seized the drink and drained the whole thing in one gulp. After wiping her mouth and handing the empty glass back to Cam, she flashed a wicked grin and said, “I hope the old bat saw that.”

She turned and bounced away, and Cam looked down at his empty glass. “Well,” he said. “I suppose that’s what I get for being charitable.”

Dinner that night was extravagant, as the formal ones always were. The five courses included, among other things: fresh salad, asparagus, peas, sweet bread, lamb cutlets, lobster tail, and the night’s main entrée―goose. When Elliot took his first bite of the goose, he couldn’t help but think of the hostile gander that had attacked him. Could he be eating that goose right now? Or its brother or its cousin?

He set down his fork and glanced around the table, noticing something strange. At each formal dinner, the seats were assigned and very rarely changed, but tonight the arrangement was different. The Lord Mayor sat at the head of the table with Cam on his right and Earl Blackwell, Philomena’s father, on his left. As usual, Lady Blackwell sat in the seat beside her husband, but instead of sitting beside her mother, Philomena was seated across the table, next to Cam. Elliot, who was sitting next to the Blackwells with his father, furrowed his brow and wondered at the odd and sudden change, but then the Lord Mayor stood and gave his customary speech.

As Cam had guessed, the Lord Mayor announced that he had decided to lower the age of debut from sixteen to fifteen. The moment he made the proclamation, however, his gaze landed on Cam, and when it then immediately shifted to Philomena, Elliot sucked in a breath. That morning Cam had felt strangely afraid when he mentioned his father’s obsession with getting the world “married off and reproducing,” and now Elliot understood why.

The Lord Mayor wanted Cam to marry Philomena, and soon.

It made sense that the Lord Mayor would want the only daughter of the city’s last and greatest aristocrat as a match for his son, but why was he in such a hurry to make it happen now? Years ago, it would have been unheard of for a boy of eighteen to marry anyone, let alone a girl who’d only recently turned fifteen. Elliot liked Philomena, and he knew that Cam did, too, but she wouldn’t even
look
like a fifteen-year-old girl until she was twenty. The thought of marrying and
having children
with her now… even before meeting Iris, Elliot would have found the idea as disconcerting as Cam.

After dinner, Elliot’s father―who’d avoided him as much as he could while sitting right beside him―announced that he was headed back to his lab to do some research. The Lord Mayor escorted him out, and the women departed for coffee, tea, and cakes in the Blue Drawing Room. The rest of the men then filed into the West Gallery, where they would spend the rest of the evening drinking port and brandy. Elliot and Cam sat down on an empty leather sofa, and Cam pulled out his cigarette case as if it were a flask of water and he was dying of thirst.

“It’s ridiculous that we can smoke in front of women at places like music halls but not at dinner,” he muttered, placing a cigarette between his teeth and then hastily striking a match.

“That’s because the two places don’t contain the same kind of woman.”

Cam and Elliot both looked up to see Charlie Hands, a dough-faced boy about their age and whom they both detested, sitting across from them, crossing his legs and swishing a snifter of brandy in his hand.

“Good evening, Charlie,” Cam replied, quickly returning his focus to the business of lighting his cigarette.

Elliot shifted and took a drink from his own snifter of brandy, already feeling sickened and overwhelmed by Charlie’s feelings, which as usual were made up entirely of scorn and conceit.

“Speaking of music halls,” Charlie said, clearly oblivious to their aversion to his presence. “I think I saw you two at
La Maison Des Fleurs
the other night.”

Cam leaned back, took a long, satisfied drag, and blew smoke at the ceiling, so Elliot nodded and said, “Yes. We were there the other night.”

“I’ve got my eye on a pretty piece who works there,” Charlie continued. “I don’t know her name, but she’s got dark hair and these maddening golden eyes.”

Elliot stiffened, tightening his grip on the delicate snifter, and Cam sat up and slowly removed the cigarette from his mouth.

“We know her,” he said, his voice even and cool. “Her name is Iris.”

Charlie snorted. “You mean you actually got her to talk to you? I can’t even get the chit to give me the time of day. She’s pretty hoity-toity for a common bit of skirt, but I have a feeling I know just how to take her down a peg.”

Elliot didn’t realize he was about to lunge out of the sofa until Cam put his hand on his leg and pressed him back into his seat. His veins bulged, and his blood screamed as Cam’s rage compounded his own, but the physical grip of his hand did keep him from tearing out Charlie’s throat.

“Charlie,” Cam said smoothly. “Do you happen to speak French?”

Charlie wrinkled his brow. “No. I mean, I know
La Maison Des Fleurs
means ‘Flower House’ or something like that, but my father said it was useless to learn a language I’d never need.”

Cam removed his hand from Elliot’s leg and took another drag. “Charlie
, tu es un être humain putride
,” he said as he exhaled. “
Honnêtement, je ne sais pas comment ta mère peut être autour de vous.”

Laughter erupted in Elliot’s throat, so he stifled it with a drink. Cam had just said, “Charlie, you are a putrid human being. I honestly don’t know how your own mother can even stand to be near you.”

“What?” Charlie demanded, turning to Elliot. “What did he say?”

“I think,” Elliot said, clearing his throat. “It was something along the lines of ‘I do believe there’s a spotted cat inside your fountain of cheese.’”

Cam sighed. “He’s probably right. My French is terrible.”

“Not as terrible as your manners.”

The room seemed to still as Cam and Elliot raised their heads. The Lord Mayor was standing beside them, lighting a cigar and leaning back against the wall. Once he’d taken a puff, he bent down between them and hissed in Cam’s ear.

“
Au moins Charlie est un jeune homme qui sait ce que son pénis est utilisé
.”

At least Charlie’s a young man who knows what his pecker is for.

Elliot’s throat closed as the Lord Mayor straightened up, and Cam stared at the ground, ice sliding through his veins. After a moment, he managed to raise his cigarette to his lips, but his face was white as ash and his hand was trembling.

“What going on?” a gruff voice asked.

Elliot looked up to see Charlie’s father, Judge Hands, beside the Lord Mayor. In fact, now that he glanced around, he saw a sort of group had started to form around the sofa.

“Like all young men,” the Lord Mayor replied, “Our boys are discussing girls. Particularly the better looking ones they’ve noticed lately.”

“I saw one today that took my breath away,” Judge Hands exclaimed. “A little parlor maid with rosy lips and golden hair.”

“You’re joking, right?” Charlie scoffed at his father. “You’ve never noticed that one? Her name is Jennie, and she is one of the finest bits in the palace.”

“I know which one you’re talking about,” another boy named Paul agreed. “She’s the one who’s always giving Cambrian the eye.”

Cam snuffed out his cigarette and immediately lit a new one, and Elliot drained the rest of his brandy, but it didn’t help. The fear in Cam’s blood had grown so thick no drink could penetrate it.

“That’s her.” Charlie laughed, and so did a few of the other men in the group. “How about it, Cambrian? Get your end away with her yet?”

Elliot stared at his empty snifter, wishing he could crawl inside.

Cam avoided his father’s gaze and murmured, “No, not yet.”

“Damn,” Charlie breathed. “If that little jade looked at me the way she looks at you…” He let out a sigh that bordered on a groan, and Elliot gritted his teeth. “I can’t believe she didn’t catch your eye until tonight, Father. You’d have to be a mandrake not to notice a girl like that.”

Most of the other men laughed again, but Elliot cringed at the word. A mandrake was one of the worst things you could call another man, since it meant a man who didn’t like women at all, but… other men.

“Or a mandrake to notice and do nothing about it,” the Lord Mayor said.

Elliot nearly dropped his snifter to the floor.

The soul-churning, suffocating shame Cam felt in the bedroom was back, curling around his veins and wrapping its tendrils around his heart. He raised his head to meet his father’s gaze, and the coils tightened, cutting off circulation to anything but fear and pain. Elliot stared, paralyzed, unable to even think, but then―as if the universe were playing some kind of a cruel joke―Jennie appeared outside the door, carrying a fresh carafe of coffee for the women.

“Oh, Jennie,” Cam called in a hollow voice. “Would you come in here, please?”

She was trained to stop for any voice that commanded her to do so, but Elliot knew she wouldn’t have jumped like she did had the voice not been Cam’s. Both obediently and hesitantly, she stepped inside the smoky room, glancing around at the sea of staring men as she approached. Once she was standing a few feet away from Cam, she dropped into a curtsy.

“Yes, sir?” she said, her voice unsteady.

“I have a question for you.”

She straightened back up and gripped the carafe in her hands, her pulse quickening, and Cam leaned back and casually crossed his ankle over his knee, resting one arm on the sofa and raising his cigarette with the other. He placed it between his lips and took a long, languorous drag, masking the terror and shame in his heart with masterful precision. After exhaling a cloud of smoke, he said, “Do you find me attractive?”

Jennie’s blood froze. “I―I’m sorry, sir?”

“Do you fancy me? Am I featured in your parlor maid fantasies? Do you dream of wearing fine clothes and dancing with me at a royal ball?” The men snickered, and Cam curled his lip and flicked some ash on the carpet. “These men seem to think you do. So is it true? Am I your fondest wish?”

Jennie’s face paled, and her stomach rose into her throat. Sweat broke out on Elliot’s brow, but he couldn’t raise his arm to wipe it. Between Cam’s fear, Jennie’s shame, and the cruel delight of the men around them, he wasn’t only paralyzed―he was trapped in the depths of hell. Jennie turned to the Lord Mayor with desperate, pleading eyes, but he wasn’t looking at her―he was looking at Cam.

And beaming with pride.

After what felt like eternity, she swallowed and turned back to Cam, dropping her head and murmuring, “I only wish to please you.”

Cam’s grin was razor sharp, and it sliced through his own heart. He took another drag and ran his tongue along the edge of his teeth. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said, looking her over as he exhaled. “I’ll be sure to seek you out next time I’m in need of being pleased.”

Something inside Jennie died, snuffed out like flame deprived of air, but she fell into an obedient curtsy and left when the Lord Mayor dismissed her. As soon as she was gone, the men erupted with raucous laughter, with Charlie actually leaning over and slapping Cam on the shoulder. Elliot placed his glass on the stand beside him, rose from the sofa, and then stumbled through the crowd and toward the door as fast as he could. His first thought was to find an empty room where he could vomit, but once he was in the hall, he found himself running after Jennie.

She was already on the other side of the State Dining Room, which was empty now except for the moonlight streaming in from the windows. Elliot dashed through the darkness and caught up to her in the eastern hallway, but when he called her name, she jumped and spun around in fear. He raised his hands and approached her slowly, taking a few deep breaths.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you that Cam… he didn’t want to do what he did just now. He didn’t mean it.”

She glanced at the floor, trying to blink back the tears swarming her eyes. “He’s the son of the Lord Mayor, sir. He can say and do what he likes.”

“No,” Elliot said, stepping closer. “What he did to you was wrong. But there was a reason he did it. He didn’t
want
to treat you cruelly.”

She swallowed and murmured, almost to herself, “I thought he was different. That he wasn’t…” She sucked in a breath and closed her eyes. “Like his father.”

Shame welled up in her stomach, as black and suffocating as Cam’s, and suddenly, Elliot thought of something the Lord Mayor said in Cam’s room―the part about a real man “having it off” with the female servants.