He wanted to take his little sister in his arms and hold her, but was afraid he might lose his courage. Instead, he gave her a little shove toward the stairs. “Go be the saintly daughter. See to Mother. I’ll come find you later.”
Tobias went to his father’s study, but paused outside with his hand on the cold brass knob. It had been little more than a week since he’d been summoned there after the squid affair. His father had told him to seduce Evelina in order to prevent exactly what had just happened.
He turned the doorknob slowly, part of him hating Evelina. She and her uncle had turned everything on its head. But he’d felt her lean into him on the dance floor and in that moment of tenderness, he’d known nothing was simple for her, either. She’d been wise to say she couldn’t afford him. And yet, despite her cool reasoning, her blood ran every bit as hot as his.
Only one thing was certain. Tobias was done being his father’s puppet.
The door swung open. His father sat behind the desk, the tiger’s head snarling above him. One of Lord Bancroft’s hands rested lightly on his silver-handled revolver. Tobias’s heart jerked in his chest, like a carriage hitting a rut. This was unexpected. For a moment, he nearly turned and ran.
He forced his voice to be light. “Are we so ruined that you need to blow out your brains?” He was being deliberately callous, but it got Bancroft’s attention.
His father glared up at him through lowered brows. “Get out.”
Tobias took a deep breath, forcing the air into lungs so tight they screamed a protest. Suicide? Truly? He’d always assumed his father too egotistical, but now he wasn’t sure. Like everything else, this assumption was crumbling away, leaving him standing on air.
He stuffed his hands into his pockets and sauntered in. “You’re guilty.”
“Yes.”
Bancroft stared at the middle of the desk. His voice sounded already dead. “I organized the affair. I knew jewelers who could recut the stones and sell them for sizable profit.”
“Why do it?”
Bancroft made a minute movement, not quite a shrug. “Money. Ambition. Everything takes gold. I gambled and lost.”
That made Tobias swallow. Would this be him in twenty years, disappointed and holding a gun? In ten? “The Gold King doesn’t know you’re involved. Not yet. Suicide is as good as admitting your guilt.”
“He will. And a bullet might encourage Keating to spare my family.” Bancroft’s hands were starting to shake. He was a brave man, but no one could stay wound to the necessary pitch forever.
Tobias was counting on the fact. If he stalled long enough, his father would lose his nerve. “Don’t be an idiot. Killing yourself won’t spare us. It will shatter us to pieces.”
Bancroft’s hands clenched. He smelled of whisky. “Stop sniveling. If you’d been a man, if you’d stopped that girl, then none of this would have happened.”
Tobias gave a dry smile. “But it seems that, at the moment, I have Keating’s respect. He likes my spirit.”
Bancroft’s mouth worked. He’d never been able to bend. Now he was breaking. “Leave me.”
Tobias was losing patience. “No. I’m tired of dancing in your wake. If it’s not a scheme at Harter’s, we’re being Disconnected. One day you’re asking me to seduce an innocent girl, the next someone is murdering our servants to get their hands on a collection of cursed automatons. The family cannot afford this insanity a moment longer.” Tobias still wasn’t satisfied by his father’s explanation about the automatons, but this wasn’t the moment to revive that argument.
His father finally met his eyes. His gaze was dull as rock. “How dare you presume?”
Tobias gritted his teeth, biting back his first retort. The second was only a sliver more civil. “I dare because if you don’t act like the head of this family, I will. Splattering your brains on the wall won’t fix anything.”
A look of pure rage crossed his father’s face. He gripped the revolver, raising the barrel to point right between Tobias’s eyes. “Get out.”
“What about Mother? What about Imogen’s Season? How can she find a husband if she’s in mourning? And Poppy is still a girl. She won’t understand.”
Defeat flooded Bancroft’s face, turning his eyes raw with despair. “Don’t you comprehend ruin? Those will be the least of their problems.”
His father’s face—that look of a drowning man—transfixed Tobias. He went utterly still inside, much the same way as when he was deep in the bowels of an engine. It was the same calm he felt memorizing how parts connected, cog and wheel, piston and pulley. He was a maker. Cause and effect worked the same way, inside a machine or out of it.
He had a flash of insight how his father, once a maker himself, got into the business of politics. It was all about pulling the right levers.
Tobias gentled his voice. “I understand there are broken things that need mending. I’ll kiss Keating’s arse if that’s what it takes to bring him around. I’m exactly the type of bright young aristo he likes in his retinue. And I can built a better machine than that prat Jackson. I can save this.”
For a moment they stood staring at each other. An understanding passed between them Tobias had never thought possible. It wasn’t enough.
Bancroft shook his head. “I’ve always told you to be like me, but I’ve secretly taken comfort in the fact that you weren’t. You still have dreams. Don’t give them up. Not for Keating.”
“I’m doing it for us.” Tobias reached for the gun, feeling exhausted and exhilarated at once. It must have been the way those Japanese warriors felt when they drove a sword into their own entrails. Sacrifice and honor. Except not literally. The pater had gone right over the top on this one.
Tobias’s fingers brushed the silver grip of the revolver. Bancroft jerked the gun away. Tobias grabbed for it at the same instant, trying to wrestle it out of his father’s hand. It went off with a thunderous pop, blowing a plume of sawdust out of the tiger’s head. A fang clattered to the floor.
And then Tobias had the revolver. He was panting, more from nerves than from exertion. Bancroft looked amazed, then furious. The fleeting moment of understanding was over, and suddenly they were rivals.
“No!” Bancroft lunged across the desk.
Tobias had enough. He’d had enough for years. “We’re done.”
“Stop being a child!”
Without exactly thinking, Tobias plowed his fist into his father’s jaw. Bancroft sprawled backward into his chair.
“We’re done,” he said quietly. Nausea seeped upward. He’d crossed a line, gone to a place he couldn’t retreat from. “I’m sorry.”
The study door banged open, Bigelow an uncharacteristic tableau of panic. He’d heard the shot. Tobias held up a hand, signaling calm.
Bancroft touched his face. Blood welled on his lip. “You’ll hate yourself for this.”
“I already do.”
It wasn’t just for the blow. He’d taken authority from his father he didn’t want. Now he had to keep his word if that gesture was to have an ounce of meaning.
Tobias turned and walked past the butler, still holding the gun.
Chapter Forty-three
Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.
—Sherlock Holmes, as recorded by John H. Watson, M.D., “The Adventure of the Yellow Face”
Holmes went directly back to Baker Street under Watson’s care. His wound had reopened, and the good doctor was ready to enforce bed rest at gunpoint if necessary.
