Charlie shook his head.
But that wasn’t an entirely honest answer. He suspected he knew more about the world he and Jonathan had been dragged into than he gave himself credit for.
“I cannot help you on my own. I need help, too. But I’ll do my best to get that help, now, if I can.”
He took a step back from Fabian, turning toward the door.
“Don’t leave me!” Fabian called out, running after him.
He got as far as the length of his chain before letting out a sharp, pained cry and shrinking back.
“Your ankle,” Charlie gasped, stepping back to him and dropping to his knees so he could take a look. “You must have a care for your ankle.”
“It hurts,” Fabian sobbed. “Everything hurts.”
Charlie was too afraid to even touch Fabian’s bruised and now bleeding ankle. “You must rest it,” he said, glancing up at Fabian. “If we have any chance at all of rescuing you, you’ll need to be able to run.”
For a moment, Charlie worried Fabian was too far gone to understand. But at last, he nodded through his sobs and dragged himself back to his chair.
“I’ll go for help,” Charlie promised him as he headed for the door. “I won’t stop until I convince him to save you.”
“Hurry,” Fabian cried as Charlie grasped the door handle and turned it. “Please, hurry.”
“I will,” Charlie promised.
He opened the door carefully, then peeked outside to make certain no one was around. When he was convinced he was safe, he slipped out into the night and turned to run back to the house.
Jonathan had to help Fabian now. If he refused after what Charlie was about to tell him, then he wasn’t the man Charlie thought he was. He wasn’t a man Charlie could devote himself to.
Chapter Fifteen
Reason and sense told Jonathan that he was supposed to feel excitement and the thrill of possibility as he finished dressing and headed downstairs to meet the other guests for supper. Everything that he’d come to Fairford House for was moving forward at a rapid speed. He’d photographed nearly every man at the party, and those who he hadn’t been able to sneak into one of his compositions, he was certain he’d be able to capture the next day.
The mission set by Brutus and Titus was only half of his story, though. The way he’d been welcomed by men of his father’s acquaintance, treated like one of them, and then had those tables turned twisted painfully in his gut. He was just as much on the outside of society as he’d always been. He should pack up Charlie and his things and leave, but, damn him, that visceral longing to prove himself, to have friends once more, had him in an iron grip. And while, yes, he had been joked about more than he had been joked with, at least his father no longer seemed to hate him.
It was all meaningless. Jonathan felt that in the center of his being before he was even seated at the table for supper. He’d been given a place of honor near Lord Frome. He could see theentire length of the table, and right from the start of the meal, he was included in the most important conversations being batted around the present company like tennis balls. But all that his position of privilege gave him was a close-up view of how rotten everything around him was.
“Young Moorgate played spectacularly this afternoon, Dalhurst,” Frome laughed to the man seated across the table from Jonathan. “He is quite a picture of athletic prowess.”
“I did my best,” Jonathan said with a tight smile as he dipped a spoon into his turtle soup.
“Atherton was certainly impressed with him,” Frome went on, dropping his voice to a saucier tone.
“I’d wager he was,” Dalhurst said.
Jonathan frowned slightly and looked across at Dalhurst as he sipped his soup. The man wore far too appreciative a look to be entirely innocent.
“What do you say, Moorgate?” Copeland asked from the seat beside Dalhurst. “Are you up for a rematch tomorrow?”
“No, no,” Blythe called out from farther down the table. “If the weather is as nice tomorrow as it was today, we will hold swimming competitions in the large pond.”
The suggestion was met with enthusiasm from most of the company.
Jonathan’s frown deepened. Among a mountain of other things that didn’t feel right, that was yet another. Men his father’s age wishing to hold a swimming competition in one of the ponds?
“I can imagine you would be quite proficient at swimming,” Dalhurst commented in a quieter voice as the conversation around the rest of the table turned more raucous. “All lean muscles and tight sinews.” He arched one eyebrow before taking a spoonful of soup with almost lewd enthusiasm.
Jonathan’s hand froze as he swirled his spoon around his soup bowl. Dalhurst couldn’t be propositioning him, could he? That would be absurd. They were in company, in full view of the other men at the table. It would not have been the first time a gentleman attempted to arrange an assignation with him, but everyone of that inclination knew you simply did not flirt at the supper table.
