“Sir, I really must—”
“Major Beauchamp.” Vidal set the plate on the table with a definitive clink, and finally turned. “I have cooked. A man does not refuse a breakfast that has been cooked for him. This is not an English rule, I grant you, because the English have no rules about food except that it be beige and criminally untouched by spice. But it is a Montcada rule. I need company. Now sit.”
Beauchamp’s jaw tightened, but he did as he was asked.
“My country,” Vidal went on, sliding into the chair opposite and pouring coffee into two cups, “has been taken from my family by a politician whose moustache makes him look like he belongs in pornography from the seventies. My entire world has collapsed. The least you can do, having walked into my kitchen at this hour, is eat a sausage with me.”
Beauchamp picked up his fork and began to eat, taking small, neat bites.
The sausages were, as Vidal had suspected, magnificent. He let Beauchamp get through three bites in silence, which was, by Vidal’s standards, an act of monastic restraint. Then he set down his own fork, propped his chin on one hand, and watched the Major across the table.
“Beauchamp.”
“Sir?”
“In my country we do not pretend the body is a secret. You may look. Everyone else does. I just ask that you not touch.”
Beauchamp’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth. A piece of egg slid off it and landed on the polished surface of the table. He set the fork down and began to push his chair back.
“No, no, no.” Vidal was already laughing, both palms in the air, the silk sleeves of his robe sliding back from his wrists. “No more, no more. I am just making fun. That is all. But we must talk, Major. About yesterday.”
Beauchamp folded his hands at the edge of the table. “Sir. I should say, before you go any further, that the position I hold carries a number of obligations regarding discretion. The Royal Household Equerry Service operates under standing protocols which extend to anything observed in the course of duty, whether on or off premises, and those protocols are not contingent on the wishes of —”
“Beauchamp.”
“— the principal in question, sir, nor on the —”
“Now, Beauchamp. Having seen what you have seen, you must look me in the eye from this point forward, you understand. Properly. Like a soldier. Otherwise I shall be forced to conclude that you cannot bring yourself to meet my gaze because you are picturing me in all of my glory, and that would be very awkward for both of us!”
Beauchamp’s chair scraped back across the floorboards. He stood, squared his shoulders, and fixed Vidal with a stare of such grim, unblinking determination that Vidal nearly applauded.
“Sir, the driver. I should…the appointment this afternoon, sir. The route, I had meant to confirm —”
“Major, you are looking at mesointently. It is thrilling.”
“The route, sir.”
“Yes, yes, the route, of course, a route of profound complexity, I understand entirely.”
Beauchamp held the eye contact all the way to the door, which was, Vidal thought, the funniest thing he’d seen in weeks. Oh, the British. Oh, the magnificent contortions of a man who had decided that the only acceptable response to being teased about his discretion was to demonstrate that he was not flinching. He was going to die holding that stare. He was going to be buried with it.
Vidal waited for the front latch to click, then folded forward over the table and laughed into the crook of his elbow until his shoulders shook. Mercè, asleep on the chair beside him, opened one eye, judged the situation, and went back to sleep.
? ? ?
Theback garden, when Vidal nudged the door open with his hip and stepped down onto the flagstones with Mercè tucked under one arm, was an insult to the word. It was sadness, contained within a three yards by four boundary, with a struggling olive in a pot that someone had been overwatering, and a pair of wrought-iron chairs gone orangewith rust. At Cardona, the Palau Montcada gardens had run for half a kilometre down to the cliff path, and the cypresses had been tall enough to block out the sun when he lay under them.
Still. Mercè had to piss somewhere, and the alternative was the Persian rug in the drawing room, which Vidal liked too much to sacrifice. He had hummed through the first chorus ofCon Alturabefore he registered the man sharing the space with them.
He was on the grass at the far end of the garden, face down, shirtless, and doing push-ups with the steadiness of a ticking metronome. Vidal stopped where he was, settled Mercè more comfortably against his ribs, and gave this man the attention he deserved. His eyes travelled across his trapezius, down the long groove of his spine, and the curve of his lower back. The man went down, then came back up. A trickle of sweat travelled the length of his back and disappeared into territory Vidal would have happily mapped with his hands.
“Mercè,” he murmured into the top of her head, “the English have hidden depths.”
He set her down on the grass. She trotted three paces, paused to consider the garden’s possibilities, and then arrowed straight for the greatest point of interest. She reached the man at the bottom of a push-up and stuck her cold nose directly into the side of his face.
He laughed, dropped onto his forearms, and turned his head to find a small, mostly hairless dog regarding him at very close range.
“Sir,” Vidal called, in his most considerate tone, “I would not stay down there if I were you. She is incontinent. Also, please do not get your sweat on my dog. She has sensitive skin and a tragic disposition.”
