The Wages of Sin, by Alex Beecroft

"What is he doing here?"  The clock on the mantle struck quarter past six as Elizabeth gestured with her loaded fork.  No doubt, Charles thought, his head throbbing, and the side of his face stinging in counterpoint, her advanced state of pregnancy excused the fact that she was still capable of eating.  He wished she would do it somewhere else.

Dragging his eyes from the drop of brown grease that trembled on the end of the bacon, he looked where she pointed.  The vague sense he had had all night that there were too many presences in the house - a pair of shoes outside a normally unoccupied door, an unexpected number of plates on the sideboard for this impromptu family breakfast, coalesced into a stranger at their table.

He wore the bob wig of a clergyman and a clergyman's black woollen coat.  The jet buttons of his cuff glittered, and beneath the stark white powder of his wig, his wing-like brows were just as black.  The fan of black eyelashes hiding downcast eyes, and the diffident bend of his neck, could not disguise an angular, almost Spanish beauty; bold high cheekbones and a sullen, dangerous mouth.

"He's here as my guest."  George was once more the picture of manly perfection in a suit of emerald silk, but the stick pin in his cravat clashed with his waistcoat, and the lines of strain in his face scored deeper by the hour.  Charles swallowed, looked away, conscious that for the first time, George had begun to resemble their father.

"He's father's enemy.  Always has been."  Elizabeth's white makeup showed cracks and streaks in a dozen places, her handsome face puffy from weeping and her eyes bloodshot.  Close to her confinement and with her husband absent at the head of his regiment in Scotland, she had returned home to be coddled with all the attentiveness an expectant grandfather could bestow.  And she had always been Clitheroe's favourite.

Charles honoured her for her grief.  Despised himself for being unable to echo it.

Outside the tall windows, dawn had barely begun to break.  Autumnal rain lashed the panes, rolled in silver beads down each black lozenge.  Within the house a melancholy procession of servants passed the door of the morning room; Geoffreys, his father's valet, with an arm full of neatly folded sheets, Cook with jug, basin and towel, and her two daughters following, a can of hot water carried between them.  He took another cup of coffee, for the hangover, and looked back.

The stranger's head still bent over the table.  He dipped his spoon, ate a mouthful of porridge and the gesture brought his face even further into shadow.

"Melodramatic nonsense!"  George speared a devilled kidney and thrust it onto his plate.  "Father doesn't have any enemies."

Elizabeth gave a harsh laugh, honey-blonde ringlets bobbing with incongruous cheer beside her jaw.  "In case you haven't noticed, brother, our father is lying dead upstairs.  He must have had one enemy, don't you think?  And now we're eating breakfast with the prime candidate?  That's taking politeness a little too far."

The scrape of a chair.  The stranger made to rise and George caught him by the wrist, pressed his arm to the table, restraining him.

At the sight of the stranger's hand, lying as if cut off by the black cuff, the picture of his father's dead face flashed before Charles' inner eye.  He too recoiled, struggling to his feet, running to the window, trying to escape it.

"This is not the time for unfounded, hysterical accusations.  Really, Elizabeth if your condition did not excuse you I should have to accuse you of running mad.  Now please keep your voice down.  This is the last thing Emma needs!"

By some dint of magic, the stranger had continued his retreat, withdrawing his presence, leaving his body like an old table that sits unnoticed in the corner of a room.  But Charles was tired of trying to see his face, being thwarted.  "Won't someone introduce us?"

George laughed with surprise.  "Don't be a goose!  You remember Jasper.  Admiral Vane's ward.  We grew up together."

Since it was impossible to say 'no', Charles leaned back against the window and let the chill of the rain seep across his shoulders.  "By reputation only," he said, and watched as Jasper's stubborn chin raised half an inch and his mouth curved in a little bitter smile.  "You forget, George; my earliest memory is of waving goodbye as you left for Cambridge.  I'm afraid I have no recollection of you at all, Mr Marin.  Except, as I say, by anecdote."

At last, with slow grace like the turn of a minuet, Jasper looked up.  His eyes, in the broadening light, were sherry coloured - a light, clear brown almost with a tint of red.  Had there been room, Charles might have stepped backwards.  A jolt of something very like fear went through him.  How could he have mistaken the man's invisibility for meekness?  It had been all along the quiet of a tiger lying in wait in the long grass.  Elizabeth's accusation no longer seemed so laughable.

"Then I wish we could have met again in happier circumstances."

Two heartbeats.  Charles had time to wonder if this was some new manner of the same paralysis that had come on him last night; time's normal flow suspended.  Then the morning room door swung open and Dr. Floyd came in.  The scene moved and flowed once more as George rose to pull out a seat for him, and Elizabeth called for fresh coffee.