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"No," Cain said when Merry came in from the garden. "Absolutely not."
That Merry had been outside at all had only been due to one of the inevitable quirks of English weather. A chill drizzle had kept her indoors throughout all of her morning lessons, and not long after her last tutor had departed Riff had heard her grimly picking out scales at the piano in the front parlor by herself--but the drizzle had slackened into a misty nothing by noon, and though the clouds stayed heavy in the sky she had begged so fervently that Cain had assented to her playing outside so long as the rain held off and she kept out of the puddles.
Had Riff spent the afternoon more properly attuned to the household as a whole, he might have kept a better sense of what went in on the gardens and caught Merry before she scooped up this particular bit of mischief, or least directed to her to come in by another door so as to dodge her brother for a time. But today he had allowed his grip on the reins of the house to grow a little lax, letting it move along in its accustomed path without him; Merry had been out with only Marie to watch over her, while Riff himself had since mid-morning been working away in the drawing room, where Cain had set the both of them to the task of untangling knotted threads of Delilah's false-front businesses and purchasing agents who didn't exist. Riff's attention had all been on the mass of papers covering the drawing room's largest table: the most detailed map of London that Cain had been able to find and a dozen piles of newspaper clippings, notes on deeds of title and property transfers, and death notices. He had only stepped out of the room when sent down the hall to the library to fetch reference books that might aid in identifying certain names; Delilah had a marked tendency towards aliases drawn from obscure mythology and Biblical apocrypha.
The last stray raindrops had slipped off the eaves as they worked. Midday had dragged into afternoon as red Xs bloomed across the map and the documents were passed back and forth, some printed in smearing type, some in hands that were looping and expansive or cramped to the point of illegibility. Cain's movements as he flipped through the papers had grown slower, and his brow already showed the telltale twitch of an imminent headache when Merry--unexpected, unintercepted--came back through the veranda doors, her shoes thicked over with dirt and a furry bundle in her arms.
Her expression was resolute, but the upward tilt of her chin suggested masked hesitancy rather than confidence. The bundle turned its head to regard the room with soft brown eyes, and barked.
"I found him under one of the bushes," Merry said, as though she hadn't heard her brother's immediate refusal. "He was shivering." She clutched the dog a little more tightly around its middle. Riff was no expert on canines, but this one had the look of a terrier, with shortish legs and flopped ears and wiry fur splotched in black and brown--though it was difficult to be certain of its exact coloration, since both dog and girl were thoroughly mud-spattered.
"Merry--" Cain set the current puzzle of papers down and rubbed at his eyes with his free hand "--I realize you're less timid than other young ladies of your age. But I did think you had the sense to know that when you find an animal with sharp teeth under a bush, the thing you ought not to do is stick your hand near it."
"He wouldn't have bitten me! He's very sweet. See?" She hitched the dog a little higher in her arms so that its head was nearer hers, and it snuffled at her cheek.
"And you think a sweet dog wouldn't bite if it was angry or afraid? Bring it here." Cain pushed his chair away from the table, and Merry's face stayed beseeching as he ran a careful hand over the dog's back and flank and peered at its eyes and teeth. The dog nosed at his hand for a moment but otherwise stayed motionless under his touch. "It's too well fed to be a stray. Surely it belongs to someone."
"He doesn't have a collar." Merry tilted the dog's head up.
"We still must make inquiries, Miss Merry," Riff said gently, standing; the situation seemed to call for a little mitigation. "It very easily could have wandered away from its home, or slipped loose from its owner."
"Well," she said, her pleading look shifting to one of uncertainty. "No, I don't want to take him away from his owner, if he has one. Though they ought to take better care than to let their dog run off." Her arms tightened; the dog wriggled mightily for a moment, then settled. "But if he doesn't, then—he couldn't be too much trouble, could he? You wouldn't have to worry about him at all, I'd take care of him--feed him, brush him every day, walk him around the garden--"
"Very responsible of you." Cain's face was stony. "But it's not staying."
"Why not? You let me keep that bird," she said, her voice taking on a sharper pitch. "You brought it back especially for me!"
"That was--" He cast a glance back at Riff, his closed mouth working once as though whatever he wanted to say had jammed up against his teeth. That cockatiel of Elsie Robbin's had been a joy to Merry, fluttering around her room and learning bits of all the bloodiest nursery rhymes she could teach it, before it died happily six months later of over-eating. She had buried it with solemn ceremony under one of the larger elm trees, and occasionally put flowers on its grave on Sundays. "That wasn't the same thing," Cain said at last.
"I don't see what the difference is." Merry's eyes were bright with indignation. There might be foot-stomping in a moment.
"A dog is far more rambunctious than a bird, after all," Cain said, and his voice had already dropped into the laziness of unconcern. Riff saw his eyes flick to the dog's damp fur. "And they're so much messier. Though...it might be useful to have it around at that," he said, looking thoughtful. "If I should need to test a concoction on something a little larger than a rat--"
Merry yelped. The dog yapped in echo, kicked its hind feet, and left more muddy pawprints on Merry's pinafore.
This seemed like an excellent moment to go fetch tea.
When Riff returned with the tray Merry and the dog were pointedly elsewhere, and Cain's gaze was fixed on nothing, his chair still pushed back from the table and its tumble of papers. "She took it off to wash its feet," he said, sounding halfway between weariness and exasperation.
"To bathe it entirely, I hope," Riff said, mildly as he could, thinking of how fast the dog's fur would mat once the mud dried. "It must have been out in the rain all day."
"It did feel chilled." Cain sighed and ran his hands along the chair's arms in one long drag; the leather made a protesting rasp. His eyes closed. "I can’t let her keep it."
"I know, my lord," Riff said, setting out the tea things. He had brought a second-flush Assam; the flavor would hopefully be a strong distraction and perhaps drive off that headache before it could settle in fully. "I sent Tommy and George out to make inquiries nearby. If the owner can't be located, some of the servants here must have relatives who would be glad to take in a young and healthy dog."
"Good," Cain said. "That's good." His eyes did not open; his brows and his mouth no longer had the set of frustration, but of unpleasant recollection.
There had been a dog, once, years ago. Riff had seen the photograph not long after he had first come to the estate: a gentle-eyed spaniel in sepia tint. By then he had known better than to ask after that animal's fate, or the fate of the others implied by empty birdcages or a bell-strung blue ribbon tucked away in a drawer. They had been lured off or driven out if they were lucky, and poisoned or strangled or shot if otherwise. Thus Alexis had made clear the frailty of any creature that might ever show affection to Cain, and Cain had learned the necessity of only loving things that could not be easily stolen away.
And now, and now--
What Cain had not been able to say, Riff knew, was that the household the cockatiel had been brought into had been a different one, more secure in its safety. On Cain's orders Merry had not been told of the fate of the poor graveyard hound that had met its gruesome end against the house's door. As a single act it had been an example of Michaela's cruelty and vengefulness; as another entry in a series of events it had been a pointed statement: any helpless thing under your care or in your vicinity is in danger. Every red X that had been marked on the map was a sign of an escalating plan, driving them closer to an end that neither he nor Cain could clearly envision. Their little world inside these walls was in far more danger than it had been months ago, and Riff did not like to think what sort of message a friendly terrier might be used to send, should certain people choose to do so. Enemies such as his master had could not be counted on to respect ordinary standards of humane and inhumane; there would always one step lower, one farther over the line, that they would take.
Merry could often sway her brother with sweetness or sulkiness, but even her most practiced disappointed eyes would not avail her this time.
"Let her do as she likes with it for today," Cain said, reaching up to accept the cup and saucer from Riff. He did not drink, but merely wrapped his hands around the cup as if to warm them. "But for pity's sake don't let her give it a name, or we'll never get her to give it up."
Collar or no, Cain had been right about the dog once having an owner, for someone had taught it the trick of sitting up and waving its front paws--with all traces of mud scrubbed away--to beg. The kitchen-maids were all overcome with delight.
"I’m certain my lord didn't mean what he said about experiments,” Riff said, setting the tray aside for one of the maids to deal with once they had exhausted the novelty of the terrier.
“Of course he didn’t,” Merry said with supreme self-assurance, perched on a stool well away from the range of ovens, her now-clean pinafore a bright spot in the dim light of the kitchen. She half-lifted a hand toward a small plate from the tray, and when Riff scooped it up to offer it she plucked up two biscuits at once. "But he said it to make me shriek, and he’d have been disappointed if I hadn’t.”
Her voice was steady, but her little fingers were restlessly picking an almond loose from its marzipan base. "Miss Merry," he began, thinking how best to lay out the reasons for the animal's necessary departure, whether or not its owner was found. Merry was not so delicate as they all pretended she was, but her heart was still a tender thing; there must be a way to hint at the difficulties of the situation without pressing too deeply and causing her undue pain. "It isn't that my lord is truly against--"
"I know," she said, before he could speak further. Her mouth was set in a line that looked too firm for her young face. "I know I can’t keep him, and I know my brother doesn't want you to tell me the real reason why. And just because he has a good reason for it instead of a ridiculous one doesn't mean I'm not angry about it." She tossed the dog a chunk of marzipan, which it snatched adroitly. "But I know he wouldn't refuse if it wasn't important."
The dog, encouraged by the piece of biscuit, waved its paws together even more frantically until it overbalanced and toppled into a furry heap, evoking another round of glee from the maids. Louisa and Ellen, after a quick look to be certain that the absent cook would not be rampaging down the hall any time soon, began to pluck tidbits from the fowl meant for tonight's dinner. "Can you roll over? Roll over! Ah, good dog!" Ellen cried, and fed the dog a bite. Riff really ought to have called them into line, but they had been working diligently all day; surely a little sport could be forgiven.
"It's not that I need a dog, you know." The heel of Merry's slow-swinging foot tapped out an uneven rhythm on the stool's rung, undercutting the voices coaxing the dog to spin in a circle or balance a bit on chicken on its nose. "Everyone here's very kind about playing with me. But...there's really no one to--to keep me company in the way a friend would, or to talk to when Cain's gone off somewhere and I'm feeling lonely." She smiled a little, watching as the dog held out its paw for Louisa to shake. "It'd just be nice to have a companion. After all, my brother has--"
She glanced up at Riff and broke off, her face pinking slightly.
“I take no offense at the comparison,” Riff said with as much seriousness as he could manage. "He might understand if you told him so."
Merry pursed her lips. "He'd just say I have Oscar, and that he's enough lapdog for anyone."
"Well." Riff managed, with a little difficulty, to keep his smile from growing so wide as to be improper. "In that case, you might point out that you'd do well to have a proper guard dog as well as a lapdog. He certainly won't disagree with that, and in the future, when things are different...."
"Yes," Merry said. "When things are better."
She popped the other biscuit in her mouth and went to join in the romping. The dog, its little body wagging in canine glee, danced on its hind legs and played dead and turned in circles from hand to eager hand--until the cook returned and chased it and Merry and the maids all out into the garden.
Meals in the Hargreaves household did not always follow the strictest bounds of propriety, but dinner that evening would have drawn a particularly sharp and chilling look from Merry's etiquette instructor. Merry had absorbed the intricacies of table manners as quickly as she had learned everything else, yet had not quite picked up the trick of believably pretending that she did not find them tiresome; Cain had, with very little hesitation, stated that as long as she kept to impeccable manners during at least one meal of the day, she might behave as she pleased during the others. (This was, Riff had noted, an arrangement that also allowed Cain to spend the meal with his nose buried in a book, or to cover every inch of his table space with murder reports to peruse.) Even with relaxed manners, Merry knew better than to feed a dog from her plate--though the little terrier was apparently so stuffed from its earlier treats that it no longer had the inclination to beg--but she sat through every course with her chair half-turned away from the table and pushed back far enough that she could rub the dog's belly with her foot. Cain's expression was a study in patient indulgence.
As the dessert course was served there was a slight commotion behind the far door. Riff, on investigating, found a gloomy Louisa and and a windblown George. "That little dog's a mad runner," he was saying. "Came all the way up from a farm on the other side of the village--went haring off after a rabbit yesterday evening, they said. Their little girl will be glad to have him back."
"Poor Miss Merry!" said Louisa. "They're already so fond of each other."
There was nothing for Riff to do but relay the news. "Well done," Cain said. "Then George and Marie can return it tomorrow morning"--his glass clinked as he sat it down--"and Merry can go along to say farewell, for now."
Merry's mouth twitched, but she put her spoon to her pudding and gamely continued eating. Near the dessert's conclusion the dog rolled itself up off the floor, sniffed its way over to Cain's seat, and pressed against his leg in a full-bodied lean; Riff saw Cain's nostrils flare a little as he huffed out a breath, but he bent and stroked one hand through the wiry fur a few times before gently nudging the dog back towards Merry.
Both Merry and the dog began to wilt an hour after the meal, though she managed another hour by propping herself up at the foot of her brother's chair in the drawing room and tossing a crumpled sheet of discarded paper for the dog to chase and fetch back to her. At last the dog flopped down in a heap and did no more than nose at the ball, and Riff called for a maid to lead the girl to bed. Merry made vague noises of protest but eventually submitted. "And he can stay in my room tonight," she said, scooping the dog up into her arms. Its head settled into the crook of her elbow, tongue lolling. "There's no reason why he shouldn't." Her attempt at a prim tone was a little weakened by the sleepy wobble of her head.
"You may certainly do as you like." Cain kept his eyes focused squarely on his book. "But I expect to hear no complaints if you wake up and find he's gnawed the pillow out from under you and chewed your favorite shoes to shreds."
Merry took her revenge by leaning over to give her brother a good-night peck, bringing the dog close enough to Cain's face to express its affection in a similar, damper fashion. "Out!" Cain said, and Merry, giggling, submitted to Marie's guiding hands and left.
"A dog is all well and good, but that one--" Cain wiped a little at his cheek. "God knows what sort of antics they'd get up to if Merry kept it longer." His face for the first time that day had taken on a faint softness, and his eyes held some distance, as though he was halfway to losing himself in some imagined future.
"Indeed," Riff said. "This household already possesses a reliable source of antics and upheaval."
Cain's mouth slanted back into a line that was not quite a grimace of exasperation, and he bolted down his glass of claret as though he wished it were something stronger.
The second glass lasted longer as Cain sat up late and later, his book put aside and his head bent again over the map. He made no new marks or asked for any other books to be brought. Several times he took up a note or paper to stare at in silence and set it into a new place, regarded the spectacle of the whole, and then shifted the paper again into another stack. There was a sharpness to his posture which he maintained even as his head began to nod. As the rest of the household began to put itself to bed, Riff drifted out once to drop last-minute orders in the necessary ears: the master would want breakfast an hour later in the morning; the proper clothing must be laid out for Miss Merry's outing the next day. In the drawing room he stirred up the fire whenever it began to weaken, watched the claret disappeared in slow, small sips, and stood at rest where he could always be in the corner of Cain's eye.
At last Cain pushed himself back from the table and took the last swallow from the glass. The sigh that came from him as he stood was longer than it needed to be, a sound that was part frustration and part exhaustion. There was no comment or conversation on the way to the bedroom, nor as Riff eased off his master's shoes and trousers and shirt and all the accoutrements of the day. When Cain had slipped between the bedcovers and laid his head against the pillows he said "Good night, Riff", with his eyes fixed on the ceiling or something beyond it; Riff said, "Good night, my lord" and withdrew, shutting the door as softly as he could.
Then there were his last tasks of the day: the checking of all the locks; the turning down of any stray lamps. In the drawing room he was unsurprised to find that several of the paper-piles had at last given way to gravity and spilled across the table, piling up into drifts like grey-grimed snow; whatever coherence there had been in their order or their arrangement had been lost. He folded away the map to clear a small bare space and began sorting, attempting to match names and companies and agents whenever he could. The books that had been hidden under the fallen sheets he retrieved and and set in neat piles at the table's edge.
The clock in the hall chimed midnight. Stillness had settled around him--not true silence, but the lulling quiet of a house in the night, occasionally broken by the soft creak of a door-joint or the pop of the dying fire. Twice his eyes began to droop a little, and to shake himself back into wakefulness he left off from his work and made a round of the rooms and hallways, feet soundless against carpet and floorboard, laying his hand against windows and doors to be certain of the locks. The second time through the halls he paused on the upper floor for a moment to peer into Merry's suite of rooms. She was sleeping soundly, her golden head turned against her pillow, the terrier a dark bundle tucked up against her side with its paws twitching in the motions of a dream-chase.
When the clocks stood at a quarter past one he shuffled the last of the papers into their proper place, took up the lamp, and made his way once again to Cain's bedroom.
As he thought, his master was now in a sleep deep enough to bring vivid dreams--and unpleasant ones. The sight of the bedding's disarray made that clear enough even before Riff had stepped fully into the room. Cain's form was still, but his face, when Riff came close enough to see it, was drawn in tight with pain or fear.
He set the lamp on the beside table, casting its light in such a way that his face would be clearly visible. "Sir," he said, and laid his hand as carefully as he could on Cain's shoulder. "My lord, you should wake up now." The nightmare and the shock of wakening from it would distress Cain enough; he needed to take every caution not to add to it.
He squeezed his shoulder again, and Cain came awake with a gasp of one whose head had been held too long under dark water, starting upwards and half-flinching away from Riff's hand. For an instant his eyes were black and wide with terror. Then the grip of fear slid away from him and he fell forwards, elbows on his knees, head bowed. The shoulder under Riff's palm was chilled; it rose and fell with each heaving breath.
There was nothing for Riff to say or do but keep his hand there, light but solid, until Cain's breathing slowed into evenness again. The silence settled around them, still enough for Riff to hear the slight click in Cain's throat as he swallowed. His head lifted a little and he stared into the darkness for a palpable space of time, then turned to look sidelong up at Riff.
"You ought to be in bed," he said, and the quirk of his eyebrows was undercut by the raggedness of his voice.
"I had a suspicion that I would be needed." It was only the truth, told by the faint tightness of Cain's mouth that had lingered throughout the day and the tension Riff had felt in his shoulders as he'd drawn the shirt away from his frame.
"Did you?" Cain's words still sounded frayed around the beginning and end. "You could have insisted on sitting in here for the night, like a nursemaid."
"A suspicion, my lord, not a certainty." Riff let his hand slip away. "You might say that I had guessed at the possibility but hoped for your sake it would be otherwise."
"And if I'd slept peacefully through the night like a lamb safe in the sheep-fold? How long would you have waited before you took your own rest? No, don't answer." His smile was thin but insouciant. "Don't think I'm going to let you slack off tomorrow just because you decided to waste your time sitting up past your bedtime."
"Being in readiness to attend to my master's needs is not a waste of time," Riff said, with all honestly in his tone, though he could not help but meet that wan smile with one of his own.
Their gazes met for a long moment. It was a mark of the unfairness of the world, Riff thought, that there was no way for time to stop itself here and let them stay in this soft, quiet space, where every part of their mind and emotions aligned with no need to speak. Then Cain dipped his head in move that was part nod and part enticement and dropped back against the pillows, his eyes now warm.
"Put out the light, will you?" he said. "And come here."
Even with no light to see by, what happened after that was very nearly the simplest task in the world. Riff was mindful as was his wont, but the necessity here was sensation and not finesse, for as always what Cain wanted after nightmares was not a melting flame but a purging one--he wanted the hands and mouth he knew were Riff's against his skin until he had no thought for anything else. His body under Riff's was terrain more familiar than any part of this house or its garden; it was all as easy as reading a book one had known for years, easy as walking up a well-worn path on a clear day, until after a warm and focused and gentle climb he felt his master's body go pliant in release, and at the very last heard Cain's stuttering, gasping breath, nearly like a laugh. And after, almost better than any pleasure of his own, came the quiet satisfaction of feeling Cain's body settling into calm, of watching the silhouette of his eyelids close once, and again, until they dropped entirely in peaceful sleep.
Next to him, Riff remained awake.
Not long ago he might have given himself over to the same lassitude and let himself linger in a comfortable doze until his natural senses, driven by the rhythms of the household, compelled him to slip quietly back to his own room before night began to brighten into dawn. Now, however, there was the faintest catch in his mind, a miniscule uncertainty that barred him from true restfulness.
He had meant entirely what he had said to Merry earlier in the day. Not once in five years had he bridled at comparisons between himself and certain four-footed creatures, no matter how many ladies and gentlemen eyed him and made sly comments about a spaniel following at its master's heel and thought themselves clever. Loyalty had yet to be enshrined as a religious virtue, but it was a virtue all the same, and loyalty given to one who truly deserved it was its absolute perfection.
And yet over the past weeks he had felt that catch in his mind when he was on the edge of sleep, or those moments at the end of the day when weariness had begun to tug at his bones. Some lingering effect of Michaela's poison or its antidote, he had thought, and sure to fade once he had returned to full health--and yet it had lingered, that feeling that his mind was a house in which a window had been left open or a door stood ajar, and that through that opening came not a full voice but the echo of one--a voice that he felt certain he would recognize if only it were a little louder, cold and hard as winter ground, rarely clear enough to hear more than a few words but full of mockery for himself and his master.
He reached out and the let the pressure of his fingertips rest easily against his master's throat, the same fragile skin he had touched a thousand times before, smoothing the line of his shirt-collar, knotting his tie, drawing down in a caress in this very same bed.
He waited, and waited, feeling the slow throb of Cain's pulse, and what floated through his mind was only a sharp little couplet--tell me, sir, whose dog are--some poem he must have picked up during his time at school, but the last words escaped him, and rather than grasp for the trailing edges of the memory he let them slip loose and fade.
He made himself pull his hand away, and let himself sink more fully into the bed, to watch and wait until morning.