Page 57 of Infamous

Henry yanked his hands away from both Nash and Eddie, and got to his feet so suddenly that he knocked over a candle; Eddie had to rescue it before it set fire to her dress.

‘What the devil—?’ exclaimed Nash.

‘Did you tell her to say that?’ Henry demanded.

His chest was heaving, his hands clenched into fists at his side. Eddie looked from Nash to Henry, baffled by this development, shocked to see Henry displaying such obvious contempt for his employer.

‘Henry, please calm down, I can assure you—’

‘Calm down?’

Henry genuinely looked on the verge of striking him; everybody stood up very abruptly, jarred by the transition from quiet seancing to the brink of warfare.

‘Henry,’ Kitty said slowly, ‘I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about. Nash didn’t tell me to say anything at all.’

Henry shook his head. His eyes were bright, his face mottled red and white with fury.

‘I suppose you think this is funny?’

He was speaking to Nash, who had a very queer look on his face, somewhere between alarm and amusement. It really did seem as if it might come to fisticuffs, but Eddie couldn’t think of a thing to say to stop it. Rose would have known what to do. She was the empath. The peacekeeper.

Eddie just gaped at them like a beached fish and wondered if she ought to blow out the rest of the candles.

‘Why don’t you have a drink, my boy? To steady your nerves.’

Henry shook his head. ‘Liars,’ he said quietly. ‘You are all nothing but a bunch of devils and liars.’

He stormed away towards the stairs, leaving the rest of them standing there in the odd atmospheric crater left by his outburst.

‘Wonderful,’ Kitty said. ‘I was really getting something before that little tantrum. I suppose since he broke the circle I am to be possessed with the spirit of this malcontent for all eternity, now.’

‘Don’t fret, Kit,’ said Valentine. ‘It would only be an improvement.’

Kitty shuddered, seeming genuinely put out. Eddie just shook her head, unable to make sense of any of it.

‘What on earth just happened?’

‘Nothing,’ said Nash, with a shrug. ‘Servants’ temperaments, you know. Let us go and recover with a few rounds of the gentleman’s sport.’

*

The gentleman’s sportturned out to be a game that used the long gallery as a court. It was played by hitting various objects scrounged from around the house with a cricket bat towards a large, frowning portrait of a middle-aged man. A small crowd had already gathered, awaiting their master of ceremonies.

‘All right,’ Nash said, claiming the bat and slinging it over his shoulders. ‘The name of the game is total ruination.’

A strawberry-blonde man with very floppy hair and a badminton racquet in his hand raised an eyebrow.

‘I thought it was called “mutual destruction”.’

‘Precisely. Now, all you must do to score points is to hit the portrait – five points for the frame, ten for the canvas, fifteen if you hit the honourable gentleman’s chest or shoulders, and twenty-five points for a headshot. I shall demonstrate .?.?. Edie, fetch me something breakable, would you?’

Eddie took a step forwards and peered dubiously into a trunk by his feet; it was full of china and candlesticks, clocks and trinket boxes, a vase shaped like a cornucopia and a matched set of porcelain dogs. She settled on a small, inconspicuous teapot, and tried to hand it to him.

‘No, no, you hold on to that,’ he said, stepping up to a chalk cross on the floor and flexing the bat. ‘Now the trick is that you want it to survive the initial impact – there’s no point to it if your projectile never goes forth into the world at all. When I give the signal, Edie, throw that for me and then take cover. Ready?’

Eddie nodded, wondering how quickly she could go from teapot-tossing to eye-shielding.

‘Three .?.?. two .?.?. one .?.?.clear!’