A Working Lunch “Thank you, thanks again,” Jay said, far more warmly than he felt as he raised his hand in farewell. “My regards to your brother.”
“I’ll be sure to pass them along,” Paul Bennett replied. His tone was as falsely courteous as Jay’s. They did not like each other much, but they had established a functional and even reasonably respectful working relationship since Uncle Anthony – apparently working on prompting from Anthony of all people, and Jay still didn’t know how he felt about his cousin stepping into his territory that way – had given Jay his orders. “Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon.”
Jay kept the fake smile on as he accepted the bill for the lunch, silently cursing Bennett’s rather expensive tastes and the fact that he had to cater to them mainly to uphold the family image. Marketing strategy had a part in it, too – reciprocity; Jay did something for him, Bennett felt obliged to return the favor – but mostly it was just damned Carey pride. Pride was an expensive luxury, even with the budget beyond his salary Jay was given just for this kind of thing. It would have been one thing if buying lunches was the only thing he’d had to do, but customs officers got more expensive to bribe every year and Jay had to deal with them at least as often as he had to feed the greedy, and that was before he even ran into the occasional lobbyist….
“He looks like a lovely individual,” a voice said above him, and Jay nearly dropped the bill in surprise before he realized it was Arthur’s.
“Almost enough to make me reconsider my choice of girlfriend,” Jay said absently, calculating the gratuity in his head and then taking a tiny pencil out of his pocket to check the figures on paper. Bennett had insisted on a few drinks and he did not trust his math as much as usual after them.
Arthur claimed, oddly casually, for him, the chair Bennett had vacated. Jay wanted to ask what he was doing here, but knew Arthur would lie to him and so didn’t bother. The explanation was most likely something completely innocuous, for a given value of that word – Arthur had his business, too, and this restaurant, with its very careful lighting and even more carefully spaced tables and near-incorruptibly discreet staff, was popular among businessmen of their kind – but Arthur had embraced all the drama of his role wholeheartedly. Jay suspected it was a psychological defense mechanism, a way of not admitting that spending all his time threatening reporters and bribing sports officials was a grimy, low way of getting by. Even Jay did better.
“I’m sure. Here,” Arthur said, and to Jay’s surprise, his cousin reached across the table and plucked the discreet leather folder which held the slip of parchment with the bill on it from his hands. “I’ll get that for you.”
Jay kept his face composed, but he could feel the back of his neck turning red. He did not know if his cousin received a salary as such – his work was unofficial, for the most part, and he lived with Uncle Anthony and Aunt Lorraine without contributing much to the household when he was in the country – but Jay did know that Arthur received a much more generous bribery budget than he did. “There’s no need for you to do that,” he said, reaching for the folder to take it back, but Arthur held it out of his reach. There was no way to retrieve it without descending into a wrestling match at the table, which was not a good idea in a decent restaurant catering specifically to those who were there to do business.
“I insist,” Arthur said firmly. “And drinks for us both,” he added to the girl, who conveniently arrived to take the money just then. “To celebrate what was no doubt a glowing success for you.”
Jay struggled to rid himself of mingled feelings of annoyance and shame, half over the situation and half over his own annoyance with it. “Hopefully some good can come from it,” he said shortly.
Jay privately didn’t expect much. The Bennetts were cautious about the Careys, and it was hard to blame them: the last time their paths had crossed, a Carey girl had put their heir, the one member of their family who had risen to something like real prominence, in an insane asylum. That was nothing to do with Jay or South Carolina – the girl in question had been Morgaine – but he thought most people thought one Carey was much the same as another. Jay remembered Leonidas Bennett primarily for how guarded the younger wizard had always been around him, and Paul had clearly been using scripts provided to him, promising very little and all of it in cautious terms. Of course, Jay had been doing the same, but that was because he thought Uncle Anthony didn’t quite trust him to deal too directly with someone betrothed to one of the Brockerts….
Resentment flared again over how the family used him. He suppressed it ruthlessly. There was no right time to indulge in that, but any time he was in front of Arthur was a really wrong one.
“I do hope so,” Arthur said. “If not in business, then in politics. We ought to marry one of them.”
Jay stared at him. “I don’t follow,” he said. “The Brockerts should make sure they don’t get too far above themselves.”
“Oh, I’m sure they will. In their current place, though, they could still provide us with a handy access point to the Brockerts if we ever needed it.” Arthur smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.
“The Brockerts are our good friends now, Arthur.”
“Lucille is your good friend,” Arthur corrected him. “Oh, I trust her information,” he added quickly when Jay sat up straighter, intending to protest. Extracting information from Lucille was one of his jobs, and Uncle Anthony had praised him for getting them tidbits that his uncle said she had evidently not passed along to Morgaine before, though how Uncle Anthony knew exactly how much Morgaine knew, Jay had no idea. “But even if we can keep Malcolm under our control - and I can throw that creature further than I trust him - I still don’t trust the family not to turn on us, maybe use the minor families to do it." Jay nodded. One of them turning on the other was inevitable, after all, sooner or later. Right now, Uncle Anthony had explained when Jay had finally asked about it, they needed each other - the question for the Careys was not whether or not there would be a crisis when Anthony the Fourth died but just how bad it would be, the Brockert heirs were soft and had a lot of cousins of their own, and beneath them was a teeming mass of younger families boiling over with thwarted ambition. If they didn't hang together, they might find themselves looking at a social landscape dominated by the Pierces fifty years from now - but the minute Adam had a son of his own, the match officially became a little less equal for the Careys unless Adam was willing to make nepotism the new primogeniture the very day he himself benefited from the latter. If that happened, unlikely as it was, then then minute Evan and Lucille had a son, the match officially became a little less equal for the Brockerts. Jay hoped it all played out after he was too old to care anymore. "Besides – “ Arthur smiled again, this time grimly – “say…Diana, or even Theresa, marries Leonidas. He’s one of us, you know. He might take Paul's place as heir even without us supporting him, and if he does, we profit while the Brockerts lose their whole reason for investing Arabella after it's too later to do anything about it.”
Jay made a noise he wished he hadn’t as he tried not to laugh. It wasn’t very dignified. “And the Bennetts would see exactly what we were planning to do there even if we didn't really plan do it," he said. "They'd keep Paul on just to spite us. And not bring the Brockerts down on their own heads. Maybe if it was Alex….”
“Hm. I suppose you’re right. Perhaps you could just marry Gemma.”
Jay nearly choked on his drink. “What?”
“Henry and Brandon aren’t bright enough to use as spies,” Arthur noted. “You are. And besides – “
Arthur shut up suddenly, looking as though he very much regretted what he had just started to say. Jay’s attention moved from the burning of his esophagus to that hesitation as the almost affable, almost humorous feel of the conversation popped like a soap bubble, leaving only a sticky mess to commemorate its existence. “And besides what, exactly?” he asked, suppressing the urge to cough.
“Nothing.”
“You can’t do better than that?”
Arthur grimaced. “You could do worse,” he said reluctantly. “Than Gemma Bennett, that is.” He looked acutely uncomfortably.
Jay looked at his drink and tried to decide if it would be overly dramatic, or even effeminate, to throw it in his cousin’s face. He decided it would be overly dramatic. “I could also do a great deal better,” he said coolly. “And am, at present.”
Arthur bit his lip. Jay stared. What was wrong with him? This hesitation, this seeming awareness that he was speaking utterly tactlessly, was all out of character for Arthur. “Do you really expect it to last, then?” he asked. “With Francesca?”
Jay’s hand tightened on the glass. He was glad he had that in his hand already. It was much more diplomatic than a wand. “Why shouldn’t it?” he asked, and when Arthur hesitated, he harshly added, “Say what you’re thinking like a man for a change.”
That was a low blow. For one thing, they never acknowledged what Arthur was among themselves any more than they acknowledged what Jay was, and for another, Jay was no one to call another man out for not confronting his problems like one – his business involved as much careful talking as Arthur’s, and probably less blasting problems out of his way with his wand. Arthur looked appropriately flustered by it. “For goodness’ sake, Jay,” his cousin said. “The Wolseithcraftes are politicians, the other kind of politicians, more than they are businessmen. It’s…well, you’re – it’s not your fault, of course, but your employment….” Arthur shrugged.
Jay turned the glass in his hand. Droplets of condensation seeped beneath his fingernails. “They don’t seem to object to it at the moment,” he said tersely.
“You suit their purposes for the moment,” Arthur agreed. “At least no one thinks she’s sleeping with Miss Bellrose. Even our sort is better than that – for a bit of fun. But even if they think she could marry a Carey…I assume they intended for her to pursue Anthony, but with him out of reach they might settle for Henry in exchange for enough money for their cause.” He honestly looked as though he wished he was not saying what he was saying. “No one is exactly clamoring to marry me, either. I’m… sorry. I thought you realized.”
Our sort is better than that – for a bit of fun. He remembered Uncle Anthony, asking him without preamble if Francesca was pregnant, clearly assuming that was all there was to it – a position which he felt had insulted Francesca at least as much as it did him, if not more considering what society thought of girls who tried sleeping their way into more powerful families. He thought about the fact that he did want her, which somehow made comments from those who seemed sure he’d had her all the more infuriating, possibly because he had already started to believe that he never would….
One major perk of Jay’s job was that it had largely eradicated any problem he’d ever had with lying. It was second nature now to consider exactly how to word his statements, to consider what the most advantageous thing to say was instead of what the facts of the matter were. He had even extended this to what he told himself, which was that he was doing real work at an age when most people of his station were still hanging around their estates chasing secretaries and their cousins’ wives, that he was making real connections, that he was going to rise to prominence and influence both in his family and in the world at large. Sometimes, though, he did not guard his thoughts carefully enough, and when he gave a report to Uncle Anthony or watched his father undercut his authority at work again or had a meeting like the one he’d just had with Bennett, sometimes…sometimes, the next time he was with Francesca, he was seized by the conviction that he had to make every moment they had together as perfect as possible, and it was because he knew, deep down, that one day she was going to realize he was nothing but a minimally-educated mid-level crook who didn’t deserve her.
“Well,” he said, then paused to collect himself. “I hope you’re wrong, but I guess I’m better off than you even if you’re right.” He forced a grin. “I haven’t noticed the hordes clamoring even to sleep with you.”