Yearn by Tobsha Learner Page B

with lack of emotion.
    D’Arcy nodded, his handkerchief pressed against his nose and mouth; he dared not breathe in.
    â€œGone. Sunday morning, carried off by the cholera. His mum and a sister followed. I got her hoop,” she finished with a certain pragmatic triumph.
    Shocked, D’Arcy stumbled, then ran back to the safety of Mayfair.
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    Once returned to the sanctuary of his own study, D’Arcy stood nonplussed for a moment—it was hard to believe such youth and beauty could be wiped out so indiscriminately. Harry’s presence now lingered before him, imprinted on both his memory and body. He could still taste his sweat, could still cast his mind back to that night the young sweep possessed him with such audacity. They had been linked by sex and magic, but also by discovery. But most disastrously of all, now that his only witness was dead, what chance did D’Arcy have to prove the legitimacy of his research, other than by his own word? His dilemma was interrupted by a tentative knock at the door. It was Henries informing him that he had an unexpected visitor—a Mr. Horace Tuttle—who insisted that he see him immediately.
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    â€œThis is an unexpected pleasure.”
    The two men stood in the grand reception room of the mansion, facing each other warily. D’Arcy, fearing he would lose control of his own temper, kept his clenched hands thrust into his trouser pockets, while he noticed that Tuttle had not bothered to remove his coat.
    â€œYou are a master of disingenuousness, young Hammer, a trait I will not pretend to admire,” Tuttle, abandoning any semblance of etiquette, observed. It was a reply that sent a surge of fury through the young biographer, who immediately went to open the door, indicating that his rival should leave.
    â€œOh, I don’t think you shall be so eager to see me leave, once you have heard me out,” Tuttle protested, not moving an inch.
    â€œYou have three minutes to interest me, but I suggest you save your argument for our great debate tomorrow, sir.” D’Arcy stayed by the open door, gripping the handle. Smiling, Tuttle threw down his cane and strolled into the center of the room.
    â€œThree minutes, eh?” To D’Arcy’s intense annoyance, Tuttle produced a small gold case and lit up a cigar. “Well, I promise it will be a devastating three minutes.” He exhaled a plume of cigar smoke with an air of smug triumph. “D’Arcy, it was I who hired Harry Jones, the chimney sweep. A wonderful thespian for a working man, do you not agree, and so easy on the eye. . . .” Tuttle watched D’Arcy with the callousness of the hunter studying his prey as it dies in the trap. Shocked, the young biographer let the door handle slip from his grasp and the door swung shut with a bang.
    â€œWhat do you mean, sir?” Ashen-faced, he turned to face his nemesis.
    â€œI mean, Hammer, that the so-called secret journal of Sir Joseph Banks, the ritual to Atanua, was all fabricated by myself and planted as bait. Biography, young man, is a war—a war that you have proven yourself to be unfit to engage in. And if you don’t expose yourself as having fictionalized Banks’s memoir, I shall do it myself. You are ruined.”
    â€œBut it cannot be a fake!”
    â€œI tell you, after studying Banks’s handwriting, and his phraseology, I wrote it myself.”
    â€œBut the ritual works!”
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous. Anyhow, how could you possibly know that?”
    â€œBecause, Tuttle, I executed it myself, with the assistance of three other people—poor Harry and two ladies of the night, one of whom is a regular amour of mine. . . .”
    Behind him the door clicked open, but D’Arcy was too impassioned to notice that a third party had entered the room. Instead he stepped closer to Horace Tuttle.
    â€œI