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The streets were broad and clean in Westminster, where the great business of Empire sprawled across dozens of buildings, some grand and some gaudy and some merely functional. In and around them were hundreds of men and women each busy about their appointed tasks, ordering armies or moving piles of money or keeping those streets so implausibly pristine.
In a nondescript and monochromatic building somewhere off of Whitehall, populated by an assortment of nondescript and monochromatic men, the business ticked quietly on — disturbed by one incongruous presence.
"I say, Da Silva, is that you?"
"Can you doubt it? How mortifying, I thought I quite stood alone in these hallowed halls," Daniel da Silva drawled. "Sui generis, you know."
Indeed, Daniel wore close-cut trousers and coat over a vest in a green-and-gold paisley that complemented his gold watch-chain and studs and green buttonhole charmingly, and had elicited visible winces from several relicts of the Foreign Office. He expected he rather stood out. Well, he didn't arrive at the Private Bureau hoping to fit in.
Bevan grinned. "I wasn't expecting you, is all. Is there anything particularly scandalous in the offing? You don't much lurk about, otherwise."
Bevan was one of the Private Bureau's more tolerable fixtures, a scholar of some juridical ilk, short of stature and sunny of disposition. Daniel favoured him with a languid wave. "Only under the most exigent of circumstances. You know how Whitehall saps at my soul, dear fellow," which was to say that the office offered little in the way of society and the atmosphere would send any self respecting poet into a bottle or over a bridge.
Daniel was a special recruit, not a bureaucrat or a career government man. He came when he was called and went where he was ordered, and his presence was neither requested nor required in the interim. Except on special occasions.
"I've a new partner, you see. One Archibald Curtis, late of His Majesty's Army. Have you met him?"
"Curtis? Really? Ah, I mean to say—"
"Y-e-ess. Terribly martial, isn't he? But you know, the office has been so distressingly drab of late, so it's nice to bring in a bit of visual interest, hmm?"
Curtis' emergence from some dim office spared Bevan from answering that sally.
"Da Silva! Awfully good to see you. They've been cramming my head so full of protocols and procedures it feels like revision week. Are you here to rescue me?"
"Alas, I could wish for nothing more than to, ah, carry you away across the hills," Daniel said, "but I've been summoned as well. I dare say Sir Maurice wants to discuss the terms of our association. Shall we join him for a little coze a trois?"
Daniel almost missed the stutter of Curtis' jaw before he carried on, genial as ever. "You do go on! Very well then, once more into the breach."
Bevan caught at Daniel's coat sleeve as Archie marched onwards. "Er, you know he's Vaizey's nephew, don't you?"
Dear Bevan. Daniel gave him a slow smile. "But fortunately there is so very little family resemblance," he said, and went swaying on his way.
Their chat with Sir Maurice, which lasted some three quarters of an hour and featured Vaizey's ungroomed eyebrows at their most expressive, concluded with an order to get out of his office and, more specifically, for Daniel to introduce Curtis around to any of the Private Bureau habitues it might prove necessary for him to know. This task Daniel embarked on with gusto.
"Mr. Fitzwallace! Have you met my new partner, Archie Curtis?" Major Fitzwallace, who had left the army but still preferred the military form of address, forewent his usual scowl at Daniel to greet Archie with all the gruff bonhomie of a fellow soldier. His handshake, Daniel noted, was unhesitating.
"Captain Curtis. Very pleased to have you with us."
"Very pleased to be here, sir."
"And you're partnering da Silva, eh? How long shall we expect that to last, da Silva?"
Daniel arched a brow. "Dear sir, surely you don't intend to cast aspersions on the good captain's endurance? I had heard that you military gentlemen were quite endowed with stamina for the long march."
Curtis briefly assumed an expression one might expect of a mounted gazelle on a famous explorer's wall: glassy-eyed, hunted, and distinctly stuffed.
Fitzwallace shot him a speaking look. "Well, if he's not run you off yet, I dare say you'll do. Try to keep him alive, won't you?"
"Why Major," Daniel said rapturously, "I didn't know you cared."
"I'll do my level best," said Curtis, recovering himself.
"Now, have you met Merton and that lot?"
"No, sir."
Merton and Bedi and Rochester were duly rousted out of whatever nest of paperwork they were currently digesting, and another round of amiable introductions took place. Daniel let Fitzwallace take the lead, affecting a slightly abstracted air. Curtis, friendly and courteous golden lad that he was, would have no difficulty amassing good will.
Sure enough, quite the convivial little gathering soon overran the office.
"And you'll be working closely with Da Silva, will you?" Cannon asked, with undisguised scepticism.
"Very closely?" Asked Roberts, the contumelious shitstain.
"Oh, I do hope so," Daniel purred.
Curtis winced slightly, but carried on gamely enough. "Well we've been through a couple scraps together already, and Sir Maurice thinks I may be able to do da Silva some good."
"That shambles in the North, you mean?" Cannon asked.
"And its aftermath, yes," Curtis replied coolly.
"That was rather a hash, wasn't it? So now Vaizey thinks da Silva needs a duenna?" Roberts put in.
Curtis visibly bristled, but Daniel re-entered the lists before he could respond.
"Does that make me the belle of the ball?" He drawled. "Curtis does make a very fine dragon, but Roberts, dear boy, it's unbecoming to be jealous."
"I'm not — the blazes do you mean, jealous —"
"You've not had an assignment in the field for some time, I believe? Nothing requiring the soldierly touch. Why, what should I mean?"
"I can hold my own just fine in the field," Roberts snapped, which was really too good an opening to let pass, but Curtis was giving him a particularly quelling look, and Daniel refrained.
"I dare say," Daniel said, unsubtly dismissing Roberts from his attention and turning a lingering look on Curtis. "Come along, mon chéri, don't you have a job to do guarding my virtue?"
He only saw Curtis' flinch because he was looking for it.
"Daniel, if I could have a word?"
"So very serious, my dear!" Daniel said lightly, and wondered whether he should pour himself a gin. And to think, he had cherished plans for Archie's visit to Bloomsbury. "What is it you wish to speak about?"
"When we're at Whitehall," Archie began, somewhat haltingly. "I know it's a bit awkward, with all the fellows about, and Sir Maurice of course."
"I must admit, it's a novel experience for me, hiding an affaire under the very nose of the relations. Should I be on the lookout for pots of basil?"
"That's just it. When we're at Whitehall, and you drop all those, ah, colourful pet names, or make vulgar comments—"
"Suggestive, please."
"Either way. I don't want them to notice anything untoward."
"My dear fellow, they'd notice more if I didn't behave a bit untoward." An unexpected defensiveness, in fact, could be quite fatal, but Daniel did not tax Archie with that observation. "They're quite used to it from me."
"Yes, but I'm not."
That stung. Daniel trusted his face did not reveal how much.
"Oh dear, have I made you uncomfortable?" He asked with elaborate courtesy.
"No, but, well, it's like you said, isn't it? About the chap in the same mansion, with the basil."
Daniel blinked.
"Archie, beloved, I cannot be held responsible for the Romantics at their most sentimental."
"I've no wish to play the fool in front of my uncles, that's all."
"No, no, that's entirely my job," Daniel said, a bit too sharply.
Archie looked like he would rather be anywhere else, possibly up to and including fighting Boers, but that was his bad luck.
"I'm making a mull of this. You can speak how you want, of course."
Of course, which sounded just like the prelude to every admonishment Daniel had ever heard from a lover, and sure enough—
"But I know I'm not up to the mark on how to be getting on with these things, so I'm just asking for some moderation, you see? With the pet names and the, er, witticisms, and such."
Archie looked at him all earnest and hopeful, entirely like a man making a perfectly reasonable request.
Archie, who had once told Daniel he could speak like an officer if he chose, who moved effortlessly through a world of baronets and bluff ex-soldiers and conscientious bureaucrats and all those pleasant English chaps. A world where an East End Jew only masqueraded.
He could moderate his manner for Archie, was the devil of it. For Archie, he might even consider it.
And what lay at the end of that particular primrose path of dalliance? Mutual resentment, because it didn't matter if Daniel spoke like an officer or a poet or the soberest lackjoy in Lincoln's Inn, if he dressed like a Tory MP and modelled his toilette on Sir Maurice. He was not and would never be a gentleman.
Curtis would realize that soon enough.
Daniel mustered a smile and turned back round. "I'll try to restrain myself, my dear."
"Thank you, Daniel."
Daniel awoke with a harrowing morning head and the decided intention to make it everyone else's problem. He was expected back at Whitehall today, as Archie continued his primer in the clandestine arts, and that affliction too he had no desire to bear with stoicism.
He dressed with grim determination and meticulous care, and very little regard for punctuality. He adopted his most languid movements walking into Whitehall, which was very well because he wasn't sure he could support anything more energetic until he had the benefit of six cups of coffee or at least one pint of stout.
"Da Silva!" Fitzwallace snapped when Daniel made his entrance. "What time do you call this?"
Daniel made a show of consulting his pocket watch.
"Dear sir, you must forgive me, I barely slept a wink last night."
Fitzwallace harrumphed majestically. "Well it's no concern of mine if you choose to laze the morning away in bed—"
"Oh no, it was quite strenuous."
Fitzwallace narrowed his eyes, first at Daniel and then at everyone else in snickering range, but visibly curtailed his lecture rather than risk learning any more about Daniel's private life.
"Take Curtis and show him the records room," he ordered.
"Right you are, Major. Come along, Curtis, I'll show you all the secluded corners."
Daniel continued his campaign by flirting lightly with Bevan, offering a few uncensored opinions of Roberts' work in terms just barely the right side of professional critique, and suggesting delicately that Cannon suffered from a French disease.
Curtis started out by shooting him perplexed looks, then pointed ones. At some point he resorted to a decidedly military mien, a lithoid expression that evoked a soldier on parade or quite an expensive butler.
Daniel prided himself on his finely tuned sense of precisely how far he could press his luck. But it was just possible that his calculations were awry.
"Will you be quiet for a moment, da Silva?"
"Oh, apologies, Roberts, do you need me to slow down for you?"
"I need you to shut up, you bloody encroaching Mary Ann!"
"Shan't. What will Curtis think of the Private Bureau if he can't even get some intelligent conversation?"
"I don't care how you go panting after Curtis," Roberts hissed, but Curtis' attention had already swung their way, along with much of the room's.
"Gentlemen," Curtis said, fixing both of them equally with a frankly obnoxious commanding officer sort of stare.
"Captain," Daniel replied.
"I hope you've a thick skin, Curtis," Roberts bit out. "If you can stomach this you're a better man than I."
"Ah, damn with faint praise," da Silva murmured.
"If you take my advice—"
"I beg you won't, lambkin, we're trying to make a half-decent agent out of you."
"Da Silva, I say—"
"Will you shut your mouth, you mincing—"
"Now, Roberts—"
"Oh, good afternoon, Sir Maurice!"
Roberts and Curtis straightened with nearly audible alacrity. Vaizey's eyebrows bowed in magnificent condemnation. His glare swept all parties, but landed firmly on Daniel.
"Da Silva. What the blazes are you up to now?"
"Merely an exchange of views, sir."
Curtis actually opened his mouth, and closed it again with a flat look in Daniel's direction.
Vaizey looked unimpressed.
"Well take your views elsewhere, you're not fit for company. Roberts, I need a word about the Dayton case. Curtis, you and da Silva are done for the day. You may remove yourselves from the office."
"Sir—"
"You're excused, Curtis."
"Yes, sir," Curtis said woodenly.
They proceeded back to Daniel's rooms in near silence, which lasted until Daniel closed the door firmly behind them and said "Well I think that went rather well."
Curtis gave him a long, unamused look. "You did say you would try to restrain yourself."
Daniel gave his most arch, insinuating, and patently untrustworthy smile. "Did I indeed?"
"You know you did. Look, I gather it's a great bore for you, but I'm just asking for bit of grace," Archie said. "And I don't think it's that unreasonable a request."
Daniel sat heavily at his desk, without inviting Curtis to do the same. "And what happened to all your brave words about not hiding?"
"It's not hiding, damn it, it's simple…it's only…"
"You knew exactly who you were dealing with when you conducted your little military offensive on my rooms."
"Well yes, of course, but you knew that I'm still learning how to get on with all this. And…and you said we'd be careful!"
"I also said you were free to disentangle yourself at any time," Daniel snapped, and braced for the blow.
Curtis waved one hand, infuriatingly dismissive. "Oh, don't talk nonsense." Daniel was ready to respond to that with acid, but Archie bowled on without giving him the chance. "I'm just not very good at the subterfuge or the playacting yet."
"Of course. One wouldn't expect that low deception of an Englishman and a Blue," Daniel bit off tonelessly.
"I suppose they don't. But just imagine if that toad Cannon heard me calling you sweetheart…"
Daniel blinked.
"…or saying something off-colour because I can't mind my blasted mouth—"
"Curtis."
"—But I am making an effort. I'll make a secret agent yet, and if you could refrain from making it about three times more of a to do than necessary—"
"Curtis. Archie. You have a lowering habit of forcing me into straightforwardness and sincerity, which is downright embarrassing for a man of my profession."
"Which one?" Archie asked drolly.
"Both. Now, let me see if I have this right: you don't want me dropping endearments and double entendres because you might respond in kind?"
Archie shuffled, caught implausibly between doughty captain and abashed schoolboy.
"I dare say they're all accustomed to it from you," you mincing, velvet-bedecked pansy, Daniel mentally glossed, "but I just have an absurd vision of coming out with a dear heart or darling or some such nonsense, or, or responding to one of your appalling quips with something dreadful about your mouth — a dreadful rejoinder about your entirely marvellous mouth, I mean — and then turning around to see the look on my uncle's face once I did."
Archie's countenance bore all the chagrin one could possibly wish of a good stiff-lipped English chap forced to discuss the finer feelings in broad daylight. Daniel attempted to keep his own face serious and sober. He was not at all confident in his success.
"So I oughtn't call you my daffodilly and my lilac and my lily at work, because who knows what sweet nothings might come of it?"
"I would prefer that you did not," said Archie with a long-suffering look. "Anyway, that's not the sort of thing you'd say at all, with all that oh dainty duck, oh dear rot."
"It is precisely the sort of thing I'd say. I may say it to Fitzwallace tomorrow."
"You know what I mean. It's not what you'd say if you meant it and weren't just trying to get everyone's backs up. Like how you go on about the muse and the stars and the daffodils, but when you write poetry it's all opaque and twisty and and full of odd, unsettling pictures."
Utterly ridiculous. Daniel had withstood the attentions of any number of minor literary critics, conniving poetical aspirants, and on a few memorable occasions drunken music hall connoisseurs, and none had the peripatetic effect on his internal organs of one semi-literate soldier. He wanted to solicit further opinions. He wanted to distract Archie all together. With iron resolution, he returned to the matter at hand.
"So your objections to my…." Daniel waved an expressive hand.
"Blatant provocation?"
"Mode of address. It's truly that you fear saying something revealing?"
"I don't care what they think, for the most part, but you did say we'd be careful. You've got nerves of ruddy steel, you know, talking that way to my uncle." Archie reached for him, wrapping one of Daniel's hands up in his own larger ones. "When I've got the lay of the land I'll know better how to go on."
"I see. Yes, I believe I do."
Archie smiled at him. "You thought I didn't like the way you talk at the office? Well, it's beyond outrageous. You flutter, and you never say quite what you mean, except when you do say something shocking, and I'm glad no one's tried to plant you a facer yet. You and your vicious tongue."
"You said you like my vicious tongue."
"I love your vicious tongue, and I'd be very pleased to prove it to you."
"Why, Captain Curtis, was that an ungentlemanly innuendo?"
"I meant it more in the way of an invitation."
"What would Cannon or Fitzwallace say?"
Archie tugged at Daniel, pulling him bodily up from his chair and into his arms. "They're not here," he said, and set about stopping Daniel's talk in a much more effective manner.
"How are you getting along with Curtis?" Asked Bevan.
"Well he's not one of Nature's born intelligencers, but I dare say I can provide the intelligence and Curtis brings, ah, other assets. He's coming along just fine."
"You like him."
Daniel pressed a hand to his chest. "Alas! I am but a young palmer in love's eye."
"Do be serious, da Silva. Do you like him? Because I know you've not had the best time of it before and I know you said you wouldn't be partnered again, but if you could not drive this one off…"
"You know, Bevan, I really don't think I shall. I'll admit I had some qualms, but Curtis is proving very tolerable, considering."
Bevan grinned. "I'm glad to hear that. If half the stories that make it around the office are true, you need a guardian angel to watch your back, eh?"
Daniel raised a brow. "Bevan, my poppet, I didn't suspect you of such whimsey. Curtis! Curtis, come hear the sobriquet dear Bevan has bestowed on you…"
Archie duly came over, looking inquisitive, and slightly wary, and as tall and golden and heartening as ever he did. "Bevan? Da Silva?"
"Curtis, my angel — no, no, this one is not my fault…"