Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray
- The Looking Glass War, John le Carré
Roxanne Morton - the Honourable Miss, pardon you - returns to school after the Christmas hols with half a box of sticking plasters on her fingers and a butterfly knife in her pocket.
It was a birthday present from her godfather, given on Boxing Day because he was going to be out of the country for New Year's Eve. Uncle Alastair always gives interesting presents, not only under the tree but also after dinner, when Mum and Dad aren't looking. She's absolutely delighted with it.
She's secretly a little more delighted with the soft blonde highlights her mother surprised her with, but it wouldn't do to admit to things like that. Roxy's always been the tomboy of the family, denouncing such girly things as getting her hair done at Mum's elegant salon, but she's very glad to have the red in her hair toned down by some nice honey blonde.
Cheltenham Ladies' College is not the sort of school where one finds many girls carrying a butterfly knife in their pocket, but Roxy has always prided herself on being a little different. Not so odd that she doesn't have friends, of course - she's not weird - but enough to stand out among all the nice girls and the nasty girls and the sporty girls and the soft girls. She's always fancied herself as, well, a cool girl, and the red hair was really cramping her style.
Mercifully, Mum seemed to understand that, and also supplied her with cool new black-framed Ray-Ban sunglasses to go with her cool new hair. Dad had been distraught when she'd come home as blonde as every other Morton girl, and declared himself heartbroken over Strawberry Shortcake's disappearance.
"Goodness," Fritz says, lolling leggily all over her bed. "Is that a knife, Roxy?"
"Either that or a very elaborate toothpick, Fritz," Roxy says, flicking the knife closed. Annabelle's one of those easily shocked types, off the hockey pitch, which had very much surprised Roxy once she realised that Fritz was one of those Frittons. A Miss Camilla sort of Fritton. Knowing Miss Camilla, Roxy never stops being surprised when Annabelle is nervous around knives, even little ones.
"Ugh," Verity says, because Verity can't talk without grunting her way toward speech first. "Who brings a knife to school? I think I might report you, Morton."
"I'm shocked, Thwaites," Roxy says, tucking her knife into the gore of her bra. "I didn't know you could think."
The knife draws all kinds of funny looks, though. Far more than Roxy anticipated, and far more than any of her other toys and fancies have ever drawn. Perhaps it's because this one is unquestionably dangerous - the knuckledusters looked like they might have come off a McQueen clutch, and the weighted hair sticks for throwing had been lacquered so prettily that even Fritz had liked them.
"I don't see what the big deal is," Roxy says to Genevieve, who sometimes goes by Hoover on account of her being a Dyson. "It's not like I'm throwing it at people."
Gen's a European champion hammer thrower, under-20, and she has the shoulders of a Highland cow. She's probably the only thing in the world Verity Thwaites is afraid of, which is hilarious since Gen's a great chicken.
"You look like you might, see," Gen says, canting one big pink thigh up across Dora Montgomery-Waldegrave's legs. "You've got mad eyes, Roxy. Everyone knows that."
"And you're a heptathlete," Dora points out, as if she isn't a marathon runner with her eye on all those nasty ultramarathon records. "That frightens people."
Roxy considers all of this, and then adds in the fact that they're sitting on the edge of the hockey pitch waiting for training to start-
"The fencing doesn't help," Gen adds. "Or signing up for that decathlon in August."
"Or oh, I'm so sorry Miss Hooper, I didn't think it would actually produce explosives," Dora agrees, in a distressingly accurate impression of Roxy's special voice for putting teachers off her scent. She knew damned well that she'd be able to make explosives in the chem lab, but she wasn't about to admit that. "That did unnerve a few people, I have to say."
So maybe Roxy can understand why some of her classmates aren't huge fans of the combination of her and very pointy things. She just doesn't understand why they have to cause such a fuss. Her sisters would never be so wet.
Roxy is one of eight - three older, an Irish twin, and three younger. She and Rupert have always been joined at the hip, closer than anyone except the actual twins, which is why Rupert is the one blinking up at her from the mat.
"Fuck me, Rox," he says. "Wherever did you learn that?"
"Al found me a trainer," Roxy says. "C'mon, Rupes, it can't be that surprising."
Rupert takes the hand she holds out to him, shaking his head, and she heaves all seventeen stone of him upright. Dad had questioned the wisdom of installing a boxing ring in the gym, but once they'd all started kicking the shit out of one another he'd given in and put down the canvas.
"You tossed me over your shoulder as if I'm not the better part of a foot taller than you," he points out evenly, stretching his left arm across his chest. "I'm heavy, Rox, and I'm damned good at grounding myself, but you made it look easy. What kind of trainer did Al find for you? How do you even have time ?"
"I make time. I'm highly organised."
"Mum organises people for a living, Rox, and even she can't pull a spare hour out of her arse. What have you cut to make time for this?"
Roxy doesn't cut things. She rejigs her schedule and makes room for everything, and yes, maybe her schedule is a little more full than most people could handle, but she's trained herself into a very effective meditation before bed that lets her drop off to sleep as soon as her head hits the pillow, every night. It works, more or less.
Alright, sometimes less. Her caffeine intake has reached medicinal levels, which might have stunted her growth a little, but it means she never feels as tired as everyone keeps telling her she should.
"I have a time-turner," she says, which makes Rupes snort. "I'm being serious, I've cut nothing, Rupes - I have it under control."
"Alright, Hermione," he says. "But Harry's upstairs, let's see if he can make sense of your adding a fucking cage-fighter to your rotation."
"Oh, Rupes, no-"
Harry, their oldest and ostensibly wisest brother, is the single most sensible living Morton. He'll judge her silly if he thinks she's taking on too much, and then he'll tell Dad.
Dad will get upset.
"Al keeps giving you these ridiculous Christmas and birthday presents," Rupes says, tossing her a bottle of water. "The knives and the Arabic lessons and I don't want to know what else - and it's not just him. I saw what Dog and Les gave you, Roxy. Be glad Mum and Dad didn't."
Dog and Les gave her a revolver for Christmas, but she's known for years how to shoot. That isn't odd in and of itself, of course - Grandfather let them all have a go on the shotgun while they were out after pheasants when they were ten or eleven, and with six foreign ambassadors among all the aunts and uncles, there isn't a Morton grandchild who can't use a handgun in dire necessity. They all know how to handle themselves, because one never knows when an ambassadorial cortege is going to be attacked by dissidents.
Roxy's bloody good with a gun far beyond necessity and defence, and she's trained with more than just a shotgun and a handgun. Alastair has made certain of that.
"Al is my godfather," Roxy points out as they come up into the mudroom from the gym. "And he's the only one in the family without kids - he's just spoiling me."
Rupes' godfather is Uncle Samuel, who's been in Kazakhstan for the past three years as part of the diplomatic mission, so he gets money in an envelope for Christmas and birthdays. Alastair spends an awful lot of time in an airplane but always makes sure to hand-deliver Roxy's presents, even if it's just a new set of classes to add to her schedule.
"Who's spoiled?"
Harry, who is even taller than Rupes but not as massive through the shoulders, is standing in one wellington boot and a pair of hideous hand-knitted socks. Dad discovered a great enthusiasm for knitting last winter, and while he's not discovered any skill to go with his enjoyment, he's proved shockingly prolific. All eight of them got hats, scarves, fingerless mittens, and socks that come up above their riding boots for Christmas, and Mum got an entire shawl. All of them are hideous, but they're warm as anything and the socks are a treat for breaking in new boots, so they're all getting plenty of use.
Harry's are pink because they were supposed to be Giselle's but Dad got the number of stitches wrong and Gee could've fit both feet into one sock by the time he was done.
"Rox, of course," Rupes says, offering Harry a hand so he doesn't overbalance while pulling off his other boot. "I was just thinking that we ought to deflate her head a bit."
"Hard, when she's tossing you over her shoulder like a baby being burped," Harry points out. "I was spying - lovely form, Rox. Bit concerned that my sixteen-year-old sister has such good form, but lovely all the same."
Harry is in the SAS, so his saying her form is good means an awful lot more than Rupert's astonishment.
"Get fucked, Harry," Rupes says with great feeling. "Not my fault Alastair sends her shady tutors every year to train her up as the next Mata Hari."
"Excuse you!" Roxy snaps, which makes him cower. Rupes is just short of nine months younger than her and well clear of nine inches taller than her, but he still asks "how high?" when she says jump. "Just because rugby takes up every waking moment of your life does not mean that the rest of us must be so bloody single-minded!"
"Hear, hear," says Ariette, sticking her head around the door from the kitchen and scaring the life out of all of them. "Come on, shitheads, Dad's made hot pot just because Hazza's home."
Harry throws his stinky pink hat at Ariette, and she only just manages to dodge because she's well used to him.
"All I'm saying, Rox," Rupert says, and she could smack him, she really could, for not letting this go around Dad. Dad frets terribly about all of them, but Roxy's admittedly bulging schedule drives him into absolute conniptions - they've a tacit agreement to just never mention it, which has been working beautifully so far. "You need an hour a week to sit down and talk about- Well, whatever you and your odd bunch talk about."
"What's all this?" Dad asks, pushing Harry firmly into place at the head of the big tile-top table in the kitchen. It's got old-fashioned low ceilings and an awful lot of brickwork, and Roxy knows that Verity Thwaites' mother shelled out an absolute fortune to get her kitchen to look something similar.
New money. No class.
"Rupes compared me to Mata Hari, Dad," Roxy whines, looping her arms tight around Dad's elbow and batting her lashes up at him. "Tell him off for being mean? Please?"
"I might, if I didn't think you more than capable of being twice as mean in return, Roxanne," Dad says. "Be kind to your sister, Rupert, and do not attempt to avenge your honour, Roxanne. Now everyone bloody well sit down so we can eat."
"No Mum?" Harry asks, even though he doesn't really need to. If Mum were here, they'd be eating upstairs, and even Harry's presence wouldn't allow for Dad's home-made Hong Kong hot pot. She's a good deal more particular than Dad is - Grandmother Morton likes to say that it's because Granddad Keating is only a baron, and so they're insecure in their wealth and cling to the trappings thereof. Since Grandmother's a terrible snob Roxy thinks it has more to do with Mum being claustrophobic, and also Dad's spotty history of seasoning and spicing anything he cooks correctly.
Mercifully, he didn't mix up his five spice and his allspice this evening.
"No Mum, and no more girls," Dad sighs, settling in at Harry's right. "The others are upstairs somewhere, I did shout up-"
A rumbling down the kitchen stairs heralds the arrival of the twins, and they tumble through the door as if this is entirely normal. Unfortunately, it is.
"I will take your riding gear if I find you roughhousing in the house again, gentlemen," Dad says, passing a bowl along the table to Roxy. "You have been warned."
The twins are only ten, but they've honed boisterous silliness into a fine art such that Grandfather won't allow them into any of the good rooms at Hoxley unsupervised. Edward and Augustus - Teddy and Gus, if anyone asks - take their places between Ariette and Rupes, and shut up the moment food is put in front of them.
It's still strange to not have Gee and Cassie with them, but Gee's always in London for rehearsals, and Cassie moved out as soon as she had her A-Levels, with Grandmother's backing. Mum and Dad hadn't approved of her wanting to work in fashion, even if it has turned out well.
"Why were you likening your sister to the Kaiser's courtesan, Rupert?" Dad asks. "Oh, Augustus, the chilli flakes if you don't mind."
Rupes sighs heavily over the whizz of the chilli shaker down the table.
"She's doing mixed martial arts now, Papa," he grumbles, slumping dramatically and earning himself a sharp kick in the ankle from Roxy under the table. "Honestly, Dad, I think she's trying to become James Bond. Jane Bond. I think she should settle down a bit."
"Good thing no one asked you, Rupes," Ariette says, scathingly. It's even stranger have Retty at home than it is Harry, because she's been off with MSF from the moment they'd take her, and she doesn't come home much.
Dad, who usually causes a mess because he never stops moving during dinner, has gone very still.
"Henry," he says to Harry, "please make sure your brothers and sisters finish their dinner."
He turns to Roxy then, and she can't remember ever seeing him quite so angry. He's gone all pale around the mouth, the same way she goes when her temper is up, and his eyes are pink - Ariette is an angry cryer too.
"Roxanne," he says. "Your diary, my dear. If you'd be so good."
Roxy could kill Rupes, even if it's probably a good idea to leave a bit more time for studying coming up to her A-Levels.
It's only a long while later - years later, when there's no one but Dad and her grandparents who call her Roxanne but she's sort of adopted Eggsy as a brother to the point where he calls her Rox - that she realises quite why Dad was so angry about the fight training.
About all of it. The guns and the knives and the martial arts and the extreme athletics and the languages, all eight of them, and the lockpicking and the codebreaking and all the other little things Alastair bought her lessons for or showed her during one of Grandmother's boring parties.
Alastair Morton, alias Percival, is going to get the kicking of a lifetime next time Roxy sees him. Roxy likes to think of herself as above average in the brain stakes, but she never copped to being groomed by her favourite uncle.
Dad did, but he knew her well enough to know that forcing the issue would only push her closer to Al. God, she owes him whiskey. Really, really, good whiskey, and maybe some absolutely terrible rum.
Still, wouldn't do to let the others, even Eggsy, know how absolutely furious she is just now, so she's taken herself off down to the gym and is letting loose on a sandbag. She knows she's being watched, because there are cameras everywhere and none of them is unattended, but she's still taken aback when dishy Merlin's low voice echoes from near the door.
"He didn't mean any harm," Merlin says, and when she looks over her shoulder he's watching her curiously, as if fascinated by how she might react.
"Just because he didn't mean harm doesn't mean he didn't do harm," she says, sounding more like Mum than she ever has in her life. "Try to talk him out of it, did you?"
"Tried to convince him to be a bit more upfront about it, maybe," Merlin says, drawing close with his hands in his pockets. "Anyone who's ever met a Morton knows that telling them no just makes them more determined."
There's a no fraternising rule, and it's only made Merlin dishier, so she supposes he must be right.