Patrick shifted slightly, trying to get comfortable on the lumpy mattress. There had been times when he'd slept on much worse, but the feathered bed he'd used for the past five years had spoiled him.
The nurse had administered the pain medication, so his leg was no longer leaving him in constant agony, but the ache was still there. Perhaps it was better to focus on that, than the disquiet of being alone in the hospital room. Patrick never liked silence. It gave him too much time with his thoughts.
He'd had his men stake out every entrance to the building, so he could, theoretically, go to sleep without endangering his own life. Unfortunately, some instincts were harder to overcome than others. How much did he really trust his men? If the bribe were right, would one of them allow his would be killer chance to finish the job? Such contemplations made it rather hard to relax. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and willed the medicine to send him into a peaceful slumber.
"Hello Patrick." Patrick's hand immediately dove beneath his sheets to where he'd hidden his pistol. He tried to blink the blurriness from his vision as he aimed his weapon at the figure in the visitor's chair.
Black bowler hat. Worn green waistcoat. Pocket watch. Fond, but vaguely disapproving expression on his face. It was Michael, exactly as he'd been the last time Patrick had seen him alive.
"That laudanum must have been strong." He'd been warned about the possible side effects of the drug, but he didn't recall seeing spirits as being one of them.
"Interesting way to greet your brother." Patrick realized that he was still pointing the gun at Michael…no not Michael…at the empty chair where he was imagining Michael to be. Still, best to return the gun to its hiding spot before a nurse returned and caught him with it. Strictly speaking patients weren't allowed weapons, but he'd gotten Clarence to smuggle one in.
"You're not my brother. Just a hallucination, brought on by painkillers." It was important for Patrick to state it out loud. He'd enjoyed reading A Christmas Carol as much as anyone, but he did not believe in ghosts.
"Does that mean you're not pleased to see me?" The vision's raised one eyebrow in a manner that was so familiar, so perfectly Michael, that Patrick had to swallow hard to keep tears from welling in his eyes. To see a memory animated before him was a miracle he'd never dreamed he'd witness.
"Nice to have visitors of any sort, I suppose." Patrick frowned. He'd been aiming for nonchalant, but that had come out a bit self-pitying. He didn't need a constant stream of people bothering him while was trying to rest.
"Clarence stopped by."
Patrick almost asked about how Michael knew about Clarence, since he'd been hired after Michael's death. Then he remembered he'd already decided that "Michael" was a product of his own brain. Whatever Patrick knew, Michael would as well.
"He needed me to sign some papers. God forbid my being shot interferes with the running of the accounts." Clarence was a good employee. Loyal, hardworking. Certainly one of Patrick's shrewder hires. Still, it wasn't like they had a friendship. Employer and employee was a difficult line to cross and frankly they didn't have much in common beyond a desire to see Nash and Sons succeed.
"Maggie would be here, if you'd bother telling her what happened. Eamonn, as well I suspect."
The tone of gentle rebuke was all too familiar to Patrick's ears. Whenever Patrick has caused mischief, and he had quite frequently, it was always the same. Why Patrick? Why did you leave a dead mouse in your teacher's desk drawer? Why did you throw Liam O'Toole's fishing pole in the river? Why did you steal the tart off Ma's tray, when she told you to wait until after supper?
"No point in worrying them." He'd gotten to know the witnesses to his brother's murder over the years, and Patrick liked them both. Still, the dark history that bound them all together made him reluctant to form any tighter bonds. He was convinced he'd only survived his brother's death because of Nash and Sons. He poured everything he had into the business, making Michael's dream a reality. Patrick couldn't have done that with regular reminders of what he'd lost.
"True. What are a few bullets in a leg in the grand scheme of things? You have two, after all."
Patrick has a strong impulse to cross his arms over his chest. He was no longer a child attempting to stand his ground with his much older brother. Patrick realized with a jolt that they were the same age now. Good god, seven years had flown quickly. What once seemed an impossibly large chasm was no more.
"The situation is well in hand. I have the best investigator in London working the case." He considered qualifying that statement, with "outside himself", but rejected it. "Michael" was in his head, and Patrick had no illusions about who the superior detective was.
"The lady detective."
There was something odd in Michael's inflection when he used the sobriquet. Perhaps a slight emphasis on the word "lady"? Patrick doubted that even a Michael of his imagination would take issue with a female PI. Their own mother, God rest her, had had a commanding presence that generals would envy.
Perhaps it was the poshness the title implied. Patrick himself had made the mistake of dismissing the "Lady Detective" for that very reason. Women of the middle and upper classes, as a rule, hadn't much in the way of grit. The only ambitions they were encouraged to nurture were of a matrimonial bent.
"She's very good. Tenacious. Ambitious. Clever. Hoodwinked me, more than once." St. Clair had been furious when he'd shown up at the office, ranting about "that woman" making fools of them both. Patrick had agreed to buy up every available copy of the circular just to calm him down. Months later and Patrick was still using the story of his humiliation as tinder for his fires.
"That must have been quite the experience for you."
Patrick looked down, smiling to himself at the memory of surprising her at her home. Eliza had been confused by his smile and words of congratulations. She had a right to be. By her own admission her trick had hurt his relationship with St. Clair, embarrassed him in the eyes of the public, and potentially stuck him with a lawsuit. By rights he should have been furious with her…but he wasn't.
The fact was, he couldn't remember a case where he'd enjoyed himself more. As he'd told her, he loved a challenge, and Eliza Scarlet was nothing if not challenging. Any anger he felt at the outcome was overpowered by the swell of admiration for her and the intense desire to make her a part of his agency.
Patrick, glanced back up, suddenly aware he'd been musing to himself for over a minute. That was rude, even to a figment of his own imagination. Michael did not seem at all perturbed at being ignored. On the contrary, he was smirking at Patrick in a disconcerting manner, as though he were enjoying a joke at Patrick's expense.
"The point is, she'll find out who was behind it." Who had shot him, and why? A difficult question to answer. Someone he'd put away? A source of information he'd squeezed one time too many? A jealous husband? Not, of course, that Patrick would deliberately dally with a married woman. Too much trouble. But it wouldn't be the first time a woman claimed widowhood a bit prematurely. Then, of course, there was always the possibility it was O'Driscoll. He had received no word from Eamonn or Maggie, but ships came in and out of the docks every day. It was possible his brother's killer had avoided them, choosing to have Patrick removed before eliminating the more vulnerable targets.
"Does it trouble you that you've angered so many people, you haven't a clue who wants you dead?"
Patrick looked at Michael sharply, the memory of O'Driscoll coating his tongue with bitterness.
"You're a fine one to talk." An old anger blossomed in Patrick's chest as he returned to that night in his mind. Michael had gone to the docks alone that night, rather than wait for Patrick. If Patrick had ever done something so foolish, Michael would have tanned his hide.
"That's unfair."
"You should have taken me with you." They were supposed to stick together. That was the deal they'd made. Michael, for the first time in his life, had broken his word, and he'd left Patrick all alone.
"You weren't there when the tip came in."
A fact continued to haunt Patrick to this day. He hadn't been there. He'd been down at the tavern drinking and flirting with lasses.
"We'd worked for two weeks straight on the case for next to nothing. I needed a break!" The words felt hollow, even as he said them. Selfish. As hard as Patrick worked, Michael had worked double. He never complained either. He had been so good. He'd always been so good. Patrick sometimes wondered if his being born was the universe balancing things out.
"I never said you didn't. I told you to go, remember?"
Of course he did. Michael had forever been Patrick's greatest advocate. Smallpox took both their parents when Patrick was only 8 years old. Michael had kept them both housed, fed, and clothed, working odd jobs until he was old enough to join the Royal Irish Constabulary. When Patrick was old enough Michael had given him a recommendation. Patrick had been drummed out for insubordination, and Michael had immediately resigned his post. He'd gotten them passage to London and worked menial jobs until they'd saved enough to open Nash & Sons.
"You should have come with me." Just once, couldn't Michael have been selfish? Ignored responsibility for a single evening?
"I couldn't. I'd made a promise." Patrick briefly closed his eyes. He remembered the look on the faces of Maggie's family, desperate for their daughter's return. Did he really blame Michael for not wanting to waste time tracking Patrick down? No. Not with Maggie's life on the line. In his heart of hearts, he knew where the blame truly lay.
"You and your honesty."
"You and your codology."
Their old refrain. He remembered returning to their very first office with a small sign engraved "Nash and Sons." When Michael had pointed out neither of them actually HAD sons, Patrick had explained that they were the "Sons." The name implied that business was inherited, with a legacy of success, rather than an upstart agency. Michael had shaken his head in exasperation, but allowed Patrick's his way. Patrick had often joked that if it bothered him so much, he could find himself a wife and have some children. Michael had always smiled and said, "Or you could." Then they'd both laugh at the likelihood of that happening.
"You'll be pleased to know I have been a bit more truthful of late." The look on Michael's face was skeptical.
"Oh really?"
"Miss Scarlett. I offered her a fair rate for referring cases to her, rather than just taking my finder's fee off the top."
Today had actually been something of a success, bullets in his leg notwithstanding. His months of careful planning had paid off. Sending cases her way. Paying Detective Phelps for news regarding Inspector Wellington. He'd waited for the perfect moment, then struck.
At first his proposal had not had the warmest of receptions, but in the end she had capitulated. Not totally, of course. Not yet. And naturally she'd managed to rest a small victory of her own from the encounter. Still, being out an extra month's pay was more than worth the exhilaration that came with going toe to toe with a worthy opponent.
"A noble gesture, I am sure. Not in the least self-serving." Patrick rolled his eyes at the rebuke.
"I didn't grow our business to what it is today by being altruistic. Besides, Eliza despises charity. I would have mortally wounded her pride."
Her disgruntled tone when she decried needing his help told him everything he needed to know on that score. She could accept a business exchange, but under no circumstances did she want his pity. She was a unique woman, who was more offended by chivalry than chicanery.
"Eliza?" Patrick realized that he'd unintentionally used her first name. Odd, that.
"I meant Miss Scarlett. A slip of the tongue."
"That would be a first." Michael wasn't wrong. Patrick's words were his best weapons and he usually wielded them with great care. Patrick shook his head and attempted to shrug it off.
"I am, as I mentioned, on rather strong medication."
Michael made a non-committal sound and rose.
"Perhaps it's best I leave you to rest then." He turned toward the door, as though he were a flesh and blood visitor, not a phantom of Patrick's mind. Phantom or no though, Patrick wasn't quite ready for him to disappear.
"Michael?" His brother paused and glanced back at him, "Why now? After all these years, why am I dreaming of you now?"
Michael scratched his beard.
"I thought you said it was the laudenum. That I'm just in your imagination." Patrick supposed Michael had a point. Any answer Michael gave would ultimately come from himself. Still, he wanted a response.
"I'm curious about what I'd imagine you to say." That same mysterious smile from earlier returned to his brother's face.
"You're the detective. Has something changed in your life lately? Something you'd want to talk to me about? Or someone?" Patrick's eyes widened as Michael's implication suddenly dawned on him. Eliza Scarlet. Somehow she had triggered this…encounter.
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Michael. What exactly was he saying? That he fancied her? She was strong and clever and funny and pretty and a man would be mad not to be drawn toward that. And yes, she had a disturbing tendency to make him want to be more fair and honest, at least with her. All that though, was besides the point.
His affairs with women were uncomplicated things. He was interested in experienced women who enjoyed occasional companionship, but didn't want the burden of a husband. That suited him perfectly. He didn't have time for anything else. Besides, it was clear to anyone with eyes she had her heart set on Inspector William Wellington. Not that the fool deserved her, but that wasn't the main issue either. The issue was that she was going to be an excellent asset to his business, and he would never do anything to compromise that. Nash and Sons came first. Always.
Though he had to admit, it had been nice, when he'd opened his eyes and found that she'd stayed with him from his transportation to the hospital through the surgery. It was nice to have someone who cared, at least a little. Feck.
Patrick glared up at his brother.
"Eejit." Since when had Michael been the one to stir up unnecessary trouble? That was Patrick's role and he'd thank his brother to remember it. The corners of Michaels' lips tilted up at the insult.
"According to you, you're only talking to yourself. Now, get some sleep." Patrick's eyelids suddenly felt impossibly heavy and began to close. Fighting against his stupor, he managed to get out the words he hadn't been able to say all those years ago.
"Good bye, Michael."
"Good night, Patrick."