He refused to accept he’d been wrong. Cheveley had insulted Kim grossly in words, and Will as much with his indifference. He’d been at the coroner’s inquest, had sat there while Will gave evidence with his arm in a sling, yet he hadn’t even remembered his face. To Sir Alan Cheveley, Johnnie’s death was a tragedy which made Kim’s act an offence, and the fact that he’d tried to kill Will simply didn’t matter.

Will was tired of his life not mattering. It was bad enough to be a twig thrown onto the raging bonfire of the war; even worse when the disdain for his existence was up close and personal. And he was tired of seeing Kim flinch at words of scorn, no matter how tiny he managed to make the motion, and he’d stroked his hair as he shuddered out his horror at the killing, and if Sir Alan fucking Cheveley showed his face on the street now, Will would batter it all over again.

So no, he wasn’t sorry he’d spoken out. Some things could not stand.

But he had buggered up, all the same. Harry Mitra had been furious, which was fair because he’d stuck his neck out for Kim and only asked they’d be discreet, and starting a fight in the main hall was anything but. Knowle had arrived, drawn by the noise, and gone purple. They’d been escorted off the premises with the clipped information that any attempt to return would lead to the police being called. If he’d wanted to spare Kim humiliation, he’d gone about it a bloody stupid way. And if that made Kim’s work here harder...

Kim’s work.

That raised a question Will wanted answering. Kim hadn’t actually said what he’d wanted to achieve at the Symposium until they’d argued, and then it had slipped out. The faint possibility that I might be able to prevent Chingford swinging. If he planned to help his murdering brother get away with it—

Surely not. That would be low even by his flexible morality. And if Will was meant to help with that, he bloody well ought to have been told about it first.

The thought set off a deep and unpleasantly familiar anger. Kim had promised not to lie to him any more, whether by words or omission, but a secret plan to get a murderer off was exactly the kind of weasel deception he specialised in. It was all too plausible, and Will didn’t want to believe it.

Kim couldn’t be doing this to him, not again. He’d promised, and that promise had meant something to them both, and he couldn’t have thrown it away for a brother he didn’t even like. Surely.