Word of Honour

'Now there's a change. No more complete confidence that you know everything?'

'It's a thing of the past. Mostly. Now, tell me about home.'

George's face fell. He stood and started to pace the length of the room. 'It's actually worse than I thought. They've been keeping things from me.'

'Parents have a habit of doing that,' Aubrey said, thinking about his mother's incidents in the Arctic.

'They certainly did in this case. Remember the landslip we had last year, where we lost those outbuildings down the side of the hill?'

'Of course.'

'We had to take out a loan to rebuild. Which we did, without much problem. But the harvest this year was poor, and cash has been hard to come by.' George sighed. 'The short story is that the bank wants money that we don't have.'

Aubrey swung his legs over the edge of the bed. 'You know my father would help.'

Aubrey's father and George's father had been in the same unit – Sir Darius as commanding officer, William Doyle as sergeant-major. Their closeness had resulted in their sons growing up together.

'I know that. You know that. Father knows that. But there is no way in the world that William Doyle would accept money from anyone, no matter how bad the situation is. Stiff-necked, proud buffer that he is, he has to find a way out of this mess himself.'

'George, this is horrible.'

'Oh, it is that. Makes me want to weep.'

'I wouldn't blame you.' Then, without realising it, Aubrey started to hum.

George looked at him sharply. 'Don't.'

'Don't? Don't what?'

'You're scheming. You're trying to devise a clever way to do something about the farm.'

Aubrey winced, but George was right.

This was a circumstance he could do something about. Without anyone knowing it, a quiet word with his father – or his mother – and the Doyles' financial situation would immediately be rectified. Aubrey knew that his family was rich. Not just comfortable, but wealthy. The amount of money needed to pay off the Doyles' debts wouldn't make a dent in the family fortune.

He'd already started thinking about the best way to go about it, to find a way to pay off the debt without Mr Doyle finding out who was responsible. Maybe getting the money directly into his hands so he could pay the bank. Burying a treasure trove where he'd be bound to find it? A long-lost relative dying in Antipodea? Or just work with the bank, who'd then let Mr Doyle know that the debt had disappeared.

'You've started again, haven't you?' George said gruffly.

'Me?'

'I know you, Aubrey. You can't help yourself. When you see a problem, you want to do something about it.'

'Well, yes.'

'It's more than that, though. It becomes a challenge, something personal. You can't leave things alone.'

'Ah. You're saying that I'm an interfering busybody.'

'That's a harsh description.'

'But accurate?'

'When you're at your worst, yes. But the trouble is, it's also you at your best. It doesn't seem as though we can have one without the other.'

'You don't know how comforting I find that.' Aubrey blew air in and out of his cheeks for a moment. 'I do want to help, you know.'

'I know. But you can't. It would break Father if you did.' George looked at him carefully. 'Look, Aubrey, I want you to promise me something.'

'What is it?'

'I want you to give me your word of honour that you won't interfere here.'

'All right.'

George stopped his pacing. 'No, Aubrey, that was too fast. I want you to think about this. I didn't ask you as a negotiating gambit, something for you to counter and then find a way around it. It's your honour that I'm relying on here. Your integrity. Your worth as a decent and trustworthy person. The person that I respect and admire.'

'Oh.' Aubrey, once again, was humbled. He had been treating George's request as a feint. He had been thinking of ways around it.

He hadn't taken his best friend seriously.

'George,' he said. He sought for the words. 'I want you to know that I'm not doing this because I feel trapped into it, or that I feel shamed into it. I'm doing it because I think I understand and I want to do it.' He took a deep breath. 'George, I give you my word of honour that I won't interfere in your family's financial problems. And that I won't try to find a sneaky way around it, either.'

George held out his hand. 'Old man, I take you at your word.'

Aubrey shook and was grateful – for the ten thousandth time – that he had such a friend as George.

George shook himself, like a dog climbing out of a river, and sat again. 'Now, what's all this about a train accident?'

Aubrey told George about the mysterious subsidence and the interesting conversation with the navvy. Then, of course, he found he had to jump backwards and explain the whole business with Jack Figg, Maggie and her Crew. Then he had to backtrack and tell George all about the thunderstorm attack on Count Brandt's Holmlanders, which seemed a very long time ago.

'Busy weekend,' George said, when Aubrey finished. 'A lot to chew over there.'

'That'd be one of your metaphors, then?' Aubrey said.

George threw a book at him, without much malice or force. Then he straightened, eyes bright. 'I tell you what, this is dashed exciting stuff, when you look at it.'

'What is? The explosion? The Holmlanders? The hydraulic railway?'

'Well, all of it really. But I was most interested in the Rokeby-Taylor goings-on. I mean, everyone knows about Rokeby-Taylor, but all this about his shoddy business dealings is fascinating.'

'You're not thinking of your journalism again, are you?'

'It's the sort of hard-hitting stuff that makes reputations. Imagine the headlines! "Rich Dandy Betrays the Country by Not Doing the Right Thing".'

'I think they have people to do the headlines, fortunately,' Aubrey said. 'But let's not get too carried away.'

'You know, I might skip Luna entirely. I'm sure I could approach the proper newspapers directly with this. Then those Lunatics would have to sit up and take notice.'

'George. Stop. Wait. Listen for a moment, please?'

George blinked. 'Aubrey?'

'It may not be the best idea to bruit these suspicions about right now. There's more investigating to be done, and even then I'm not sure about how useful it would be to publish such details.'

George jabbed a finger at him. 'You're talking about silencing the voice of the people. Censorship. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.'

'George, it's not the voice of the people I'm talking about. I'm talking about your possibly writing a piece about events and people without foundation. There are such things as laws of libel.'

'Ah, libel. Yes.'

'And as well, there is the tricky area of things that are kept silent in the national interest.'

'Lovely phrase, that. It can mean whatever you want it to mean. Especially if you're the one making the decisions.'