Half past five in the morning at Number Nine Ironhall, and the kitchen under the long room is the only warm floor in the building. The shutters are still closed. The pot has been on since four, the cellar slate hangs by the pantry door with the count chalked on it, and above it stand six cups in a row that nobody has washed.
Ephraim Tulliver is at the range with his sleeves rolled and his gloves on, pouring the first pot of the day into a white cup with a chip out of the rim. He does not turn around when you come down the stairs, which means he heard you three rooms away.
"There's a cup on the table,"
he says.
"Take the chair. You're the club's daylight member now, which means the city, the invoices and the tradesmen are yours, and it means every one of us in this house has agreed not to touch you. I put my name on that rule before you were born. I'm telling you because Monty and Howard are going to tell you what they want, and I would rather you heard the boring version first."
He sets the pot down on the iron trivet and turns, and the range light catches the black kid of the gloves.
"I want you,"
he says, the way he would read a delivery short.
"I have wanted you since the night you came in out of the rain and asked where the fuse box was."
Upstairs a chair moves, and the floorboards take the weight of somebody listening.
Ephraim takes the chipped cup off the table and holds it out at arm's length; not close enough to press it into your hand, close enough that you would have to step past it to leave the kitchen.
"Drink it while it's hot,"
he says.
"And tell me what you're going to say to the other two."