“You’re sitting on thorns today.” Leavenworth wiped some mud off his shoe.
“So many ducks to put in a row.” Damn ducks. Shitting everywhere. “Jackdaw, the house. Getting Elinor down here. And I don’t like how people are talking about Celia.”
“It’s a national sport, to belittle the Irish.” Leavenworth spoke bitterly.
“They wouldn’t if she were a respectable man’s wife.” Like mine.
Leavenworth snorted. “Like yours? But hey—Alcott.”
Leavenworth grabbed his arm just as Peter kicked a stone.
Blast, now some ladies walked over the stone. He couldn’t run after it.
Peter turned to Leavenworth. “What?”
Leavenworth shook his arm lightly. “Stop worrying. You’re brilliant at making plans.”
Peter jerked his elbow away. “Not if you ask the widows I left.”
Leavenworth followed, close at his shoulder. “It was a goddamn war, Alcott. It’s time to forgive yourself.”
Peter snorted. What did it make him, if he walked away from the truth of what he’d done the same way he had walked away from his family?
*
They turned intothe park, admiring the flowers, bowing to acquaintances, as though they had all the time in the world. But at precisely quarter to five, they turned round the corner of the duck pond—containing goose shit but no gentlemen today—hidden into the spring woodland foliage.
Shoulder to shoulder, they stopped. Rising from the bench, grinning widely, was not the friend of a friend that Peter had arranged to meet; it was Jackdaw himself.
Peter had been double-crossed.
If they hustled, they’d be on the public view in a few steps. His only knife was in his boot.
Leavenworth nudged Peter’s hand, just a brush. It meant to go forward, and if Leavenworth thought they should advance, then Leavenworth was armed.
Peter smiled and strolled into the clearing. “Boss! What a treat to see you here today. Nice day for a stroll before the thunderstorms close in, eh?”
Jackdaw’s eyes flickered to Leavenworth, annoyed. “Brought your valet with you, did you?”
Leavenworth was dressed just as Peter was. The comment was either calculated to make them both angry, or Jackdaw knew nothing about the upper classes.
Leavenworth snorted, unperturbed. “Hoping to meet Alcott alone, were you?”
In a public place like this, the constables would come running at any noise. But a seasoned brawler could knock out a lightweight like Peter in one blow, nice and quiet. Now it was two against one, and Leavenworth was nearly as big as Jackdaw, significantly younger, and obviously on guard.
Or, one man could get in one shot. Which would be Leavenworth.
Peter glided forward, easy smile. “While we’re all together, shall we have some tittle-tattle about the Duke of Florence?” He spread his palms open. “We can reveal our hands.”
He waited.
Leavenworth shifted.
Jackdaw jerked, moving his hands out. Twitched. Opened his hands. Empty.
“Just like I like to see them,” Leavenworth purred. He did not reveal his hands; that was the benefit of being the extra. “Good boy.”
The familiar phrase lit up memories in Peter’s mind—good boy, the anonymous letters. The letter-writer had been vague about the threat, but Leavenworth had said that his friend was later asked for a favor he couldn’t refuse. He’d gotten the first letter right around when Jackdaw had been assigned to his department; did the slubber de gullion send out threats just in case he wanted to make good on them later—and now he wanted to send Peter to Italy?
