Page 11 of Thief Taker

“No, my lord, though I fear the evening is at an end.” Marlborough fixed his angry eyes on Duvall. “Perhaps we could continue at Salter’s? I’ve a wager with Cavendish in the offing—five hundred guineas say he beds both the Roxbury sisters tonight.”

“Capital idea!” Rowsley set down his glass, caught it on the edge of the table and let it topple, smashing on the marble floor. He barely noticed. “Capital bloody idea.” To Duvall he said, “Go home, little brother. What’s done is done.”

“Have you no compassion?” Duvall looked desperately weary. “Not even for our father?”

“As much as he’s ever shown me, I imagine.”

With that, Rowsley walked away, Marlborough at his shoulder, and Duvall stood alone and silent in the centre of the room.

Poor sod. Elias might have offered a word of encouragement in different circumstances. But he was playing at being a footman and had no business interfering in the disputes between dissolute viscounts and their gallant brothers. Especially when Rowsley might be desperate enough to recover his debts by fair means or foul.

And that, Elias thought as he slipped away unnoticed, was something worth looking into.

Chapter 5

Kit awoke to the dry scraping of a housemaid cleaning the hearth and setting the fire in the grate. She worked as quietly as possible in the light of a single candle, rustling kindling and striking sparks onto the tinder.

He remained unmoving under the covers, awkward at the unfamiliar intrusion as the maid moved about the room. There came the sound of water pouring, the bloom of a lamp in the dressing room. He closed his eyes when the maid turned towards him, feigning sleep until she was gone.

Strange, that this had once been his life. It felt entirely foreign now.

Tender flames licked through the kindling and up over the coals, but the fire was too young to take the chill from the room. For a while Kit just enjoyed their dance and put off the moment when he must get up and face the world.

Two problems had troubled his restless sleep. First, James.

Curzon Street might be his father’s house, but now it was his brother’s domain, and Kit wasn’t welcome. Well, that was James’s hard luck; Kit had a right. More than that, he had a duty. He didn’t give a damn whether he was welcome, but even so it hurt to be the enemy in his own father’s house.

The second problem was more troubling still and he hoped very much that he was wrong. But the footman he’d encountered last night, being assaulted by Marlborough, had struck him as very much like the Bow Street man who’d chased him across the Fleet Ditch.

Impossible, of course. But there’d been something in the defiant glint in his eye that had taken Kit back to the scuffle in the dark tunnel beneath The Red Lion Inn. Something about his voice, too. A warm roughness.

Scowling into the dark, he pushed off the covers and stalked over to the closet in search of an old banyan. He was in luck and shivered himself into it with some relief before turning to open the curtains. A dull winter morning greeted him, the sky icy grey. Fitting, he thought; the world was an icy place at the moment.

Walking through to his dressing room, he found warm water in the ewer and washed quickly. He’d brought a few clothes from his lodgings, but no servant had seen fit to unpack them. He didn’t mind. He’d lived without servants for years and was well used to fending for himself. He preferred it that way. Besides, with the goings on of the previous night, which servant would have had time? He slipped on his house shoes, buttoned his waistcoat and reached for his comfortable wool coat. Even before he’d joined the Queen’s Rangers he’d never cared for fashion—he’d rather be warm than modish.

The house was oppressively silent when he left his room and strode to the wide staircase that swept down to the first floor. He came to a stop there, halted by the chaos that daylight revealed below. It looked as though a riot had passed through the house and he meant that quite literally. He’d seen something similar in New York and this disarray was no different.

“Good God,” he breathed, surveying the damage from the top of the stairs. Furniture sat in tilting stacks up against the walls, soiled table linens in great piles next to it. And the reek of spilled wine and spoiled food rose with nauseating insistence as he made his way downstairs. “Bloody hell, James.”

When he was halfway down, Tobin, his father’s butler, appeared from the dining room and paused to assess the damage. Across the empty salon their eyes met. Tobin’s expression remained blank, but there were days of hard work ahead for the household staff. Kit blushed on his brother’s behalf.

“Tobin,” he said as he trotted the rest of the way downstairs. “Good morning.”

“Mr. Duvall.” Tobin offered a bow, his jowly cheeks sagging as he bent forward. “I trust everything is to your satisfaction, this morning?”

“Perfectly,” he said, looking about the hallway. He sighed. “Tobin, tell me—how often does this sort of thing happen?”

“The viscount enjoys entertaining at home,” Tobin said with studied blankness.

“I see.” After a moment, he added, “And where is my brother? Still abed, I suppose.”

One of Tobin’s eyebrows twitched. “His lordship has not yet returned from his club, sir.”

Of course. James wouldn’t surface before noon—he was probably still drinking and gaming away their family’s future. Kit’s stomach tensed. “Thank you, Tobin. Is there breakfast…?”

“Of course, sir.” Tobin led the way to the breakfast room. “Cole will attend you today. He is—That is, we’ve recently experienced some”—a delicate hesitation—“difficulty in retaining staff. I’m afraid Cole is rather inexperienced.”

Following along behind, Kit scowled at the thought of respectable servants refusing to work in his father’s house. It was mortifying. “I understand,” he said, “and I appreciate all you—” He stopped short when Tobin opened the breakfast room door because, standing bolt upright next to the sideboard, was the footman from last night.