Page 110 of Thief Taker

Elias hesitated just inside the doorway and made his valet’s bow. “Lady Charlotte.”

“That will be all, Brooks,” she told the butler.

Silence followed his departure and continued for several heartbeats after the door clicked shut. Lady Charlotte’s gaze didn’t leave Elias’s face for a moment.

“I—” he began, but she cut him off with a curt wave of her hand.

“I suppose I should be grateful that you have come under your own name, Mr. Cole, and not tried to impose on me in some deceitful manner.” Her voice was thick with restraint. “But I’m afraid your journey has been in vain. You will not find my brother here.”

His disappointment was visceral; he’d hardly known how much he’d hoped until the hope was dashed. It took him a long moment before he could clear his throat and say, “It’s not your brother I’m here to see, my lady.”

Her back stiffened. “What business can you have with me? I’ve committed no crime.”

Well then, she knew both who he was and how he made his living. Perhaps she had even been complicit in the ‘Wessex’ scheme. Either way, it didn’t matter now. “I ain’t come on that kind of business,” he said, and reached into his pocket to pull out the papers. “I’ve come to give you these.”

He held them out to her, but she made no move to take them. “What are they?”

“Documents that recently came into my possession.”

A single eyebrow rose.

“It’s the deeds to your father’s estate,” he said. “And the deed of disentailment.”

Lady Charlotte swayed back and put out a hand to brace herself on the mantelpiece. “I believed those to be in the possession of another.”

“Perhaps they were,” Elias said, still holding out the deeds. “But he misplaced them and now I’m returning them to their rightful owner—the Earl of Ashbourne.”

The aristocratic disdain in her face melted and suddenly he could trace Kit in her features—the strong jaw, the full lips, her expressive eyes. The hand she put out to take the deeds shook. “How is this possible?”

Elias shifted uncomfortably. He couldn’t confess the truth to a stranger; he couldn’t confess it to anyone. “You don’t need to know, my lady. Just take what’s yours and keep them safe.” He put his hands behind his back where he could clutch them until his fingernails bit into the flesh of his palm. “Perhaps you might tell your brother—Mr. Duvall, I mean—that I’ve returned the deeds to you.” The thought that Kit might, even now, be somewhere else in the house left him breathless.

Lady Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. “My brother isn’t here,” she snapped. “Neither of them is. As you see, I am left here to manage quite alone.”

And not happy about it, either. Well, who could blame her? Elias cleared his throat. “Then when you next see—”

“You are out of luck, Mr. Cole,” she said, anger flashing in her eyes. They weren’t blue, like Kit’s, but rather a stormy grey. “You won’t find him here, or anywhere else in this country.”

“He’s left—” His voice broke and he struggled to put it back together. “He’s left the country?”

Tight-lipped, she said, “Sailing for America even as we speak.”

America. It struck like a blow, like a fist to his chest punching out all the air. Worse, he couldn’t show it. Couldn’t do anything but nod and feel the blood sink into his boots, the life drain out of his thumping heart. “America,” he echoed in a voice he barely heard.

He’d told Kit to run; he’d promised to hunt him down. Where else would he go but back to America? Although he might as well sail to the moon, it was so far away.

Elias had lost him completely. He’d known it anyway, in his heart. How could it be otherwise? But the thought that he was gone from the country completely, that Elias couldn’t apologise, that they would never meet again even as friends? He couldn’t stand it.

“So, you see,” Lady Charlotte added, “he is far beyond your reach, Mr. Cole.”

There was a crushing sensation in his chest, as if a vice held his heart in its jaws. “Yes,” he said, barely audible. “I reckon he always was.”

Silence followed. Elias desperately wanted to turn and run but once he left that room all connection to Kit would be over. His jaw worked, words dying on his tongue. What could he say?

“Are you quite well, Mr. Cole?” There was something of Kit’s honesty in Lady Charlotte’s eyes, a frank appraisal that hurt to see. “You look pale. Perhaps you should sit down?”

“No.” He shook himself. “No, I’m well.” He took a breath, trying to pull his thoughts together. He couldn’t let it end like this; he had to at least find a way to tell Kit the truth of the one lie that mattered most. “I would—If you have Mr. Duvall’s direction, I’d be—”

“I don’t,” she said, although her tone was more hesitant than before. “But if I did—”