Page 112 of Thief Taker

A flush touched her cheeks, but she lifted her chin in defiance. “Two days from now,” she said, “with the evening tide, so he told me.”

Elias stared at her, at a loss. “I don’t understand.”

“I think you had better speak to my brother yourself,” Lady Charlotte said, holding out his note. “If you can reach him in time.”

Hope gripped him but he dared not give in to it; if he was mistaken, the disappointment would be crushing.

Perhaps she understood because a familiar, barely-there smile touched her lips. “Mr. Cole,” she said, “I already told you that I know my brother. And I need him here. If you can give him reason to stay in England, I will count you a friend.”

Elias could only bow, unsure what or how much to say and opting for the safety of silence instead.

“Go,” she said, making a little shooing gesture. “And go quickly.”

It was enough to break the spell and a moment later Elias was inside the coach. “Get me back to Stony Stratford,” he told the driver. “Do it in time to catch this evening’s stagecoach and I’ll double your rate!”

As the carriage rattled away, the coachman urging the horses faster, Elias watched from the window until Lady Charlotte was a tiny figure before her vast house, the crumpled paper in her hand fluttering in the breeze.

Chapter 42

Despite the horses’ thundering hooves and the rattling sway of the stagecoach, the journey to London was nightmarishly slow.

Elias spent the whole time trapped in the corner of the carriage, a matronly woman to one side and a pallid young squire sitting opposite. He had the look of a man about to cast up his accounts each time the coach rocked. Luckily, neither of them showed any desire to talk. Elias didn’t think he could pass the time of day with anyone; his head was so stuffed with thoughts of Kit they left room for nothing else.

He tried to remember their one night together—the intimacy of sharing a bed, the feel of Kit’s body against his own, the tenderness of their passion. But he couldn’t capture it. Everything was scratched out and written over by the angry way they’d parted—the look of hurt on Kit’s face and, yes, the fear. Kit had been afraid of him at the end. That was almost the worst of it. Kit had feared him and Elias had given him cause.

As if he could ever have let Kit hang!

Yet his shock, his sense of betrayal, had made him vicious. If he could change anything, it would be those few minutes in Kit’s bedchamber with Kit’s arm bleeding and Elias offering no comfort, offering nothing but threat and condemnation. And lies.

He shifted in his seat, gazing out at the grey dawn. His eyes were gritty, his body knotted and aching after three days—no, four now—on the road. But they would reach London today and he prayed it would be in time. If Kit left, if he sailed without Elias being able to tell him…

Tell him what?

He hardly knew what he’d say if they met again; he dared not imagine that meeting in case it never happened. He dared not think about it not happening, either. Now that he was close, the fear that he might never see Kit again dug like a barb in his chest. It was difficult to breathe around the pain.

As the winter-barren fields of the countryside gave way to the edge of town, Elias sat forward in his seat. The coach would leave him at the White Horse on Piccadilly, from which it would be at least an hour’s fast walk east to Wapping. But how to find one ship among the hundreds clogging the London Pool? His stomach bunched nervously. He knew Wapping well enough; he’d tracked any number of longshore thieves and cutpurses through that riotous place. But the great ships that came and went along the river, their masts stretching like a forest across the water, were exotic and strange. He had no idea how to find one among them.

He didn’t know the times of the tide either and the winter sun was already below the rooftops. But Lady Charlotte had said evening, and that could be hours away. At this time of year, dusk fell in the afternoon. He would still have time.

He prayed he’d still have time.

Under a clear sky fading into a misty dusk, the Lady Jane sat at anchor in the Pool of London. Her cargo was loaded and the few passengers travelling with her stood milling at the stairs, waiting for the wherry to take them out to the ship.

Kit and Hartwell stood in silence among them, with no loved ones to embrace and each lost in his own thoughts. Perhaps Ned was remembering leaving New York, or perhaps he was contemplating facing his brother upon his return. Kit’s own thoughts were split between his sister, his father, and Elias.

His father, he would never see again. He would be with God before Kit ever came home, if he ever came home. And Charlotte would be left with the management of everything: their removal from Ashbourne, James’s self-destructive decline, and their father’s passing. Everything.

Charlotte would be left to bear all the burdens that should have been borne by her useless brothers. Not that she wasn’t capable; there was no one more capable than Charlotte, but—

He looked again at Hartwell, at the pocket where he’d put the newspaper article about Marlborough. If that man was truly dead, and named as Wessex, then what need—what right—did Kit have to leave England and shirk his family responsibilities?

“What?” Ned demanded, his face pinched and uneasy in the failing light. He was tense this evening, haunted by his own regrets, no doubt.

Kit gave half a shrug. “It’s nothing.”

“You’re staring at me again. Why?”

“I wasn’t.” His eyes dipped back to Ned’s pocket. “I was just thinking—”