Page 47 of Thief Taker

Elias flexed his fingers around the hilt of his blade as Wessex picked his way carefully through the filth.

Even if his clothes hadn’t betrayed him, his demeanour would have marked him as a gentleman. Elias’s excitement rose; this man could very well be Rowsley. His height was about right, though his build was harder to determine in his coat. His face, of course, was hidden by the gloom and by the scarf wrapped around nose and mouth. Probably helped with the stink, Elias thought with a flicker of amusement.

As Wessex prowled closer, Elias readied himself. Breath held and silent, he waited until the man was level with the doorway, and then launched himself forward. Seizing Wessex by the collar he swung him hard into the alley wall. “Bow Street,” he said, for the authority it lent him. “I’ll see your face!”

But Wessex was faster and stronger than he’d anticipated. He twisted in Elias’s grip with practised ease and got an elbow into his ribs. It drove the breath from him, making his eyes water, and suddenly it was Elias who was off balance, stumbling back against the opposite wall. He barely had time to snatch a breath before Wessex was on him, one forearm across his throat and the other seizing his wrist, slamming it hard into the wall. Elias lost his grip on the knife and it fell into the muck. And then they were wrestling with grim, breathless efficiency. Neither was willing to yield.

Elias was good in a fight; he’d had to be. But so, it turned out, was Wessex. And he was bigger and fighting, Elias realised with a flash of clarity, like a man who’d been trained for it. Not the desperate scrapping of a criminal, nor the mincing boxing of a nob, but something harder than both. Something learned. Something professional.

In the end it was a misplaced foot on the treacherous ground that undid Elias. He slipped, lost his leverage for a fraction of a second, and that was enough. Wessex had him face first against the wall, one arm wrenched up behind his back, Wessex’s weight pinning him there.

Elias went still.

In the silence, he heard Wessex’s ragged breathing, hot against the back of his neck. And then, very quietly, a sound that might almost have been a suppressed laugh. “Bow Street, is it?” Wessex said softly, his accent that not-quite-American lilt that Elias remembered from their last encounter. He thought he heard something of Rowsley’s refined tones in it.

“Thief taker,” he said, his words stifled by Wessex’s weight against his back. His arm hurt and he grunted, trying to move it. To his surprise, Wessex loosened his hold. Not enough to let him escape, but enough to ease the pressure on his shoulder and chest. Breathing more easily, Elias said, “Well, now what?” He remembered the silver pistol he’d glimpsed earlier and his heart thudded. “Will the watermen find me face first in the river tomorrow?”

Wessex was silent, save his quick breathing. Elias could feel it still, ruffling his hair. “They would,” Wessex said eventually, “if I were a wiser man. But it’s not my desire to hurt you, or anyone.”

“What about the poor buggers you frighten half to death on the road?”

He gave no answer to that. “What would it take for you to stop?”

“Stop?”

“Money? I understand the price on my head is three hundred pounds. I could—”

“I don’t want your filthy money,” Elias spat, struggling against Wessex’s hold. “I serve justice.”

Wessex shoved him back against the wall, keeping him still with the weight of his body. “What if I am justice?” he hissed close to Elias’s ear. “What if I’m the only justice these men will ever face?”

“Private vengeance isn’t justice.”

“It’s not a perfect world.”

Surprised, Elias gave a soft huff of amusement. And behind him, Wessex shifted, his weight softening against Elias’s back. A strange, disconcerting moment. And then Wessex let go, stepping back.

Elias spun around to find himself face-to-face with the barrel of a silver pistol held in a black gloved hand. No more than a foot from his face. “Leave now,” Wessex said, gesturing with the pistol towards the mouth of the alley. “I don’t want to hurt you, and you don’t want to be hurt. So go.”

“I won’t stop,” Elias warned him.

Wessex nodded. “Neither will I.”

No more to be said, then. Elias bent to retrieve his knife, then touched the brim of his hat. “Until next time.”

With that, he walked back towards the yard. His scalp prickled with awareness of the weapon trained on him, but Wessex’s gaze on his back burned hotter still.

Chapter 16

Kit stared down into the grimy water in the basin, shivering in the cold of his room in Soho. His St. Giles-soiled clothes sat in a heap on the floor, the stink of the place still lingering. They’d need to be laundered, but Mrs. Coolidge would see to it for a sixpence and ask no questions.

That was the easiest part of this tangle to unravel.

Harder, by far, was the memory of Cole’s body beneath his own; the warmth and solidity of his flesh pressed into Kit’s memory. It had been a fight, and yet… Christ, how he’d wanted it to be something else.

His blood was up, it had been since that moment in the dark behind Salter’s. And that fever had driven him to follow Cole, to wrestle with him in that dark, dangerous passage. To risk everything for the chance to speak honestly to him, as Wessex. As himself.

It had been a foolish, selfish risk. And the encounter had done nothing to douse the fire in his blood. If anything, it burned hotter still.