Page 81 of Thief Taker

“Of course,” Elias bristled. “I promised to help you, didn’t I?”

He had, but Wessex was Elias’s prize, and Kit had laid a clear trail for him to follow. He’d assumed that Elias would follow it. Yet here he stood, his hand on Kit’s arm and his expression earnest. His loyalty was painful. And touching.

Reaching out, Kit took hold of Elias’s shoulder, then the back of his neck, urgently drawing him closer. Elias moved with a breath of laughter, until they stood, arms looped around each other, just looking. Kit wondered what Elias saw in his face—deception or truth? Both were there to be seen. Elias, though, was entirely open. He had a handsome, honest face. A good face for a good man, and Kit—

Something fierce was rising inside him. Something raw and true.

“I’m glad you’re alive in the world, Elias,” he said, feeling it deeply. “The world’s a better place for it.”

Elias leaned in to press his smiling lips against Kit’s. “You nug.”

It was piercingly sweet, and Kit almost couldn’t bear it.

They ended up clasped together, holding each other loosely. “All will be well,” Elias said. “You’ll see. All will be well.”

Against all reason, and perhaps for the first time, Kit believed he might be right.

Chapter 28

They brought the card table up from the basement early the next afternoon. It must have been down there for years, because the dust sheet had grown grey and made everyone cough when one of the footmen swept it aside.

“Bloody hell,” Elias grunted as the four of them started hauling the table up the stairs. “What’s this thing made of? Stone?”

His only replies were a grunt and a couple of muted curses. Nobody was very talkative today. Did the whole household understand what was at stake in tonight’s game? Perhaps they did. Servants saw a lot more than their masters liked to believe.

Tobin certainly did. He was waiting for them in the card room, keeping a close eye on the paintwork as they moved the table through the doorway.

“In the centre of the room, if you please.” Tobin indicated a place on the Turkey rug, standing back to give them room. “Rotate it a little clockwise,” he said, then nodded. “Just so.”

As the footmen caught their breath, flexing their aching arms, Elias watched Tobin. His expression was unusually blank today and maintaining it appeared to be costing him some effort. Turning, he went to the sideboard and fetched a soft-bristled pad, handing it to Elias. “Brush down the table, would you? Start from the centre and work out.”

Elias did as he was bid, though the table hardly needed it. He didn’t mind, though; it kept his restless hands busy and freed his mind to think. Not that he was enjoying the thoughts rattling around inside his skull, but like them or not they had to be addressed.

The problem was Kit.

Elias had immediately dismissed his suggestion, last night, that Wessex could be Marlborough. Granted, a man who had beaten someone to death was not a man who would balk at stopping a carriage on a dark road.

But…to what end?

Marlborough wanted Ashbourne Abbey. He wanted its two parliamentary seats. How would he profit from robbing his friends on the highway? It would be all risk and no gain, and Marlborough didn’t strike Elias as a man who did anything without gain.

It was such an unlikely notion that Elias wondered why Kit had even suggested it.

Two reasons presented themselves. The first, and the more likely in Elias’s view, was that Kit was trying to protect his brother. Elias understood that impulse; he’d have done the same, and more, for Will.

The second reason, Elias didn’t want to consider. Didn’t need to consider because Kit couldn’t be Wessex. He’d been at Marlborough’s evening party the night Osborne was robbed in Hyde Park. Elias had escorted him there himself and spoken to him inside. They’d been together when Osborne arrived to tell his tale of woe, and Kit couldn’t be in two places at once.

“Cole?” Tobin was surveying the table carefully. “Once you’ve finished that, set the chairs at equal distances around the table. Lord Rowsley specified it.”

“Right you are,” Elias said.

He set the chairs while Tobin moved to the sideboard and began arranging the decanters. Rowsley would do better to stay sober this evening, but of course Marlborough would never permit such a thing. Strange, how compliant Rowsley was in his own destruction. But perhaps he did not care about the game because he planned to retrieve his property in some other way…

From the sideboard, Tobin said, “Go and see where Tom is, will you? I sent him to fetch candles half an hour ago.”

Happy to oblige—in truth, happy to leave the card room and its oppressive air of calamity—he went in search of Tom, the young hall boy.

The whole household was busy now, preparing for an evening that would likely end in their ruin. Did Rowsley, or any of these indolent nobs, consider for an instant the consequences of their wins and losses for the men and women who depended on them? Elias knew the answer and it enraged him.