Page 83 of Thief Taker

What will he do if Rowsley loses tonight?

The question had been pressing on him all day. If Rowsley lost Ashbourne—when he lost it—Kit lost it too. And he would do what?

He’ll go back to the road, said the devilish part of him. A man with nothing left to lose and a family to save.

If Wessex was either of them, he’d go back to the road. And the road was where Elias would find him.

“Cole.”

He jumped, finding Tobin at his side. Elias hadn’t heard him cross the room, which was a shocking reflection on his degree of distraction.

“The decanters,” Tobin said. His attention was focused on the sideboard, not Elias. “His lordship will want them replenished throughout the evening. I’ll manage it. You needn’t concern yourself.”

Elias considered him.

Tobin’s face was composed but his eyes carried a weary weight. He must have stood in this room when the earl had still been himself, Elias realised. When the house had been respectable and prosperous, and the family name as solid and enduring as a rock. Something to which a man like Tobin could anchor his life and loyalty.

I’ll manage it. As if Tobin could manage away the disaster about to open beneath his feet.

“As you always do,” Elias said.

Tobin nodded and moved away.

Elias stayed at the window. Below, a carriage turned into the street, slowed, and moved on. Not yet. The guests weren’t due for another two hours.

In two hours, Marlborough would walk through that door. In two hours, the game would begin.

And the only certain thing about the evening to come was that the consequences would turn everything upside down.

Chapter 29

They’d been playing for five hours.

Kit had seen Elias replace the tall beeswax candles three times. They were the expensive kind, of course; James had demanded the best for tonight, no matter the cost. Well, what did a box of candles matter compared with everything he’d already lost, and with what he risked this evening?

Tonight’s card room had once been their mother’s favourite drawing room, and the earl had preserved it unchanged in her memory for many years. In those days, it always smelled of orange flower water. Now it smelled of hot wax, brandy, and the sour desperation of a gaming hell.

Four men sat at the table.

Four players, two partnerships, each pair facing the other across the green baize. The last card of each deal was turned face-up to set the trumps, and then there were thirteen tricks to play out before the reckoning.

Kit stood near the fireplace holding a glass he’d not drunk from all evening, watching his brother lose everything. James sat, in their mother’s favourite drawing room, next to the man who had almost certainly beaten Jacob Hawker to death. Kit breathed and kept his face composed. He dared not look at Elias, who now stood a discreet two paces behind him; if he looked, he was not entirely certain he could maintain his hard-won composure.

James was drinking, of course. Kit’s stomach sank every time Marlborough reached across the table to refill his brother’s glass. There was something bullying in his bonhomie, the overbearing assurance of a man who would not be refused. Kit knew that only too well, his gaze drawn repeatedly to the silver-headed cane Marlborough kept by his chair.

James lifted his glass and drank.

Salter had the seat opposite Marlborough. He was dressed as Kit had last seen him, well but without excess—a style carefully appropriate for his station. No hint of their last meeting had passed between him and Kit, on either side. Salter had proposed himself as the natural fourth for the evening, which had puzzled Kit at first. But no longer.

Lord Pemberton was James’s partner. A man of his own age with an inoffensively handsome face and a complaisant smile. Kit was acquainted with the Pembertons, distantly.

But he’d been watching the man for six rubbers now, and what he’d seen confirmed everything he had feared about the evening. The errors were too consistent, falling always at the moments when a well-timed mistake would do Marlborough’s side the most good. Pemberton trumped his partner’s winning trick. He led into Marlborough’s strength. He wore, throughout, an apologetic half-smile.

“My apologies, old man,” he’d say, and top up James’s glass.

It was a performance of mediocrity so finely judged that it had taken Kit most of the first rubber to understand what was happening. But once he had, he’d looked at Salter and found Salter regarding him with an expression of unreadable blandness. Plainly, he saw that Kit understood what was happening and simply didn’t care.

Why should he? The deeds to Ashbourne Abbey were already in his coat pocket. The game was a formality.