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Reeve saw it too.

His eyes went to Spit on the steps. To the boy with the unfired pistol. To his men on the floor, pinned by the captain's crew. Something shifted in his face — not defeat, not yet, but the first fissure in the calculation.

Kit hit him.

Not with the knife. Not with the pistol. With his fist. Thirty years of silence and obedience and the boy who stopped crying after Deal because a man told him to. The punch connected with Reeve's jaw and turned his head and the knife fell from his hand and Kit caught him by the shirt and drove him down.

Reeve hit the floorboards. Kit was on him, one knee between the shoulder blades, one hand on the back of his neck. Reeve bucked once. Kit pressed harder.

"Stay down," Kit said.

The man went still.

The room settled. The captain's men had Reeve's crew against the wall, arms pinned. The warrior lay where he had fallen, his face a ruin, barely conscious. Spit was crumpled on the steps, breathing but not moving. The candle on the mantelpiece had gone out.

Silence. The kind that comes after.

Kit looked across the room. Audrey was still on the steps. She had lowered the cane. Her hands were shaking and her face was white and her hair was matted with plaster dust and quicklime and she was the most extraordinary thing he had ever seen.

Then, from the front of the house, three sharp raps on the door.

Kit looked at Audrey. She looked at him.

"Shall I get the door?" she said.

"Please."

She crossed the drawing room. Stepped over a body. Opened the front door.

The Duke of Iredell stood on the step. Behind him, a man in a plain dark coat with a leather satchel and careful eyes. The magistrate. And behind the magistrate, square-jawed and watchful, a Bow Street Runner.

The duke looked at Audrey. Then past her, into the drawing room: the tilted platform, the overturned coffin, the quicklime dust hanging in the air, the six men on the floor, Kit kneeling on Reeve's back, and the boy sitting against the wall with a pistol in his lap and tears running down his face.

"Lady Kendal," the duke said. "I see you've started without us."

"Your Grace." She stepped aside. "Do come in."

The duke entered. The magistrate followed. The Runner moved past them both to Reeve and locked the iron cuffs around his wrists. The click echoed off the walls.

Spit was hauled from the steps, groggy, the left side of his face already swelling purple and misshapen. Reeve's men were lined against the wall and cuffed in pairs. The warrior was carried between two of the captain's men, his face swollen shut, whimpering through cracked lips. They were taken through the front door and into the morning.

The magistrate read the charges. Reeve was hauled to his feet. Blood dripped from his chin onto the floorboards. He looked at Kit. The look carried hurt. Disbelief. Then he spoke.

“I mourned you, Kit. When you disappeared. I sat in my cabin and drank and mourned you like a son. You were the best thing I ever built.”

They took him through the front door and into the morning.

The duke waited by the door while the Runner worked. He said nothing. When it was done, he put on his hat and left.

Kit looked at the boy. Jem was still against the wall, the pistol loose in his hands, his face blank with shock. Kit crossed the room and crouched in front of him. He did not touch the boy or reach for the weapon. He waited until the boy's eyes found his.

"Give me the pistol, Jem."

The boy looked down at it. Then he held it out, grip first. Kit took it and set it on the floor behind him.

He looked at the boy the way Marian had once looked at him.

"Can you mend a fence?" Kit asked.