“There you go,” Betty said. “It’s always easier to think like a reasonable person when you don’t look like something dragged in from a sewer.”
“I’ve already made up my mind.”
“Your mind is scrambled, then. Stop using it. Let me do the thinking for you. That’s why you keep me around, isn’t it? Listen to me, Kit. We both know you can’t run or ride fast enough to be safe during a robbery. You’ll put yourself and everyone you’re with at risk.”
“I’ll figure out a way around that,” he said. “I have to.”
“The feelings you have where Clare is concerned have no business in a robbery.”
“He’s the whole reason I have any business doing robbery in the first place,” Kit said. “If it weren’t for him, I’d be—” He didn’t dare finish that thought, not after yesterday’s gin-fueled trip down memory lane. “I started all this because I wanted revenge.”
“That’s because you were young and foolish and grieving your wife and child.”
He held up his hand to stop her. “Hush.”
“No, you hush. You got by on gin and luck. Now you’re older and you know better, and you have me to tell you what to do. I’ve seen what happens when people go into a robbery seeing red. They wind up losing their heads and taking stupid risks. I’m not putting my neck on the line just because you’re too angry to think straight.”
Kit let out a breath. Betty was a fence, and came from a family of fences, and maybe because she dealt only with goods and coin, she didn’t understand anyone who approached life without the levelheadedness of an actuary. “Every job I’ve done, I’ve been angry.”
“Bollocks. This job would be personal. Not to mention the fact that you shouldn’t want to ally yourself with the Duke of Clare’s son. You ought to know a trap when you see one. I won’t be a part of it.”
“Then don’t.”
“Go to hell.” She closed her eyes and seemed to gather herself. “What good is revenge if he doesn’t know that you’re the one serving it to him? I know you, Kit, and you’ll want to let him know exactly which of his sins he’s paying for. And once he knows it was you, it’ll come back to you, here.” She gestured around the shop, as if he didn’t already know what was at stake. “And to me. And to my family. Unless you plan to kill him.” When Kit didn’t answer right away, she sucked in a breath. “Christ. Do you plan to kill him?”
“No,” he said. “I’m not going to kill him.” If anyone deserved a knife in the heart it was Clare, but Kit wouldn’t be the one to put it there. “As for the rest of it, I don’t need him to know who I am. It’s enough that I know.”
Betty looked at him long and searchingly. “Then you’ll do this sober, Christopher.” She crossed her arms, looking as displeased with him as she ever had, including during the ruby diadem incident.
“Yes, Elizabeth,” he said, trying to tease her back to their usual good relations. He needed her, not as a fence, certainly not as a serving girl, but as his friend. He had known her since she was a child, running around London in her brother’s clothes, delivering messages and arranging meetings for her father. She had arrived in his life when he thought he’d never again be able to give a damn for anyone ever again, least of all a child, and certainly not a surly, ill-tempered child, but here they were. He had watched her grow up, and she had seen him at his worst and stuck around anyway. In Rob’s absence, she was his closest friend, and even before Rob disappeared, Betty had been indispensable. He didn’t have any illusions about this indispensability going both ways: Betty didn’t need anyone. When her father died, she had quietly taken over the family business and was, in Kit’s professional opinion, the best fence in London. She could get a good price for anything and make sure it was never traced back to its original owner. The only thing Kit contributed was the coffeehouse, which provided a convenient meeting place with the people she called her customers.
If this robbery was going to cause a rift with Betty, he needed to do something to reassure her. He couldn’t and wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to get revenge against Clare, but he could keep his involvement as minimal as possible. He could plan the thing at arm’s length. After all, planning had always been his particular talent, a well-organized plan being nine-tenths of a successful robbery, and the other tenth consisting of sheer bravado, a bit of luck, and a cheerful willingness to stare down the barrel of a pistol. And gin, probably, but Kit could do without that, especially if—
“Betty,” he said as the plan coalesced in his mind. “Sit down.” He pulled out a chair for her.
“Some of us have work to do,” she said, evidently determined to sulk for the rest of the day. “It’s past nine, and you’ll have people at the door soon. You might want to, oh, I don’t know, brew some coffee.”
“They can wait,” he said. “Come. Sit down. I have a plan.”
Chapter 14
Percy thumbed through the invitations that sat on his writing desk. It seemed his return to England had not gone entirely unnoticed, despite his best intentions.
When Marian had sprung the news of his father’s bigamy on him, Percy had been in England for a matter of hours. He had hardly had time to get used to being home, after an absence of over two years, before he was uprooted again, this time a distance further than the span of the channel.
All the invitations were addressed to Lord Holland, and he—Edward Percy, or whoever he was—had no claim on them. He had no claim to the company of the friends with whom he used to visit gaming halls and pleasure gardens. He had no claim on any aspect of the life he had once lived as Lord Holland, and he had too much pride to help himself to something that wasn’t rightly his.
He supposed an entirely different sort of man might have counted on the support of his friends, might have assumed they would stand by him regardless of his changed circumstances. But Percy knew that if one of his friends had turned out to be the subject of a scandal and the fodder for gossip the likes of which England hadn’t seen in a generation, Percy would have bitterly resented the man for bringing Percy’s name into association with his own. As a matter of dignity, he couldn’t expect more from his former friends than he would have given them himself.
And so he found himself at something of a loose end, loath to spend any more time in Clare House than strictly necessary but without anywhere else to go or anyone to see.
He dressed in his plainest clothes and set off on foot in the direction of Webb’s, for lack of anything better to do—not because he was beginning to enjoy the place, not because he found himself at the end of the first volume of Tom Jones and eager to begin the next. Almost as an afterthought, he recalled that it had been a few days since the punching incident, and Webb might be ready to accept his proposition.
On his way, he passed a boisterous throng surrounding a raised platform in Covent Garden and slowed his pace. Amid the shouts of the crowd and the jingle of coin he heard another, infinitely more intriguing sound: the clatter of blade upon blade.