Page 59 of Once a Gentleman
Chapter Twenty-Two
Twelve days following Andrew’s departure found Kit seated in the study and contemplating a note he had received from Robinson. Rain pounded the windows, and the branch of candles on the desk did little to push back the watery gloom. A few sprigs of holly Samuel had set on the mantel gave the room its only touch of brightness, and their attempt at cheer made the study feel darker and more oppressive.
Kit sighed. Robinson had written asking him to call on him.
He looked up at the window again. Wind howled and battered another flurry of rain into the glass, and the draught around the window made the candles dance and flicker.
Going out in a gale was precisely the opposite of how Kit had wished to spend his morning—and Andrew, Andrew was on a ship, somewhere out in that same weather, perhaps drenched to the skin and—doing something with ropes, Kit supposed, or heroically saving a man from being swept overboard, or…he shivered. No matter what Andrew might be doing, and how dangerous it might be, he would certainly be uncomfortable and damp and subsisting on salted beef.
Kit imagined him as he had seen him last, his hat set jauntily on his head and his hand raised in a momentary salute, his expression one of professional calm but his eyes…his eyes had nearly bored holes in him, they had been fixed so intently on Kit’s face. Kit had waved with enthusiasm, his confidence raised by the fact that Mrs. Harrison and her brood of children had indeed absorbed him into their midst the moment he stepped up to the railing along the harbor promenade. Andrew would see him there, and know Kit’s presence was all for him, but anyone else observing would see only a mass of people and think nothing of it.
And so he removed his hat and waved it over his head so that Andrew would be able to pick him out of the crowd and perhaps see his face.
The ship had sailed, the crowd had dissipated, and Kit had managed to exchange a few words with Mrs. Harrison and survive an introduction to her numerous children without making, he hoped, too much of a fool of himself. He had even rashly promised to join them for Christmas dinner, though he had regretted accepting the invitation right up until the moment he entered their modest lodgings and was enveloped in chatter and laughter and the smells of roast goose and plum pudding. He had missed his father, and missed Andrew, in horrible and nearly equal measure.
Returning to the quiet of the house had left Kit miserably lonely and dull, and he had remained so ever since.
At least he had the prospect of going out in foul weather to distract him. Kit rang the bell, and Peter poked his head into the study a moment later.
Kit looked at the window again—at, since one could not be properly said to be lookingoutwhen one could see nothing but water—and sighed in resignation. Andrew had trusted him sufficiently to leave his fortune, his house, and his worldly goods in Kit’s care. Going out in the rain, while Andrew might be—he could not consider it. In any case, he had no grounds for complaint.
“Get me a hack,” he said. He knew Andrew would have insisted on his using the carriage, but why force Jacob and the horses out into the rain when the hackneys were out in it already? “I’ll need to go round and see Mr. Robinson.”
Peter nodded and disappeared into the hall.
The hack deposited Kit in front of Robinson’s dreary little building some half hour later, and he dashed for the stairs, shaking water from his greatcoat and hat as he reached the shelter of the staircase.
Robinson’s office was the same as always, with the two clerks hunched over their desks and the ever-present pot of stewed tea on a small caddy between them. One of the clerks knocked on Robinson’s inner door and announced him.
“Mr. Hewlett!” Robinson said, rising for a moment and nodding. “Didn’t know if I’d see you this morning, with the weather like this.”
His tone had a note of approval in it; Robinson thought the younger generation too soft, a subject on which he’d opined to Kit on more than one occasion.
“You never summon me here unless the matter is urgent.” He took the seat before Robinson’s desk. “I hope no decisions of too-great moment will be required. Mr. Turner did allow me the privilege of acting as his proxy on any matter, but I would prefer to lay anything really important before him, if possible.”
Robinson nodded again. “I have no doubt your judgment would be sufficient, but I haven’t asked you here to discuss Mr. Turner’s affairs. I have received a letter from a gentleman attempting to locate you, Mr. Hewlett.”
For a moment, sheer disbelief left Kit frozen; and then shock and horror set in. “A gentleman,” he rasped, sinking back in his chair. Good God, he had thought he had at last escaped any further scandal. “Someone is—attempting to find me? And wrote to you? How did he—” And then he stopped without completing the question, for it was obvious how, and by the sheepish look on Robinson’s face, he also knew he was to blame. Andrew had discussed him with Robinson when he hired him; Robinson had made inquiries. And whoever had received those inquiries had been indiscreet.
Robinson cleared his throat. “I would apologize for my correspondent’s loose lips, Mr. Hewlett, but for the fact that this gentleman’s business with you appears to be very much to your advantage. Appears, let me emphasize, however. I have some reservations. But I have the letter here, and perhaps you ought to read it for yourself before I offer any opinion on the matter.”
Kit wordlessly held out a hand, not trusting himself to speak, and Robinson laid a letter in it. The contents were dry and to the point, and yet Kit had to read the letter over again several more times before he could comprehend.
The letter had been written by Josiah Colton, with whom Kit had grown up as a boy. His father had been one of Kit’s father’s most trusted business partners, and had invested heavily in the doomed venture that led to the elder Hewlett’s suicide.
When Kit’s father took his own life, Mr. Colton, Josiah’s father, had been left the most senior and responsible investor, and had managed the aftermath.
And now, Josiah wrote, one of the ships thought lost had limped into the port of London.
One of the five ships had returned.
Kit read that line over yet again, still disbelieving. Damaged, and with several of the crew lost and the others thin and worn, but the ship had returned—with its cargo, a full hold of the rarest spices of the Orient, entirely intact.
And as Mr. Colton had fallen ill, Josiah had now taken over the disbursement of the profits to each of the investors according to their original stakes. Since Kit himself had, on his father’s advice, invested his own funds into the venture, Kit’s share of the ship’s cargo amounted to three thousand pounds.
Kit stared down at the letter, at the neat figure, there in black and white, at Josiah’s name. The horror of his father’s death and all the scandal that had attended it came rushing back to him, along with a blur of happy childhood memories, now all tainted and dim. Josiah’s smile and his laughter. The last letter before this one he had received from the man he thought his closest friend, when Kit had written to him in the direst extremity: cold, brusque, and only several lines, refusing any help whatsoever and telling Kit never to acknowledge their acquaintance again.
And above all that, one thought thrummed in his mind: his father had been proven honest.
