Page 6 of The Scoundrel of Drury Lane
Time.
Time was all a man truly had of value, and he’d had seven years stolen from him. Seven years of their friendship had been taken, just as his father had been, and neither could be reclaimed.
“I still can’t believe it,” Lionel Thistlewaite murmured after everyone had briefly greeted one another. Lionel stepped toward Kit. His old friend looked at him as if he was a ghost, and he was only slightly surprised the man didn’t come over and poke his chest to make sure he was real.
His friends stood in a loose half ring facing him across the other side of the drawing room. Only Darius dared to cross the chasm. Kit turned back to the window. He was unable to meet the curious and probing gazes of his friends. He wasn’t used to being looked at, not with such intensity. He would have given almost anything to douse the lamplight and vanish into the dark. Coming home now felt like a mistake.
“Kit...?” Warren Burville’s green eyes sought out Kit’s face, and Kit could feel the man’s searching gaze upon him.
“Yes?” Kit asked after a moment’s hesitation.
“What can we do? What do you need?” Warren kept his voice low, and Kit was grateful. He did not want Palmer or Mrs. Swanson woken by their late-night meeting.
Felix Hawkins, with his wild tangle of golden blond hair making him look like a roguish knight of King Arthur’s court, leaned against the wall. “Yes, wewantto help. Tell us what we can do.” His gray eyes were earnest and sharp. Bittersweet memories of Felix as a boy made Kit’s heart ache enough that he nearly fisted a hand over his chest. He remembered everything about these men... or at least, the boys they had once been. He knew nothing of the men they had become.
Kit cleared his throat, aware more than ever of the condition of his clothing and his wild appearance among these polished gentlemen. It left him feeling off-balance.
Vincent, always the quietest of their group, seemed to read Kit’s mind. “Revenge... that’s why you came back, isn’t it?”
Kit answered with a slight nod.
“Then tell us what to do,” Darius said. “We’ll help in any way we can.”
“No, I must do this alone,” Kit said.
Lionel chuckled. “I don’t think you understand. We weren’t asking permission.”
Kit blinked at Lionel’s offhand remark.
“We’ve waited seven years to have you back, and we aren’t about to let you have your revenge alone. We want it too. Those men need to pay for what they did.” Lionel’s hazel eyes were filled with all the cleverness he’d had as a child, and Kit sensed that Lionel had honed that ability into a dangerous skill.
Kit took the measure of each of his friends. None of them had become the leisurely, relaxed aristocrats he’d expected them to be. It seemed they had suffered from a restless need for justice, just as he had. He could see that now. Beneath their gentlemanly clothing, there was a hard edge to each of them that reminded him all too much of the feral animals and even more feral men he’d lived with in Australia. His friends had in some ways spent the last seven years in a battle here just as he had battled all the way on the other side of the earth. They carried a darkness that almost matched his own.
“You truly want to help me?” Kit asked, and his throat suddenly tightened with a flood of emotions as the men facing him all solemnly nodded.
“We’re with you to thelast. We always have been,” Warren replied.
The confident words stung deep within Kit’s chest. It felt like a lightning bolt had struck his dead heart, forcing it to beat again. He’d been dead for seven years, a ghost of a man... And now here he was, breathing, hurting all over again.
But he wasn’talone, not anymore.
“Where do we start?” Felix asked, still lounging against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.
“There are only three people I want,” Kit said after a moment. “Thomas Balfour, Maynard Walsh, and Jackson Townsend, the shipping clerk who gave false witness against me.”
Vincent took a chair at a reading table. The other men followed suit except for Kit, who kept near the window away from the others. He still wasn’t used to being so close to his past.
“Well,” Vincent began, “Balfour is now a chief magistrate, and he a partner with Walsh in your old shipping company. He did wait a full year after your transportation before he bought into Walsh’s company. They handle almost all the major shipping out of London’s ports now, except for those ships that Ashton Lennox hires for his cargo. He is the only one still giving them any competition.”
“Lennox?” Kit wasn’t familiar with the name.
“He’s a baron,” Lionel explained. “He’s a ruthless businessman, but fair. If you need anyone investing your money, he’s the man to trust, and likely a good ally if we ever need one. After you left England, he handled your father’s financial affairs at my suggestion. We thought he wouldn’t take advantage of your father during the period of his grief, and he didn’t.”
Kit tensed at the mention of his father. “Thank you for watching over him.” He met the eyes of the men in the room, letting them all know he meant it.
“You would have done it for any of us,” Warren replied.
That was certainly true, but Kit needed them to know how grateful he was. “What of the clerk, Townsend?” Kit asked, forcing himself not to think of his father again. He would face that bleak emptiness when this was over.
