Page 5 of The Scoundrel of Drury Lane
He hadn’t known then that his investment had been a trap, that he was meant to be the fool they’d planned to pin the tobacco theft on once the theft was discovered.
Kit set the elephant down on the windowsill, then stilled as he heard something plinking against the window. He pressed close to the glass and stared down at the street below where a dark figure stood. The man bent to retrieve something from the ground and stood again. He wound his arm and threw something at Kit’s window, which hit with another plink.
Bloody hell, the man was tossing stones at his window. Kit moved quickly and rushed down the stairs to the front door before the man smashed his window.
The instant he opened it, the figure from outside slipped into the foyer. It was a trick! The man wasn’t trying to get his attention—he’d been trying to get someone to let him inside. Before the man could react, Kit grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the wall, growling a warning in the dark.
“Move and I’ll break your neck.” He squeezed his fingers on the man’s throat in emphasis. He didn’t know what this man wanted, but Kit trustedno one. For all he knew, this man could have been hired by Balfour and Walsh to watch for his return and to kill him if possible.
“Might be hard to do... if your lung is punctured,” the other man growled back.
The sharp prick of a blade against Kit’s ribs made him realize what a fool he’d been. Of course a thief would be armed if he was making such a bold attempt at robbery.
Knowing when he was beat, Kit let go of the other man and slowly stepped back. The man was close to him in height, with hair as black as a raven’s wing, and his bight blue eyes glowed in the waning moonlight coming in from the open doorway. He recognized the man, but the shock of the face, as changed as his own, caught him off guard.
“Darius?” Kit said uncertainly. He would never forget those eyes, even if the face had changed from a boy’s to a man’s. It was Darius St. John.
“Good God...” Darius’s face turned a stark white as he stared at Kit. “Kit,” he breathed, his eyes softening with brotherly affection. “Christ... it’s really you, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Kit replied. He was uncomfortable with the rush of emotions he felt at seeing his old friend. He wasn’t ready to face the past, even the better parts, perhaps even those more so than the rest, because he could never go back to those good days before his world had burned around him.
Darius grabbed him in a tight embrace. “God, man, you have no idea how much we missed you.” He slapped Kit on the back and then finally let go of him. Darius was grinning, but Kit remained frozen as he felt the burden of those missing years weigh heavily on his shoulders.
“Kit, are you all right?” Darius asked, then cursed under his breath. “Of course you aren’t. That’s a stupid question. No one would be all right after what you’ve been through.”
Kit had no idea what to say to that, so he merely grunted in response. How was it that Darius could so easily read him and the situation he was in?
“I want to hear everything, of course, but we ought to wait for the others,” Darius said quite seriously.
“The others?” Kit replied in confusion.
Darius walked into the drawing room and took the lamp over to the window. He stopped and passed the lamp in front of the window, then withdrew it from view five times in succession. Then he watched the street for a moment and repeated the odd motions. Only then did he finally set the lamp down and face Kit again.
“What on earth were you doing?” Kit asked.
“Summoning the others,” Darius said with a grim smile. “They’ll be on their way. We devised a simple method to send signals to each other when we have news. Ever since you were sent away, we haven’t trusted anyone to not read the messages we send, at least not anything about you.”
“Why would you be sending messages about me?” Kit asked, still confused and still baffled as to who Darius would be talking to.
“Because we’ve never stopped trying to prove your innocence. We’ve had to be careful about it.”
“When you saywe, you mean...” Kit waited for him to explain.
“The others... Lionel, Warren, Felix, Vincent. Good Lord, Kit, you can’t think we’d have forgotten about you after all these years.” Darius stared at him, clearly stunned at Kit thinking just that.
“We’ve spent the last seven years pretending to be scandalous aristocrats playing in the pleasure gardens and racing our curricles and all that nonsense. But in truth... we’ve changed, Kit, just as you have.” Darius’s eyes were filled with an old pain. “We’ve become a sort of... secret society. You remember that old joke they used to make about us when we were lads? The Rogues of Devil’s Square? Well, I’m afraid it’s become true—we’re dangerous men, Kit, as dangerous as we could manage to make ourselves. We’ve trained in combat of all forms, we’ve practiced signals and writing in code and all manner of things, all while we kept watch on your enemies, because they becameourenemies.”
“You’ve been watching Walsh and Balfour all this time?”
“Walsh and Balfour are clever, and we don’t wish to underestimate them. It’s why I came to investigate when I saw you here. It was my night to stay on the street and keep watch,” Darius declared as if that was quite obvious. “I saw the light on in the window and didn’t know who’d be in your room. I thought I’d come to see and lure whoever it was to the door. I never imagined it might be you, but I’m deuced glad it was. It seems...” Darius paused as he glanced out the window again. “That we’re fortunate. The others are coming now. They must have come home early from their evenings out and seen the signal.”
Sure enough, a moment later, four figures were seen moving toward Kit’s home. Darius left the drawing room to meet them at the front door. Kit stayed where he was, his mind racing as he realized who was about to come through that door.
For the first time in seven years, his friends, nowdangerousgentlemen who lived in Devil’s Square, were going to be together again.
2
Nothing could have prepared Kit to be in a room with his boyhood friends again. Certainly not like this. The golden-hued memories that surrounded their now hardened masculine faces were like faint auras, echoes of the past. His chest ached with an unexpected hollowness. He had lost something precious these last seven years.
