He turned, then, to the boy behind him. “I’ll need to take that now.” He held out his hand.
Blue eyes spitting defiance, the boy handed the watch over. If his skinny hand trembled, they both chose not to notice it. “Thank you, Tom.”
He closed his fingers around the watch and turned back to his uncle, who scoffed as the boy was helped back up the stairs.
“In my study, Major. Now.”
An hour later, Sebastian climbed the stairs, his whole body heavy as lead. His head was aching, but it was only a dull counterpoint to the unholy throbbing in his arm.
Nothing was broken. He was sure of that. Just as he was also sure the blow would have smashed the boy’s skull like an egg.
He rapped lightly on Tom’s door before opening it. The boy sat sullen and pale in bed, looking up once to see who his visitor was before setting in to study the sheet over his lap with an even blacker scowl than before.
Very, very tired, Sebastian stood at the foot of the bed and crossed his arms, ignoring the pain.
“Explain the clock, Tom.”
“What’s it matter what I say? You won’t believe me; no one’s gonna believe me. I’m good as hanged already.”
“On the contrary, Tom, you appear to be comfortably situated in a Queen Anne bed of considerable antiquity and value. But if you don’t tell me the truth, then youwillfind yourself before the Watch. And I am not in a patient mood.”
Tom scratched a grubby fingernail at the white sheet—stillgrubby, despite all the baths.
“I like clocks. I wanted to look at it.”
Sebastian looked at him. Slowly, he repeated, “You like clocks.”
The boy’s skinny jaw jutted. “Knew you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I might do a better job if you gave me more truth.”
“It is the truth!” He jerked upright, indignant, then winced at the pain. How he’d managed to climb out of a window with a broken arm, Sebastian couldn’t fathom. And it’d been three floors up. He’d learnt that much from the interview with his uncle. Shortly before he barred him from setting foot in the house again.
“I like clocks. And that was an odd one.”
“The Breguet Sympathique. A very rare and valuable one.”
“I wanted to open it up and look inside it, so I took it to my room, to the window where it was light…”
“Lookinsideit?”
“I told you!” The boy glared at him as though he was stupid. “I like clocks! I like all them little cogs and bits inside them. I had a watch…filched it off some swell up Covent Garden, but we got unlucky, someone saw and snitched us, and I fell off a roof in the chase—landed in some back yard with high walls, lucky, cause they ran right past me. But the watch was all smashed to pieces under me. All them little goldy yellow shiny cogs and springs and whatnot spread all over the floor. Glittered like fairy dust, they did. Well…I picked ’em up, best I could, and I kept them…I didn’t tell Jem about it. No good to him, is it? Can’t sell that, but he would of took it off me anyway, just to spite me, he would. So I kept it secret, in one of me pockets, and anytime it was quiet, I’d try to fit it all back together. Never quite could. But I stole a big old mantel clock off a junk stall a few weeks later, and that one was much easier to figure out, all the bits being there, you see.”
Sebastian looked at him. “You like clocks.”
“I told you!”
He dragged a hand over his face, eyes squeezed shut for a moment. He drew in a breath, and hopefully a large dose of calm serenity with it.
“Very well, Tom. I believe you. You get to live—and to stay under my roof a while longer. But I warn you that if you everdosteal from me, my uncle’s wrath will look as gentle as a mother’s kiss. And likewise if you ever take any of my clocks apart.Especiallythe Breguet. Do you understand?”
The boy pouted, but a shiver went through him. Relief.
“Yes, sir. I get it.”
“Very good. Now get some rest.”
Tom gave the window a horrified look. “But it’s broad daylight!”
