Page 72 of To Save a Scoundrel’s Soul

“No, there is no need.” Rossingley answered this time; he too seemed to be finding the entire exchange dreadfully amusing. “I’m told that once one reaches the capital, the French are rather good at providing suitable staff. And I rather think Rollo and Fitzsimmons will manage quite well without.”

“So…” Mickey frowned, puzzled. Now even Ashington smiled at him indulgently.

“What?” he said, suddenly self-conscious. “What are the three of you looking so pleased with yourselves about? Do I have remnants of shaving soap around my ears?”

“Your ears are as petitely divine as always, my darling,” purred Rossingley, his grin even wider. “Everything about you is divine, if only you realised it.”

Knowing better than to pursue Rossingley in this playful mood, Mickey searched Tommy’s face for answers instead. It was far too early in the day for any of them to be sloshed on brandy; as far as Mickey knew, they’d only imbibed coffee so far.

“What Rossingley is trying to say is that you have become surplus to requirement, dear cousin,” Tommy announced. “From today, I am insisting you leave my employ.”

“What?”

The words falling from Tommy’s mouth landed heavily in the pit of Mickey’s stomach. He looked around at the elegant salon, all those armchairs, the crystal decanters, and discreet gas lamps that once filled him with a sense of purpose. He knew trade here at the club dwindled over the summer months, and the new secretaries were already proving themselves more than adequate, but they didn’t know the nuances of the business, like Mickey. And, more to the point, he was Tommy’s right-hand man. His cousin, his only living relative. His second in command. Tommy needed him, dammit!

“I-I’m at a loss to understand.”

All three men were still smiling at him.

“I’m letting you go, dear cousin,” Tommy repeated more gently. “From today, you are no longer in my employ.”

“You’re…dismissing me? Is it something I’ve done wrong?”

“Hardly.” Tommy laughed. “You’re the best employee a man could wish for. No, we simply became weary of waiting for you to pluck up the nerve to ask me if you could leave, so we thought this was the best way.”

Mickey swallowed. He was leaving Squire’s. Tommy was dismissing him. Which meant he could…he could…

“You’re to visit Europe with Rollo and Fitz. As far as Paris, in the first instance.” Tommy smiled. “After that, it’s up to you. But I don’t expect to see you back here for a year or more. And only then for a visit.”

“You’re getting rid of me.” Mickey’s brain wasn’t fully working. His mouth was moving, but nothing sensible was coming out. Against his chest, Valentin’s gift burned.

“I believe I’ve already stated that. Go and track down that devilish vicomte of yours. The one giving you a face like an alley cat fallen into a hot bath.”

Rossingley was also smiling at him—his rare guileless one. It was disconcerting. And Tommy was still talking.

“But I—” Mickey tried again. He wasn’t sure what he was. Petrified? Elated? Exposed? “What if he…”

“Which bit of everything about you is divine are you failing to understand, Mickey?” interrupted Rossingley. “The man adores you, my darling, and why wouldn’t he? He rescued you from arrest and trusted you with Ashington’s parure. He even sent his old papa to find you!”

And gave Mickey a priceless gift. If the others had an inkling that a dark red diamond as big as a hazelnut lay hidden under Mickey’s shirt, they’d tumble from their comfortable chairs in shock. Even Rossingley, and he was virtually impossible to wrong foot.

Ashington roused himself from his newspaper. Generally, these sorts of conversations he left to the experts, such as Rossingley. Today, however, he chose to wade in. “Love makes a man vulnerable, Mickey,” he pronounced, his dark gaze lingering on Tommy. “One’s heart will be quite wrung by it. One can choose to keep it to oneself of course, or one can spread it around the racetrack, or lavish it on one’s siblings.” His eyes returned to Mickey. “Or on one’s cousin, who appreciates the value of your love intensely but can manage quite well without. But even doing all those things with it, my dear boy, it is not safe. Love will find you out and, frankly, is not worth fighting.”

He shook out his paper. “Go to France, for heaven’s sake. If only to thank that devious vicomte of yours on my behalf, for doing the right thing and returning my original parure.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

MICKEY DIDN’T ENJOY the voyage by boat across to France one bit. He didn’t care for how the horizon tilted and swayed in a mischievous, unpredictable rhythm, nor how the world shifted beneath his feet in ways it was never meant to. Mind you, it had been doing something not too dissimilar when he was still on dry land, from the moment Tommy had given him his marching orders.

Naturally, Rollo had the stomach of an old seadog.

Paris was no less bewildering either. Grand and yet gritty in much the way of London, the French capital beat with an altogether different pulse, making Mickey feel very much the foreigner. The poverty was reassuringly familiar, of course. Like London, it sat merely a stone’s throw from society (the Parisian ton were as blinkered to it as people were in London), but here, Mickey detected an undercurrent of revolt. From the grandeur of the Opéra Garnier to the darker corners of Montmartre, people gathered in ale houses and on the streets, conversing in the rolling, artful, romantic manner of Valentin, but lacking his green gaze and his sure way of making Mickey feel far more than the sum of his very ordinary parts.

Rollo was in his element, and Fitzsimmons renewed many acquaintances. Though Mickey appreciated their attentiveness and company, when Fitzsimmons muttered about a concert in Vienna, and Rollo shared a yen to visit a distant cousin living in an incomprehensible-sounding town en route, Mickey was rather glad to be moving on.

*

THE SUN HAD dipped low when Mickey rode into Verdille; already it cast a golden hue over the undulating hills. Clusters of wildflowers dotted land stretching endlessly before him—tiny bursts of colour amidst a sea of soft green. No signs indicated he’d arrived in the correct place; the track had dwindled to dirt a mile or so back, and his red leatherbound map book had long ceased to be of use.