Page 32 of Thief Taker

They darted into the light, and the footman gave a breathless yell. “Stop them!”

And then the door flung wide and a hand reached out, grabbing Elias’s coat. He slipped, almost fell, struggling in the meaty grasp of someone behind him. “Go!” he yelled at Duvall. “Run!”

But he didn’t run. His expression hardened, anger flaring. “Let him go.”

“The devil I will,” came the growl from behind Elias’s ear.

In the corner of his eye loomed a bully’s squashed profile and surly, gap-toothed grin. The breath washing past his cheek was gin sodden.

“Keep hold of him, Guts!” The footman picked his fastidious way through the filth.

Elias lunged back with his elbow, but the lug holding him was too big and too strong.

“Quit your squirming,” he snarled and pushed Elias to his knees in the mud, arms twisted behind his back.

Biting down on a curse, Elias glared up at Duvall. “Run!” he barked. “Now!”

But the cod’s head ignored him, squaring up to the bully with his jaw set. “I said, let him go.”

“You going to make me, chit?”

All youthful bravado, Duvall tipped his head. And Elias’s heart sank. “Oh for the love of—”

Duvall swung. His left fist slammed into the bully’s jowly face, something cracked—his jaw?—and the man fell hard against the doorjamb with a grunt.

Then Duvall was hauling Elias to his feet, a strong hand on his arm, and they were running again.

Once they were back in the dark Elias had to blink a couple of times before he could see, slowing down to keep from slipping. Duvall still held his arm.

“Clark, where are you?” the footman yelled from behind. “Get down here!”

Which was when Elias remembered there’d been two of the lobcocks standing on the front door. If they’d half a brain between them, the second man would be making his way down the other side of the building. And he and Duvall would be trapped in the mews.

Bugger it. He stopped, thinking fast. There—a patch of deeper black in the darkness ahead. He prayed it was what he needed. Fingers clamping onto Duvall’s wrist, Elias dragged him across the alley. And, yes, he was right; a narrow cut branched off from the alley, leading along the side of the stables. He pushed Duvall ahead of him—they could barely squeeze into it.

The footman’s squelching footsteps were close, his huffing breaths loud in the dark night. Clearly, he was more ornamental than useful when it came to securing his master’s property, but the cull still had ears, so Elias stopped dead halfway along the cut.

“Wha—?”

Pressing a hand over Duvall’s mouth, Elias pushed him against the stable wall.

In the dark, all Elias could see was the gleam of his eyes as they went very wide, his chest heaving where Elias had him pinned. He tried to urge silence with a look and Duvall gave a slight nod of understanding.

The footman was still squelching through the mud in the alley, close enough to hear them if they made a noise.

Under his fingers, Elias felt the evening stubble on Duvall’s jaw, the heat of his mouth against his palm, quick breaths from his nose grazing the back of his knuckles.

Duvall. Kit. The nickname suited him better.

At the end of the passageway the footman paused. Elias stopped breathing, feeling Duvall do the same.

After a moment the footman moved on again. “Clark, did they come your way?”

Controlling his breaths, keeping them silent, Elias lifted his hand from Duvall’s mouth and pressed a finger to his own lips. His other hand was curled into Duvall’s coat. Kit’s coat. Eyes locked, neither of them moved. Elias’s heart was racing. He could feel it hammering and wondered whether Duvall could feel it too. How could he not? Elias licked his dry lips and Duvall watched him intently.

The footman was still cursing at the end of the passageway and then another voice joined him. Clark, the other footman, probably. There was an irritable exchange between the two men regarding the state of their shoes and stockings, their voices starting to fade as they moved away.

Still Elias didn’t shift. He waited for a slow count to thirty, and then another to twenty, until he couldn’t hear anything beyond the usual night-time babble of London.