Page 93 of Thief Taker

That’s when he found the note, folded in half and laid on the pillow.

Pulse thumping, he snatched up the paper and fumbled it open. It wasn’t addressed to him; it wasn’t addressed to anyone. For discretion, neither was it signed. But it was written in Kit’s cack-handed scrawl, the ink smudged where his hand had dragged over it as he wrote. It read:

I must speak with my sister before Marlborough arrives, and so I go to Ashbourne today. If it were possible, I’d have you at my side throughout, but I know that cannot be. If things go well, I’ll be back within days. If not, remember the words I spoke last night and know that they were true, are true, and will always remain true. I am yours, always.

The last word was underscored twice and Elias stared at it, at the whole note, for a long time.

Kit had gone to see his sister. Of course. It made perfect sense.

It also put him on the Bath Road tonight.

Elias read the note again. Kit would want to break the news to his sister himself, before Marlborough arrived to claim the estate. And he had his father to think about too…

Really, he should consider it a stroke of luck that Kit was gone today. It meant Elias could go about his own business without needing to lie.

No more than he’d already lied.

He swallowed the dryness in his throat, ran his fingertips over the ink. Always. A simple word, but Kit had no idea what he was promising—or how difficult it would be to keep that promise once the truth spilled out.

Nevertheless, to see it written there was something to treasure, something to hold against everything to come. Folding the note neatly, Elias slipped it into his pocket to keep it close and headed for the door.

Tonight, Marlborough would be on his way to Ashbourne. If Elias’s suspicions were correct, Wessex would stop him on the road. And it was Elias’s fervent hope that when the man was unmasked, he would be revealed as Viscount Rowsley.

There would be time enough after that to face Kit and try, if he could, to explain himself.

Chapter 33

For the sake of discretion, Kit found Hartwell in his Marylebone lodgings later that morning. There he explained his plan, and though he didn’t expect Hartwell’s cooperation, he was glad to have it. “It’s as damned foolish as anything else we’ve done,” Hartwell said. “And no doubt lucrative.”

With nothing to do until dusk, they spent the day feeding and resting the horses, and themselves. In practice, this raid was no different to any other. Yet they both felt the difference, the night’s potential ringing between them like an unstruck bell. They didn’t speak of it, though, talking instead of anything else.

Hartwell had a copy of the London Advertiser and sat in the chair by the fire reading and scowling. “Ha,” he exclaimed suddenly, startling Kit out of his thoughts. Thoughts of Elias, of how it had been last night, the warmth of him, the way he’d—

“Another riot,” Hartwell said, smacking the newspaper. “In Philadelphia this time. Didn’t I say there’d be no order under this so-called Congress of theirs?”

“You did,” Kit agreed.

“No power to levy taxes, no power to compel states to honour their foreign treaties…” He sat forward, bent over the newspaper. “Listen to this, it’s a letter from a gentleman in New York. He writes, you will wish to know how matters stand here with our unfortunate friends who staked everything upon the honour of the Crown and the justice of the Treaty. I can only tell you that they are, for the most part, ruined men.” Hartwell looked up. “Ruined men, you see? It goes on, The states do as they please; Congress cannot compel them; and the articles of the peace, so far as they concern the Loyalists, are treated as so much dead letter. I know of several families of the first respectability who have applied in vain for the return of their estates, now occupied by those who purchased them at the confiscation sales, and who show no inclination whatsoever to quit them.” He lowered the paper, his face set tight. “That’s how it is there, lawless.”

Kit nodded. “Have you had no word from your brother?”

Ignoring the question, Hartwell dropped his eyes back to the paper. “And it says here that Virginia forbids the payment of debts to British creditors. Nonsense, all of it. How do they expect to be taken seriously?”

“Perhaps if you wrote to him first?” Kit pressed. “I know it’s difficult. God knows I can hardly stand to look at James… But perhaps you could suggest a rapprochement now that the war is over? Your brother is in a position of influence, is he not? He may be able to help your case.”

Hartwell sent him a cold look. “If he has influence, why would he use it on my behalf? He thinks me a traitor, Kit. Remember?”

He did remember. “Those words were spoken in anger.”

“They were spoken in court! ” Hartwell’s eyes flashed, his colour rising. “I did nothing but my duty to king and country, and he …” His voice cracked. “My brother stood up in court and named me a spy and a traitor. He watched them strip me of everything—my estate, my honour, and my home.”

Kit ached for his friend, for the injustice of it. And yet. “George is still your brother, Ned. Perhaps, if you could find it in your heart to forgive—”

“As you forgive James?” Hartwell waited for a moment, then snapped the newspaper and carried on reading. “No, I thought not.”

Kit had no answer to his question, that was the truth. His feelings for James were a tangle of anger, pity, frustration and—deep down—love. Whether any of that could amount to forgiveness he couldn’t say.

The rest of the day passed cold and tense, but eventually the light began to fail. And at half past three, they set off for Hounslow Heath.