The Gentleman and the Thief (The Dread Penny Society #2) - Sarah M. Eden Page 0,1

He stood on the walk as the carriage rolled away down Piccadilly and turned off the street.

Free of his brother’s scrutiny, Hollis walked with casual haste away from the bookshop. Hatchards was a fine place to spend an afternoon, but it was not actually his destination.

Randolph worried that Hollis might be involved in a profession that would cast a shadow on the family reputation. Oh, Randolph. You ought to be fretting about so much more than that.

Hollis pulled a penny from his pocket and spun it in his fingers as he moved leisurely in the direction of Covent Gardens. He had time enough to make his way at a pace that wouldn’t draw notice.

Mongers hawked their wares. Customers with a few coins to rub together wandered in and out of the shops. A good number of people had, either in their hands or in their pockets, the familiar “penny dreadfuls”—serial stories sold for a penny and exceedingly popular among the poor and working class. They were considered a scandalous choice among the upper crust, one few admitted to but many indulged in.

Onward he went, spinning his penny, keenly aware of anyone and everyone around him. He would appear to them as a gentleman of means, of indifference, never knowing he tracked them like a pickpocket in a crowd of unguarded purses.

Among the penny serials, he spotted a good number sporting the teal cover of Mr. King’s latest work. King was, in a bit of fitting name-play, the reigning monarch of the genre. Hollis also saw a smattering of the first installment of a new series by Lafayette Jones, a particular favorite of his.

He stopped and purchased a copy for himself. That’d put some truth to the bald-faced cropper he’d told Randolph about how he meant to spend his day. He tucked the lightweight booklet in his interior jacket pocket, keeping it hidden from prying eyes. They would see what he wanted them to see. Nothing more.

He kept his demeanor casual but his eyes sharp. He didn’t usually get this close to his destination without spotting others tossing or spinning pennies about. It was a sign, an identifier, a calling card among them.

He didn’t see any. Hang it. He’d be skinned if he was late.

Hollis turned up the steps of what, to a passerby, would look like an unassuming London townhome with an ordinary blue door. It wasn’t locked; it never was on these crucial days. The entryway looked a bit shoddy compared to the polished stone floor and carved columns of his family’s London home. Father had managed to complete the Darbys’ descent into bankruptcy, but at least he hadn’t taken a crowbar to the old place and sold it by bits. The vestibule was unexceptional. The sleeping butler, though, was an oddity.

Hollis laid the penny he had been spinning in his hand on the walnut end table alongside at least a dozen others.

The butler, head still hanging and heavy with sleep, reached out and pressed a specific flower in the decorative molding. The first time Hollis had seen the butler press that flower, triggering a nearby door to open all on its own, he’d been speechless. The wonder of it had faded over the years.

He moved with quick step into what, in any other home, would’ve been a parlor or sitting room or something painfully boring like that. Here, it was a small-scale recreation of the House of Commons. The room was abuzz, but the meeting hadn’t started. He wouldn’t be chewed up and spit out for tardiness. Not this time.

Brogan Donnelly greeted him as Hollis moved toward his usual seat. “I’d nearly given you up. ’Tisn’t like you being the last to arrive.”

“I didn’t have the sun shining off your fiery hair lighting my way,” he said.

Brogan shrugged. “I offered m’services to those who came when they were meant to. Couldn’t laze about waiting on you.”

“My brother offered to drop me wherever I was going,” Hollis said. “I had to formulate a likely story and destination that wouldn’t garner suspicion.”

“Where’d you choose, then? The ‘I Don’t Belong to a Secret Society of Renegades’ shop? I hear one recently opened on the Strand.”

Hollis sighed dramatically. “If only I’d thought of that. I chose Hatchards.”

“A shame.”

Fletcher Walker, Hollis’s closest friend and the acting head of this organization, known amongst themselves and in whispered speculation around Town as “The Dread Penny Society,” called out over the cacophony of voices. “Order, mates! Order.”

With a degree of swagger even an American would have