person you’re trying to get it from won’t be afraid to kill you. You need to act like this matters.”
“It does matter,” Holland insisted.
“This book that you want to get—”
Holland cleared his throat and glanced meaningfully at Betty.
“She’s a part of this job. She knows everything,” Kit said. “This book, either you’re willing to hurt people to get it or you aren’t. You need to decide now, before you waste any more of our time or your own, what it’s worth to you.”
“It’s of the utmost importance,” Holland said tightly.
“Then act like it. Try again.”
He did try again, and this time Betty managed to trip him so thoroughly he landed sprawled on his back on the bare floor.
“No more,” Kit said. “Go home. And don’t come back until you’re ready to act like you mean it.”
Holland got to his feet. “You never really meant to help me at all,” he said through gritted teeth. “You’re simply amusing yourself by watching your friend humiliate me.”
Kit narrowed his eyes. “The people you need to hire to work with you on this robbery are my friends. I’m not asking them to risk their necks to work with a man who isn’t willing to put his own neck on the line. If you can’t take this seriously, if you aren’t willing to do what it takes, then I can’t help you.”
“I will not hurt a woman.” Holland clenched his fists, and for a moment Kit thought this might be more than some gentlemanly rubbish about the fairer sex or some such rot. “I was raised—”
“Fuck how you were raised, and fuck your gentlemanly scruples. You can’t do this if you insist on being a gentleman.”
“A gentleman!” Holland repeated, unable to suppress a bitter laugh. “That has nothing to do with it. If somehow you think that gentlemen are unwilling to hurt women, I hardly know what to do with you.”
“I know perfectly well what Talbot men are willing to do with women.”
“That is precisely my—” Holland began, but was interrupted by a shrill whistle, and they both turned to face Betty.
“Enough. The pair of you are quarreling like fishwives. You,” she said to Holland. “I got in my first fistfight when I was eight years old and I only stopped when the boys got too afraid of me to take me on. Don’t come back until you’re ready to treat me as your equal. And you,” she said to Kit. “This was a terrible idea for all the reasons we talked about. You’re not thinking straight, and you’ll never think straight where these people are concerned.”
When Betty left, Kit knew he ought to follow her and give Holland time to get dressed, but if given a choice between Betty’s wrath and Holland’s sulk, he’d take the sulk.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Holland dress himself with shaking hands. It took him three tries to get his waistcoat buttons lined up. When Kit gave him a proper look, he saw that the man’s cheeks were flushed with what Kit suspected was helpless embarrassment. It felt wrong, seeing Holland exposed like this.
Holland opened his mouth but evidently thought better of it, and swept out of the room, leaving Kit alone and feeling unaccountably disappointed.
Chapter 17
Kit had once been a heavy sleeper. It had been the source of much family comedy, with his brothers attempting to cut his hair or steal his pillow while he slept soundly. Later, Jenny had often needed to shake Kit awake in the morning. But by the time Jenny was gone, Kit had become the lightest of sleepers. Anger and fear had robbed him of peaceful sleep, and habit had accustomed him to waking every time Hannah stirred in her cradle. Now his nights passed almost dreamlessly, and when he woke, the covers were seldom disturbed. Sometimes he thought he didn’t sleep so much as shut his eyes.
So it happened that when, in the small hours of the morning, he heard a rapping at his door, he sprang into wakefulness. Only stopping long enough to step into his trousers—he was not going to confront miscreants in a state of total nakedness—and grab his dagger and his walking stick, he was downstairs quick enough that he doubted his neighbors would even complain of the nighttime disturbance.
When he flung open the door, he didn’t know whether to expect a vagrant who had lost his way home or a messenger with bad news about Betty or some other friend. He certainly did