not expect Lord Holland, visibly drunk, his coat draped over his arm, his hair loose around his shoulders.
“What in the— Get inside before the neighbors see.”
“I have something to tell you.” Holland’s usually precise tones were slurred. “S’important.”
“You can tell me indoors,” Kit said, taking him by the arm and tugging him into the shop. “And you can tell me while you’re sitting—no, I don’t trust you with stools right now. Sit in this chair.” Once he had made certain Holland was safely in a chair, he built up the banked fire. “Now, what’s so important that you had to wake me up in the middle of the night?”
“It’s about women.”
“Oh, is it?” Kit asked, amused.
“It is,” Holland said with the earnestness of the very drunk. “I don’t want to hurt them and it’s not fair of you to make me.”
The smile dropped from Kit’s face. “You couldn’t hurt Betty if you tried.”
“S’not the point. I don’t want to try. Don’t want to be the sort of man who does try.”
“I see,” Kit said slowly. He turned his back so he could put the kettle on the fire, and so Holland couldn’t see his face.
“There’re not a lot of things I do right, it turns out. I mean, not a lot of things I do that are good. But that’s one of them. And you shouldn’t try to take it from me.”
Kit turned around and saw Holland, one leg crossed over the other, his elbow on the arm of the chair and his chin in his hand.
“I see,” Kit said, because he couldn’t think of anything else. He took a jar of ground coffee off a shelf and put a spoonful in the pot. As he worked, he occasionally looked over his shoulder at Holland, partly to make sure he hadn’t fallen off the chair, and partly because his face was open and vulnerable in a way Kit hadn’t yet seen it. “I ought to have guessed.”
“I’m six feet tall and twelve stone,” Holland said. “That’s a lot bigger than most women.”
“That’s true,” Kit said.
“I don’t want to be frightening.”
“I promise that Betty wasn’t frightened of you.”
“That isn’t the point!” Holland said, his voice nearly a shout. “The point is that I know who I am and what I am, and you shouldn’t make me do a thing that I know is wrong.” He closed his eyes and wrapped his hands tightly around the arms of the chair, and Kit guessed that inside Holland’s wine-soaked brain, the room was spinning. “I do know it’s wrong.”
“Of course you do,” Kit said, rummaging through the jars and baskets he kept behind the counter for some solid food he could get into the man. Finally, he turned up a couple of stale biscuits. He spooned some sugar into the coffee cup and put it on a saucer, then placed a couple of biscuits beside it. “Here,” he said, handing saucer and cup to Holland. “Don’t drop it.”
“Never dropped a cup in my life,” Holland said. “Breeding.”
“One of the reasons I asked you to spar with Betty was that I wanted you to understand that in order to rob your father, you’re going to have to do things you don’t like.”
“I already know that. I knew that the first time I came to you. Did you think that soliciting criminals is something I enjoy? I mean, I did enjoy it, you’re very handsome, and there’s—” He broke off, gesturing vaguely at Kit. Kit crossed his arms over his bare chest, desperately wishing he had thought to put on a shirt before coming downstairs. “All very pleasant to look at, bravo, but the reason I had to come to you in the first place was appalling. I don’t want to steal from my father. I don’t want my father to be a villain. I didn’t ask for any of this. And one day when I have time to think, I’m going to be terribly angry about being forced to deal with all this.”
Kit didn’t ask what “all this” consisted of, just as he wasn’t ever going to ask what was in that book. Whatever Holland and his father were up to, Kit didn’t want to know the details. He needed to keep this entire affair at arm’s length in order to keep his promise to Betty and not get caught up in a job that could easily get personal.
“I’ve never seen your hair down,” Kit said, the words leaving his mouth before he could think