part of my mind, but—how could I, Kit? The man is a duke, and I am just a—a man with a little bit of a business.” He shook his head, his expression disgusted. “But I should have said something.”
“No,” Kit said firmly. “You did the right thing. Besides, Evie would have my spleen if you got into an argument with a duke over my head.”
Jean-Jacques gave a dry laugh. “Very true.”
“So,” Kit said gently. “Did you tell him how I was?”
“Only that you were in good health and settled. I said there was no more I could share with him without your agreement. That was when he asked for your direction, and I said I could not give that either but I would ask you if you would agree to meet. I said I would let him have your answer tomorrow.”
Kit gave an incredulous laugh.
“Oui!” Jean-Jacques exclaimed. “You could have knocked me down with a bird.”
“Feather,” Kit said absently.
Jean-Jacques gave a Gallic wave of dismissal.
“I can't believe he wants to meet me,” Kit said at last. It was incredible. What had prompted such a notion? After all these years?
“Would you consider it?” Jean-Jacques asked curiously.
“It’s been so long,” Kit hedged.
“Eighteen years, your duke said.”
Kit looked up, a little surprised. “That’s right.”
He tried to imagine what Henry might look like now, but all he could think of was Henry all those years ago, not quite thirty years old. He’d seemed so mature to Kit back then. Strange to think that if Kit met that Henry now, he would probably think of him as a mere boy.
Today’s Henry was seven-and-forty. Only six years Kit’s senior. Those six years had mattered a great deal when they had first known one another, but they meant very little now. The years between had equalised them in maturity, if nothing else.
Kit was a very different man now from the innocent Henry had once known. Well, perhaps “innocent” was a bit much. A boy who’d grown up in a brothel and serviced his first client at sixteen had no business calling himself an innocent—but in his way he had been quite naive.
When he looked back now at how he’d behaved after Henry had left him, he cringed to think what a foolish, idealistic boy he had been. It was not, even then, that he’d believed Henry had loved him—he had not been that stupid—but he had thought there might be a little affection there, enough to at least earn him the right to a farewell delivered in person.
Instead, he’d been given fifty pounds, his marching orders, and a single day to remove himself from the little house in Paddington Green. The news had been delivered not by Henry, but by his man of business, Silas Parkinson. And it hadn’t been so much a farewell as a warning to stay away from Henry or risk losing the use of his legs.
Mabel—also known as Madame Georgette of the Golden Lily and the broker of his arrangement with Henry—had been furious at Henry’s breach of the agreement. She had negotiated generous terms at the outset: Kit was to get the house and three hundred pounds as a parting gift, twenty per cent of which was due to her. She’d wanted to expose Henry for breaking the contract, but like an idiot, Kit had begged her not to do it, unable to bear the thought of bringing ruin to Henry, notwithstanding his shabby behaviour. And yes, perhaps hoping that Henry would have a change of heart.
Kit had given Mabel the fifty pounds Silas Parkinson had paid him. And then, after weeks had passed with no sign of Henry, and without consulting Mabel further, he’d foolishly leapt into the bloody awful disaster that had been his arrangement with Lionel Skelton. All to make sure he’d be able to pay up on his IOU to Mabel promptly and show her he could manage on his own.
Of course, the arrangement with Skelton had turned out to be a far, far worse mistake than any he’d made before. The misery of those four months had finally come to an end the night Skelton had beaten Kit half to death. By some miracle, Kit had survived the night he’d spent naked and unconscious on the bedchamber floor. When he’d awoken in the early hours, shivering and in agony, he’d realised he must get away if worse was not to befall him when Skelton returned. Somehow he’d managed to dress and had left the house by the