The Sugared Game - K.J. Charles Page 0,15
you think you can strike a blow at the bastards via the High-Low, I’m in if you want me. By the way, the floor manager is a vicious piece of work.” He repeated what Beaumont had told him. “If you’re planning to get in there, you’ll need backup. Me, the War Office, whoever.”
“I’m not working for the War Office and there is nobody I’d rather have with me than you,” Kim said. “I would very much like you at my back, please. And by back I probably mean front.”
Will blinked. Kim tipped his head. “You needn’t look so startled. You can look out for yourself, you’re quick on the uptake, and I trust you. I hope I haven’t made you think otherwise.”
“I’m not even going to answer that,” Will said with feeling.
Kim gave a quick smile, there and gone. “Fair warning: I will tell you now that this won’t be clean. I’m going to be very unpleasant to people who deserve it, and probably to a few who don’t.”
“What about Beaumont?”
Kim shrugged. “I’d be most grateful if we could use him to get into the High-Low.”
“What would you need from him?”
“Any information he has on the people who run the place. A layout, weak points—it’s not obvious how one would break in, and I don’t want to show my face there while casing the joint, as the Americans say. Assistance, if he feels so inclined. If we can’t use him I’ll find another way, but since you have the connection—”
“I’ll see if he wants to talk to you. No more than that.”
“That would be marvellous. Don’t tell him I’m official, will you? Tell him you’ve a pal in a spot of bother and ask if he can help, perhaps.”
“Do you think it’s safe?” Will asked. “Him being seen with me, I mean. I wouldn’t want to get him in trouble.”
Kim considered. “Did you have any sense he was pumping you for information when you met?”
“No. He mostly talked about himself.”
“And I take it you don’t feel you’ve been followed or watched? Nothing suspicious since you met him?”
“Well, there’s this dodgy bastard who broke into my shop...”
Kim grinned at that. “Then it doesn’t sound as though there’s a problem. You might tell him to be discreet, but better he meets you here than at my flat.”
“Fair enough.”
Kim rose. “Let me know when to pitch up. I like the room, by the way.”
It was an improvement on the crowded back-room of the shop where he’d lived for months but that was about all you could say for it. Kim had stained-glass lamps and original Pre-Raphaelites. Will had whitewashed walls and second-hand furniture. “It’s not much.”
“It’s bare and efficient. Just how I think of you,” Kim said, and slipped off down the stairs without a farewell before Will could think of anything to say in reply.
Chapter Four
Will had an arrangement to meet Phoebe for lunch the next day. He hadn’t mentioned that to Kim. Some might think it was a bit much to be lunching with a man’s fiancée without telling him; Will was of the opinion that Kim could go whistle.
The Honourable Phoebe Stephens-Prince was a strikingly lovely blonde, tall and slender and wildly out of Will’s class. She dressed in the most dashingly modern fashions, smoked cigarettes in an ebony holder, painted her face, called everyone ‘darling’, and seemed to be exactly the sort of empty-headed Bright Young Person who got in the newspapers unless you listened to her.
They met at their usual place, a small French restaurant on the Charing Cross Road. She had arrived before him, and Will was unsurprised to see her deep in conversation with the proprietor. All the staff were hopelessly in love with her, and looked at him with a mixture of envy and bewilderment that he fully understood. He found it hard to believe he got to lunch with Phoebe too.
“How absolutely lovely to see you,” Phoebe said, once they’d ordered. “You must tell me everything about how you’ve been and what you’ve done. How did you like the High-Low?”
“We had a good time, but it’s a funny sort of place.”
“Isn’t it? And the proprietress, too dreadful.”
“When did you go?”
Phoebe raised a brow. “Oh, goodness, months ago. I was there with—now, who was I there with? Binkie Huckaback and Gloria Glade, so it was summer, of course. A little party for Binkie’s birthday, which to be honest isn’t entirely something one would expect him to celebrate, being a juvenile.”
“He’s too young to drink?”
Phoebe gurgled.