of the finances he’d inherited and the agreement the duke had laid out.
Whistling, Avery reclined in his seat. “Well, either way, as I see it? You’ve plenty of stuff here that you don’t need to risk your neck to save another. Sell your properties. Sell their fancy things. That’ll be enough to last you.”
“I’ll give it some thought,” Dare murmured. Ultimately, however, it wasn’t about him. That had long been a distinction between him and his mentor: Dare had been determined to give it all away. Avery had given away only just enough to afford him some power in the Rookeries, and the rest he’d hoarded and held on to for his own security. Having lived the same precarious existence as the other man, Dare would never pass judgment on what anyone did to survive.
Avery came to his feet. “I have to go if I want to be in The Window.”
Dare glanced to the clock. “Yes,” he said, unable to tamp down envy at the freedom permitted Avery to go out.
The Window, as the other man had called it, referred to the safest hours in which to conduct one’s most precarious thefts: the early-morn hours when lords and ladies had returned drunk and tired from their night’s pleasures and passed out in their beds. It was at that time when servants stole their all-too-brief rest. And then the household was most unguarded.
Once again a restlessness filled him. A hungering to take part.
“Wipe that look from your face,” Avery admonished.
Dare’s neck heated. “What look?”
“The only time I ever saw you with that silly, infatuated look on was when you were thinking about Temperance. By the way, I thought she was done with you?”
Yes, because after he’d found her the first time in the Cotswolds and she’d pleaded with him to leave her for good, Dare had returned to the Rookeries and revealed the end of his marriage to Avery. The other man had commiserated with him over brandy he had stolen from some nobleman’s household. “I convinced her to . . . help me one more time.”
Laughing softly, Avery shook his head. “Always had a way with that one, you did. Always had a way with everyone.”
Had it been anyone else, there would have been a trace of envy to those latter words. Dare stared down once again at the notepad containing Avery’s latest assignments. He and Avery, however, had managed a perfect partnership, with his mentor having been determined to look after him.
This moment proved no different. “You don’t want to do this, Dare. Not again,” his mentor said with a gruff gentleness, contradictory sentiments and yet both existing in truth. “And I’m not going to let you venture back out. Your days of that are done.”
“As if you could stop me,” he called over to his mentor.
With a snort, Avery shoved to his feet. “That much you’re correct on.” He touched the brim of his hat and headed for the doorway.
Something in seeing his retreat sent panic spiraling. Once Avery was gone, so went with him the link Dare needed . . . craved . . . to his previous life. “I’d start with Ashcroft.”
“And here I thought you’d say Bolingbroke.”
Because Dare had been a victim of a crime committed by the likes of Bolingbroke. “I’m clearheaded enough to know which assignment is the right one. Mercy is more likely if you’re caught stealing from the bastard who’d kill his own son.” Is it that? Or is it simply that you want the privilege of that great theft?
As he turned, Avery lifted a hand and waved it in parting. “You’re not wrong.”
“I’m right,” Dare called out, earning a laugh from his mentor.
The other man paused at the doorway. “How is she, by the way?”
“The same,” Dare said automatically, not pretending to misunderstand who the other man spoke of. “She is the same.” And yet different. To say as much, however, would invite an elaboration Dare had no interest in providing.
“Now that I can believe. That one was always a spark.”
She and Avery had always had a volatile relationship, Temperance’s dislike palpable, an emotion she’d never made an attempt to conceal around the other man. Whereas Avery? Avery had always been amused by her.
Dare stood. “I’d ask you to . . . keep me abreast of the Rookeries,” he said, that being the closest he could come to asking the other man to be part of his life still.
“And is that something Temperance is going to support?”
No, she wouldn’t. She’d