disapproved wholeheartedly of Dare’s relationship with the other man, and even more, she’d despised the work they’d done.
The other man chuckled again. “Not that you ever did make decisions based on how she felt about our work.” There was no recrimination there, and yet . . .
Dare frowned. Something in hearing the other man put the words that way . . .
“Anything else you need from me?” Avery asked, pulling him from those guilty musings.
“Your latest list.” At the other man’s puzzled expression, Dare clarified. “Might I hold on to it . . . do some research of my own on those households?”
Avery chuckled. “You can take a thief out of the Rookeries, but you can’t take the thief out of the man.”
Now those were words Dare could find himself agreeing with.
Avery nodded at him. “It is yours.”
After Avery had gone, Dare found himself alone once more with nothing more than the ache of regret for what he was missing out on . . . and frustration with this new life he now found himself forced to live.
He studied the four names: men who were all strangers but evil in their own right, and deserving of finding themselves targets . . . Reluctantly, he drew the center desk drawer out and filed the sheet inside.
You? Thieving still? You’re mad . . . Whyever would you want to do that?
Dare gathered his ledgers and stared once more at the columns of names: men, women, and children whom he’d given to.
How adamant Avery had been that Dare should carry on in his new, comfortable existence . . . and divorce himself of his past.
And ironically, the pair who’d long been at odds over everything and anything had come together in their opinion . . . of this. For Temperance had been insistent that Dare had to choose one life.
To hell with the both of them . . . telling him who he should or should not be. Or what he should or should not do. Dare knew what his fate and future held. He always had.
Go . . .
The streets called, their whispering potent . . . stronger than the opium the men and women with their tobacco addiction craved.
Go . . .
A voice niggled.
Unbidden, he found himself opening the center drawer and withdrawing the notes written in Avery’s sloppy hand.
Do it. Why wouldn’t you?
The funds he was here attempting to earn in Mayfair the honorable way required him to give something he didn’t know how to give. Dare stared at the page he held in his fingers. While the monies belonging to these men? That money was there, now, for the taking.
Dare snapped his book of names closed and tucked it into the desk drawer.
He stood, pausing to stuff the ripped page into the front of his jacket.
A short while later, he found his way through the all-too-familiar streets of Mayfair . . . and outside the household of his latest victim.
A man who deserved nothing but had everything.
This was what Avery and Temperance would have him quit. The only damned thing he’d ever been good at.
The household had been entirely doused of candlelight, leaving the townhouse welcomingly pitch black. Even the heavily clouded moonless, starless London sky complied this night, agreeing with Dare and casting aspersions upon that which Avery and Temperance had urged of him.
Staying close to the stucco unit, Dare withdrew the dagger he’d strapped along his back. He wedged it under the window. The distinct clink of metal striking the wood echoed like a telltale shot. Hanging to the side, he waited, allowing for an errant servant still strolling the halls to investigate any out-of-place sound.
And waited.
Dare straightened and peered into the unlit ballroom . . . recalling a different waltz.
What are you waiting for?
Someone would have come by now had they heard him.
He wiggled the blade back and forth . . . when a little face reflected back within the pane.
Dare jumped.
Heart thudding, he glanced around . . . and then back to the unattended child.
The little babe wiggled its fingers and then beat them hard against the glass.
When no one came rushing to collect the child, Dare hesitated a moment and then rested his palm against the glass.
The child giggled happily. Naively innocent of Dare’s intentions or any evil—his father’s. His family’s.
Dare cocked his head and studied the babe with his thick, dark hair. This boy linked to Bolingbroke.
Dare didn’t look at the families he robbed in this light, as having children reliant upon them.