“What’s wrong?” Kit said, frowning. “Is it Evie? Or one of the girls?”
Jean-Jacques shook his head. “No, no, nothing like that. All is well with us, mon amie. It is just”—he broke off and took a deep breath—“someone came to Mercier’s yesterday. A man I have not seen for many years. I think he was quite shocked to see me, but then… he asked after you, Kit, and wanted your address.”
Kit’s first thought was, please not Lionel Skelton, and his stomach began to roil with anxiety. He had only seen Skelton twice since that long-ago night when the man had beaten him senseless. But on each of those occasions, Skelton had looked at him with such hatred Kit had been worried for days afterwards.
“Who was it?” Kit managed, through stiff lips.
Jean-Jacques was silent for a moment, then he said gravely, “It was your duke.”
“My duke?” Kit repeated, his tone disbelieving. “My—wait, you can’t mean Henry? He would never—” Kit’s head began to swim and his heart to thud in slow, slugging beats. He took a long, shuddering breath and let it out in a whoosh.
“Kit,” Jean-Jacques said gently, worriedly. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Kit said faintly. Then he added, “He’s not my duke.” It seemed vital to clarify that, for some reason. Perhaps to remind himself.
Henry Asquith had never been Kit’s.
Jean-Jacques didn’t answer, but his gaze was pitying.
The silence stretched, and still Kit’s heart hammered. At last he said, his voice hoarse, “You say he was shocked. Didn’t he know you owned Mercier’s before he arrived?”
“No, I am quite certain of that. There was a woman with him. She was with child. I think he almost fell off the chair when he saw me.”
Kit’s mouth twisted. “He must have been horrified. I’m surprised he didn’t run away with his tail between his legs.” He tried to imagine the scene, Henry sitting in Mercier’s with a pregnant lady, only for Jean-Jacques to hove into view. He wondered if Henry had flushed—he used to flush very easily, when he was embarrassed or felt uncomfortable.
Another thought occurred to him then—Kit had learned a few years ago that Caroline, the wife Henry had practically worshipped, had passed away. Henry must have married again. But that was to be expected, he supposed.
“I was surprised when he asked to speak to me,” Jean-Jacques said. “At first, he pretended not to recognise me, and left with the lady—I thought that would be the end of it. But then he came back and asked for a word in private.”
“What did he want?” Kit hated that he cared what the answer to that question was.
“News of you. I said I found it strange that he was asking. And he said—” Jean-Jacques broke off. He pressed his lips together and shook his head.
“What? What did he say?”
Jean-Jacques met his gaze. “That he behaved shabbily towards you by not saying goodbye in person—but he thought you would understand.”
Kit hated how much that hurt. Enough time had passed, and enough had happened that such careless words shouldn’t affect him in the least. But they did. Because Henry hadn’t just “behaved shabbily”—he had broken their agreement entirely. Had effectively swindled Kit.
“Understand?” Kit said incredulously. “Understand what? Being cheated?”
Jean-Jacques gave a little shrug that was part mystified, part I-told-you-so.
“I was such an idiot,” Kit groaned.
“I think I said so at the time,” Jean-Jacques agreed.
Kit sighed. “Yes, I know. And so did Mabel and everyone else with half a brain, but I was stupid and stubborn and—”
“—in love,” Jean-Jacques completed for him.
“Infatuated,” Kit amended.
Jean-Jacques’s gaze was sympathetic. “You thought he would come back, didn’t you?”
Kit let his head fall back and stared at the ceiling. “I suppose I did,” he admitted. “I hoped he’d wake up one day and realise he missed me.” He scoffed at himself quietly. “I was a very foolish boy.”
After a moment, he raised his head and met Jean-Jacques’s steady gaze. “So how did you respond to him?”
Jean-Jacques shook his head unhappily. “I wanted to give him a 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.