Restored (Enlightenment Book 5)

by Joanna Chambers

  He opened his mouth then, to ask if he might speak to her father, when Jean-Jacques himself emerged from behind the counter, visibly startling at the sight of Henry.

  Henry stepped toward Jean-Jacques. “Monsieur Mercier,” he said. “I wonder if I might beg a word in private while I wait for the order I just placed.”

  Jean-Jacques scowled—actually scowled—but after a moment he gave a short nod. “Very well,” he said succinctly. “Follow me, please.”

  He led Henry behind the counter and through a narrow corridor that Henry presumed ultimately led to the kitchens, given the mingled scents of caramel, caraway, ginger, and orange that drifted towards them.

  Before they reached the kitchens, however, Jean-Jacques opened a door and led Henry into a small office. He closed the door behind them and turned to Henry, his expression cool.

  “What do you want, your grace?”

  “So, you did recognise me.”

  “Of course,” Jean-Jacques said, giving a familiar Gallic shrug that Henry recognised as a gesture of his from the old days. “Though why you wish to speak to me after twenty years, I can’t imagine.”

  “Can’t you?” Henry asked, somewhat taken aback by the man’s faint hostility.

  Jean-Jacques’s expression tightened. “No.”

  Henry eyed him uncertainly for a moment, but he had to ask now, having come this far. “Do you—that is, are you still friends with Christopher Redford?”

  Jean-Jacques’s gaze hardened, and for a long, terrible moment, Henry wondered if he was about to tell Henry something awful. That something had happened to Christopher, perhaps. Henry’s heart squeezed painfully in his chest.

  But then, to his relief, Jean-Jacques said coolly, “Yes. We are still friends. Why do you ask?”

  The relief was so huge that, for a moment, all Henry could do was exhale a long breath. “I thought you were going to tell me something had happened to him,” he said.

  Jean-Jacques seemed unmoved by this confession, standing silently as he waited for Henry to answer his last question.

  “Can you tell me how he is?” Henry asked at last, shocked by how breathless he sounded.

  Jean-Jacques frowned. “Forgive me, but I find the question very strange. It has been twenty years—”

  “Eighteen,” Henry interrupted.

  Jean-Jacques eyed him curiously. “Close enough,” he said, shrugging. “The point is, it is many years since you left Kit, and you did not ask after him then—and not in any of the years following. But you see me today, and suddenly you want to know?”

  Henry swallowed hard. “I behaved rather shabbily, I know,” he said. “I should have said goodbye to him in person, but in the circumstances, I thought he would understand.” He broke off at the sight of Jean-Jacques’s furious expression. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Jean-Jacques turned away, giving Henry his back. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said roughly.

  “You looked angry,” Henry said. “Why?” A strange sense of foreboding was building in his chest.

  Slowly, Jean-Jacques turned. His expression was back to being polite again, his gaze remote.

  “Your grace,” he said quietly, with the air of man who planned to bring the conversation to an end. “Kit is well and quite settled. I believe he has put the past behind him.”

  “Is he—?”

  Jean-Jacques held up a hand. “That is all I can tell you. It is for Kit to decide what else to share with you after everything that happened.”

  Everything that happened?

  “What do you mean?” Henry said faintly. “What happened? Other than my going back to Wiltshire?”

  He caught another betraying flicker of emotion in Jean-Jacques’s eyes.

  Disgust.

  Henry had known Jean-Jacques as a pert, provocative prostitute, given to sharp observations and sly humour. He had been outspoken in those days. Now he was reserved, careful. A respectable business proprietor with much to lose at the hands of a powerful aristocrat.

  “There is nothing more I can say,” he said. “You must speak to Kit if you want to know more.”

  And God, but there was some story here, Henry realised sickly. Something he did not know about from his own past.

  “Can you give me his direction then?” Henry asked. Was that really his voice, asking for Kit’s direction? Was he really considering doing something he had sworn he would never do?

  Jean-Jacques stared at him for several moments, then he shook his head. “I cannot do that, but I will pass on the message that you would like to meet, if you wish. Then it will be for Kit to decide.”

  Henry nodded, his heart racing. “I will come back on Thursday for his answer,” he said. “If that suits?”

  Jean-Jacques nodded. “Very well.”

  He conducted Henry back out into the tea room then immediately excused himself. After another minute, Jean-Jacques’s daughter arrived with the pastries, all neatly tied up in paper and string. Henry paid and left, and returned to the carriage.

  He smiled distractedly as Marianne chattered all the way back to Curzon Street, but the whole time he was thinking of Christopher.

  Wondering what it was that Jean-Jacques would not tell him.

  5

  Kit

  Kit did not like to rush his mornings. Since he was generally at the club till very late, he rarely rose before ten and would usually enjoy a leisurely breakfast and read the newspapers before he got to work.

  And so it was that, when there was a rap at the dining room door at eleven o’clock on Wednesday morning, he was still wearing his favourite turquoise dressing gown as he sipped his fourth cup of tea and perused an article about the upcoming general election.

  “Come in.”

  Tom, resplendent in his new footman garb, opened the door and announced, “Mee-syoo-mer-see to see you, sir.”

  Kit frowned, puzzled. “I beg your pardon?”

  But already his guest—Monsieur Mercier, Kit saw—was strolling past Tom and setting two beautifully-wrapped boxes of cakes on the table while Tom bowed solemnly and withdrew.

  “Jean-Jacques,” Kit said, smiling warmly. “It’s good to see you.”

  “And you,” Jean-Jacques replied, tossing up the tails of his coat as he sat himself down. “The cakes are from Evie.”

  “Thank her for me.”

  “I will,” Jean-Jacques assured him. “New footman, mon amie?”

  “Yes,” Kit said. He sighed. “Very new.”

  “Do you need such a fancy piece?” Jean-Jacques asked, one eyebrow raised. His French accent was still very thick, despite a quarter of a century in London. “Though I admit, I see the appeal—this one is handsome as a god. Are you…?” He trailed off with a suggestive look.

  Kit rolled his eyes at the predictable response. Everyone who walked through his door panted after Tom.

  “No,” he said. “He was working at the club before this, but he doesn’t lean that way. He wanted to get out of the game, so I agreed to let him come here and learn on the job, as it were. Clara’s teaching him his letters and numbers in the evenings.”

  Six months from now, Tom would have choices. Choices were everything, but sometimes you needed someone to give you an opportunity, a way to get on the right path before life beat you down too much to change.

  “A pity,” Jean-Jacques observed. Then he waved his hand in an airy, dismissive gesture. “Well, never mind. Plenty more fish in the lake, yes?”

  Kit sighed. “I’m not looking for a—fish.”

  “Everyone needs a fish,” Jean-Jacques said kindly. “It is a fact of life. We are pairing creatures, like swans, or—”

  “Jean-Jacques,” Kit interrupted, reaching forward to pat his hand. “I don’t know whether I’m a man or a fish or a bird at this point. But whatever I am, I can assure you I’m quite happy on my own. Now, tell me this: to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  Jean-Jacques had been his usual merry self until Kit a
sked that question, but now a troubled expression crossed his face. He had a most expressive face, and Kit knew him very well. They’d met when they both worked at the Golden Lily and had become close friends. Like Kit, Jean-Jacques had had a careful eye to the future. He’d carefully saved generous parting gifts from several wealthy protectors to build up the funds he needed to marry his sweetheart, Evie, and set up his business. Now his life was good, his small family happy. Kit could not think what might have happened to make him look so worried.

  “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, notwithst
anding 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 servants’ door, making his way back to the Lily to throw himself on Mabel’s mercy.

  He’d worried she’d tell him she’d washed her hands of him and send him away, but instead she’d tsked and taken him in, nursing him herself and personally negotiating the terms of the severance with Skelton.

  And of course, she’d let him have a piece of her mind.

  “You’re a fool, Kit Redford,” she’d told him sharply. “Lucky for you I was so fond of your mother.”

  Kit had been in a bad way for several weeks after Skelton’s assault on him, recovering from broken ribs and fingers and whatever internal injuries had been inflicted that had him pissing blood and deaf in one ear. As he’d waited for his hurts to heal and his spectacular bruising to fade, he’d had plenty of time to dwell on the pain of Henry’s betrayal—something he had assiduously avoided thinking about before then. But lying there in his sick bed, Kit had finally had to accept just how absurd and misplaced his feelings for Henry Asquith had been. Like a stray dog, Kit had fixed his affection and loyalty on a man who had neither asked for nor deserved such gifts.

  The hearing in Kit’s left ear never did return, but the other injuries had mended, in time. And life had gone on. After that, Kit followed Mabel’s advice to the letter. An experience like the one he’d lived through with Skelton did not leave a man with even the dregs of romantic idiocy.