Page 13 of To Save a Scoundrel’s Soul

“I’m worried about you.”

“You’re always worried about me. You missed your calling as a mother hen.”

“It was Benedict who put me on to it, actually,” said Tommy, ignoring him and definitely still scrutinising him. “Rossingley and Kit can barely tear their eyes from one another, Rollo clambers all over Fitzsimmons like he’s a stuffed tiger, and I…well, I have my delicate duke. Which leaves you rather lonesome.”

“Are you kicking me out of the group already?” Mickey was amused. “For being a spare part?”

“No. Just concerned that I work you far too hard to find time for pleasure. I’m feeling…fatherly.”

Mickey shook his head. “You’re always feeling fatherly. Despite being only ten years my elder.”

“Brotherly, then.” Tommy shrugged. “Cousinly. Feeling as if my only living relative and heir deserves a slice of happiness.”

Happiness? Mickey had more of that than he’d ever imagined. He counted his blessings practically each morning on waking. Sure, he woke alone, but it was in a warm bed and with more money stuffed under the mattress than he’d once thought possible, let alone his to spend how he wished. And if he did wake to the odd, rare day when living amongst the ton seemed too gilded, too constricting, as if the city walls were somehow pressing in, then he remembered all those nights he’d shivered under a tattered blanket as grey as the London fog. He remembered how the stench of decay and smoke and shit and piss had become part of his very breath, and if it wasn’t for Tommy, he’d have stopped taking any breaths many years ago.

Mickey resumed his arithmetic, starting again at the top. “Feeling odd is more like it, Tommy. Is it the change in the weather, or something you ate?”

“For heaven’s sake, Mickey!” Tommy reached across to pluck the quill pen from his hand. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m worried we stifle you. That working here, with me, stifles you. You hang around with us old folk—”

“Rollo is hardly old! And neither are you!”

“I wonder if I keep you too close, then. Prevent you from spreading your wings.”

“And flying where?”

Tommy made an exasperated noise. “I don’t know! Exploring! Seeing what lies beyond. Just…”

“If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have any wings at all. I’d be buried six feet under or turning tricks outside what’s left of the White Hart.”

“Yes, but—” Tommy waved his arm over their desks, piled high with ledgers and invoices and orders for liquor. Over money, in other words. “—I want this to be a stepping stone. I want you to have everything. You’re like a son to me.”

“Ten years and three months.” Mickey rolled his eyes again. What had brought this on? Tommy was fretting like a nervous nursemaid. “Did you not hear the first time?”

“Goddammit!” Tommy banged on the desk. “You know what I mean. I worry that you’re festering away, toiling for me when you could be…I don’t know…finding adventure. Or…or finding a…a lover, perhaps an intriguing, mysterious one. Forming a romantic attachment. As I have done, and Rossingley and Kit, and Fitzsimmons and Rollo.”

An intriguing, mysterious lover? A romantic attachment? Mickey cursed as the pieces fell into place.

“If this is your commonplace mind’s bungling way of asking me if I’ve made the acquaintance of a certain French vicomte, then—” He paused as Tommy’s annoying face split into a smug grin. “You bugger!”

“Not at all,” Tommy protested, at least having the decency to appear slightly abashed. “I do want all those things for you. But Benedict…”

“Benedict what?”

“Benedict spotted you conversing with our debonair vicomte at the masked ball,” Tommy confessed. “And then Rossingley noticed him slip away into the garden.” He raised an eyebrow. “Two minutes later, you were nowhere to be found either.”

Mickey’s cheeks flared with warmth. London cock. “If those two peers squander their family fortunes, then might I suggest they find themselves positions as nursery governesses,” he observed drily. “Or government spies.”

“So, he is one of us,” Tommy asserted, even more pleased. “Damn. I owe Rossingley five pounds.” His good humour suddenly faded. “He’d better not have hurt you, Mickey. You should tell me before you go galliva—”

“He didn’t hurt me, Papa, and I didn’t gallivant anywhere. We merely partook of the night air together in a shady corner of Lady Butterworth’s delightful walled garden.”

“But he is one of us.” Tommy’s lips twitched. “And I sense from that rosy glow that you have personal experience?”

Mickey gave up. He couldn’t hide anything from bloody Tommy, and he wouldn’t be allowed to finish balancing the books until Tommy had eked every last shred of information from him. “Very personal,” he admitted. “Beauregard invited me into the gardens, relieved my ballocks, then had a crack at relieving me of my purse too.”

“The cheeky sod!” Tommy snorted. “I’m becoming fonder of him by the minute. What did you make of him? Should we consider admitting him to Squire’s?”

Mickey’s consideration of Beauregard was leaving very little room for anything else.