Page 19 of Restored

“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, butthere 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-seeto 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.”