Page 88 of Restored

“How about last night then?” he said after a moment.

Kit felt his face heat. “I’m sorry things got so out of hand. I wasn’t expecting that. I don’t think it would have happened had Skelton not been there.”

Sharp only shrugged. “There was always a risk of fisticuffs. I wouldn’t have let you do it to a good customer, but Bartlett was on his way to being banned anyway. As for Skelton, your duke friend did me a favour with that one. Turned out he’d been using marked cards in my club.”

Sharp leaned forward, his tawny gaze oddly intent on Kit. He looked unusually serious with no hint of amusement or sarcasm in his expression. It was a look that said he meant what he was about to say.

“Don’t you worry about them coves, Kit,” he said quietly. “I’ll be taking care of both of them. You don’t need to give ’em another thought, and neither does your friend, Clara.”

Kit blinked.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised. Sharp had already been remarkably decent about the whole thing.

“Thank you,” Kit said at last. “I appreciate that more than I can say, and Clara will too.”

Sharp acknowledged his thanks with a brief nod. “So,” he said after a pause. “This duke of yours. Avesbury.”

“He’s not my duke,” Kit replied quickly. He might be grateful to Sharp, but he wasn’t about to give him any information about Henry he didn’t need.

“No?” Sharp said, raising a brow. “I heard he was your keeper?”

“That was years ago,” Kit said with a careless shrug. “And he’s not the only keeper I ever had.”

Sharp was silent for a long time, then he leaned back in his chair and said, “Well, that’s good to know, Kitten, because if there’s a position free as your keeper, I’d be very interested in applying.”

Kit laughed softly and shook his head. “There’s no position. As I think I’ve told you before, I don’t do that anymore. And even if I did, I’m too old for you.”

“Bollocks,” Sharp said, grinning. “You’re not much older than me.”

“Whether or not that’s the case, the fact remains I swore to myself a long time ago that I would never take money for that again.”

Besides, I’m in love with someone else.

He wasn’t stupid enough to say that last part aloud though.

Sharp sighed. “Well that’s just a damned shame,” he said. “The way I see it, money keeps things simple between two people. And I need things simple.”

Kit could have told him he was wrong. That far from making it simpler, money complicated everything. That it changed the balance between two people in ways that couldn’t be easily rectified.

But he didn’t say any of those things.

“If you recall, you do owe me a favour,” Sharp said, canting his head a little and quirking a smile.

Kit gave him a look. “I do recall—and I also recall that I told you that doesn’t includemyfavours. Ask for something else.”

Sharp laughed. He leaned back in his chair, watching Kit with unconcealed curiosity. “What have you got to offer me, Kitten?”

Kit opened his mouth to make some flippant comment in reply, but then he stopped himself. Paused. Let the idea that had just occurred to him expand in his mind.

What he was contemplating terrified him, but he made himself say it anyway.

“How about I sell Redford’s to you?”

Sharp’s eyes widened

And it was then that Kit realised something.

He really did want to sell Redford’s.