Page 93 of Restored

Kit cleared his throat. “You remember how you said I needed to find someone? For the other side of my fireplace?”

“What?” Mabel shrieked, sending Nell Gwyn squawking yet again. “You’ve finally got yourself a new fancy man?”

Kit shifted uncomfortably. “It depends what you mean by new.”

Mabel’s gaze narrowed speculatively. “Someone you already know…” she mused, tapping her chin. “One of the boys at the club, is it?” But already she was shaking her head. “Is it someone I know? Wait”—she clapped her hands, grinning—“is it Jean-Jacques?”

“No!” Kit exclaimed, offended. “He’s married, and I’m friends with his wife!”

Mabel scowled. “Shame,” she said sourly, and went back to tapping her chin. “Who then? I can’t think of anyone. You’ve never been one for romantic feelings, Kit, despite being so soft-hearted. Not since that bloody duke—” She broke off at the expression on his face, her own transforming into one of pure disbelief. “Oh, no, Kit! Never tell me it’shimafter all these years!”

Kit said, “I’m afraid so. Henry found me and—”

“That lying, cheating—”

“Andhe’s explained what happened in the past,” Kit spoke over her. “He had no idea, Mabel. It was all the fault of his man of business.”

“And you believe this rubbish?” Mabel hissed.

“Just listen,” Kit insisted, and proceeded to tell her the whole story—or at least, most of it.

By the time he was finished, she looked somewhat mollified, though her mouth was still tight with disapproval.

“I can’t believe you wouldn’t let him give you the money!” she exclaimed. “I think you’re touched in your top loft, Kit. He owed you that.”

Kit laughed softly and shook his head.

Nell Gwyn whistled noisily and hopped from Mabel’s shoulder to the arm of her chair.

“Woo-hoo!” she shrieked. “He loves you; he loves you not.”

“You should listen to Nell Gwyn.” Mabel told him sternly. “I swear this old girl’s practically a prophet.”

The parrot launched herself from the chair in a lazy flap of wings, landing on top of her cage.

“He loves you,” she intoned flatly, then hopped from the cage to the top of a wooden glass-fronted cabinet where Mabel kept her best china. “He loves you not.”

Next was the sideboard. “He loves you.”

The mantelpiece. “Woo-hoo! He loves you not.”

She paused on the coal scuttle to whistle tunelessly, then shrieked, “He loves you,” only to hop to the tea table and intone mournfully, “he loves you not.”

Finally, Nell Gwyn did something she had never done before. She landed on Kit’s shoulder and rubbed her feathered head against his hair, whistling again. “He loves you.”

And fell silent.

For a few moments, no one said anything, waiting. Then Nell Gwyn flapped back over to her cage and hopped inside, picking up a nut from the floor of the cage, which she began to tear open.

Kit looked at Mabel, wide-eyed. She had tears in her eyes.

“Well in that case,” she said, “you’d better have your duke, I suppose.”

Henry arrived at five minutes to seven.

“He’s keen,” Tom commented unprofessionally, leaning in the doorway of Kit’s private sitting room. “You should let him kick his heels for a while.”

Kit chuckled. “I’m too old for that sort of nonsense. Show him up.”