LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Two

       London, three weeks later

      Elliot stifled a yawn and fished in his waistcoat pocket for his watch. Five minutes off two in the morning and his friend Cunningham was showing no inclination to leave. The atmosphere in the gambling salon of Brooks’s was one of intense concentration disturbed only by the chink of coin, the glug of a decanter emptying, the snap of cards and soft murmurings as the stakes were raised. The gamblers were much too hardened to betray anything so crass as emotion as the stack of guineas and promissory notes shifted across the baize from one punter to another.

      Some of the cardplayers wore hats to shield their faces. Others tucked the ruffles of their shirt sleeves up under leather cuffs. Elliot, who had been used to gambling with his life for far higher stakes, could not help finding the whole scene slightly risible. He had placed a few desultory bets at faro earlier, more for form’s sake than anything, but the last hour and a half had been spent as a spectator.

      Restlessly pacing the long room, with its ornately corniced concave ceiling from which a heavy chandelier hung, the candles in it guttering, he called to mind the many similar reception rooms across Europe he had visited. Cards were not the game which had attracted him to such places. In the midst of war, cards were a means for his men to while away the long hours between battles. Civilians didn’t understand the boredom of war any more than they understood its visceral thrill. He had no idea why Cunningham could ever have thought he would be amused by a night such as the one they had just spent. Carousing and gambling left Elliot cold. No doubt when Cunningham rose from the tables he would be expecting to indulge in that third most gentlemanly pursuit, whoring—another pastime which held no interest for Elliot. He was a gentleman now, perforce, but he was, first and foremost his own man, and always had been—even in the confines of his uniform. Elliot had had enough.

      ‘I find I have had a surfeit of excitement, my dear Cunningham,’ he said, tapping his friend lightly on the shoulder. ‘I wish you luck with the cards. And with the ladies.’

      ‘Luck doesn’t come into it, Elliot. You of all people should know that. Never met a devil more fortunate with the fairer sex than you.’

      ‘Never confuse success with good fortune, my friend,’ Elliot replied with a thin smile. ‘I bid you goodnight.’

      He collected his hat and gloves and headed out into St James’s, doubting he’d be making much use of his new club membership in the future. It was a cold night, dank and foggy, with only a sliver of moon. A housebreaker’s kind of night, though it was much too soon to be thinking about that.

      Kinsail’s diamond had proved rather difficult to dispose of. Elliot’s usual fence had refused to have anything to do with such a distinctive stone, forcing him into an unplanned trip to the Low Countries where he had, reluctantly, had it cut and re-faceted before selling it on. The resultant three diamonds had garnered far short, collectively, of what Lord Kinsail was rumoured to have paid for the parent. But then, Kinsail had paid the inflated premium such contraband goods commanded, so Elliot’s thief-taker had informed him. More important—far more important—was the price Kinsail was now paying for his dereliction of duty to the British army.

      Not that he knew that, of course, any more than he really understood the price paid by that army for his neglect. Men such as Kinsail saw lists demanding horses, mules, surgeons. Other lists requiring field guns, cannons, rifles, vied for their attention, and more often won. But what use was one of the new howitzers when there were no horses to haul it into battle? What use were muskets, Baker rifles, bayonets, when the men who would wield them lay dying on the battlefields for want of a horse and cart to carry them to a field hospital? For want of a surgeon with any experience to tend to them when they got there? What did Kinsail and his like know of the pain and suffering caused by their penny-pinching. The ignorance which led them to put guns before boots and water and bandages?

      Elliot cursed, forced his fists to uncurl. Even now, six years later, Henry’s face, rigid with pain, haunted him. But what did Kinsail and his like know of that? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And even if he could, by some miracle, paint the picture for them, it would give them but a moment’s pain. Far better to hit them where it hurt—to take from them what they valued and use it to fund what really mattered. Those diamonds, even in their cut-down form, would make an enormous difference. That miserly bastard Kinsail would never know that his jewel had, by the most dubious and complex route, gone some way to make reparation for his war crimes.

      As ever, following what he liked to think of as a successful mission, he had scoured the newspapers for word of the robbery, but Lord Kinsail had, unsurprisingly, declined to make public his loss. For perhaps the hundredth time since that night Elliot wondered what, if anything, Lady Kinsail had said about their encounter. For what seemed like the thousandth time the memory of her pressed beneath him flitted unbidden into his mind. The feel of her mouth on his. The soft, husky note to her voice. That face—the haughty, questioning look, the big eyes which had shown not one whit of fear.

      He should not have kissed her. He had thought, as he fled the scene of his crime, that she had kissed him back, but had come to believe that mere wish fulfilment. She had simply been too startled to resist. After all, as far as she was concerned he was a thief. But why had she not cried foul?

      The bright gas lighting of Pall Mall gave way to the dimmer and appropriately shadier braziers around Covent Garden. Thin as London was of company this early in the year, there seemed to be no shortage of customers for the wretches forced to earn their living on the streets. A scuffle, a loud cry, then a cackle of laughter rent the air as a man was dumped unceremoniously on to the steps of a brothel. Shaking his head at a questioning pock-marked street walker, Elliot pressed a shilling into her filthy hand and made haste across the market square, ignoring her astonished thanks.

      The stark contrast between the homes of the gentlemen who frequented the privileged clubs of St James’s and the hovels and rookeries which were home to London’s whores, whom those same gentlemen would visit later, made him furious. He had seen poorer and he had seen sicker people abroad, but this—this was home, the country he had served for nigh on sixteen years. It shouldn’t be like this. Was this what twenty-odd years of war had won them?

      In the far corner of the square he spied something which never failed to make him heartsick. Just a man asleep in a doorway, huddled under a worn grey blanket, but the empty, flapping ends of his trousers told their story all too well. The low wooden trolley against which he rested merely

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