The afternoon groaned into evening, creaking and implacable as icebergs. In the wake of Kit’s pronouncement, not much else could be done that day; they did not have time to explore all the Fairleigh fields, nor a precise enough location. The night’s blizzard threatened, howling.
The occupants of the study had gazed at each other and sighed; Miss Featherdale said she’d need to walk home before dark, as her mother needed help with the children. Kit very nearly said something about young women and walking alone and unattended, and then remembered that he wasn’t in London and this particular young woman knew the paths and country lanes better than he did. And then he couldn’t help glancing at the latest angry eruption of snowflakes beyond the windowpane anyway.
Harry caught this glance. Murmured, “It’s fine, Lizzie’s a greenwitch, remember? She’s not strong enough to fight all this, and she won’t do anything to antagonize an elemental, but she can keep herself warm, and it’s only just across the park. But it’s nice that you cared.”
Kit, who did not enjoy being so transparent—and who did not care about people, only doing his job, thank you—glared.
Harry grinned. “Would you like to finally see your room, and then come and meet me in the library? I’ve got an idea about narrowing down the search, if we’re going out tomorrow.”
Kit’s brain took this poor innocuous suggestion and rewrote it in lascivious resplendent detail. Harry Arden offering to meet him in the library. To show him to a bedroom. Harry Arden, who Kit had thought earlier would be such a luscious challenge, such a luminous beacon to those empath’s senses. Harry, who had knelt unselfconsciously to get closer and ensure that Kit was unhurt.
Harry broadcast emotion like a waterfall: cascading, vibrant, tingling with life. To have that waterfall beneath him, beside him, spilling into Kit’s own senses, matching breathless plunges into the depths—to have Harry on those knees again, but this time feeling everything Kit made him feel, more and then even more, as Kit touched him and handled him and made him cry out with pleasure—
Harry Arden was dangerous. In one of two ways: either he truly was hiding a deadly secret—which Kit did not quite believe but couldn’t rule out—or he was as unguarded and guileless and innocent of the world as he seemed, in which case Kit had no business being anywhere near those shining eyes.
Which at the moment had become quizzical. “Er…sorry, was I interrupting your thoughts? Deductions? Working out strategy? I can let you think.”
“If you learn anything come and tell me,” Ned said, “I’ll be trapped here for eternity attempting to figure out the cost of new seed crops,” and poked at a scribbled note with an expression of good-humored despair. “At least we’ve got money.”
“No,” Kit said, recovering from his own thoughts. “No, you’re not interrupting, I…ah, never mind.” Harry Arden probably was exactly that innocent, and had no idea regarding what two men might do with each other in the first place, never mind some of the darker rope-tinted pleasures that Kit enjoyed with partners. “Thank you, Sommersby, I’ll meet you in the library.”
“Oh,” Harry said, managing to turn into a sad heap of puppy without changing form. Even his hair drooped. “It’s Harry, remember? I don’t especially like the title. It’s never felt like me.”
“Don’t tell me you went by Harry at Eton or Oxford.” Kit might not move in the exalted halls of English aristocracy, but he knew perfectly well the usual forms of address and the emphasis placed on one’s inheritance.
Harry fidgeted. Moved a foot. Moved it back. Did not quite meet Kit’s eyes. “I never went. To school, I mean. Mother and Father hired private tutors. I’ve never even been off the estate.”
This tidbit promptly got filed in Kit’s constable brain as highly unusual. “You’ve never been to Town?”
“London? No. Ned’s been, once, with Father, to look over the townhouse and the property and to make the Court appearance, but that was only a day or two, and they came right back. I wasn’t—” Harry winced at whatever word that would’ve been. Opted for, “I’m sorry about that as well, Constable. I know I’m not…we’re not…what you’re used to. Society. Town. All that.”
“Speak for yourself,” Ned said, with fondness. “Uncivilized brat.”
“You’re only three years older than I am!”
“And infinitely wiser.” Edward Arden was grinning, though; that was the look of a man who had do anything for his sibling. “Shouldn’t you be in the library? Since it was your idea.”
“Don’t you dare start that again,” Harry said, rather mystifyingly, and went.
Kit, left alone with the Earl, raised eyebrows.
“It’s personal,” Ned said cheerfully. “Private joke. Or not really that private, considering the footman who was also involved. Harry thinks I’m overly inclined to meddle in his life, and he’s no doubt correct, but he is my only brother. Do you have siblings, Constable?”
“A sister.” He was trying to read between the lines of Edward’s comment. Would Harry resent meddling? In what ways were footmen involved? And why hadn’t Harry Arden been allowed to visit London? “Younger.”
“Then you know about being the oldest.” Ned picked up his teacup again. “You know exactly what I’d do for him. My brother.” That was a warning if Kit had ever seen one: the youthful and delicate Earl of Fairleigh would nevertheless stand up and throw all his strength and devotion and not inconsiderable wealth and titular authority at anything that threatened Harry.
He found himself impressed. Those eyes. Cool whip-crack steel. Not as inviting and open as Harry’s, but then Ned would’ve spent years not expecting, according to rumor, to even survive; that knowledge, along with the more recent loss of parents, changed a man.
Harry Arden had managed to remember how to smile. To meet a potentially lost stranger and immediately offer assistance. Kit knew no one else who would’ve made that offer without calculation.
Idly, not quite connecting the thoughts, he decided he rather preferred Harry’s unaffected blue gaze to Edward’s wry grey.
Ned took a sip of tea, gave him a smile, and finished, “Having said that, I believe he’s waiting for you in the library; you wouldn’t want to disappoint him, would you?”
Kit gave Harry’s brother a long hard look. Ned smiled serenely across the teacup and tapped fingers on his estimated crop costs, a dismissal.
Grayson materialized out of ancestral-manor air at the study door, in case Kit needed guidance to a guest room.
Kit glanced from skinny butler to tranquil Earl, gave up, and let himself be dismissed. No arguing with the aristocracy. Not for a common thief-taker.
Besides, well—
Harry Arden was waiting for him.