Some Particular Evil

Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I t was late afternoon by the time Tom-Tom returned to The Fox right now, he was starving.

Darcy looked around him for a fork and knife, the only set on the table having been claimed by his young friend. Sarah was not behind the counter. He glanced around the half-full dining room and back at Tom-Tom, who now sat filling his stomach with kidneys and gravy, and he realised he would be leaving this place soon. To his great surprise, a twinge of sadness crept up behind Darcy’s eyes.

He had become used to the life of a working-class layabout. Though he worried about how his estate and properties were being managed, he knew he had capable men overseeing his holdings; they did well enough without him for a time. Even Georgiana did not seem to need him, as busy as she no doubt was with Lady Matlock. Here, he felt useful.

Tom-Tom had learnt to read at his elbow, and Darcy had more than once used his impressive height to ward off the unwelcome attention Sarah so desperately feared. His Clerkenwell accent was still not perfect, but he had certainly improved—at least, no one looked at him askance when he spoke anymore. Even the men at Beech’s pugilist club had accepted him, patiently training and challenging him in turns. In fact, he owed no little of his new, stronger physique to that group of boxers.

Darcy had managed to find somewhat of a home here and leaving it would affect him more than he had imagined.

A negatory shriek from across the dining hall alerted him to Sarah’s position. Darcy craned his neck to find the girl and request the needed flatware, only to see her speaking with a giant of a man near the stairwell, arms crossed, a scowl on her face.

Darcy stood immediately, the guardian in him ready to fend off any unwanted advances Sarah might be receiving. As he drew near the pair, however, he heard his name. His own name— Darcy .

Then he heard Sarah say, “I said I never seen the man. Never heard of him. Would not know him if I did!”

Just then, a shorter man spoke up from behind the pair. Darcy had not seen him, blocked as he was by the massive frame of the other. “What about on the streets? Surely you’d remember seeing a bloke as tall as Nigel here, eh? Curly hair, dark eyes.”

“I do not walk the streets! Now go on. I got customers to see to,” she commanded, shooing them out with the dirty rag in her hand.

Darcy, who had slumped himself into a chair at the counter, glanced up as the men were leaving, and cold fear gripped him. The contentment of his current situation and the sweet anticipation of freedom fled as he took in the faces of the men Sarah had just ushered out of her inn. It was the constables—nay, the assassins—who had tried to capture him at Rosings.

They were still looking for him.He was still in grave danger.

And he would not be returning to Darcy House any time soon.