Chapter 3
Edward kicked the crooked door to his lodging room closed and collapsed on his bed. It was merely late afternoon, but he felt like he’d been out carousing all night rather than bringing a lady to climax in the park and collecting eel pie for luncheon.
“Got any for me?”
He jerked at the sound from the window, where a wiry boy was climbing inside. Somehow, Tobias always spooked him, despite materializing with regularity.
“Don’t you have some pockets to pick?” asked Edward, sliding over the hand pie he’d bought for the urchin.
“No need to steal if my belly is full,” said Tobias, happily eyeing his daily meal.
“I should think you’d need some occupation. Or perhaps…schooling?”
Tobias looked at him as if he’d bit a bone in his most recent mouthful of pie. “What about you? Don’t you need occupation?”
“I am very occupied,” said Edward. “Doubly so, in fact. And it has nothing to do with picking pockets.”
Though it has everything to do with filling the pockets left empty by other men, thought Edward to himself.
“It’s too bad you don’t have a scallywag that keeps showing up at your lodgings with free time and an empty belly,” said Tobias pointedly.
“I suspect that if we sent you to school, we’d have cause to regret it,” said Edward, once again admiring his unlikely friend’s perspicacity.
“What needs doing?”
“Well, the first task is unsuitable for a gent of your age,” said Edward. “How old are you, by the by?”
“I reckon about fifteen? Tough to say.”
“Yes, far too young for the first job. But the second…I might need some help. You don’t happen to know the aristocracy on sight, do you?”
“The gents what could kill me dead in the street for looking at ’em wrong and then escape the noose because of their titles? Those ones? Yeah, I know ’em.”
“I suppose it pays to know the enemy,” mused Edward. “I need one of them watched. Charley Mabbot.”
“About this tall, brown hair like that wood on the desk, always swinging a cane?”
“That could be half of the young bucks in the ton, Tobias.”
“Naw, but this one is different. Swagger of a rooster, but always looking deep into dark corners as if he’s afraid someone is on to him. Hard one to sneak up on, not that I’ve tried.”
Edward rolled his eyes. “Sure you haven’t. I need to know where he goes, who he sees. I especially want to know if he’s got a ladybird stashed somewhere. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
“A dancing girl, a mistress in a little brick house with two kiddies and lots of servants, that sort of thing?”
“Precisely,” said Edward, shaking his head and chuckling. “I haven’t got any coin yet, but I’ll give you a cut when I get paid. How’s that?”
“Keep the eel pies coming in the meantime,” said Tobias, climbing out of the window, preparing to stalk a future viscount.