He wove through the crowd, through the smoke and the waiters bearing trays and the upraised newspapers that mercifully contained no gossip about him.
But he was aware of the murmurs that rose when he stopped at the betting books.
He ignored them.
He turned until he found the page he was seeking.
It was Exeter who had managed to sneak into White’s to write the words, with his gift for being as invisible as he was visible. How that had amused Lucien at the time.
He studied them now, bemused. It was striking in how a few short weeks the sentiment seemed to have been written by another man entirely.
I wager every penny I possess I will have revenge. —BOLT
With a flourish, Lucien crossed them out.
And he could almost feel something like an invisible shackle fall away.
Revenge could not be had, not really, even if he still wanted it. He had no need of it, anyway. Nor did he have need of a gaming hell, when heaven could be at Number 11 Lovell Street, a white building by the docks known as The Grand Palace on the Thames.
He felt he now knew the reason he’d been born: to cherish and protect Angelique Breedlove’s heart.
The way he felt... it was the opposite of being thrown into the Thames. Launched into the sky, perhaps. Up into the heavens, past the blue, spiraling and spiraling among the stars.
And that one final bit of business addressed, he turned around to face his future.
He blinked.
Standing right behind him—or rather, swaying right behind him—was Lord Hallworth. Drunk already, and it was scarcely two o’clock in the afternoon. His blue eyes were pink at the rims and he was scarcely thirty and sporting quite a set of jowls, also pink thanks to an excess of drink.
“BOLT!” he exclaimed joyfully. Even though they’d greeted each other in passing a week ago.
“Hallworth,” he said politely. Cautiously.
“Glad ye’re back, Bolt.”
“Kind of you to say, Hallworth.” Though Hallworth had said it once before, Lucien knew better than to point that out.
“Cutty and I were talking of your exploits not more than a month ago. Who but Lucien would be able to return from the dead like that, we said!”
“Who indeed? They don’t teach resurrection at Eton, more’s the pity.”
“HA HA!” Hallworth was delighted, and went to give Lucien a thump on the back. He missed by a few inches and the momentum of his chummily swinging arm nearly carried him forward onto the floor. “Say, d’you remember that night at The Palace of Rogues where two brutes threw you bodily out?”
“No.”
Of course he did. Not only had Cutty mentioned it some weeks ago, Lucien always remembered nearly every event of any significance, apart from those hazy feverish weeks between the time he’d been fished from the Thames and the moment he came to halfway across the world.
He did not want to think about the former Palace of Rogues at all. Unless it was to consider it the pile of manure from which a flower had sprung.
“Just one of your many exploits, eh, Bolt. I expect they all blend together,” he said admiringly.
Lucien found that his wells of patience were deeper now, but hardly infinite. His jaw tightened. “I don’t reflect on that sort of thing any more than I reflect wistfully on the hobby horse in my nursery. The memories are of no use to me as an adult.”
Never mind that he’d never had a hobby horse.
Hallworth looked a little deflated. “Ah. It’s just I heard something amusing about the place and thought you might like to hear... it’s a sort of boarding house now, yes?”
“Yes. The king, in fact, visited it. It’s a veryfineboarding house, in fact.”