Page 24 of The Love Potion
“Ras! She’s a nobody with a father who gambled.”
“How do you know that?”
Nate shot him a hard look, and Ras felt his cheeks heat. His friend had surprising resources sometimes. He knew things well before anyone else. He would sometimes appear with bruises or, once, a bloody gash for which he had no good explanation.The man was often underfoot, and then mysteriously absent for days at a time. No explanation, no apologies. But when he reappeared, he would have coin enough to pay his bills.
And though Ras had given him money as often as Nate’s pride would allow, it had been a long time since his friend had accepted any help. Longer still since Nate had shared how he made his money. Every time Ras asked, Nate pushed it off as success at the gaming tables or some other such nonsense. The man rarely gambled, and he was a lot smarter than the face he presented to the world.
But rather than pursue that line of questioning, Ras focused on Kynthea. He was uncomfortably obsessed with finding out more about her. “What else do you know about Miss Petrelli? Is she hiding something disastrous?”
“As far as I can tell, she is exactly as she appears. An impoverished relative to Lady Zoe’s family. Her father was the one who created the situation. Every vicar has his vices, I suppose.”
“Noteveryvicar.”
Nate shrugged. “Near enough. And as vices go, gambling isn’t the worst by far.”
“It just severely damaged her future.”
“Yes.”
“And I came along and finished the job.”
“Youdidn’t do anything of the sort,” Nate countered. “I cannot understand what happened. Who would add such a thing to my column?”
“Your publisher had no idea?”
Nate sighed. “None. Though he did say that sales that day were quite high. And that he wished I would add salacious tidbits like that more often.”
Ras could tell the idea sat uncomfortably with his friend. He was not a cruel person at heart, and gossip was almost always cruel.
“Nate—”
“He even suggested that he’d hire someone else to do the job if I could not.”
Ras frowned. “Nate,” he began carefully, “how badly do you need this work?”
His friend flashed him a warning look. He did not like discussing money, even with his closest friend, but his answer was honest enough. “It’s not the pay, though that’s very useful.” He grabbed the last sandwich and popped it in his mouth. “I like directing the attention of thehaut tonwhere it ought to go.”
In short, Nate liked exposing blackguards and thieves. But most times, those people were hard to expose. At least in a way that could credibly be printed without revealing the source. And society did love tearing down innocents even more than it liked cutting a blackguard from their ranks.
“You walk a fine line,” Ras said.
“Always.”
“But if you need—” Ras said.
Nate cut him off. “My name is not Broderick.”
That was an old code word between them. Broderick had been the king of all sycophants when they were in school. An older boy who’d been charming, athletic, and a good friend to anyone who paid for his trinkets. Broderick was also a liar and a thief, and had taken advantage of the younger, naïve Ras.
It was Nate who had shown him the truth of the older boy. Nate who had brought Ras secretly to listen when Broderick was drunk and bragging about how he had “a duke dangling by the nose.” And Nate who had stood by him when Ras went to the headmaster to expose Broderick as a thief.
The ordeal had cemented their friendship. It was also the one wedge between them. Nate would not live off of Ras’s charity, no matter how tight his purse became. And Ras knew better than to challenge his friend’s pride. But damn it, the man had more pride than the third son of an impoverished earl ought to have.
“Not Broderick,” Ras grumbled. “You’re Nate the Ass, who has too much pride to ask for help.”
Nate flashed a quick smile. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll find out who is tampering with my columns. And in the meantime, I’ll turn in my work in person.”
“That’s a risk, isn’t it? To be seen going in and out of the paper so often?” Ras knew that was why his friend had always sent in his writing through the street boys. It was too easy for someone in thetonto see him frequenting the paper and guess his identity.
