Page 132 of Thief of the Ton
You’ve ridden him too hard, boy!
The image flashed before his mind’s eye of Lancelot, and his father’s cold detachment as he’d ordered him to shoot the animal.
Curse you, Father!
“Beg pardon, your lordship?” The boy raised his eyebrows in question.
“Take particular care of him, please,” Peregrine said. “I’ll make sure you’re compensated for my folly.”
“Your folly?”
“In not treating my horse with the respect he deserves. He cannot speak for himself, and this morning I failed him. It won’t happen again.”
“Lord bless you, sir—you’re the opposite of your f—” The boy broke off, blushing.
“Thank you,” Peregrine replied. “I intend to be.” He patted Poseidon’s flank, then returned to the house.
He found his father in the breakfast room, a pile of bacon on the plate before him.
The earl glanced up and scowled. “Where the devil haveyoubeen, boy? You know breakfast in my house is served at eight.”
“I’m no boy,” Peregrine said, “and I’ve a house of my own in London.”
“That house belongs to the earldom, therefore it belongs tome.”
“You’renot the earldom, Father,” Peregrine said. “You’re merely the present incumbent.”
“Since when did you become so disrespectful of your betters?”
“Mybetters?”
Peregrine shed his coat and handed it to the footman beside the door. Then he took a seat. Another footman appeared with a platter of bacon, and Peregrine waved him away.
“Where’s our guest?” he asked.
“Houseman? He’s gone.”
“Already? I thought he was leaving at nine.”
The earl shrugged. “He changed his mind and left earlier. He’ll be halfway to London by now. With luck, he’ll find that blackguard bleeding on the road. But I hope he’ll take him alive.”
“Alive?”
“Yes,” the earl said between mouthfuls. “We wouldn’t want to be robbed of the satisfaction of seeing him swinging from a gibbet. Now, eat your breakfast.”
Peregrine rose and scraped his chair back. “I find I lack the stomach for it.”
His father snorted. “You always were a weakling.”
“Better that than a thief.”
“Don’t be a fool!” the earl cried. “I’ve never stolen a thing in my life.”
“Perhaps not in the eyes of the law,” Peregrine said, “but you took everything from another, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, yes you do.” Peregrine gritted his teeth to suppress the urge to smash his fist into his father’s self-satisfied face. “Persuading another to invest his fortune in a doomed enterprise may not be an offense that lands the perpetrator in jail, but it’s an offense nonetheless—against decency, honor, and friendship.”
