Page 41 of A Debt Inherited

“Mr Rudd?”

“Proper one, are you?” The man’s lips curled. “Rudd.”

Kerr gave him the note.

Rudd broke the seal, read, and looked up again. “You’ll wait?”

“I was not told to go.”

Rudd nodded. “Good.”

From the room beyond came the faint chime of metal upon metal. Kerr glanced once and saw a tray upon a table: spoons, watch-cases, a lady’s vinaigrette, a silver-mounted comb with dark hair still caught between two teeth. Beside it stood a young man in a coat too fine for the place, his face pale beneath the candle.

Rudd folded the note into the flame and held it until it blackened. “Tell Sykes it is understood.”

Kerr inclined his head.

The young man behind him made a sound—not speech, not quite a sob. Kerr kept his eyes on Rudd.

“Is there an answer?”

“You’ve had it.”

Outside, Kerr drew a breath. He had delivered a note. Nothing more. A gentleman might carry a note without dishonour.

He walked back to the Forge and repeated Rudd’s words.

Sykes listened, nodded once, and put two shillings on the counter.

Kerr looked at them.

“You waiting for a receipt?” Sykes asked.

Kerr took the coins.

The second errand came before the week ended.

This time Sykes gave him no note. He gave him a name.

“Mr Abel Grant. He keeps rooms over a coffee-house in King Street. You’ll say Mr Rudd expects what’s owed before Sunday. Say it plain. No threats.”

“No threats,” Kerr repeated.

Sykes looked amused. “Not from you.”

Grant received him in a room that smelt of burnt coffee and stale pomatum. He was a broad man gone soft at the jaw, with a banyan thrown over his shirt and a newspaper opened before him like a shield.

“I know no Rudd,” he said, too quickly.

Kerr removed his hat. “Then the misunderstanding may be easily settled. I was asked to say that Mr Rudd expects what is owed before Sunday.”

Grant’s colour rose. “I do not answer to tradesmen.”

“No,” Kerr said. “That may be why they sent me.”

The man stared.

Kerr felt his heart striking hard against his ribs, but his voice had not betrayed him. The discovery steadied him. He stood in a poor room over a coffee-house, speaking to a debtor in a banyan, yet some old instruction held: shoulders easy, tone civil, no haste. Men heard breeding before words. He had spent years despising that fact. Now it served him.