“That is all for tonight, Partridge. I will not need to see you tomorrow, but come to me the day after.”

Partridge straightened the new stack of papers he would take away with him and stowed them carefully in his large leather satchel. “I will tell Steele to contact you as soon as he has any information. Goodnight, sir.”

Gareth nodded and looked down at the papers on his desk, not looking up until the other man had left the room. He hated leave-takings and always felt uncomfortable with them. He found it less arduous to simply ignore people when it came time for them to leave. Likewise, when it was his turn to depart he usually left without making a fuss. Declan, a man who treated every coming and going as if it were a state occasion, felt it was not only his place, but his duty, to chide and scold Gareth for his odd behaviors.

“It is bloody disconcerting to be speaking to you one moment and the next realize I’m speaking to myself,” he’d said on more than one occasion. Since Declan’s mouth rarely seemed to stop moving it would have been difficult to find a time to depart when he was not speaking.

Gareth found it expedient to ignore the gregarious, loquacious Irishman when he rode rust on him for his dismal lack of social polish. According to those who kept track of such things—Declan, for one—Gareth was one of the ten wealthiest men in the country. As such, he no longer needed to worry about his odd behaviors and how they struck others. It was acceptable that he did not—could not—seem to fit in.

That realization should have been soothing. Instead, it left a gnawing hunger in its wake: a hunger to not always be on the outside.

Gareth pushed up from his desk and strode to the sideboard where he poured himself a glass of whiskey. He took his drink to the window and looked out over the quiet square. This house was his favorite even though it was by far the smallest. He had purchased it—complete with furniture, art, and servants—from a man who had played too deeply at one hell or another. He had, essentially, moved in to another man’s life. Declan told him there was something wrong with him for feeling so comfortable surrounded by somebody else’s trappings.

Gareth sipped his drink as he considered his friend’s accusation, the fiery liquid like a soothing balm over a raw, stinging wound. He realized his hand was balled into a fist and unclenched his fingers, stretching the taut soreness from them before resting his forearm against the window frame and sighing as he leaned against it for support. He should not be thinking of such things—certainly not right now.

It was late, and he often found the time between three in the morning and first light to be the worst time of the day. The protection of logic and numbers and mathematics was at its weakest point and emotion rose to the fore. It did not help that he suspected Featherstone of dishonesty. No, that suspicion drained him and made him wonder what the point was to all of this; this accumulation of wealth and possessions and the need to protect it from those who wanted a piece. It made him feel like a rat protecting a big cheese.