Toby rowed easily, riding the tide running downstream as if he were an idle undergraduate up from Oxford out for an afternoon’s chilly but invigorating exercise. Within the hour, he had fetched up handily at the Adelphi Wharves below the Strand, where the warehouse of Grindle Brothers Wine & Coffee Merchants perched on the quay like a fat cat next to a goldfish bowl.

It had been almost a year since Toby had visited the place. The dim confines looked just as prosperous and seedy as ever. And populated with the same seedily prosperous fellows—a number of his former shipmates in the Millbank Prison as well as on His Majesty’s Royal Navy frigate Vanguard.

All of whom eyed him with something rather stronger than disfavor.

“Well now, would ye look what the cat drug in?” Bolter—a former landsmen, or unskilled sailor, aboard the Vanguard, whose injuries had been even more severe than Toby’s, costing him his leg—hitched up his woolen pants, and spat into the sawdust at Toby’s feet. “Come down in the world enough to visit uz, have ye?”

“I haven’t come down yet, Bolter. And I won’t, if I have anything to say about it.”

“Runners chase ye outta yer plushed-up riverside pad, now did they? Been nosin’ round ’ere, they ’ave, making life a misery for uz that still has to work fer a livin’. All cuzza ye.”

“I have done nothing to invite or warrant such nosing around, Bolter. You can tell the rest of our mates that it isn’t me robbing these Mayfair kens. Got out of the business and stayed out of the business just like I promised I would. Just like we all promised.”

“A likely story, McTavish.” It was Grindle himself, former assistant purser aboard Vanguard—hence his knowledge of both cargoes and wine—moored up against the doorframe in his scarves and mittens.

His open disdain for Toby seemed to embolden the hostility of others—Mott, another thick-armed landsman from their ship, stepped forward and drew out a rather wicked looking blade from his heavy boot. “I’ll ’ave a go at ’im,” he muttered. “I’ll carve ’im up handsome like.”

“Easy, Mott.” Toby immediately backed away, holding his hand out as a caution. He had come here looking for help, not a knife in his back. “Handsomely with that sticker—someone’s liable to get hurt, and I don’t want any trouble.” But Toby slid his own knife down his cuff and into his hand as sweet and silent as a snake—if Mott wanted trouble, Toby was prepared to help him find it. He might look like a toff, but under his gentry togs, he was still a hard man.

“Mott.” Grindle growled. “Enough.”

“Not e’nuf, if’n he gets uz all stretched.”

“We’d all have to be doing something to get ourselves stretched,” Toby reasoned. “And I, for one, am not.”

“My eye,” the big fellow swore, and advanced.

“Enough, I said,” Grindle barked. “Come in here.” He motioned Toby into the window-lined office overlooking the warehouse floor. “Back to work, the rest of you.” Grindle regarded Toby with a sour, dissatisfied look upon his beaked face. “Why’ve you come?”

“You know why I’m here—everyone in the city, including the Runners, thinks that I’m the one behind these Mayfair jewel thefts.”

Grindle shrugged as if such a conclusion were entirely forgone. “Are you not?”

“No.” This was one of the drawbacks in being a former thief—no one believed former, not even his friends. “The last time I stole anything was for the benefit of His Majesty’s Navy, and we all benefited then.” The prize monies Toby had helped to earn for Vanguard’s crew had allowed them all to buy shares to start the business under Grindle’s direction.

“And we all benefit now, if we hew to the straight and narrow,” Grindle observed, gesturing to the stevedores working below. “I have beat it into their thick sculls like a bosun. But it will all be for naught if you don’t keep your nose clean, as well—we’ll all be tarred with your brush of pitch.”

The thick skull that had saved Toby on more than one occasion was still fully functioning—no one in Grindle’s warehouse did anything without profit, including accusing a former shipmate of theft. The suspicions that had buzzed at the back of his mind flew to the fore. “I tell you,” he swore, “it isn’t me.”

“Then who could it be?” Grindle threw up his hands. “We all read the broadsheets—these thefts bear your mark, the sprig of heather.”

The damn sprig of heather—it had been a stupid bit of pride, that long-ago impulse to make the white heather his calling card, so the rich Englishmen he robbed would know they had been bested by a Scotsman. “That is what they say, isn’t it?”

But what the broadsheets were reporting now was that the current thefts were marked by a bloom ‘as purple as the Scottish hillsides from whence McTavish hailed.’ So whoever was behind the new thefts knew a great deal about him, but they did not know all.

It wasn’t much to go on, but it was the only sliver of advantage he had at the moment.

The other advantage was that he distrusted Grindle implicitly—Toby had learned the hard way that no one could betray a man like his friends. “But clearly you believe the broadsheets, Grindle, and have said as much to the men. No wonder Mott and Bolter want to carve me up.”

Grindle turned aside the question of his flexible scruples with a shrug. “They think you have broken your word, your bond.”

It wasn’t the thievery that counted against Toby with these men—they couldn’t care less if some rich toff were robbed—it was the breaking of his word, his very honor. But if he could not convince his friends, what chance had he with the magistrates, who would see the few years he had spent as a prolific thief as evidence of his guilt, no matter the many more years he had spent expiating his sins in the Royal Navy? His heroism would be forgotten in the rush to judgment.

And whoever was robbing Mayfair of its best baubles certainly knew that. “What I can’t understand is how this thief could imitate me so perfectly,” he mused. “How they know my technique so well as to duplicate my methods.”

“Perhaps it is a former Runner,” Grindle offered with a shrug. “Bow Street made a study of you before, to capture you. And now perhaps they use this knowledge.”

It was likely enough for Toby to consider the possibility—and reject it. “The Runners who laid information against me in the old days were old men even then—and thievery of this variety is a young man’s game. People our age fall and die coming down from ladders, not going up drainpipes.”

Grindle laughed. “You’re only nine and twenty.”

“It’s not the age, but the sea miles, Grindle.” They all had fathoms of aging experience under their belts. “And I shall use that experience to catch this thief—the devil knows the Runners won’t.”

“You?” Grindle’s mouth gaped open in shock before he gave way to laughter. “How will you do that? Especially if, as you said, you’ve been out of the game?”

“I have been out of the game,” Toby admitted. “But I may have a way or two to get back on terms.”

But he wouldn’t get any help doing so at Grindle’s. Toby saw now that there was always going to be an unbridgeable chasm between him and his shipmates after he had risen out of their ranks to become an officer—even a high-ranking warrant—though he had paid for the privilege in lead.

Yet, he had recovered from his wounds, unlike others—Bolter’s uneven gait on his peg was pronounced. They had all kept their distance from one another for their own reasons.

Toby’s reasons had him speaking to Grindle with every appearance of candor. “The old ways haven’t left me entirely.” Toby had kept his hand in, practicing his skills in the comfort of his own home, picking locks and breaking into strong boxes for his own amusement—a gentleman ought to have a hobby.

Which was now catching the thief. All he had to do was reckon where the crafty fellow was going to strike next, before the man himself had even thought of it.

But the problem was that Toby no longer had the information he needed about society—about just who had jewels worth stealing. He needed to know where they lived, in which rooms they kept their jewels, and what time they went to sleep. He needed to know if they had dogs, or guns, or vigilant servants, or took extraordinary precautions against theft.

And he wasn’t going to find that information at Grindle Brothers.

“I’ll see myself out, Grindle. Thank the lads for not carving me up, will you?”

“You’ll stay away?” the merchant asked. “So there won’t be Runners sniffing around here daily, putting people off? Makes my men nervous, puts them on edge. Makes customers think I’m not running an honest establishment.”

Toby felt a wry smile carve up his lip. “And we certainly wouldn’t want that, would we?”