“He don’t want that,” Grindel said, hooting. “Ain’t you gonna tell him, then, Duke?”
Villiers cast him a glance and Grindel shut his mouth.
“You’re my son,” Villiers said. “I’m taking you home. I’ll send the others where they’ll be clean and well-cared for.”
Tobias didn’t say a word. Villiers felt a creeping amusement, and, to his surprise, even a streak of pride. He couldn’t have known what to expect in response to that announcement, but he would have loathed an excited shriek of “Papa!”
Instead, Tobias silently looked at Villiers’s white-streaked hair, then at his rose-colored coat. His eyes lingered on the elaborate embroidery of yellow roses around the buttonholes, slid lower to his perfectly-fitted pantaloons, then to his boots, now slightly scuffed from toppling Grindel’s baskets.
Tobias’s glance might have shown some approval of his sword stick, but it wasn’t hard to read the utter distaste in his eyes for the rest.
“Are you certain of your claim?” he said finally, as proud as if any man would be lucky to claim a filthy, odiferous boy nicknamed Juby as his offspring.
One might not wish for an exuberant display of filial excitement, but rank disappointment wasn’t what Villiers would have envisioned either.
“Don’t be a fool,” Grindel cut in. “You’re the spitting image of the bloody-minded bastard, and it’s bastard you’ll be called from now on, and rightly so.”
“Better the bastard of a duke than a bastard by nature,” Villiers said. He kicked a surfeit of teeth and buttons from under his feet and strode over to the desk. The family reunion was over, and he had one final piece of business to attend to.
Grindel inched back in his greasy chair.
“My son has a bruise under his eye,” Villiers said. For the first time he heard his own voice—its measured—cold tones, and knew it to be a more mature version of that which he’d just heard. He had passed on his most useful trait.
“Could be he got in a tussle with the boys,” Grindel said, slanting an eye toward Tobias. Grindel knew as well as Villiers did that the boy would never tattle about an injury. He wasn’t the type.
Villiers sighed inwardly. His gloves were immaculate, or at least they had been that morning…
Grindel went over in a crash, taking two more baskets with him to the floor. He let out a squeal like a stuck pig from behind his desk. A final basket teetered, then tipped to its side. A torrent of silver spoons poured forth, the fruit of the boys’ labors in the river and sewers.
When he turned about, the door was thronged with boys. Five, maybe six of them, staring silently. They were as dirty as newly-pulled radishes and their thin legs were marked with scars.
Grindel groaned from the floor but didn’t seem disposed to move.
“Someone take that basket and pick up all those spoons,” Villiers said. “There’s another collection of spoons on the floor there.”
“And the silver buttons,” Tobias said, without even the slightest flicker of an eyelash to show appreciation for the blow to Grindel.
“Take them,” Villiers said. “They’ll pay for apprenticeships for you lot,” he told the boys.
They didn’t seem to understand, but Tobias scooped the spoons back into their basket with a few swift movements and thrust them at a boy. “Go!” The other basket of spoons, a box of silver buttons, and a third box with a lid, were out of the room before Grindel managed to lumber to his feet. “Here you!” he roared. “What’s happening to me stuff?”
To Villiers’s satisfaction, Grindel’s right eye was fast swelling shut. “You’re thieving from me! You’re nothing more than a fleagler, duke or no. I’ll have the constables on you!”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Villiers said softly.
“You’ll find some other way to make a living. I’ll be watching, and if I ever hear that a boy has set foot on these premises again, I’ll have it burned down. With or without you,” he added dispassionately.