The boy laughed at that—and in his laughter was the final evidence, if Villiers needed it. Grindel actually flinched at the sound.
“You don’t dare strike me again, Grindel, remember?” His face was positively alight with glee. “After what happened last week?”
“Take him,” Grindel said, spitting on the floor. “The city is full of lads who’d be more than glad of my rates and my hospitality, as any of the boys will tell you. I’m known for my fairness, I am.”
“I’m taking all of them,” Villiers said again, speaking for the first time since Juby had entered the room.
“Fetch all his boys,” he said, meeting his son’s eyes.
“Who are you to say so?” the boy asked, jutting out his jaw precisely the way Grindel did.
Grindel barked with laughter. “You got more than you bargained for there!” he said, his voice suddenly buoyant.
The boy slanted another glance at Villiers from under his thick lashes. “What do you want us for?” he demanded.
“Not for that.”
“We’re not good for much. And you don’t look like the type to be looking for an apprentice.”
“Is that what you’d like to be?” Villiers felt as if he were operating outside his own body, watching himself speak to this boy who was a shadow of himself, a weedy, nasty, evil-tempered version of Leopold Dautry, Duke of Villiers. The only real difference being that he himself was muscled rather than skinny.
But the boy wasn’t going to give an inch. “We ain’t got nothing you would want.”
“Stay with me, son,” Grindel said, chuckling like a maniac. “I’ll treat you right. I’ll even pay for Fillibet’s doctor if you ask me pretty-like.”
Villiers found himself in the unusual position of being unsure of what to say.
“I forgot Fillibet,” the boy exclaimed, turning around. He jerked his chin at the smaller lad, who was waiting outside the door. “Fetch all the boys.” The child ran.
Then he turned back to Villiers. “If you’re one of those with a taste for the nasty, you will regret the moment you met me.” His eyes were as cold as a November rainfall. Villiers knew those eyes; he saw them reflected in his glass every morning.
“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.