Anne Gracie - An Honourable Thief

twirling her and twirling her until she was quite dizzy with pleasure and delight.

Kit had danced the waltz several times before, but she suddenly realized why it had been regarded as so scandalous. When danced like this, caught up hard in the grip of a strong masterful man, twirling in his arms until you lost awareness of anything except the music and the man, the experience was utterly intoxicating.

Kit simply gave herself up to the magic of the dance. And the man. The world blurred around her in a glittering rainbow, the music spun through her brain in a melody of magic, and all that anchored her to the ground was the hard, strong body of a tall dark man.

RITA® Award Nominated

Gallant Waif

“Ms. Gracie has a knack for delving into people’s souls and tickling their funny bone.”

—Rendezvous

“An easy and elegant style…this is as polished a piece of romance writing as anyone could want.”

—The Romance Reader Web site

Tallie’s Knight

“Charming and wonderful…”

—All About Romance Web site

#615 THE TEXAN

Carolyn Davidson

#617 A WILD JUSTICE

Gail Ranstrom

#618 THE BRIDE’S REVENGE

Anne Avery

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Gallant Waif #557

An Honorable Thief #616

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Near Batavia, on the island of Java, Dutch East Indies. 1815

“Promise!” The dying man grabbed her arm in a hard-fingered grip. Promise me, damn you, girl!

Kit Smith winced under the pressure. She glanced down at her father’s thin, elegant fingers biting into her flesh. Gentleman’s fingers. White, soft, aristocratic, seeming too fine even for the heavy ring he wore. Refined hands, good for lifting a lady’s hand to be kissed. For gesturing in an amusing fashion to illustrate a sophisticated story. White-skinned, blue-veined hands. Hands which had never done a hard day’s labour in their life. Hands which excelled at the shuffling and dealing of cards…the clever, extremely discreet dealing of cards…

Kit bit her lip and tried to ease her arm from under the punishing grip. He did not know his own strength, that was Papa’s trouble.

People didn’t when they were dying.

“Promise me!”

Kit said nothing. With her other hand she picked up a linen cloth and wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.

“Dammit, girl, I want that promise!” He searched her face angrily. “It’s not as if I’m asking you to do anything you haven’t done a hundred times or more in your life!”

Kit gently shook her head. “I cannot, Papa.”

He flung her hand aside in disgust. “Bah! I don’t know why I bothered even asking you. My daughter!” The scorn in his voice lanced through Kit. “My only living child! She, who has refused to help her father since she turned thirteen!”

“Hush, Papa, do not try to talk. Save your strength.”

“Be damned to it…I’m dying, girl…and I’ll not…be hushed. By sunset tonight—” He spat blood and lay gasping for breath before he could continue. “Dying, curse it…and without a son to…” He rolled his head away from her, muttering, “Nothing but a daughter, a useless daughter—”

Kit did not respond; she told herself she was inured to the pain of his tirade on the uselessness of daughters. She’d heard it all her life.

Her maidservant and companion, Maggie Bone, bustled in, carrying a pile of clean linen and a bowl of fresh water. Kit nodded her thanks and, as Maggie removed the blood-soaked wad of linen, Kit pressed a fresh pad against the wound in his chest.

“Done for, curse it.” He gave a snort of bitter laughter. “And by some clod of a colonial lout! Me! In whom the finest English blood flows…”

Kit pressed harder, willing the flow to stop.

“Not so hard, girl!”

Kit eased the pressure slightly. In moments fresh, bright blood seeped through it. Her father’s life blood, draining inexorably away into a napkin.

“Blasted stiff-necked Dutchman. Accusing me of cheating! Me! The Honourable J—” He broke off in a paroxysm of coughing.

“Hush, Papa, you will only make it worse if you try to speak. And besides, you are not the Honourable Jeremy Smythe-Parker here. That was in New South Wales. The name you are using now is Sir Humphrey Weatherby, remember?”

Not that it mattered any longer, she reflected. The Dutch doctor had left, the Javanese servants could not understand English and Maggie’s loyalty was unquestioned. There was nobody to pretend to any more. But one could not break the habits of a lifetime so easily, and keeping track of her father’s many identities was such a habit.

Her father ignored her. He lay gasping for breath for another moment of two. “Felled by a grubby tradesman, in a dirty foreign village in the middle of nowhere. If the blasted Pittance hadn’t been late—”

The Pittance was what he called the money which arrived so mysteriously from time to time. It seemed to come, no matter where they were, though it was often late. Kit had no idea where it came from, or why. Her father refused to discuss it.

She glanced through the window at the sea sparkling under the sunlight. It was so blue it almost hurt her eyes. To be sure, there were the swamps and the mosquitoes were very bad—malaria was a serious risk—but on some days, Kit had thought they had landed in paradise.

Yet in her father’s eyes, everywhere they had ever lived, no matter how wonderfully exotic or beautiful, had soon been declared grubby or obscure or provincial. Nothing compared with England.

He was, he had always been, a most bitter exile.

Kit reached for a fresh pad of linen. He was growing paler by the moment.

Her father coughed painfully. “Dammit…why could not Mary have given me a son who lived…sons…”

She tried not to listen. She pressed the linen pad more firmly against his wound. Was it her imagination, or was the blood flow slowing?

“A son would understand about a man’s honour.”

“I understand honour very well, Papa,” said Kit. “Even if I am only a girl.” If her father was unaware of the irony of a card cheat and swindler lecturing his daughter on honour, Kit was not. But it was not the card game or the recent duel with the Dutchman he was referring to. No, it was about what had happened in England all those years ago.

“Don’t take that tone with me, girl! If you understood anything at all about a man’s honour, you would make me that promise.” He lay back, wheezing with the effort of his outburst. “Females have no understanding of honour. Their minds are too clouded with emotion…If only my bonny boy had lived.”