is very generous of you, but I think you are due—”
Restell held up one hand, palm out, effectively quelling her objection. “You misunderstand, Miss Hathaway, or perhaps it is that I was not clear. My time is priceless. You haven’t sufficient funds to effect payment. No one does.”
Emma’s brow furrowed slightly as she considered what this meant. “Can you really think so much of yourself? Your time cannot be so precious as to be invaluable.”
Restell simply shrugged.
“But what if I desire to engage your services?”
“I am not a hack driver, Miss Hathaway, waiting at the curb for someone to hire my cab.” He waved aside her objection. “In any event, I do not deal in currency. I deal in favors.”
“Favors?” The shadows beneath Emma’s eyes deepened as she speared her host with a narrow glance. “What do you mean?”
Restell folded his arms across his chest. “Let us suppose there is a physician with a penchant for placing wagers on cockfights. Let us further suppose that he’s had a run of bad luck so that his wagering far exceeds his ability to pay. He is profoundly motivated to change his habits, in part because the man he owes quite a bit of the ready to has threatened to break his hands, one finger at a time. To prove this is no idle threat, the man encourages the physician to make the acquaintance of a young gentleman who had a similar debt to pay.”
Restell saw Emma’s eyes drop to his hands. Not offended in the least, he held them up, splaying his fingers so she might view them clearly. “I am not that young gentleman.” He wiggled his fingers for emphasis. “But you are right to suppose that I might have been. My brother made a timely financial investment in my future.”
“So that you would have one.”
“You have it exactly.” Restell lowered his hands to the desk, curling his fingers around the edge. “For purposes of this illustration, our physician has no wealthy relative to see him clear of his debt, so let us imagine that he applies to me for assistance.”
“You pay his debt?”
“Hardly. It’s precisely that sort of interference that encourages more wagering. Ask Ferrin.”
To suppress her laughter, Emma quickly took a sip of tea. She could not say whether it was the whiskey or Restell’s discourse that was calming her nerves, but she knew herself to be more at her ease than at any time since her abduction.
Restell’s grin underscored his lack of contrition. “Let us pretend that what I am able to do for this physician is to reverse his losses so that his debt is nullified. You might wonder how such a thing is possible without cheating, so I will tell you that it’s not. Cheating was very much involved, though no more than was done to the physician. The fights are fixed, you see, and the physician is a mark from the outset, the object being to relieve him of his savings, of his livelihood, of his reputation, and most likely, in the end, of his life.”
“But why?”
“For sport.”
Emma’s cup rattled in the saucer as she shuddered with the cruelty of it. “Can you mean it?” she asked softly.
“I mean it. Can you really doubt there exists such evil among us?”
She found herself oddly reluctant to answer him. Emma leaned forward and placed her cup and saucer on a nearby table. The small movement served to remind her of aches that had not yet healed and new ones that were surfacing. How had she forgotten that she’d been the victim of that sort of evil? “For sport,” she said on a thread of sound. “Yes, I understand.” She shook her head slightly as if to clear it. “What of the favor, then? What do you ask of the physician whose debts you clear and hands you save?”
“I might ask anything of him,” Restell said. “It is all hypothetical, you understand, but I might be moved to request that he attend a man who is gravely ill from a pistol ball lodged in, shall we say, an unmanageable location. Further, this physician would lend his expertise without raising a single question. He would be expected to offer his assistance at the precise moment he was asked, no matter the complication it presented to his own life. If all this is accomplished in a satisfactory manner, the favor is discharged.”
“It is a rather ingenious approach.”
“Hardly. It is barter. An eye for an eye, or at least something akin to that.”
“Do the people you assist know what favor you will require of them?”
“No. They can’t. I don’t know myself.”
“Does that ever give anyone pause?”
“I imagine it does—after their problem is resolved. No one hesitates to agree beforehand.”
“What happens if someone is unable to meet the terms of the favor you ask?”
“I can’t tell you.” Restell could not miss Emma’s look of dismay. He grinned. “I believe you’ve put the wrong construction on my answer, although I find myself unnaturally flattered that you think I could be so ruthless. The reason I can’t tell you what happens is not because I cause harm to their person but because no one has ever failed to meet my terms.”
“Astonishing.”
He shook his head. “Do I strike you as unreasonable, Miss Hathaway?”
“No,” she said cautiously, “but you will allow we have had a very short acquaintance.”
“You are right, of course. You will perhaps appreciate that those people I decide to help are often asked to agree to my terms on the strength of an introduction only—and my promise that I will resolve the situation that distresses them. They agree, I think, not because they know I am indeed a reasonable man, but because the circumstances of their life have become in every way intolerable. As it happens, though, I ask only what can be given. For instance, I would not demand that our hypothetical physician dishonor his oath to do no harm by asking him to mix a poison, nor would I require that he trod the boards at Drury Lane in the service of my amusement or the amusement of my friends. I have no notion whether or not he might agree to either or both of these things, but I am not inclined to place such disagreeable choices before him.”
“Reasonable and honorable.”
“Depressingly tiresome, but there you have it.”
Emma managed a small smile without causing herself further injury. “It is kind of you to explain it to me.”
“Not at all. You should know the whole of it before I accept you as my client.”
A thin vertical crease appeared between her eyebrows. “I thought you understood I have changed my mind. I do not wish you to do anything on my behalf.”
“On your behalf? Aren’t you here on behalf of your cousin?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then whatever I might be able to do would be done for her, is that not right?”
“Yes, but—”
“So
