Discovering the Devil

T h i r t y - o n e

XXXI

HARRY miserably nursed his gin and took in his surroundings. He hadn't been to a tavern in years. It smelled exactly as sour and airless as he remembered. He could not understand why anyone willingly chose to frequent these establishments. He watched a girl squeal as she squirmed in someone's lap. The man whispered something in her ear and she giggled. Well, he supposed he could understand why some people came to these places.

"Just tell me where he is!" someone shouted. Harry turned in the direction of the voice and raised his eyebrows in surprise. It was Abernathy. The man he was addressing shrugged his shoulders. "Please, you must. It's important." The man he spoke to merely shrugged and walked away.

"Whiskey please," Abernathy barked at the tavern attendant.

"Hard day?" Harry asked.

Abernathy looked at him twice, as if he was surprised to see him. "Not the best," he answered shortly. "And you? You're a sorry sight."

Harry laughed at his rudeness. He didn't know what Penelope had been talking about. This man wasn't timid at all. "I'm in a bit of a dilemma."

"And you've come to drown your sorrows?"

"Not quite. It's the place where I first got the idea for my business...and I thought it was a fitting place to think through a crisis that has arisen with it." Harry had not thought about selling crops overnight. He hadn't known what to do with Hawthorne for almost a year after his arrival. It had come to him suddenly during a moment of half-drunkenness and pity.

Abernathy looked at him skeptically. "You had an idea for a business in a tavern?"

"It came to me suddenly over a very bad cup of gin." Harry snapped his fingers. "Just like that."

Abernathy, who had been leaning over the counter, settled into his seat. "Well, let's hear it then. Your problem."

"I don't want to bore you."

"You wouldn't be boring me, you'd be distracting me from my own problems." His companion took a generous sip from his glass. "God knows I need a distraction."

"One of the buyers of my crops tried to press me into lowering my prices. I said no. Then, he burned my fields."

"Polly told me about that. I'm sorry."

"Thank you. Anyway, I employed an investigator to prove that he did it. I was going to use the evidence to press charges with a solicitor but....I've just found out he doesn't have enough to make ends meet."

"It doesn't excuse burning your fields."

"Penelope saw his wife and child at the grocer. He cannot even afford bread." Abernathy clucked his tongue. "I cannot agree to the prices he set...it would eviscerate me. But I cannot allow a family to go hungry."

Abernathy tilted his head. "I'm impressed."

"Why?"

"Most business men would not have blinked before crushing a rival. I would know, my father is one of them. And yet, Milford's Devil refuses to do that very thing."

Harry shrugged. "It's hardly noble. Common decency, really."

"Decency isn't that common." Abernathy sighed. "My brother is betrothed to a lovely girl—a childhood friend. It was his choice...none of it was arranged. And yet, he chooses to galavant around taverns and sleep with whores. And who do my parents dispatch to come find him?"

"I'm sorry."

Abernathy shook his head. "I just don't understand it. I really don't."

"I personally never understood the desire to whore about."