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Kit stuck out his lower lip to blow hair from his eyes and cleaned grit from the socket. The room was quiet. Deighton hadn’t moved.

Kit sighed. “I don’t have to fix it. Like you didn’t have to turn back for us yesterday. Or attempt to save my life.” He paused. “We’ll leave to the side the fact that you almost killed me.”

This time Deighton’s grunt sounded almost humorous.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

The silence wasn’t companionable, but neither was it murderous.

The crack of the broomstick beneath Kit’s shoe sounded like a gunshot. The diameter was close, but not an exact match, slightly too small, which was preferable to the alternative. A bit of cement would do the trick.

Kit had just completed the cementing when he felt something brush his leg. He glanced up, but Deighton was in the same position.

“Cat,” said Deighton, and there was, in fact, a cat in the tack room. It went slinking around the bicycles and then rubbed itself against Deighton’s calf.

Kit squared his stance.

“Do you expect me to fall to and start torturing?” Deighton looked affronted. “What in God’s name do you think I’d do to it?”

Kit shrugged without lowering his guard. “I don’t want to find out.”

Deighton was glaring at the cat now, a glare that seemed powerful enough to crisp its fur. The cat wove between Deighton’s legs, oblivious. It was little more than a kitten, gray and fluffy, with big eyes in a round face. He bent and scooped it up.

“Easy,” said Kit warningly.

But Deighton was cradling the cat in his arms, much as he’d cradled the half-drowned boy. His glare had dulled, and he studied the cat with a wholly new expression, flummoxed and a little bit sweet.

“I slapped cats at school.” He said it grudgingly. “Is that what you want to hear? Fine. I confess. I slapped cats. Only toms, though. I slapped them to make them fight. To make them stronger.” A knot formed on his brow, and he muttered the rest: “It was for their own good.”

Kit looked at Deighton for a long moment. He was still studying the cat, his short, colorless lashes trembling.

“I see.” Kit focused again on the repair. “Was it good for you?”

“To slap them?”

“To get slapped.” Kit spoke quietly. “Or thrashed, or whatever it was.” He guessed slapped wasn’t the half of it.

Deighton’s glare was hot again. “I’m strong, aren’t I?”

Kit nodded blandly. “Indeed. You could toss me overhand into a dunghill.”

“Exactly.”

“Your father wants you to.” Kit raised a brow. “But you haven’t.”

“Yet.”

“You won’t.” Kit would put money on that. “You’re an obnoxious blowhard, but you’re a sportsman. As you once told me, you follow the rules of the road. You’d rather face your father’s wrath than compromise your integrity. That is strong. Standing up to a bully, instead of bullying in turn. Strength and violence aren’t the same thing. But I think you already know that.”

Strength and violence and manhood aren’t the same thing, he could have added, but didn’t because Deighton’s eyelid was already twitching.

“Ha,” said Deighton, without conviction.

Kit wiped the grease and cement from his hands with a rag. Deighton had set the cat on the saddle of his bicycle. The cat remained in place, gazing tranquilly at Deighton over the handlebars.

“Another thing I think you know,” said Kit. “You can tell your father to hell with Scotland.”

Deighton was too thunderstruck for fury. “And he’d say to hell with me. He’d disown me. I’d lose everything.”