Free The Scarlet Thief by Paul Fraser Collard

searching for the courage to dare to do something which would, if he were discovered, lead only to the scaffold and a long, drawn-out death.
    It was time to prove he could do it. He owed Molly that at least. He would gamble his life to better himself and he would do it for his Molly.
    He would do as Sloames had suggested. But he would do it in a way that his officer would never have imagined.
    For he had nothing left to lose.
    The room was as cold and clammy as a corpse. The fire had died down as Jack slept, a muted glow in its smoky depths the only reminder of its former warmth. A solitary gas lamp that Jack had balanced carelessly on the edge of a battered travelling chest hissed and spluttered, before its light went out, fuel exhausted, its flame untended and ignored.
    It was quieter without the harsh hiss of the gas lamp, almost silent except for the slow, methodical tick of the silver fob watch which Jack had placed on the mahogany dressing table, its chain neatly coiled round its case. The watch lay at the head of a formation of tortoiseshell-handled brushes, combs and razors, next to their brown leather carry case, precisely as Sloames liked them to be laid out.
    Sloames listened to his fob watch, cursing the sound of each second ticking by, hating the audible acknowledgment that his life was nearly over, the passing of time as inexorable as the approach of his death. He lay on his back in the darkness, his head bent to one side so that he was facing the room’s single garret window. The window was streaked with filth, congealed bird muck covering much of the uneven glass. He longed to enjoy one last view of the stars. Yet even that simple pleasure was denied him.
    He yearned to rise from the filthy sheets. To peel back the stained and stinking counterpane and cross the scuffed, soiled, floorboards. To throw the window open so he could drink in one last mouthful of the crisp night air. Instead, he was a prisoner in his putrid bed. His ruined body his jailer. The illness that had reduced him to a living cadaver his immutable sentence.
    The seconds ticked by, bringing Sloames ever closer to his end, this last period of consciousness a final misery his illness chose to inflict upon him. He cursed the irony of fate that should condemn him to die of disease in the benign surroundings of the Kent countryside when he had spent a small fortune to avoid a posting to the fever-ravaged Indies where sickness and death were commonplace.
    In the quiet of the room, Sloames could detect the faint sounds of his orderly snoring as he slumbered in the winged-back chair in the adjoining room. It would have been easy to hate his servant for his ripe health and vitality. Instead Sloames felt tied to the man he had saved, whose life he had changed, whose future he had set and which now looked almost as bleak as his own.
    Sloames would have wept if his body had still had the faculty. He would have railed against the merciless disease that had reduced his body to a desiccated husk, at the injustice, the unfairness, the casual callousness of his fate. Yet his imminent demise brought on such lethargy that it was an effort to focus his mind even on the appalling spectre of his own death. His thoughts, meandering and vague as they were, turned to what might have been.
    These should have been the best days of his life, the great adventure of going to war certain to bring the glory he had always craved. The campaign against the might of Russia should have been his finest hour, the much longed for opportunity to lead a company of soldiers into battle.
    As Sloames sank ever closer to oblivion, he dreamt of the battles that were to come, imagining the future that had been stolen from him, the laurels of glory that would have been his. The room was silent, yet Sloames’s sick mind echoed to the sounds of battle, to the calls of the bugles and the beat of the drums, the crash of cannon, the rattle of musketry, the screams of pain and the cheers of