by Maxton, Lily
It’s about more than happiness.
“Is it unsporting if it’s true?”
“It’s probably more unsporting if it’s true.”
She snorted. He fought back a smile. He liked being around Lady Sarah, but she didn’t amuse him quite so easily. It was a shame. A goddamn shame.
“People like their lies, Cecil.”
“Don’t try to be philosophical. It doesn’t suit you,” she said. “And stop calling me that.” But there was no heat in her reprimand anymore.
A new expression had crossed her face, something he couldn’t quite interpret. He could tell she didn’t exactly understand him, but why would she—she’d never been desperate, never wondered if there was enough blunt to pay for dinner, never stood, shivering, in a graveyard all night waiting to do something that made him sick to his stomach simply because it was the fastest way to make money, and if he didn’t do it he and his mother might lose the roof over their heads.
She’d never watched swells walking by with wide eyes and wondered what strange, glittering world they’d tumbled out of. She was part of their world. On the fringe, maybe, as Stephen had pointed out, but part of it, all the same.
She’d never been ravenous for all the things she didn’t have.
The lives they’d led were as far apart as heaven was from hell.
He hoped she didn’t pity him. He could take her aggravation, he could even take her disdain, but he couldn’t take her pity.
He met her unflinching gaze. Georgina had told him her sister was reserved, but he couldn’t imagine her ever being reserved, even when he’d seen her, sitting with the wallflowers, avoiding people’s gazes. He couldn’t reconcile Society’s Eleanor with his Eleanor.
No, not his. Bad choice of phrasing.
He broke first. “What are you thinking?”
She cocked her head. “I’m thinking that you don’t need me anymore.”
Something sharp and bitter jolted through him.
“You’ve danced with Lady Sarah. It would be appropriate to call on her tomorrow. There’s not much else that I can do to further your acquaintance.”
“But I might need you,” he said, his voice edged. “I might have questions. You cannot just disappear.”
She lifted her eyes skyward. “And I shall be here, all Season—it’s not as though I have much choice—but I still don’t think you’ll need me.”
“Our agreement—”
“I haven’t forgotten our agreement. How could I with you holding it over my head all of the time? Do you think I take ruination lightly?” she snapped.
He nodded, a little stupidly. “Good.”
Her lips pursed. They stared at each other. Finally, she said, “Good night, James. I hope you get exactly what you’ve been looking for.”
He watched her move toward the door, a little amused, a little annoyed, a little wary. He wondered if she’d meant her parting words to sound like that…not like a sincere wish of his success, more like a curse.
Chapter Nineteen
James hated tea. He liked strong, bitter things—coffee in the morning, beer, if he indulged at all. He didn’t like things overly sweet, either. He and his mother had rarely had sugar when he’d been a child—now, for him, a little went a long way.
But when Lady Sarah offered, he decided to partake. He felt like a distaste for something as expensive and coveted as sugar might show his origins.
So he drank the saccharine tea and tried not to grimace.
He liked the wall hangings in the drawing room—expensive striped silk in pale green. He glanced at the Wedgewood cup, white and red and covered in bucolic scenes, and wondered how much it cost. It looked fragile in his hand. He felt clumsy.
Oddly, he hadn’t felt clumsy at the Townsend residence. But then, they hadn’t been staring at him quite as intently as Lady Sarah’s mother was, as though they were just waiting for him to slip.
“How do you know the Townsends?” the woman asked, like she could read his mind.
For a second, he wondered what the reaction would be if he told the truth—Eleanor Townsend occasionally dresses as a man and I coerced her into introducing me to your daughter, lest I reveal her secret. It made him sound like the villain of this tale. He didn’t think of himself as a villain, and he wasn’t certain he liked it.
“I met Robert Townsend at a bookshop,” he said, with a straight face. “We found we both have a mutual fondness for Walter Scott.”
Lady Sarah’s mother lifted her eyebrows. “Indeed.”
The truth was, the only thing James could read without being bored senseless was prizefighting accounts. He’d tried out Walter Scott because he thought it might be useful to his goals. And when he’d heard Walter Scott wrote poetry, he assumed they would be short poems. They were not.
The man used far too many words—The Lady of the Lake had taken him hours to finish. He now harbored a burning hatred of the man, which probably wasn’t fair, but really, poems weren’t supposed to take up more than a page or two in a book.
“Indeed?” Lady Sarah asked, but when she said it, it sounded like indeed, not like a challenge. “I adore The Lady of the Lake.”
“Yes, that’s one of my favorites, as well.” He smiled over his teacup, hopefully winningly.
“Tell me about your boxing saloon,” Lady Sarah’s mother said, with a smile that was just as winning. It seemed an impolite question, based on Eleanor’s lessons about avoiding anything regarding money, or money making, but Lady Sarah’s mother said it with such charm that the faux pas was barely noticeable.
He had to hand it to her, she was good. “There’s not much to tell, I’m afraid. I’ll be adding trainers soon. I shall be the owner in name only.”
The words tasted bitter in his mouth. Boxing had been his life for so long. But he’d known this would happen if he courted Lady Sarah. It had always just been one more step on the ladder, it had never been his end goal. It shouldn’t taste bitter to give up something he hadn’t wanted to begin with.
“Such a brutish sport,” the woman said with a delicate shudder. “I don’t know how you can involve yourself with it at all.”
Lady Sarah cast her mother a pleading look.
“I disagree,” he said politely. “It is a sport of gentlemen. Even the prince partakes. I’ve done all I can to move away from prizefighting, which I agree is quite brutish and unnecessary, to the elegance of gentlemanly practice, the art of the form in its purest sense.”
Good God, he was nearly putting himself to sleep. Gentlemanly practice? Who was he trying to fool? He’d been a prizefighter. And it hadn’t mattered that it was brutish—he hadn’t been satisfied until he’d tasted blood.
And the gentry and aristocrats, who looked down on prizefighters from their coveted circles, certainly had no problem with watching and placing bets.
But Lady Sarah smiled at him, and even her mother looked impressed with his answer. The older woman shot her daughter a look then that said maybe he wasn’t completely hopeless.
His heart surged. For the first time, it truly felt like victory was in his grasp.
…
The next week progressed surely and steadily, a slow march to the end of his goals. The beginning of a new life. As the weather grew colder and snow threatened more often, he called on Lady Sarah several more times, once taking her in a curricle ride around town, and was invited personally to a ball her family was hosting.
His first thought was a question—would Eleanor be there? But he didn’t ask.
He hadn’t seen her since the night he’d told her about his father, but he found himself wondering about her. Mostly, he just wondered what she was doing. Had she come across anything interesting in her readings? Had she submitted anything new under Cecil’s name? Had she been sketching? Had she sketched him?
He was a bit obsessed with the idea of her sketching him. He wanted to know how she saw him. Had she been telling the truth when she mentioned his strange proportions or had t
hat been a lie?
Did she like his body?
That last thought earned him a quick jab to the jaw during practice, which was just the thing to shake him awake. His mind was quickly becoming his enemy. Any time it lulled, any time it wasn’t focused, it inevitably drifted back to Eleanor.
He shouldn’t care if Eleanor liked his body. Other women liked it. And he thought Lady Sarah liked it well enough—not that he would know—he’d been the perfect gentleman with her, and anyway, her mother was always in the room, which was quite a deterrent to scandalous behavior. He didn’t like to admit that even if her mother had been gone, he might not have been able to work up much enthusiasm about kissing her.
Which meant something was wrong with him, not her. She was beautiful and charming. There was nothing not to like. It was probably only because she was so perfect…she seemed untouchable to someone who’d grown up in the gutter. Once they were married, and they knew each other better, he was sure he would be positively thrilled about bedding her.
Maybe. Well, that didn’t matter much anyway, in light of other things.
He threw himself into the sparring match, but a softer, pleasanter image kept flickering in his mind, of Eleanor sitting by an open window in the Townsend drawing room, sketching by the diffused winter sunlight, lips pursed as she concentrated, hair ruthlessly pulled back. Until someone softened her lips with theirs…or unpinned her hair with careful fingers.
He let himself take a hit that time, literally wanting someone to knock some sense into him.
By the time his students had left, and he’d washed and changed into clean clothes, he was feeling more relaxed, the way he always did after a good sparring session.
James straightened his shoulders as he glanced in the mirror to tie his cravat. His fingers paused on the fabric, gaze taking in the bold color of the waistcoat he’d chosen. He realized, all at once, that he’d never shown it to Eleanor.
He also realized, all at once, that he missed talking to her, even though it had only been a few days. She was the only person he’d ever opened up to about his past, about his father. They had a bond he couldn’t deny.
Why hadn’t he gone to see her? What did he think he was doing? Courting Lady Sarah didn’t mean he couldn’t still speak to Eleanor. They were friends, weren’t they? They could conduct a perfectly pleasant, platonic relationship. That they’d kissed once was completely irrelevant.
He nodded to himself and smirked slightly as he wondered if Eleanor would say anything about the waistcoat.
Chapter Twenty
James was led to the drawing room where Eleanor and Georgina were waiting. For a second, he simply drank in the sight of Eleanor, sitting primly on the edge of the settee, dark, silky hair in perfect ringlets around her face, poise so stiff and face so closed that she practically radiated ice. She was always so tidy and cool. He didn’t stop to wonder why Lady Sarah, who radiated warmth and charm, seemed more untouchable to him than this woman.
Eleanor’s gaze flickered over him. “You look like you’ve dressed yourself in wall hangings from Prinny’s most opulent palace.”
He grinned, pressing a hand to his waistcoat. “It’s silk damask,” he said fondly.
“It’s a very violent shade of red,” she muttered.
“The tailor called it claret red.”
“Like you’ve spilled wine on yourself…how fitting.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
Georgina glanced back and forth between the two of them. “I think we need tea,” she announced. Instead of ringing for it, she left the room completely, leaving James and Eleanor alone.
Which James was not quite as disturbed by as he possibly should have been. He sat beside Eleanor on the settee, in the spot Georgina had just left. There was an appropriate amount of space between them, but it felt like they were sitting shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. He was too aware of her for some small bit of space to make much difference.
“What did you need?”
“Do I have to need something to want to speak to you?”
She shot him a pointed look.
“We’re friends, aren’t we?”
Her smile was wry. “We are not friends.”
That cut. Rather deeply. He’d thought they were friends.
“Do you threaten to reveal all of your friends’ secrets if they don’t assist you?” she added.
“That’s your own fault. Your secrets are simply more interesting than everyone else’s.”
She huffed, but it was a noise that held amusement, not just exasperation. “How are you doing with Lady Sarah?”
“Fine,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation. For some reason, he hadn’t expected the question and wasn’t prepared for it.
Eleanor must have noticed the pause. “Do you have trouble speaking to her?”
“No,” he said quickly. “Of course not.” And he didn’t. He truly didn’t. Lady Sarah was very easy to talk to…it was simply…he never really remembered their conversations afterward.
Eleanor didn’t look convinced, but she was prevented from saying anything by the maid’s arrival. The woman set the tea tray on the low table in front of them and James’s attention was immediately caught by a plate of cakes. He grabbed one and popped it into his mouth before Eleanor could slap his hand away.
It was sweet and plain with currants. Still a little dry, but better than the seed cake, since he hated caraway seeds with a passion.
Either way, it didn’t much matter. James, whether he was fond of a food or not, still ate it. It seemed wasteful not to, and pugilists needed to keep their strength up.
Eleanor thanked the maid, and once she was gone, turned back to James. “Do these meet your approval?”
“Still too dry,” he said, after he swallowed and picked up another one.
She sighed.
Georgina peeked her head into the room then, but she didn’t enter. “Make sure she eats those rout cakes,” she said, before venturing off once more. If she was supposed to be Eleanor’s companion, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
James looked at Eleanor, confused. “What was that about?”
“I skipped dinner last night.”
This was troubling news to a man who had never voluntarily missed a meal. “Why?”
“I don’t make a habit of it, but sometimes I’m sketching or reading and time gets away from me.”
The pugilist in him was horrified. “You shouldn’t skip meals. It’s not good for your body. Cakes can’t replace meats and vegetables. And what of fruit? Do you want to get scurvy?”
She lifted one delicate eyebrow. “Currants are a fruit.”
“But you’ve buried them in flour and sugar. If I lived here, I would follow you around with a platter and feed you any number of wholesome things.” He said it as a jest, but a part of him wouldn’t mind taking care of her when she was too enraptured by her studies to remember to eat. The realization was startling for someone who’d never had a nurturing bone in his body.
And oddly sensual—he had a fleeting image of pressing a slice of orange to Eleanor’s lips, her tongue darting out to capture tart droplets of juice that clung to his fingers.
He shook his head to clear it, realizing he was venturing into dangerous territory.
“This isn’t much of a replacement for a meal, though,” he remarked before finishing half his cake in one bite.
“Very well. Now eat your dry rout cakes and stop pestering me.” Her lips twitched as she said it. She poured herself a steaming cup of tea and then set the teapot down again. “I can ring for something else. I know you don’t like tea.”
“How do you know I don’t like tea?”
Her mouth twisted wryly. “Because you drink everything else in about two gulps.”
It was odd, and probably ridiculous, that such an observation would cause a little pang in his chest, but cause a pang it did.
“Have you been watching me so closely, then?” He meant it to be lig
hthearted, but his voice emerged slightly husky.
“Only because you wear things like that.” She nodded at his waistcoat. “It’s a sort of fascinated horror, really. Like a carriage wreck one can’t look away from.” Then she proceeded to take a dainty bite of cake, as though she hadn’t just blithely insulted him.
He smiled in spite of himself. “You, Eleanor Townsend, are an utter nightmare.”
Her lips twitched again, and then spread to a full grin, and something in his chest lifted, or quieted, or fell silent. He didn’t know exactly what the sensation was because he’d never felt it before. But he did know that in that moment, he was not thinking of the future, or how much the porcelain tea set in front of him cost, or how he might buy one someday whether he liked tea or not.
He was simply there, in that moment, there and nowhere else.
…
Eleanor was feeling a little too complacent and a little too warm and a little too happy, and Georgina was showing no sign of coming back to the drawing room, which set off warning bells in her head.
Before she could bring the conversation back to Lady Sarah, though, as she knew she should, as she knew she must, James spotted her sketchbook, the corner of which poked out from beneath the table. She’d pushed it there when Jeffries had announced a visitor.
“What is this?” James asked curiously.
“My beetle sketches.”
Anyone else would have met those words with disinterest or vague distaste, but James actually leaned forward, looking eager. “What have you been working on, Cecil?”
She hesitated, too tempted, and the blasted man grinned.
“I never told you this, but I was quite impressed with your stag beetle sketches.”
She tried to stare at him coolly. “Were you?”
“I have no knowledge of entomology and even I could tell they were exquisite.”
Exquisite? Her coolness was thawing, albeit reluctantly.
“I’ve never seen more realistic drawings, or more thorough ones. It felt like I was actually observing what you had observed. You made beetles more fascinating than I’d ever imagined they could be.”