by Jane Feather
“Why bliss?” he asked softly.
Without taking her eyes off the ring, Theo said, “It’s exciting. It’s doing something … something risky that you must do perfectly if you’re not to hurt yourself. It’s a real life … not this … this …” She stopped, but Sylvester knew what she’d been about to say. London bored her, and she despised the inane social round, although she struggled to hide her tedium from her mother and sisters, who seemed to be enjoying themselves.
His gaze shifted from his wife’s countenance to Edward Fairfax. Emily still clutched his hand. Edward had taken lodgings in Albermarle Street, although he spent all his time in Brook Street and went to his lodgings only to lay his head on his pillow. Sylvester was still uncertain whether he knew anything about Vimiera, but if he did, he clearly wasn’t saying. And he hadn’t hesitated to join the Belmont women in their support of Stoneridge.
He closed his eyes as his temples tightened. Theo had still said nothing openly about his humiliation of the other afternoon, and today her sisters and Edward were behaving just as always. Perhaps it was the distraction of the performance.
But perhaps, he thought, it was another way in which they were showing him their support. A kind of blind loyalty simply because he was now one of them. They were the most extraordinary family. But dear God, if only he could prove that their loyalty wasn’t misplaced.
The familiar frustration washed through him. If he could just remember, or find someone who remembered, what had happened before the bayonet had slashed across his head. There had to be an explanation for that surrender. An explanation other than abject cowardice. He’d searched the records at Horseguards, forcing himself to meet the eye of men who passed him in the corridors, but the transcript of the court-martial yielded nothing that he didn’t already know. It was time to start asking some questions.
Again Neil Gerard’s face popped into his vision. Gerard had not yet put in an appearance in town, but it was very early in the Season. When he turned up, Sylvester would tackle him. If he cut him socially, then he would track him down in his lodgings. Somehow he would force the man to talk about Vimiera. Maybe now, now that Sylvester was distanced from the agony of his imprisonment and the immediacy of his shame, he might latch on to some infinitesimal fact or impression that would unlock his memory.
Unless he already knew the truth. Unless he knew everything there was to know: He’d yielded the colors, surrendered, condemned his own men. Perhaps the truth had been too terrible to remember.
Theo took her eyes from the ring for a minute and glanced at her husband. A shiver ran through her as she saw his expression. His eyes were blank, his face drawn, that muscle twitching in his cheek. What was it?
She glanced at her sisters, intent on the scene in the ring. With the natural delicacy of Elinor Belmont’s children, no one had mentioned the other afternoon. If Theo didn’t bring it up, then they wouldn’t. They would have discussed it among themselves and with Elinor, but it would go no further than that unless they were given permission.
But for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to speculate about some obscure dishonor in Sylvester’s past, not even with her sisters or her mother, from whom she rarely held secrets. Just as something had held her back from revealing the true conditions of the old earl’s will. Her motives for keeping quiet about it confused her, but for whatever reason, she kept silent.
“I wish I could ride,” she declared with sudden fierceness, and was instantly rewarded as Sylvester’s eyes focused and he came back to the world of Astley’s amphitheater.
“But you do,” Clarissa pointed out. “You rode only this morning in Hyde Park.”
“You call that riding?” her sister retorted scornfully. “A decorous trot along the tan under the eyes of every old cat in town?”
Sylvester raised his eyebrows and caught Edward’s eye. The younger man gave him a sympathetic smile.
“Look at that man swallowing a sword now!” Rosie cried. “That has to be a cheat. It must fold up or something as he pushes it down.”
“A magician’s nightmare audience,” Sylvester murmured. Theo’s deep chuckle answered him.
“She has an inquiring mind.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
The grand finale brought the performance to a rousing close. Sylvester could see that the unsophisticated treat had been a success. Emily and Clarissa had been delighted, Rosie fascinated if less than credulous, and Theo diverted for a few hours.
“Supper,” he announced cheerfully, placing Theo’s cloak over her shoulders. Her hair was braided around her head, and the slim white column of her bared neck was irresistible. He forgot where they were for a minute and bent and kissed her nape.
Startled, she looked over her shoulder, her eyes glowing with sensual response to the caress. He kissed the corner of her mouth and the tip of her nose.
“Where are we going for supper?” Rosie asked, clearly unimpressed by this delay in the proceedings and quite unaware that her sisters and Edward were tactfully looking in the opposite direction.
“I thought you might enjoy the Pantheon, Rosie,” Sylvester said easily.
“Will they have scalloped oysters and ices?” the child inquired, removing her glasses to wipe the lenses on her skirt. “I most particularly enjoy scalloped oysters and pink ices.”
“Then you shall have them,” Sylvester assured her. “Let’s get out of this crush.”
He shepherded his small flock ahead of him through the rowdy departing audience, a crowd of townspeople, raucous costermongers, fleet-footed urchins. Astley’s was an entertainment that appealed to anyone who could afford the penny entrance fee in the pits.
There was an autumnal nip to the evening air as they emerged into a crowd as noisy and shrill as the one inside. Fruit and flower sellers called their wares, competing with the bellows of pie sellers, and the jangle of an organ grinder with his scrawny monkey dancing frantically.
“I’m just going to look at that monkey.” Rosie dived into the crowd in the direction of the organ grinder.
“Rosie!” Theo plunged after her, but Sylvester was quicker. He grabbed the child’s pelisse and hauled her back.
“This is not Lulworth,” he said. “You do not run off like that on your own, do you hear, Rosie?”
“I merely wished to see what kind of monkey it was,” she said with an injured air. “There are many different kinds of monkeys, you should know, Stoneridge. I have a book about them, and I wanted to identify it.”
“It’s a little black monkey,” Edward said. “Now, come along. Emily’s getting cold.” He took Rosie’s hand and marched off with her, Emily and Clarissa arm in arm beside him, toward the corner where the chaise and Sylvester’s curricle waited with coachman, groom, and tiger.
Sylvester and Theo followed, pushing their way through the crowd that seemed suddenly to grow thicker. It wasn’t so much that, Theo realized suddenly, as that they were being pressed on either side by three men in the leather aprons of workmen. Three very large men. She glanced up at Sylvester and saw that he was now behind her; the men had somehow separated them just as they drew ahead of the crowd.
She saw the realization of danger flash in his eyes the minute she understood it herself.
“Theo, go to the carriage,” he ordered, his voice low and intense as he stepped sideways, his eyes assessing the three men. They wore caps low on their foreheads. A hobnailed boot swung, kicking him on the shin, and his breath whistled through his teeth. He was surrounded now, no room for maneuver, the indifferent crowd behind them as they left the immediate vicinity of the amphitheater.
Sylvester was unarmed. A man on a family outing in the company of women and children didn’t carry weapons. His driving whip was with the curricle. One of the men raised his arm, a heavy oak cudgel in his fist, and Sylvester wanted to scream as the memory of the bayonet slicing down at his unprotected head filled him with a momentarily paralyzing terror. He flung up his arms to protect his head at the sam
e moment that Theo kicked the cudgel wielder in the kidneys.
The man bellowed, spinning toward her, giving Sylvester breathing space. Theo kicked again, her leg a perfectly straight weapon, her aim wickedly accurate, slamming into his groin. He doubled over with a scream.
The other two were on Sylvester now, and a knife glinted. He drove his fist upward under the jaw of one of his assailants, a massive bear of a man who simply shook his head and pre pared to renew the attack. As he did so, Theo went for him, two fingers jabbing for the eyes. Blinded, he fell back with a panicked cry and her leg flashed upward, her heel driving against his heart just below his ribs.
“Bastards,” she said, dusting off her hands. “That was exciting, wasn’t it?”
Sylvester had dealt as efficiently with the third assailant, who lay gasping in a fetal curl on the ground, the knife at some distance from his body. The earl, momentarily at a loss for words, turned to his wife. She was breathing rapidly; her eyes shone, her cheeks were flushed, her hair wisped from its braided coronet, and she looked perfectly ready to take on another half a dozen footpads.
Her hat lay on the ground and he picked it up, dusting it off against his thigh, handing it to her silently. She stuck it on her head and grinned at him.
“That’ll teach them.”
“Yes,” he said, “I’m sure it will. Where the hell did you learn to fight like that?”
“Edward taught me. You knew I could do it.”
“I knew you could wrestle,” he said slowly. “I did not know you knew how to fight like a damned street Arab.”
“I’m sorry if it vexes you,” she said, a shade tartly. “But it seems to me you should be grateful. Those footpads meant business. If you ask me, they were after more than your purse and your watch.”
“What on earth—” Edward’s horrified tones came from behind her as he took in the scene. “We wondered where you were.”
“Oh, just dealing with a minor matter,” Sylvester said.
“Footpads,” Theo said with another grin at Edward’s expression. “You should have seen me, Edward. I remembered all those kicks you taught me, and that business with the fingers.” She gestured to prove her point.
“Dear God,” Edward muttered, glancing uneasily at the earl. “I only showed her the technique, sir. I didn’t train her in it or anything.”
“My wife is clearly an apt pupil,” Sylvester said with a sharp exhalation. “And the devil of it is that if she weren’t, I’d probably be lying there with my throat cut—which rather inhibits my legitimate outrage.”
“So I should hope,” Theo declared indignantly. “What shall we do with them?”
“Leave them,” Sylvester said, turning away. “Are the girls all right, Fairfax?”
“Yes, they’re in the chaise,” Edward replied. His expression was strained, his voice low. “I was so busy seeing them safely installed, I didn’t see what was happening. Not that it would have made any difference. A cripple isn’t good for anything but seeing to the comfort of women.”
“Don’t be a damned fool,” Sylvester said roughly, but he touched his arm in a fleeting gesture of understanding. “Come along, let’s get out of here.” He indicated they should go ahead of him and then turned back to his assailants. One of them was struggling to his knees.
Sylvester planted a foot in his chest and sent him sprawling. “You will inform whoever employed you that he will discover I don’t take kindly to unprovoked attacks. That is a most solemn promise.” He lifted his foot again, and the man on the ground cowered, covering his head.
“All right, guv, all right. We was only doin’ what we’d been told.”
“By whom?” The gray eyes were like the arctic wastelands as he stared down at the man, his foot still menacingly raised.
“ ’E was all wrapped up, guv. ’E ’Ad ’is face ’idden in a muffler. I swears it,” the man babbled, burying his head. “In the Fisherman’s Rest on Dock Street. ’E comes and says ’e wants a little job done. ’E ’ad an ’usky voice, raspy like. Brings us ’ere and points out yer ’onor to us and says get on wi’ it. There’ll be a guinea apiece. We was only doin’ what we was told to do.”
“Yes, I’m sure you were.” Sylvester believed the man. Whoever was behind this wouldn’t be foolish enough to reveal himself to his tools. But the Fisherman’s Rest was a clue.
“We wasn’t expectin’ no woman from ’ell,” one of the others muttered, groaning as pain stabbed in his kidneys.
“Something of a surprise for all of us,” Sylvester agreed blandly. “Now, don’t forget my message.” Turning on his heel, he strolled to the waiting vehicles, where an argument seemed to be in full flood between Edward and Theo.
“You cannot possibly drive in an open carriage looking like that,” Edward stated.
“Don’t be absurd. Who’s going to see?”
“Oh, Theo, come into the chaise with us and let Edward drive with Lord Stoneridge,” Emily said, her head at the window of the chaise. “We want to know what’s happened.”
“Now, what’s the matter?” Sylvester inquired somewhat wearily.
“Edward’s being so silly,” Theo said. “He says I shouldn’t drive in the curricle, just because my gown’s a bit torn.”
“A bit!” Edward said, pointing at Theo’s gown of pale-yellow muslin. “It’s ripped all the way up to your waist.”
“Well, how could I do a high kick without tearing it? I could have pulled it up to my waist first, I suppose, and regaled the entire neighborhood with the sight of my drawers.”
“Theo!” protested Emily.
“Of course, they’re very pretty drawers,” Theo continued, ignoring the flapping ears of tiger and coachman. “They have lace frills and pink ribbon knots, and I believe—”
“That’ll do!” Sylvester interrupted this devastating description before it drew an even larger crowd. He scooped her up and bundled her into the chaise. “You may satisfy your sisters’ curiosity on the way back to Curzon Street, where you will change your dress.”
His tone was scolding, but his eyes were alight with laughter, and something else. Something akin to admiration.
He instructed the coachman to return to Curzon Street and climbed into the curricle beside Edward.
“Was it footpads, sir?” Edward asked directly as the pair of chestnuts sprang forward and the tiger clambered hastily onto his perch at the rear.
“Up to a point,” Sylvester said. “Pm sure they’d have happily robbed me of my last sou.”
“But there was more to it, you believe?”
He nodded. “Another one of those ‘accidents’ that seem to be occurring with dismaying frequency.”
“Who?”
“God alone knows. I’d rather hoped it was some disaffected tenant. But clearly it’s not that simple. But don’t say anything to Theo. I have enough of a problem second-guessing her as it is, without giving her a cause to get her teeth into.”
Edward smiled. “She needs to be occupied.”
Sylvester groaned. “Why can’t she occupy herself like other young women? Emily and Clarissa enjoy doing the usual things. Shopping and exhibitions and balls and suchlike.”
“Theo’s not like them.”
“No,” Sylvester agreed glumly. “She’s not like any woman I’ve ever met. If I don’t watch her every minute, she’ll be riding ventre à terre in the park at the fashionable hour, or attending a prizefight, or presenting herself at Manton’s Gallery for some target practice. I can’t think what her mother and grandfather were thinking when they encouraged her to be so damnably independent.”
Edward bristled. “I believe they both understood they’d have had to break her spirit if she was to be molded in any conventional form,” he said stiffly. “And she’s a very special person.”
Sylvester glanced sideways at the young man’s rigid countenance. He smiled and said pacifically, “Yes, she is.”
Edward visibly relaxed. “Do you intend to discover who’s behind these
attacks, sir?”
“If I’m to stay healthy—not to mention alive—for much longer, I think I’d better.” Sylvester passed a brougham with barely an inch to spare.
“If I can be of service,” Edward suggested tentatively. “I know a one-armed—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, you young fool, a one-armed man can ride, shoot, drive, fence, fish, and make love as well as a man with two arms,” Sylvester declared. “If I need your help, I’ll call upon you, fair enough.”
The impatient tone was much more reassuring than sympathy or an anxious disclaimer. “Fair enough, sir.”
They reached Curzon Street before the chaise and were drinking claret in companionable silence when the girls arrived.
“Is that the ninety-six?” Theo said, lifting the decanter, inhaling the bouquet. “Some bottles in that delivery were corked.”
“This one’s fine,” Sylvester said. “Go and change your dress. We’re all famished.”
“I’m also very thirsty,” Theo responded with a twinkling smile, filling a glass. “All that exercise, you understand.”
She was radiating mischief and energy. Sylvester had rarely seen her like this, and he realized with a shock that she was happy, and in the few weeks since he’d known her, he hadn’t often seen her truly happy. At least not outside the bedchamber.
And she was happy because that encounter had exhilarated her, had enabled her to do something she was good at, something that pleased and satisfied her and made her feel useful.
She was never going to settle for the life of a society matron. Maybe motherhood would use up some of her surplus energies. Thinking of their passion-filled nights, he couldn’t imagine it would be long acoming.
“Take it with you,” he said. “You may have ten minutes to change.”
“You wouldn’t go without me?”
“I wouldn’t put it to the test.”
“What! After I saved your life?”
“Don’t exaggerate. Nine minutes.”
There was a distinct glimmer of laughter in the gray eyes, a complicit quiver to his mouth, and Theo felt the warmth of her own response leaping to meet him. These moments of private understanding in public places had been rare occurrences since their arrival in London, and she’d missed them.