The man snapped forward in an angry little bow and withdrew, leaving Archie to turn his black gaze on Lucy. She cringed.
“I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful showing,” she said, praying she sounded sincere.
“Do not patronize me.”
“I’m not. Really. It’s just a contingency plan. You know. In case something goes wrong. Like if you trip.”
“You mean while I’m running away?” Archie asked sarcastically.
“No, not at all,” she said in her most pacifying voice, which did not have any visible pacifying effect on Archie at all. In fact, if anything, it only made his swarthy skin go darker. Behind them a bell clanged.
“You know, Lucy, I am—”
She was never to know what Archie was or was not because at that instant a huge arm swung out, aiming straight for Archie’s head.
Lucy’s eyes went round as saucers and Archie ducked.
An enormous arm swept over his head, the breeze ruffling his hair. He started back up just as his opponent’s other arm swung from the opposite direction so he waited an instant before straightening.
This was going to be ridiculously easy.
The behemoth just kept swinging and Archie just kept ducking, letting the Frenchman wear himself out. He was a country brawler; Archie had been trained by some of the best pugilists in England.
True, he caught an occasional glancing blow to his ribs. He would have been spared even these if Lucy hadn’t kept distracting him by shrieking, “Watch out!” “Oh my God!” or some variation thereof. He kept track of her out of the corner of his eye, a manic figure in a bedraggled blouse and shrunken skirt, darting along the rope line, hopping up and down as a pair of dark-uniformed police thwarted her attempts to hurl herself into the ring.
In fact, he was much more worried about her actually breaking free and throwing herself between him and the Frenchman than he was about himself.
Lucy could get hurt.
With this a distinct possibility—because the police were seriously outclassed in the matter of evasion—he set about ending the match. Initially he’d decided to let the man hang in there for all three rounds. There was no sense in needlessly humiliating the local hero. But Lucy’s continued and fervent efforts to save him put an end to that plan. Like many a plan she’d put an end to, he thought as he ducked yet another mighty punch and came up beneath the Frenchman’s unguarded chin with an uppercut designed to take him off his feet.
It didn’t have the desired effect.
The Frenchman’s arms dropped, true, but he only swayed, looking more baffled than injured. There was no help for it; Archie hit him again. The fighter’s eyes rolled back and he toppled over, dropping flat on his back in a little puff of dust.
Stunned silence met his fall and then a rapturously amazed voice called, “Archie! You won!”
He turned to see Lucy duck under the rope, hike up her splotchy skirts, and sprint toward him. She skidded to a stop right in front of him, her shining face turned up to his, smiling broadly, her eyes wide with wonder.
“You won!” she reiterated.
“You might at least make some attempt not to sound so astounded.”
“But you won!” She pointed at the behemoth climbing painfully to his hands and knees. “Against him!”
“I know.” He’d thought he had himself well in hand. But the excitement of the fight must have affected him more than he’d realized because his heart was still pounding, his muscles still coiled with readiness.
“But how?” She patted his chest as if to reassure herself he hadn’t somehow died in the last few minutes and she was seeing a ghost. “Wait. Don’t tell me. The deans at your boy’s school thought fisticuffs would be a bully way to dispel your excess energy.”
“Hm? Oh, I boxed at the ’04 Olympics,” he said, distracted. He was too busy tallying up the freckles on her cheeks, the vibrant flush on her skin, the curl of her gold-tipped lashes. And his pulse, rather than slowing, had quickened as a sort of ebullience, an irrepressible recklessness, filled him.
He remembered this feeling from long ago; it had never boded well. He’d felt like this before accepting Hinny Mickfert’s dare to scale the bell tower, before touching the flame to the methane gas tube in the college laboratory, before diving off that cliff in Abereiddy.
In short, he felt on the cusp of doing something very rash.
“Archie?”
“I won.” He should look away. Walk away. Be away, before it was too late. “I won the prize.”
“Yes,” she agreed, nodding happily. “A substantial purse, so I’m told. Well, done, Archie. Well done!”
Too late. “That’s not what I meant.”
“No?” Her extraordinary eyes widened in surprise. “What did you mean?”
“This.”
“I was thinking that perhaps, some time in the future, it would be interesting to tour Italy,” Bernice said, softly so as not to wake Marjorie.
Their friend had secured them the compartment they occupied, but, lulled by the soft sway of the carriage and the unremitting green of the countryside, she had fallen asleep soon after the train had left the Châtellerault station. Bernice and Lavinia shared the seat opposite her, Lavinia taking the place closest to the window to enjoy the view as reading en route made her queasy.
“Baedeker’s says there are very reasonably priced inns catering specifically to English ladies traveling unaccompanied.”
“Italy?” Lavinia echoed, still surprised by her sister’s nascent wanderlust. “I . . . I don’t know. I suppose so. We will certainly be able to afford it.”
“Oh.” Bernice’s round face flamed with embarrassment. “I keep forgetting that you are going to be rich, Livie.”
“We are going to be rich, my dear. You know it has always been my intention to settle half of whatever those rubies fetch on you.”
Bernice regarded her sister fretfully. “I know, but I couldn’t feel right accepting—”
“Good heavens, Bernice, don’t be a juggins.”
“A what?” Bernice asked. If Lavinia was surprised by Bernice’s taking to travel, Bernice was equally dumbfounded by her sister’s transformation from frail maiden lady to self-possessed cosmopolitan.
“A juggins. Someone who is unnecessarily circumspect.”
Bernice was a tad offended. She had only meant to make clear that she didn’t expect anything. “Forgive me for not presuming.”
Lavinia smiled. “And now you are being a double juggins. Or perhaps a widgeon.”
Widgeon, Bernice understood. In many cases, it could be considered a fond term.
“You know very well were the situation reversed you would do the same and insist upon the same. So, let’s speak no more of it, shall we?”
How could she be offended? Lavinia would never purposely hurt her feelings. It was just that she had recently discovered the pleasure of speaking her mind.
She was changing. They were both changing.
How odd that, so late in life, one could begin to . . . well, bloom. But then, even at Robin’s Hall, November roses were not all that rare.
“Now tell me about Italy. Where would we start?”
Bernice flipped to the map at the back of the book, her finger traveling slowly along the coastal towns.
“Good heavens. Do you see that, Bernice?”
“See what, Livie?” Following her sister’s wide-eyed gaze, she leaned forward and peered out of the train window. She jerked back with a thump.
“Oh. Oh, my!” Bright pink circles arose on her soft, round cheeks as she fussed with her blouse cuffs. She cleared her throat. “Now, Lavinia, it is only to be expected that the inhabitants of these small French burgs would have a different notion of decorum than that which we are used to at Robin’s Hall. We mustn’t judge them by our standards, and instead allow for the Frenchmen’s looser moral understanding.”
Now that she’d composed herself and could consider the goings-on objectively, Bernice permitted h
erself a somewhat longer look back at the couple, still locked in their passionate embrace. Lavinia, who hadn’t so much as blinked, lifted slightly from her seat, allowing herself a clearer view.
A small crowd gathered in a cordoned-off area had surrounded a young man and woman thoroughly wrapped in one another’s arms. A few of the male spectators actually clapped the young man on the back. He didn’t appear to notice, being entirely engaged in . . . well, entirely engaged.
“He looks like a young farm hand, don’t you think?” Bernice asked. He was certainly built like one, or at least as Bernice imagined—not that she’d ever imagined—one would be. Lean and muscular, the young man wore only the top half of his gentleman’s combinations and a pair of dusty looking trousers. As his broad back was turned toward them, all they could see of his head were thick black curls.
Even though the object of his affection faced them, it was impossible to see what the girl looked like due to the young man’s head completely eclipsing her face. But, judging by the slender arms clinging round his neck and the narrow form he held lashed so tightly to himself, she was slight and small. Her poorly made, ill-fitting clothing suggested that she, too, came from a simple background.
“Country sweethearts,” Bernice opined.
The young man suddenly dipped down and plucked the girl right up off the ground and lifted her high against his chest, his mouth never leaving hers. A pile of tawny brown hair spilled over his forearm as he turned and strode off through the crowd just as their train headed around a curve.
“If this is how they act in France . . .” Lavinia murmured.
“Just think what it must be like in Italy!” Bernice breathed.
He really had to stop grabbing Lucy and kissing her. It was becoming a very bad habit.
The thought flickered, the dim light of reason trying to illuminate his thoughts. But then the feel of her mouth, soft and voluptuous beneath his, and the press of her supple form yielding against him extinguished that sputtering light and ignited a blazing fire instead.
He wrapped his arms more tightly around her, bending her backward over his forearm, his mouth slanting urgently over hers. He cradled the back of her head, his fingers spearing through the thick, glossy hair. God, she tasted good. She smelled, she felt, she was . . . Impossible to find words while a tidal surge of sensation and desire swept through him.
Long, long minutes later he became dimly aware of some ill-mannered idiot poking his back . . . Damn! Here he was, once more putting on a show for the locals. He broke off the kiss and snapped upright, carrying her with him. What must she think?
She didn’t seem to think anything.
She wobbled on her feet, dazed, her eyes soft and unfocused. He steadied her with a hand on her elbow. She stared down at his hand with an unreadable expression. Any second now she would slap his face in the time-honored tradition of a lady insulted. He richly deserved it.
But instead she looked up at him and gave him a barmy sort of half smile.
Silly, silly, unwise girl. The rabbit hole he’d entered five days ago turned into a bottomless abyss, one from which there was no return.
“Here now, lad,” a hearty English voice said from his side. “It’s still daylight, for the love of Mike!”
A pot-bellied, redheaded bantam of a man with bright blue eyes grabbed his hand and shook it violently. “Bless you, lad. You just won me a tidy sum, a tidy sum indeed! I knew you were a contender, the minute I saw you lift your fists. ‘There’s a stylist, Ned,’ I said to meself. I recognized it, you see, counta I went a few rounds on the canvas meself when I was a youngster.
“So I hightails it over to where the boys are takin’ odds and hands over me whole month’s earnings. Eighteen to one. Eighteen to one!” He broke off in delighted laughter. “Come along! You and your sweetheart.”
“Come along where?” Archie asked, feeling stupid.
“To me pub, lad! The Wayfarer.”
“You have a pub?”
“More of an inn. Lost me senses over a French girl and followed her here. She inveigled me into marrying her and working on her dad’s farm. Turns out I’m not so good at farming. Luckily, I am good at running an inn. But I missed the taste of good ale so much I turned the bar into a proper pub where a man can enjoy a pint. And you’ll be my guests there for the night.”
He caught Archie around the shoulders with one arm and Lucy with the other. Then, shouting, “Suivez-moi, mes amis!” to the spectators who still milled about in disappointment, thus instantly heartening their mood, he shepherded Archie and Lucy off the field, trailed by a large and growing crowd.
Merrymakers and fairgoers, regulars and first-timers, witnesses to the fight and those who had just heard rumors that Ned Cleary was standing drinks to anyone who could make their way through the tight press of bodies in his bar to collect, filled the Wayfarer Inn, spilling out the wide-flung doors and into the street. Ned, flush in more ways than one, sent his barmaids to buy “whatever’s left that looks good to eat” from the booths around the field before they closed down. When they returned he set it all out as a free feast.
The festival air in the Wayfarer grew and expanded as people drank and ate, laughed, and enjoyed themselves. Someone called for a fiddler and soon couples old and young, and a few who were one of each, were stomping the floorboards. The women raised their skirts; the men, a cloud of dust. Tall tales, squeals of laughter, and congratulations passed freely. Within seconds of Archie’s glass being emptied, someone refilled it with a clap on the back or a nod of his head. More often than not it was his erstwhile opponent, Denis, who turned out to be a very pleasant baker with a philosophical bent.
“I only won for so many years because I am strong,” he confided reflectively from across the table they shared. “The strongest. I have no idea how to fight. What sort of person goes about trying to learn how to pummel another man more efficiently? Not that I begrudge you the knowledge, monsieur,” he hurriedly added. “We have all heard of stories about your English boarding schools. Had I gone there, I, too, would have learned the art of pugilism. But here? In France? Phff.”
“Ish true,” Ned agreed stoically, if a little blearily. “Only Englishmen and Americans have schools to teach fisticuffs.”
Archie, his thoughts having grown a little muzzy and filled with bonhomie, smiled sympathetically.
“But”—the giant wagged his finger playfully under Archie’s nose—“had we been involved in a weight-lifting competition, my friend, then I would have won the beautiful girl’s reward.” His eyes danced to where Lucy perched on the end of the bar, her legs swinging merrily. And lovely legs they were.
All three men fell into a silent, cow-eyed appreciation that lasted until Lucy felt their scrutiny and turned her attention their way. She’d been laughing at something someone said and her lips were parted in a broad grin, her eyes sparkling, her skin pink with warmth and ale.
“No, you wouldna,” Archie said, his eyes never leaving Lucy’s face. She tipped her head inquiringly, a mocking lift to her brow. She knew they’d been imbibing. And when he couldn’t think how to respond, his thought processes having been temporarily disabled by her beauty, his drunkenness, and a multitude of other factors for which he couldn’t account, she gave him a saucy wink and went back to listening to the old geezer filling her ear from the bar stool at her side.
“Ah. So it’s like that, is it?” Denis said knowingly.
“Yes. Like that.” He didn’t even try to deny it. But neither did he explore too closely what “like that” meant.
He’d never met anyone like Lucy. He wouldn’t ever meet anyone like her again. She filled his mind, crowding out his every resolve to act sensibly. It was like being drawn to the edge of a waterfall. No matter how dangerous you knew it was, you couldn’t keep from looking over the edge.
As a lad, he’d always had a hard time “not looking over.” He’d imagined he’d gotten over that tendency.
It appeared he hadn’t.
“Then, because I am Frenchman and you are only a poor Englishman but a damned fine boxer, then perhaps I will not try to steal her from you,” Denis stated magnanimously. He quaffed down the rest of his beer. “She made eyes at me, you know.”
Archie burst into laughter. “Yeah, in order to save my life.”
As flirtatious as Lucy was, and she was flirtatious, he didn’t for a minute believe she was interested in Denis. Or any other man . . . The thought gave rise to another notion—one not yet fully realized—that clamored on the edges of his consciousness, shouting to be heard. Something important, very important, that he should stop to consider.
But then Denis, after trying unsuccessfully to look offended, joined in his laughter, clapping him on the back.
Archie peered around at the revelers, the dancers, the fiddler, the piper, and the barmaids swatting at hands. Farmers swayed in unison to some old drinking song, children skittered in and out amongst the tables, dogs barked, and Lucy, always Lucy, now sang some naughty music hall ditty, and he realized he was having the time of his life.
“This is fun,” he said, apropos of nothing.
Denis nodded.
“Ya know, I’m a profeshor.”
“I should say so,” Ned agreed. “Professor of the Right Uppercut.”
“Well, that, too,” Archie admitted modestly, “but I’m also an anthra . . .” No, that wasn’t the word. His mouth was having a hard time forming what his brain wanted it to. “I’m an anthree . . . I study culture. I’m a trained observer.
“ ’N one of the first things an anther . . . an antro . . . a guy who studies cultures learns is never to become involved with your subjects. Leads to all sorts of meshy, unscientific stuff. Right?”
His audience regarded him with gratifying—or was that stupefied?—attention.
“Mustn’t interact, ya know? So, I haven’t. Always been careful to stay detached. Objective. Like a well-mannered audience member. Observin’, not participatin’,” he finished sadly.
“Sounds deadly dull,” Ned opined.
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