Innocence and Impropriety

by Diane Gaston

  Tanner asked his coachman to follow Greythorne. The man walked only a short distance before jumping into a hack, but luck was with Tanner—Greythorne left the vehicle at White’s. He could not have picked a better place for an accidental meeting.

  ‘I’ll not need you,’ Tanner told his driver. ‘Take the horses back.’ He glanced up at the threatening sky, wondering if he’d regret that decision if caught in a downpour.

  He entered the gentleman’s club and greeted the doorman by name, divesting himself of his hat and gloves. Sauntering into the dining room, he spied Greythorne alone at a table, placing his order with the footman. Tanner acknowledged the few other gentlemen in the room who gestured for him to sit down, but instead made his way to Greythorne.

  ‘Well, look who is here,’ said Greythorne, watching him approach.

  Tanner grinned. ‘I’ll take that as an invitation to join you.’ He signalled the servant for some ale and lounged in the chair opposite his rival.

  ‘Ale?’ Greythorne sniffed.

  Tanner cocked his head. ‘I like ale.’

  Greythorne lifted his nose. ‘To what do I owe this…honour?’

  ‘Thought I would see how our game is going.’ He leaned forward. ‘Making any progress?’

  Greythorne sneered. ‘Do you think I would tell you?’

  Tanner sat back again. ‘Actually, I did. I mean, if you have won the girl, you would be more than happy to tell me.’

  The servant brought Tanner his ale and brandy for Greythorne.

  ‘So,’ Tanner went on, ‘you have not won the girl, but neither have you given up, I’d wager.’

  Greythorne scowled at him. ‘I am progressing nicely, if you must know.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Tanner said. ‘So am I. What is your progress?’

  Greythorne swirled the brandy in his glass and inhaled its bouquet before taking a gentlemanly sip. Only then did he answer, ‘I believe I shall not tell you.’

  Tanner lifted his tankard and gulped some ale, licking his lips of the remaining foam. ‘Then I cannot very well report my progress either, can I? We are at a stand.’

  Greythorne eyed him with disgust. ‘I am sure it makes not a whit of difference to me.’

  Tanner leaned forward again. ‘Does not the competition fire your blood, man? The prize becomes more precious for knowing another covets it.’

  ‘For you, perhaps,’ Greythorne said with a casual air Tanner did not believe in the slightest.

  ‘Where is your fighting spirit?’ Tanner taunted. ‘This is a manly challenge, is it not? Who will win the fair maid?’

  Greythorne gave a sarcastic laugh. ‘Shall we joust for our little songstress? Shall we don our chainmail and armour and wave our banners?’

  Tanner pretended to seriously consider this. ‘The Tannerton armour will not fit me. Too small.’ He eyed Greythorne. ‘Might fit you, though.’

  The barb hit. Greythorne’s eyes flashed with anger as he took another sip of his brandy.

  Smiling inwardly, Tanner went on, ‘No a joust would not do. How about fisticuffs?’

  The man nearly spat out his drink. ‘Do not be absurd!’

  Tanner pretended to be offended. ‘You proposed a physical contest, not I.’

  ‘I am not going to engage in a physical contest to see who wins the girl,’ Greythorne snapped.

  Tanner lifted his tankard. ‘I beg your pardon. I misunderstood you.’ He took one very protracted gulp, knowing he kept Greythorne hostage during it. Finally he set the tankard back on the table and continued as if he’d never interrupted his conversation. ‘So no physical contest for the girl. I do agree. That seems rather trite. How about a physical contest to learn this progress we each have made?’

  Greythorne looked aghast.

  Gratified, Tanner went on, ‘If you win, I tell you what we have achieved in conquest of the girl. If I win, you tell me the progress you have made. Agreed?’

  ‘No, I do not agree!’ Greythorne looked at him as if he were insane. ‘You would have us pound at each other with our fists over such a trifle? I assure you, I would do no such thing.’

  Tanner did not miss a beat. ‘Oh, not fisticuffs. That would not be a fair fight at all. I’ve no real desire to injure you—well, not much of a desire anyway—or to injure my hands.’ He looked at his hands as if admiring them.

  Greythorne’s eyes shot daggers.

  Tanner returned a sympathetic look. ‘We could tame this for your sake. Perhaps a game of cards, if a physical contest is too fearful—I mean, if it is not to your liking.’

  The man straightened in his chair. ‘I am well able to defend myself, if the sport is a gentlemanly one.’

  ‘Oh?’ Tanner lifted his brows. ‘A race, perhaps? On horseback or phaeton?’

  Greythorne grimaced.

  ‘No? Too dirty?’ Tanner said. ‘What then?’

  He waited, enjoying the corner he’d put Greythorne in.

  Finally Greythorne answered, ‘Swords.’

  Tanner grinned. ‘Swords it is!’

  When they walked out of White’s, leaving a rustle of voices discussing what was overheard, it had started to rain. Greythorne opened an umbrella, not offering its shelter to Tanner as they walked from St. James’s to Angelo’s Fencing Academy next door to Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Club on Bond Street. To thoroughly annoy Greythorne, Tanner sustained his friendly conversation the whole way, as if they were fast friends instead of adversaries.

  When they entered the Academy, Tanner received a warm greeting from the third-generation Angelo to run the establishment. Tanner and Greythorne both stripped to their shirtsleeves.

  ‘Choose your weapon,’ Tanner invited.

  ‘Épée?’ responded Greythorne. ‘And shall we forgo masks?’

  Tanner approved of that bit of bravado. He preferred clearly seeing the expression on his adversary’s face. In Greythorne’s case, he assumed it would be like reading a book.

  ‘How many touches?’ Tanner asked.

  Greythorne thought a moment. ‘Five.’

  Tanner nodded.

  With Angelo and a few others watching, they saluted and faced each other en garde. Tanner gave Greythorne invitation, carefully watching how the man moved. Greythorne engaged his sword, and the sound rang throughout the room. Parrying the thrust, Tanner executed his riposte with just enough speed and skill to keep Greythorne attacking.

  Again and again, Greythorne lunged and engaged. The man was light on his feet and had a supple wrist. He also had confidence in his skill. Tanner had to concentrate to keep up his defence. Greythorne managed a clever glissade, sliding his blade along Tanner’s, creating music not unlike a bow across a violin. The point of his sword hit Tanner’s shoulder.

  ‘Touché,’ cried Greythorne.

  ‘Bravo,’ someone called from the sidelines. Gentlemen from White’s, who had overheard the challenge, took their places to witness the fun.

  Tanner acknowledged the touch, while a flurry of bet-making commenced among the onlookers. As near as he could tell, the odds were not in his favour.

  He and Greythorne walked back to the middle of the room. Tanner glanced over and saw his friend Pomroy standing next to Angelo. Pomroy regarded Tanner with raised brows. Tanner lifted a shoulder and gave Pomroy a rueful smile.

  He took position opposite Greythorne again.

  ‘You will lose both this and our other little competition,’ Greythorne boasted, as his épée clanged against Tanner’s blade, driving Tanner backwards. Tanner allowed alarm to show on his face as Greythorne looked more and more self-assured. Greythorne whipped the blade upward, its edge catching Tanner’s face before the point pressed into his neck.

  ‘Touché,’ Greythorne repeated.

  Tanner felt a trickle of blood slide down his cheek. Greythorne’s eyes shone with excitement, a change in demeanour Tanner did not miss. He swiped at his cheek with his sleeve, staining the cloth red.

  The contest resumed, and the shouts of their onlookers grew louder. The ép�
�es touched in a flurry of thrusts and ripostes, clanging louder and louder. Salty sweat dripped down Tanner’s face and stung the cut on his cheek. Greythorne sweated as well, his pace slowing, but his skilled work with the sword continued to keep Tanner on alert. When Greythorne earned one more touch, his laughter at the feat lacked force. Three touchés to Tanner’s zero. The odds against Tanner winning went up.

  Tanner breathed hard as they stood en garde again. Greythorne began the same pattern of thrusts and parries he’d executed before with great success. This time, however, they merely informed Tanner exactly what would happen next. At Greythorne’s counter-riposte, Tanner parried and lunged, forcing Greythorne’s blade aside. He quickly attacked again, the point of his épée pressing at Greythorne’s heart.

  The onlookers applauded, and the wagering recommenced. Greythorne’s eyes widened in surprise.

  They began again. This time Tanner went on the attack. He picked up the pace of his swordwork, then slowed it again, until Greythorne’s brows knitted in confusion and he began making simple mistakes. Tanner drove Greythorne back again and again, each time striking a different part of his body, all potentially lethal had the épées not been affixed with buttons to prevent the sword from running straight through the flesh. He earned three more touchés.

  With the score four touchés to Greythorne’s three, Greythorne rallied, giving the contest more sport and increasing the frenzy of betting among the onlookers. The blades sang as they struck against each other, the sound much more pleasing to Tanner’s ear than what he heard in King’s Theatre or Lady Rawley’s music salon. He relished it all. The strategy and cunning, the rumble of the onlookers, the danger, the sheer exertion.

  He and Greythorne drove each other back and forth across the floor as the onlookers shouted louder and louder, odds changing with each footstep. Greythorne engaged more closely in an impressive display, the look of victory on his face. He lunged.

  Tanner twisted around, parrying the attack from behind. He continued to spin, lifting Greythorne’s blade into the air, forcing him off balance. Tanner made the circle complete as he swung his blade back to press against Greythorne’s gut. The surprised man stumbled and fell backwards to the floor.

  ‘That was five! Five touchés!’ someone cried from the side.

  Tanner continued the pressure of the dulled tip of his blade on the buff-coloured pantaloons Greythorne wore. The fabric ripped.

  ‘You’ve damaged my clothes!’ Greythorne seethed.

  Tanner flicked the épée slightly and the tear grew larger. ‘What say you?’

  Greythorne moved the blade aside with his hand and sat up. He did not look at Tanner.

  ‘What progress?’ Tanner demanded.

  Greythorne struggled to his feet. ‘I am to dine with her tonight at Vauxhall.’

  The onlookers had not attended to what must have seemed to them an epilogue to the drama. Wagers were settled and the onlookers dispersed, a few gentlemen first coming up to Tanner and clapping him on the shoulder. The winners of the betting, he surmised. Pomroy waited while he dressed. After thanking Angelo, he and Pomroy walked to the door. Greythorne was just ahead of them.

  Outside rain was falling as if from buckets.

  ‘My clothes will be ruined!’ Greythorne snarled.

  He held back, but Tanner and Pomroy did not hesitate to step out into the downpour, breaking into laughter as they left Greythorne in the doorway.

  ‘Damned prig!’ Pomroy said.

  They ducked into the first tavern they came to, already crowded with others escaping the weather, including some of the gentlemen who had witnessed the swordfight. Tanner accepted their congratulations good naturedly. He and Pomroy pushed their way to a small table in the back.

  When they were settled and some ale was on the way, Pomroy said, ‘What the devil was that all about?’

  Tanner grinned. ‘I exerted myself to discover what Greythorne next planned in his conquest of Miss O’Keefe.’

  ‘Such a trifle?’ Pomroy pointed to the cut on his cheek. ‘There was not an easier way to come upon that information?’

  ‘And miss that sport?’ Tanner felt his injury with his finger.

  A harried tavern maid brought them their ale, and Tanner took a thirsty gulp.

  ‘I discovered something about your fashionable adversary,’ Pomroy said.

  Tanner sat forward. ‘Tell me, man.’

  His friend took a sip of his ale instead. Tanner drummed the table with his fingers while he waited. Pomroy placed the tankard down and brushed the moisture from his coat sleeves, merely to delay and to annoy Tanner.

  ‘I discovered…’ he finally began, pausing to give Tanner a teasing smirk ‘…that your friend is not welcome at several of the brothels in town.’

  ‘This is all?’ Tanner took another drink.

  His friend waved a finger in the air. ‘Think of it. Why would a man be barred from a brothel?’

  ‘Not paying?’ Tanner ventured. ‘Emitting too great a stench?’

  Pomroy shook his head. ‘He has been barred because of cruelty. He inflicts pain.’

  Tanner recalled Greythorne’s eyes when his sword drew blood. He frowned. ‘I remember now. Morbery went to school with him. Told me once Greythorne passed around de Sade’s books and boasted of engaging in his practices.’ He halfway rose to his feet. ‘Perverted muckworm. I must take my leave, Pomroy. The devil is set to dine with her this night.’ He dug in his pocket for some coin, but sat back down. ‘Dash it. I’m spoken for tonight. Clarence again.’

  ‘Send the ever-faithful Flynn,’ drawled Pomroy.

  The rain settled into a misty drizzle that Flynn did his best to ignore as he stood under the scant shelter of a tree bordering the Grove at Vauxhall. There were a few other hearty souls who had braved the weather to listen to Rose sing, but Flynn had not seen Greythorne among them.

  He’d listened with alarm to what Tanner had told him about Greythorne. A devotee of the Marquis de Sade, the man who said ‘the only way to a woman’s heart is along the path of torment.’ Flynn knew the man’s works. De Sade’s books were more popular at Oxford than the texts they were meant to study. Flynn had read the forbidden volumes as assiduously as the other Oxford fellows. De Sade had a brilliant mind and a perverted soul; if Greythorne meant to practise his brand of pleasure on Rose, Flynn would stop him—no matter what he had to do to accomplish it.

  As he listened to her, Flynn thought Rose’s singing altered. She sang with less emotion, less energy, perhaps due to the rain, or Greythorne, or strain from her voice lesson. He could tell she was attempting to put her newfound knowledge into practice, trying to breathe as they’d taught her, to sing the highest notes as they’d taught her, but she seemed self-conscious, as if fearing her knuckles would be rapped at any moment if she made an error.

  He missed the undisguised pleasure that had come through in her voice before, but he well understood her determination to improve. His own ambition was as keen. They both burned with the need to rise high, as if achieving less than the highest meant total failure.

  Flynn knew Tanner would let him open doors for Rose, like the one he’d opened for her at King’s Theatre. The marquess had the power to fulfil her dreams.

  When she finished singing her last note and curtsied to the audience, the applause was nearly drowned out by the sound of the rain rustling through the leaves and hissing on the hot metal of the lamps’ reflectors. Flynn quickly made his way to the gazebo door. A few other admirers also gathered there.

  He knocked on the door and gave his name and card to the servant who answered it. When he was admitted, he heard another not so fortunate fellow say, ‘How did he get in?’

  The servant left him alone in the gazebo’s lower room, and a moment later Rose came rushing in, directly into his arms.

  ‘Oh, Flynn! I hoped you would come!’

  He could not help but hold her as she clung to him and buried her face in the damp fabric of his caped greatcoat. When she fina
lly pulled away, tears glistened on her dark lashes.

  ‘When does Greythorne come?’ he asked.

  She glanced up in surprise. ‘You knew of it?’

  He nodded.

  A faint smile flitted across her face. ‘He cancelled. Postponed, I mean.’

  He gazed at her. ‘Let us go somewhere we can talk.’

  She went to take her cloak off a hook on the wall. When they walked out, the bedraggled men outside could be heard saying, ‘That’s her!’ and ‘Dash it! He’s cut us out.’

  He whisked her away, leading her down the Dark Path. It was dotted with small classical structures where couples could be private. Flynn tried the knob of the first one they came to, and, finding it unlocked, brought her inside. Rushlights lit the interior. A table was set with wine and two glasses.

  ‘I am guessing this party has been cancelled,’ Flynn said, gesturing to the table. ‘Come.’ He led her to the single chaise-longue, the only place to sit. ‘If they do show up, we will make an apology and leave.’

  He unfastened her cloak and laid it aside with his greatcoat, hat and gloves before coming to sit next to her. Taking her hand in his, he pulled off her gloves, one finger at a time.

  She could barely breathe for the feel of his bare hand upon hers. ‘Greythorne gave my father money for my company.’

  He held both her hands in his.

  She stared at them. ‘But…but when the rain came he…begged off. He sent a message. So I do not know when I shall be required to meet him. I do not wish to meet him at all, Flynn!’

  He nodded, squeezing her hands. ‘Have no fear. I will think of some way to help.’

  Rose gazed at him, feeling relief and something even more powerful. She could not believe he had come to her, rain and all. Now that his hands folded over hers, tethering her with his strength, she had not realised how keenly she needed him.

  But he released her and stood, turning his back to her. ‘Lord Tannerton is prepared to better any offer Greythorne makes.’

  She bowed her head. Tannerton again. Standing between them. ‘When?’ She felt the gloom descend upon her.