Best do it quickly though. He couldn’t swing without the joint feeling like it was ripping open. An uppercut with his left caught Jasper on the chin, but Jasper merely took a step back, cleared his head with a shake, then launched himself at Alistair, fists flailing.
“Apologize for Sophy!” Dodging right, Jasper landed a jab on Alistair’s right shoulder. He buckled with a howl, but staggered up before he met the ground, catching Jasper with a swift punch right in the middle.
“Bastard,” Jasper gasped, stumbling backward.
“No, that’s Sophy,” Alistair countered, but before he finished Jasper was grappling him around the waist. They were striplings again, gangly, furious, determined to win by foul means, which were always faster than fair.
“Get off!” Alistair yelled, tugging Jasper’s hair, earning a grunt and a leg hooked around his own. Before Jasper could push him over, Alistair threw himself forward, shoving Jasper to the grass, but Jasper held tight, pulling him down. Evading a fist swinging heavily as a flying anchor, Alistair rolled sideways and froze. Five yards away stood a neat pair of boots—red leather with cheeky curved heels.
Alistair couldn’t move. Jasper had grabbed his hair and was lobbing insults with immense satisfaction.
“Jasper—” Alistair began, jerking his chin at the boots.
“Good God!” Jasper’s stream of profanity came to an abrupt halt as he released Alistair’s hair. “Erm—” He fell into incoherent sputtering.
Before Alistair could lift his eyes above Miss Red Boots’ skirts, someone stepped out from behind them—a mop-headed boy in nankeen trousers and a blue coat.
“Ass-wipe!” he pronounced triumphantly. “Bloody—” Before the child could fire off more of Jasper’s choice words, a gloved hand clapped over his mouth and Red Boots hoisted him onto her hip. Alistair was on his feet in an instant, brushing blindly at his waist coat, his apologies a messy tangle. Jasper was stunned silent.
No wonder. She was beautiful. Tall. Slender but shapely. Abundant black curls under a bonnet of golden straw. Ruby lips, winched into a tight frown and dark-lashed eyes pouring hot coals over him. Alistair flinched. Jasper, still unable to speak, nevertheless saw a way to redeem himself and pitched forward, snatching up a rubber ball lying in the grass.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Is this yours?” Red Boots snatched it from his outstretched hand, then spun about in a volte-face any infantry commander would admire. Alistair didn’t know how she could march so rigidly with a child wrapped around her waist, but it was impressive, a crushing snub—at least until the child piped up again. “Filthy ass-wipe!” he crowed, loud enough to carry to the other side of the park. Miss Red Boots—or Mrs., rather—halted for a split second, silencing the child with an admonitory finger, then hastened through the park gate.
Even Sophy hadn’t run from him that fast. Alistair tried to laugh, but it hurt. He winced and rubbed his shoulder.
“She’ll hear you,” Jasper hissed.
“Doesn’t matter. No way we can recover from that.” Alistair reached down and snatched up his coat.
“Let me,” Jasper said, stuffing Alistair’s arms painfully into the sleeves and hoisting the coat over his shoulders.
“Easy does it,” Alistair croaked. He glanced round. Curious ladies vanished behind parasols. Beyond them a gentleman hustled his lady out of earshot, looking back with a censorious frown. Devil take it. At least six people had seen them.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jasper said, trying to straighten his coat, forgetting the seams at the back and shoulders were torn, revealing flashes of white shirt.
“Right.” Alistair was already aiming for the gate to the street, pretending they weren’t grass-stained and disheveled.
Jasper fingered his bleeding lip as they walked, letting out a grunt. “Who was she?”
Alistair shrugged, reviewing her features: red heels, white dress, little brat behind same, bonnet tied with a pert bow. Mortification grew as the pieces began fitting together. Hair: dark. Eyes: angry. Mouth: luscious. He had no idea who she was, but he felt certain he had seen her face before.
Alistair unstoppered his short bottle of whale oil. Moistening a greasy rag—once part of a French soldier’s coat—he pushed it through the barrel of his pistol, twisting the rod as he went. Cleaning his gun almost always helped his mood, and tomorrow he might be too sore for the job. His shoulder felt like a lump of pastry who’d tried disagreeing with a rolling pin. At least Jasper hadn’t gotten his face.
Better if he’d stayed home. Or written his colonel, saying he was ready to return to Spain. With his name already splashed across London’s scandal sheets, getting caught brawling in the park only made things worse. Anyone would know he and Jasper had been fighting over Sophy. Alistair picked up a clean square of cotton. It went through the barrel as well, with more force than necessary, a kind of self-punishment—his knuckles hurt too.
He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of his bedchamber, balancing the dirty rag on his boot so it wouldn’t stain the carpet. He fitted the pieces of his pistol back together, buffed the whole thing with a cotton square, and raised it to his eyes, taking inventory of each familiar scratch. He had a good memory for names and faces, but he couldn’t place hers. Easy enough, though, to imagine her leaning in to a jewel-adorned ear, whispering what she’d seen today in the park, her lips twisting with contempt. He and Jasper might each nurse their bruises in solitude all day, but their families would hear about this afternoon’s turn-up before dinner.
Perhaps he’d met her at that al fresco luncheon in Richmond? Might explain it. He’d drunk liberally of the champagne there, enough to blur the edges of his memories a little. No, that couldn’t be right.
Alistair rose, dusted off his grass stained-breeches and hobbled to the dressing table, his muscles protesting though he hadn’t been sitting on the floor long. He needed a bath, but that would require his man, Griggs, and he wasn’t in the mood for any kind of company. Instead, Alistair sprawled across the bed, pulling out a battered book. It was his favorite, his good luck charm, a volume of Horace. The pages were feathering at the edges, the cover water-stained. Someday soon the book would fall apart completely, but he didn’t know if he could bear to replace it. Horace had been his companion in Portugal and Spain, at Talavera, Buçaco, Fuentes de Oñoro and in the little medieval town of Tarifa, where he had finally taken a bullet in his shoulder.
Alistair started with the odes, enjoying them as he always did, until he tripped on the line,
who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold.
He instantly thought of Tom Bagshot.
Sophy, a captivating innocent, couldn’t be likened to Pyrrha of the poem, but Bagshot—he fit nicely as her lover. Credulous, yes, and as rich in Methodist morality as he was in merchant gold. And he, like the writer of the poem, was jealous, sick with injured pride. Alistair flipped the page, turning his shoulder against a boiling cloud of anger, reading half a page without understanding a word. Bagshot was still in his head, Horace failing to evict him. Yet beneath envy and offended dignity there was something else . . . Alistair chewed the inside of his lip, straining after an elusive wisp of memory. Something about Bagshot, or Bagshot’s morality. Yes, he had it now. It was more than just Tom Bagshot. It was the memory eluding him since he’d left the park, trying to recall just where he had first seen Madame Mouth.
He knew he’d seen her before! It was the demure dress and the little boy hiding behind her skirts today that had thrown him off. She’d looked much more dashing, and even more delicious, the first time he’d seen her at one of the opera house’s scandal-making masquerade balls. Ladies of Quality might flit in and out—discreetly, if they valued their good names—but they didn’t remove their masks, especially when their lips were decorated with paint. He’d noticed her early in the evening, but it was later, when she was glaring at the masked fellow dancing in the pit with his own Sophy, that he sauntered over to lean against the side of her box.
“Is he yours?” he asked. “The tall one, dancing with the lady in blue?”
She wilted for a fraction of a second before taking firm hold of her pride. “Obviously not.” Her mouth tightened.
“I wouldn’t worry. No harm will come of it,” Alistair said. Sophy could play her games and try to avoid him, but he didn’t like that she was waltzing with this fellow after refusing to waltz with him. He’d make sure she was back at his side after this dance. It was time he made his intentions plain.
“Too late. Here I stand, defeated,” she said. A glimmer of humor would have softened her words, turning them into the kind of self-mocking jest that was both acceptable and wearily elegant. But there was no lift of an eyebrow, no lurking smile. She meant what she said. She cared far too much.
“Is he your husband then?” It was always best to make generous assumptions about females.
“No.” The word was bare, forlorn. He felt a twist of pity, enough that he had to look and see if the beautifully packaged woman was still there, or if she’d been replaced by a girl in braids and a dimity frock. No. This was the same one, brittle and alluringly varnished.
“Then he won’t object if you dance with me?”
“No. More’s the pity.” She pressed her lips together. “He’s of no use to me now, not even for dancing. I might as well take the floor with you.”
“Such enthusiasm,” he said, smiling at her as he walked around the front of the box. He expected she would wait for him collect her, but when he came to the door of the box she was already there. Hungry for a protector, he surmised. She was lovely to look at, but desperate and not, in any case, for him. Probably best to avoid her, but he’d already asked her to dance. He could at least use the opportunity to position himself near Sophy on the dance floor.
They dropped into the swirl of dancers without making a ripple. Alistair shifted his hand on her back, pulling her a fraction closer than was respectable. A test—one she failed. She didn’t resist, or appear to even notice. Her eyes were fixed over his left shoulder.
“There is something arresting about the way she moves, isn’t there?”
He moved her through a turn so he could see what she meant—it was Sophy, floating back into the circle of her partner’s arms.
“I think it’s more in the line of her shoulders,” he said, unable to hide his frown. “She’s much too young to be traipsing around with strangers.”
She caught the shadow in his voice and leaned closer. “Does it tear your heart? Or just displease you? I can’t tell if you love her or not.”
Her sharp probing surprised him. True, his own thoughts of her were not kind, but he’d kept them to himself. Smarting from the sting of her words, he started to let go of her, intending to leave her where she stood. The smirk on her face changed his mind. There were better ways to discomfit her. He tugged her closer, so they were nearly touching, his mouth a handbreadth from her ear. Her breath quickened. She was probably waiting for words, but he didn’t speak. He didn’t intend to answer impertinent questions.
Tired of waiting, the woman in his arms supplied an answer herself. “Hmmmn. Not heart broken. Not yet.” That, too, he decided to ignore, stonily returning her gaze as she searched his face, trying to see past the mask around his eyes.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“You first,” she said.
“Rushford. Jasper Rushford,” he lied.
“I am Mrs. Morris.” She seemed to be waiting for him to ask after her husband, but Alistair was not such a novice. If there was a Mr. Morris, he was clearly a complaisant man, and therefore of no consequence.
“You’re a nice armful, Mrs. Morris, but I’d like a look at your legs again,” he said, propelling her into a spin so her shape would appear beneath the swaying skirts of her high-waisted gown. Very nice. Wherever she had come from, she looked like a thoroughbred at least—close to his own height and perfectly formed from her neck to her wrists to her ankles.
“You shouldn’t say such things to me,” she said.
“Why not? Don’t you like it?” He slid his thumb along the edge of her hand, kindling fire in her eyes.
“Your lady won’t like it,” she said, radiating angry heat. Surprising. You’d think she’d have overcome such scruples.
“I don’t think she’ll ever know,” he said.
“Probably not. Her eyes are all for Tom. Look, he’s very taken with her.”
If she meant to goad him, it was a weak attempt. Sophy could have her one waltz. It was of no consequence.
“Bad luck. She’s not for him,” he said.
“How do you know?” she asked.
Alistair grinned, happy to retake some ground. “Because she’s for me. If I want her, that is.” The music slowed, sinking in heavy pools between dancers approaching stillness, a heartbeat of a pause to exchange courtesies before breaking apart and leaving the floor. Alistair lifted his hands from her as the last note swam into the air. He sank into a bow. “I’m quite sure that I do, so don’t give up on him, Mrs. Morris. The lady in blue is unavailable, and you are not without some attractions.” He let his eyes travel slowly down below her face. “Thank you for the dance. May I escort you to your seat?”