Irresistible (34 page)

Pinter visibly blanched. “It is all a lie,” he said.

“What is?” Eden asked him. “But it does not matter, does it? None of it will ever have to be made public.
Will it?”
He barked in a manner that had even Nathaniel jumping.

“No, sir.” Boris Pinter’s bravado had disintegrated as they had all known it would. Though not entirely, Nathaniel hoped.

“There
are
several copies of that document, by the way,” Eden said. “We all have one. We do not have the power to impose any sentences of banishment, Pinter, but we do strongly suggest that you remove yourself from this country for a year or ten. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Pinter said.

“Good.” Eden stood aside. “Your turn, Nat.”

Pinter had been eyeing him uneasily for the past minute or two. Nathaniel had been methodically removing his coat and waistcoat and rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.

“You are not going to die, Pinter,” he said conversationally. “Unless it is from fright, of course. And you are not going to be tied down, you may be disappointed to learn, since that was always your favorite form of punishment. You may remove some of your own garments for greater ease of movement—I will give you time—and then use your own fists as much as you like. I will be using mine.”

Pinter backed up a step. “You have the letters,” he said. “And you have my promise of silence. I will even leave the country. What is this for?”

“This?” Nathaniel raised his eyebrows. “This is for Mrs. Armitage, Pinter. Our friend. You have one minute to get ready. After that it will be either a fight between you and me or else simple punishment. Take your choice. It is all the same to me.”

“There are three of you.” To his discredit, Pinter’s voice was almost a squeak.

“But fortunately for you, Pinter,” Nathaniel said, “we are honorable men. If you can succeed in avoiding your punishment by knocking me insensible, Major Lord Pelham and Major Lord Haverford will not lay a finger on you.” He smiled. “Thirty seconds.”

Perhaps Boris Pinter thought he had a chance. Or perhaps he was too frightened to take the coward’s way out. Or perhaps he simply did not understand that he was dealing with an honorable man, who would not have continued hitting him once he was down.

However it was, he stayed on his feet for a satisfyingly long time. Not that it was in any way an equal contest. One of his punches landed rather painfully against Nathaniel’s shoulder blade and another wild one drew blood from the corner of his mouth. Everything else glanced harmlessly off or missed altogether.

Pinter himself, by the time he went down, completely unconscious from a crushing blow beneath the chin, had a broken nose, which was bleeding copiously, an eye whose surrounds were puffed up to twice their normal size and would soon be black, two raw-looking cheeks, and two broken front teeth. The bruises on the rest of his body, all from the waist up, were invisible beneath his shirt.

Nathaniel flexed his fingers and looked down ruefully at his raw knuckles. There were other people in the doorway, he noticed for the first time—Pinter’s valet, the landlady from downstairs, the servant who had opened the door to them.

“If you are his valet,” Nathaniel said, pinning the man with his gaze, “I would suggest that you fetch some water and throw it over him.”

The valet disappeared at a run.

“My card.” Kenneth held one out to the landlady. “If there has been any damage to your property, ma‘am, you may have the bills sent to me.”

“There is
blood
on my carpet,” she said, apparently unconcerned with the unconscious and bloody person stretched out on top of it.

“Yes, ma‘am,” Kenneth said, “and so there is. You are dressed again, Nat? Good day to you, ma’am.”

“You are slipping, Nat,” Eden said as they descended the stairs and stepped out onto the street. “Out of practice. Rusticating too long. You actually allowed him to punch you in the face. I could have expired from shame.”

“He has to have some trophy to take home to Sophie,” Kenneth said. “Nat? Is there something you care to tell us, old chap? Something to get off your conscience?”

“Go to the devil,” Nathaniel instructed him, mopping at the comer of his mouth with his handkerchief.

“As I understand it, Ken,” Eden said, “Lady Gullis is as innocent as the day she was born. White as the driven snow. Nat has been leading us a merry dance.”

“You may go with him,” Nathaniel said.

CATHERINE, MOIRA, AND Daphne, Lady Baird, were in the morning room at Rawleigh House, playing with their children. But the game was instantly abandoned when the door opened.

“Rex,” Catherine said, hurrying toward it. She stopped. “And Sophie?”

Young Peter Adams toddled toward his father, clamoring to be picked up so that he might impart to him some news in the incoherent babble that only a parent could understand. Young Amy Baird went close to Rex, tugging on the tassel of one of his Hessians to attract her uncle’s attention. Jamie Woodfall, forgetting that he was a big boy now, first put his thumb in his mouth and then leaned against his mother’s legs and raised both arms above his head.

Sophia felt awkward. But she was not ignored. Catherine caught her up in a hug and then laughed and looked down at the swelling of her womb.

“I am having to learn that I must keep my distance from people again,” she said. “Sophie, how
lovely
it is to see you again. See who is here, Moira, Daphne?”

“Hello, Sophie,” Moira said before picking up her son. “When everyone stops talking at once, sweetheart, we will ask Uncle Rex where Papa is. Is that what you want to know? I daresay he will be back soon.”

“Amy,” Daphne was saying at the same time, “Uncle Rex has two ears, darling, but he can listen to only one person at a time. Do let Peter finish what he has to say and then you may have your turn.” But Peter was no longer babbling. He was giggling—he had hold of his father’s ears and looked as if he was trying to bite his nose. “Sophie, you have come to a madhouse.”

If she had been thinking straight in the carriage, Sophia thought, she would have asked Rex to set her down outside her own door. Why had she allowed him to bring her here?

“Do sit down, Sophie,” Catherine said, linking an arm through hers and leading her toward a chair. “I shall ring for Nurse to take the children up to the nursery for milk and biscuits and for the tea tray to be brought in here. We will soon have a measure of sanity restored, I do assure you.”

She was very gracious, Sophia thought, sitting stiffly on the chair that had been indicated, and watching the children being led from the room by the nurse—after Peter had been set back on his feet and Rex had gone down on his haunches to look at Amy’s new tooth and Jamie had been assured that his papa would be back soon and would come to the nursery to take him home.

“We have all been dreadfully worried,” Moira said, looking from Rex to Sophia, “fearing that something would go wrong. Where is Kenneth? And Nathaniel and Eden, of course. And Sophie? How did you learn of this? We were all going to be so careful to keep it from you.”

“Sophie was there ahead of us,” Rex said. “She had a pistol pointed at Pinter’s heart.”

Daphne gasped and Catherine clapped both hands to her mouth.

“Good for you, Sophie!” Moira said. “Oh, well done. I would wager it was not loaded, though.”

“No, it was not,” Sophia said.

“Women!” Rex shook his head. “Do you not realize the danger of pointing unloaded pistols at villains?”

“It is the principle of the thing,” Moira said. “I am so glad you got there first, Sophie, and showed everyone that you are no abject victim. Now tell us everything that happened. And if you are going to do the telling, Rex, you may not give us a laundered version. Sophie is here to set you right.”

“I feel so dreadful,” Sophia said, looking down at the hands she had spread in her lap. “I would not admit you when you came to call on me, Moira and Catherine, although it must have been clear to you that I was at home. I
scolded
Rex and the others for interfering in my life and broke off my friendship with them. Yet you continued to try to help me. And you are being kind to me now. I am so ashamed.”

“Oh Sophie,” Catherine said, “we understood. And I am glad you went to Mr. Pinter’s this morning even though it was a remarkably rash thing to do. If you had not, none of us would have told you why the blackmail had suddenly stopped, and we would have been reluctant to try to see you soon lest you suspect. But we have never stopped being your friends, have we, Rex?”

“Of course not,” he said, “and never will. Ah, the tea tray. I daresay Sophie could use a cup.”

“Where
are Kenneth and the others?” Moira asked, sounding a little exasperated.

Rex proceeded with an account of what had happened in the rooms on Bury Street. Sophia accepted her cup of tea gratefully and sipped on it, hot as it was.

They had been going to
punish
Boris Pinter.
Nathaniel
was going to punish him. Not with a gun or a sword. With his bare fists, then. Not in order to get back the letters—she did not doubt that just the presence of the three of them would be sufficient to pry them from Mr. Pinter. But for her sake—because of what Pinter had done to her.

Nathaniel was doing that for her.

Nathaniel was also discovering the truth. They all were. They would know now. By the time they came here, she would see the knowledge in their faces.

She would see it in his face.

She should have gone home. She should have thanked Rex and sent her thanks to the others for what they had done for her, but she should have gone home.

Was he hurt? Had Mr. Pinter hurt him? She did not doubt that it would have been a fair fight. Not really punishment but a fight in which Nathaniel might as easily have been hurt as Mr. Pinter.

Her hands were beginning to shake. She set her cup down in the saucer.

“It is all over, Sophie,” Daphne said kindly. “But what a dreadful experience for you.”

“Yes.” Sophia smiled. “But how fortunate I am to have such friends.”

“Did you know,” Catherine asked her, leaning forward in her chair, “that Harry—my brother Harry, Viscount Perry—is to call upon your brother-in-law this morning? None of us can even begin to guess the reason why, of course. Perhaps it is just that spring is in the air.”

Sarah? To marry the very handsome and amiable Lord Perry? So soon? But they were so very
young.
Or else she was getting rather old, Sophia thought.

“Oh,” she said. “No, I did not know. And I cannot guess the reason either.” She laughed. “But if the approval of a mere aunt is important to Sarah, then she has it.”

They all conversed on a variety of topics for half an hour before the sounds beyond the door of new arrivals proved just how tense they all were. Moira leaped to her feet, Rex got to his and strode to the door, Catherine and Daphne leaned forward expectantly in their chairs, and Sophia pressed back into hers, her hands gripping the arms tightly.

Everyone was talking at once. Moira was in Kenneth’s arms and—for some reason—weeping. Rex was asking in feigned disgust if that was a
wound
at the corner of Nat’s mouth or merely a cold sore. Eden was proclaiming the debilitating influence of a life of rustication on a man’s instincts for self-defense. Nathaniel was inviting him to go to the devil—at the risk of repeating himself and becoming tedious. Catherine was demanding to know what had
happened.

And then Nathaniel detached himself from the group at the door and came across the room to stand in front of Sophia’s chair. He reached out a hand and she placed one of her own in it.

“Sophie,” he said, “it is all over, my dear. He will not be bothering you again, and the information he held will never be published. You have my word on it, and the word of your other friends here.”

“Thank you,” she said as he raised her hand to his lips—and she saw his knuckles.

Kenneth was right behind him, Moira holding to one of his arms. He held out a bundle that was even fatter than Sophia had expected it to be. There might be ten more letters there—enough to have beggared both Edwin and Thomas before the last one or two had been used to bring about the scandal she had no doubt Boris Pinter had intended from the start.

“They are all here, Sophie,” Kenneth said. “Including the one that was on the floor. And even on the remote chance that he dared keep one or two back, I can assure you that he would never dare to let them come to light. Walter did not call us the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for nothing.”

She stared at the bundle, feeling rather faint.

“There is a fire in here,” Kenneth said gently. “Shall I set them on it, Sophie, and we will watch them burn?”

“Yes,” she said, and watched as he tossed the letters into the heart of the fire. There was an instant blaze about them, and they curled into golden and brown ashes. “Thank you.”