The Devil May Care (Brotherhood of Sinners #1) (8 page)

Before the caresses could proceed further, Sebastian himself appeared, proffering a steaming cup of the spiced rum.

“Give it a rest, Cardross,” he reproved mildly. “Other men would like a chance, and they won’t appreciate the slobber. Besides, the lady requires refreshment.” He nudged the mug against the hand Cardross was mauling.

Cardross released her with a shrug. “Forgive me, my dear,” he said, giving one last caress with his eyes. “But you are impossible to resist, as always.”

She snapped open her fan to cover her face, and pretended to take a sip of her rum. And nearly choked—the fumes hit her like a punch to the face. Did these people really drink this stuff? If so, their first cup must have seared their digestive tracts into insensitive scar tissue.

Before she could attempt an actual swallow, Lady Barham sauntered up with yet another gentleman in her wake.

Rachel’s stomach clutched—this man she had no name for. Her mind scrambled over the details: silver hair, elegant, perhaps fifty-five, with ice-gray eyes and a hard mouth. Expert tailoring in his bottle-green coat. Trim waist and straight, slim legs, remarkable in a man his age.

Panic swelled. She had no idea who he was.

“Oh, Salomé, darling,” exclaimed Lady Barham, “you must meet my friend Lord Henry Walters. Lord Henry, this is our beloved Salomé Mirabeau, returned at last!” She giggled conspiratorially. “Though in truth, dear girl, I should never in good conscience introduce you to him, for Lord Henry is the greatest reprobate the world has ever known.”

The alleged great reprobate took no offense at this remark, and took Rachel’s hand and kissed it with perfect delicacy. “Don’t listen to a word she says,” he drawled. “I’m harmless as a lamb.”

“As am I,” she whispered, turning loose one of the coy smiles Sebastian had taught her.

She hoped her answer would read as playfully ironic, and not as the simple truth it actually was.

Lord Henry chuckled—hopefully for the right reasons.

Sebastian snapped a bow as Lady Barham made the necessary introductions. “Lord Henry Walters!” he exclaimed. “How excellent we’ve chanced to meet at last.”

Sebastian’s smile was warmer than his wont, but his eyes were sharp. The accessing look Lord Henry gave him in return was particularly hard and chill, despite the polite upturning of his lips.
Curious
. Who was this man?

Even more oddly, Sebastian’s free hand pressed to Rachel’s lower back, almost possessively. She forced herself to relax against his touch.

“Oh, Lord Henry,” said Lady Barham, “I must tell you, I heard the most delicious piece of gossip about you at the Duchess of Arlington’s fête the other night.”

“Lies,” cut in Lord Henry smoothly. “Every word of it.”

“Now, how do you know it was lies?” protested Lady Barham merrily. “I haven’t even told you what the story was!”

“Ah, my dear, I know Her Grace well, and I know for a fact she never indulges in stale tittle-tattle. I, poor mortal that I am, have done nothing gossip-worthy in years. Age, I regret to say, has robbed me of the best of my wickedness.”

“Oh, such a thing I cannot believe, my lord,” Rachel found herself saying. The French voice came out throaty, with a confidence that scarcely seemed her own. “The look of you suggests a . . . how do you say? . . . a
prowess
that can only have improved with years. Years give some men a lasting steadiness the young can only envy.”

Lady Barham clapped her hands together, laughing, and cried, “Indeed! Oh, indeed, I’m sure you have the right of it, dear Salomé!”

Thank the heavens Mr. Rapson had shown Rachel the poetry of the ancients without the prudish expurgations usually made for British schoolboys. For him, even the most salacious texts were sacred, and he’d never have silenced Sappho or Catullus with his own pen. Lord Gargoyle had looked quite stunned when she’d listed the titles she and her tutor had read together. It had been most gratifying to see his jaw drop.

Now Lord Henry favored her with an urgent, questioning look—an invitation?

No, not an invitation. There was a demand there, but nothing like the hungry looks du Bourge and Cardross poured over her.

He might as well have touched a cold fingertip to the nape of her neck.

Who is he?

Sebastian’s palm pressed more firmly against her back. She didn’t dare look towards him, though, or her nerves would give her away. She was a hairsbreadth from visible shaking.

“Oh, Sebastian!” said Lady Barham. “For years, I’ve wished to see you and Lord Henry compete, skilled as you both are. You must engage in a match as soon as possible!”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “Do you play chess, sir?”

“Not that,” cried Lady Barham. “I meant
fencing
, Sebastian dear. Lord Henry is as much a master as you are. He studied with Alfonse du Magnin years ago.”

“Du Magnin?” Sebastian’s voice rose with genuine enthusiasm. “At the Académie d'Armes de Paris?”

Lord Henry gave a modest nod of acknowledgement. “I misspent the entirety of my youth in France before the monarchy fell. And have seized every possible opportunity of return since, whenever I thought I could do so in safety.”

“A glorious city, Paris,” said Sebastian. “And your teacher the very finest in the French classical style.”

“
Alors
!” chimed in du Bourge, flushed with animation. “Du Magnin was the teacher of my own dear father as well, though he retired before I was of age to learn from him myself. I should love to see the style of your attack, Lord Henry, and watch the handiwork of du Magnin once more.”

“I, too, should like to try myself against a student of du Magnin’s,” said Sebastian. “But the chance may not come for some time, your grace. I leave London within days.”

“Then tonight!” insisted the duc. “This place is good as any,
n’est ce pas
? The floor is large enough.”

“You’d do no damage I could care about,” said Lady Barham, happily flushed as well. “No doubt this place bore witness to a bloody match or two in the olden days!”

“But we have no weapons,” noted Lord Henry.

“Tush!” declared Lord Cardross. “I took my exercise at Angelo’s this very afternoon, and have four good foils in my coach, all of Toledo steel. You may each make your choice.”

“
Tout de suite
!” cried the duc in encouragement, clapping his hands so his ruby ring flashed in the firelight.

The assembled guests hurried to clear space on the wide slate floor. Sebastian and Lord Henry stripped off their fine coats and neckcloths, rolled up their sleeves, and removed their evening shoes and stockings.

The current company might be used to such displays, but Rachel’s belly heated at the sight of so much of Sebastian’s bared flesh. His calves were even more strongly muscled than his evening clothes revealed. The bones of his wrists looked surprisingly broad and hard. The gargoyle, it turned out, had such ordinary human things as ankles and toes, tendons along the tops of his feet, and dark hair shadowing his skin, the same as any country farmer stripped down in the heat of harvest time.

An unsettling pulse beat deep inside her.

The whole mood of the room had shifted; the men murmured bets to one another, and the ladies giggled and sighed, palms pressed dramatically to their bejeweled bosoms.

Lord Henry’s exposed limbs looked tough and ropy as grapevines. He clearly took daily exercise, for he had none of the softness that came to most men with age. Once again his gaze had something hard behind it—the look of a man with a grudge.

Anxiety quavered in her chest.

If Sebastian had never met him before, where did that hostility come from?

Soon, Cardross returned with long cases that opened to reveal thin but quite deadly looking weapons. “I have but the one plastron and mask, I’m afraid,” he said, holding out what appeared to be a thick leather vest and a half-sphere of metal mesh.

“Lord Henry may have them,” said Sebastian with a small bow.

“No, indeed,” returned Lord Henry. “If you are to dispense with protection, so will I.”

Rachel was relieved to see both men set a round metal cap to the tips of their weapons to blunt the points, though the delicacy with which they handled the foils suggested the still-exposed edges were razor sharp.

They stood opposite one another, turned slightly sideways, backs straight, legs bent at the knees.

At Lord Henry’s cry, they launched into motion, foils meeting with a hissing ring, like metallic snakes striking. Their speed was astonishing—their weapons a blur, their bare feet beating hard tattoos against the slate, backwards and forwards, as they attacked and parried. Who led, who responded, was impossible to tell.

The transformation in Lord Gargoyle was amazing: all traces of the dandy had vanished. Only the agile, muscular predator was left.

The two men struck again and again, turning slowly around some imaginary center. Their foils whistled. For stretches they’d draw apart, circling and watching, then fly at one another again. Always, their gazes fixed on one another’s blades.

Then, unexpectedly, Sebastian drove forward at high speed, pushing Lord Henry backwards. His weapon struck the older man hard on the chest, and Lord Henry grunted, saved only by the cap on the blade. The assembled ladies squealed.

“Touché,” said Lord Henry, and his eyes took on an even colder glint.

Sebastian gave Lord Henry a moment to recover, and the weapons raised again. Once more, Sebastian drove forward, his back leg stretched nearly straight behind him as, cap or no cap, he came fearfully close to skewering Lord Henry to the wall.

Lord Henry’s color rose, and he flew at Sebastian in return, slapping his blade aside and scoring a hit against Sebastian’s ribs.

Sebastian’s eyes flashed, but not, it seemed, with anger. What, then?

Her fingernails dug into her palms.

Again and again, Sebastian tried some new approach, sometimes darting in from the side, sometimes looping his weapon in a circular motion, sometimes closing with lightning speed, sometimes moving slowly and methodically. It seemed he was watching for something, concerned with something more than just evading Lord Henry’s sword.

He made another vicious drive at Lord Henry, his blade clanging hard and quick, and the older man backed up in haste, scarcely managing to fend off the blows. Sebastian's weapon flashed and slipped past Lord Henry's guard. It made a quick, neat slice in the air just by Lord Henry's left arm. The sleeve of Lord Henry's shirt gaped—a slit fell open just above the elbow.

The blade had touched the fabric only, apparently, for there was no blood, but Lord Henry's eyes went harder than before.

"Pardon," Sebastian said blandly. He steadied his blade in front of him, but did not strike again.

Lord Henry tensed. He gave out a sudden bellow and sprang, his blade high and sweeping towards the side of Sebastian's face.

For a horrible instant, the blow seemed sure to land, but then Sebastian's foil darted and caught Lord Henry's blade with an awful shriek, stopping it dead at the joining of the hilt.

"Enough!" cried Lady Barham, a shrill of panic in her voice. She ran up perilously close to the combatants.

Her presence stilled the men, but Lord Henry's stare stayed on Sebastian, an ugly look in the depths of it. A clear desire to hurt. Only after a long, tense pause did he finally disengage his weapon from Sebastian's and lower it to his side.

Remarkably, the two men bowed to one another then, and shook hands.

Rachel found that she was trembling.

Lady Barham laughed, a laugh with a hitch of relief in it. "How ridiculous you are. Like two boys who forget they are merely playing a game."

"We beg your forgiveness," said Sebastian, with a gallant bow of his head. "Sometimes when the blood is up, we lose hold of our civilized selves."

"So you do," she said, laughing again and wrapping her arms around Sebastian's waist, a look of wanton invitation on her face. "That's part of the reason I love you so dearly. My savage." She kissed him hungrily on the mouth.

Lord Henry’s posture was stiff, his lip pinched, and he spoke snappishly to a red-haired young footman who appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, to help him back into his neckcloth and coat.

He gave Rachel a pointedly cold look as he passed her on his way to the door.

Sebastian, though, seemed in an unaccountably good humor—remarkably unlike his usual elegant self, with his tawny hair mussed and a sheen of sweat on his brow. He smiled as he slid into his coat and slung his neckcloth haphazardly around his throat.

When at last, despite the petulant protests of Lady Barham, they took leave of the company, Sebastian leapt up to their coach with extraordinary vigor. His sky-blue eyes gleamed as they had the day Rachel had met him, when he’d nearly goaded the Black Giant into hitting him.

He
enjoyed
fighting.

So this was why a man born to be a marquess had become a spy.

The moment the coach rumbled forward, she spoke. “Who in blazes is Lord Henry Walters?” she demanded. “And what did you do to make him want to kill you?”