It Takes Two to Tangle

Twenty

Henry was not wrong in comparing Wadsworth to a wounded animal. The man’s nostrils were flaring. He looked like a beast that had lost a very hard race—and a bit of blood too.

“Eavesdropping, Middlebrook? Perhaps all those years in the army stripped you of your good breeding.”

Henry ignored this clumsy sally and replied with maddening cheer. “Oh, you do recognize good breeding when you see it? Judging by your own actions, I didn’t realize that about you.”

“I suspect there’s much you don’t realize about good society.” Wadsworth’s eyes narrowed. “For example, you must not know that a gentleman doesn’t accompany a lady upstairs into her private apartments.” His breathing still came a bit fast, but save for the dishevelment of his carefully pomaded hair, he was shrugging back into his sharp, ambiguous urbanity. “Unless you do know that, and you are not a gentleman. Or this person is not a lady. Which is it?”

Frances lifted her chin and glared at Wadsworth, looking as though she was preparing to stomp on a rodent.

What a tableau they must make, the three of them standing in the doorway of the drawing room. If Wadsworth would but put a shawl over his head, they could perform an amateur theatrical for the other… Henry counted… seven men, plus Caro, who were watching them, transfixed.

They were all getting a dramatic performance today, though they had probably expected nothing but the usual pleasantries and flowers and dainty sandwiches. Already they had seen a vase thrown. Shards of majolica and scattered daisies lay before the drawing room’s marble fireplace, and the carpet was dark with water.

Henry was very aware of the stillness of his right arm—the arm that ought to draw Frances within its cradle, the arm that made Wadsworth think him weak. But he could fight with society’s tiny, barbed sentences as well as he had once handled a bayonet. “I’m unsure who you would call a lady or gentleman, Wadsworth. For your own sake, I hope you define a gentleman by blood rather than behavior. Otherwise, by all rights, you ought to relinquish your title to someone more deserving.”

He raised an eyebrow, calculating just the right insouciant lift as a spring within him began to coil up tight and tense. Eager energy began to flood him—the desire to fight and wound, to vanquish, to prove himself. Frances was unsure of him for some unknown reason. She need not be. He’d prove it.

“And how do you define a gentleman, Middlebrook?” Wadsworth’s face had turned a dark violet. “I should say it was one who knew his betters.”

Whispers broke out in the drawing room, nothing but a distant buzz in Henry’s ears. He peered closely at Wadsworth’s face, then tilted his head and stepped back. With a nod, he held his thumb up to the side of the viscount’s face.

“What?” Wadsworth’s livid color had begun to drain, and his lips looked oddly bloodless. “You have no reply?”

“Oh, don’t.” Henry let his posture sag, his face transform into a portrait of misery. “Don’t let yourself calm down, please. Why, you had turned the exact shade of Tyrian purple; it was a marvelous effect. That’s the color that used to be worn by all the Caesars of Rome. Ah, there you go—you’ve taken on that rare shade again. Hambleton? Crisp? Have you seen Wadsworth’s face? You ought to have waistcoats made in this color.”

Wadsworth’s brows yanked into an angry vee. When he opened his mouth to speak, Henry smiled pleasantly. “Since Tyrian purple used to be saved for royalty, Wadsworth, I suppose you’d consider it an appropriate shade for yourself. Did you know the dye comes from the mucous of snails?” He turned from the sputtering Wadsworth to Frances. “Did you know that? You do know the oddest things about people.”

Her eyes caught his, and she managed a faint smile. “I did not know that, Mr. Middlebrook. But I admit that nothing you tell me about Lord Wadsworth would surprise me.”

“The kitten has claws,” Wadsworth murmured.

“Heaven save us from such manners.” A woman’s voice. Through the drawing room doorway, Henry saw Caro stand from her flower-caged seat and thread through the room toward them. “You three are excellent at attempting courtesy without succeeding at it. But I suggest you either come in to the drawing room and be genuinely polite or take a little time to drown your prickly tempers in a brandy bottle.”

To Henry’s surprise, Wadsworth shot Caroline a cool look. “And who are you, madam, to dictate my behavior? Naught but the daughter of a vicar, aren’t you?”

Clearly some wall of courtesy had been broken along with the majolica, but Wadsworth was no tactician. This was fratricide: hurting one’s own allies.

Caroline straightened her shoulders. “I am the widow of an earl and the owner of this house. You can’t possibly require any further authority. But if you are so presumptuous as to request more, I will remind you that I am the woman who has refused your suit, and I can’t see what further we have to say to one another.”

“Look, Frances,” Henry said ruthlessly. “Wadsworth has turned the color of snail mucous again.”

He probably shouldn’t have said that. It was not the act of a gentleman to heap further humiliation on a man who’d just been publicly chastised.

But since he had said it, he probably should have expected the punch.

Thud. A perfect, whole, five-fingered fist hit Henry just below the ridge of his left cheekbone. The shock snapped his head back, echoed through the bones of his skull. The dull sound of it seemed still to be ringing in his ears when the pain hit his face in a sudden, hot wash.

His first emotion was surprise; the viscount had more spine than Henry had credited him with.

His second was a desperate calm, the calm of a man scrabbling to hold together his fortune during a deep gamble. Frances was ashamed of him, and now she’d seen Wadsworth strike him. A roomful of people had seen that. The pain in his face was nothing compared to that agony of humiliation.

He lifted his hand to his aching cheek and pivoted toward Frances as deliberately as he could, as though he had all the time and self-control in the world. The coiled spring within him wound ever tighter. “I believe I’ve just been batted by an insect,” he said in what he hoped was a tone of calculated wonder. “I didn’t realize they flew in the better households. Did you see it? Was it hideous?”

“Don’t.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper, her eyes fixed on his. The ring of green around the edge of her irises looked particularly bright. “Don’t make it worse.”

For an instant, Henry was back in her bed, sliding skin over sweat-slick skin, making her cry out. We saw each other naked; we shared each other’s bodies. How had they left that intimacy behind so quickly? It was not a mere flight of stairs away, but the unbridgeable distance of her unspoken regret.

“There’s no way to make it better,” he said.

He could see now, no woman would protect him against men such as Wadsworth. Not even Caroline, with all her money and influence, could keep the golden muzzles of London society tied on tightly enough. If Henry was to emerge victorious, he would have to fight his own battles.

He turned to Wadsworth, standing almost nose-to-nose with the viscount, close enough to smell the starch of his clothes and the sharp, oily bergamot with which he scented himself.

He was the cleanest foe Henry had faced in several years, that was certain.

“You’ve struck me,” Henry said as though reading a mildly interesting article out of a newspaper. “I wonder what you think will happen next. Do you think I can possibly let that pass?”

Wadsworth swiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I think you’ll take it.” Again, he launched a fist at Henry.

With a quick snap, Henry caught the viscount’s forearm and warded off this second blow. He held the arm tight, pushing it back from his face, letting it struggle and flex inside its carefully tailored sleeve.

He stared into Wadsworth’s eyes and saw his own face reflected in their gray gloss.

There was his greatest foe; there. And he was strong enough.

“Name your second, Wadsworth,” he said. “And choose your weapon.”

At these words, the drawing room exploded with the din and chaos of canister shot.

Henry smiled. Yes, London was full of its own little wars. And he was determined to win.