Читать книгу Devil-May-Dare - Mary Nichols, Mary Nichols - Страница 7

STARTLED, Lydia stifled the Oh! she had on her lips and changed it to a husky grunt, as he took a step backwards and looked down at her. ‘Look where you’re going, boy.’

‘Pardon, monsieur.’ Why had Tom not seen the Marquis and waylaid him, or tried to warn her? If it was his idea of a test for her disguise, then it was a very dangerous one. ‘My fault entirely.’

The Marquis was regarding her in the same lop-sided way he had used at the ball and she was afraid he had penetrated her disguise. Oh, what a fool she had been to suppose she could get away with it! He was far too perceptive and if he recognised her now the whole masquerade would be at an end for she would never dare to repeat it in their own social circles. She was swamped by a feeling of relief at the thought of not having to do it, followed immediately by the dread of what Douglas Fincham would do. Tom was a fool and she was an even bigger one. And she would rather anyone but the Marquis know it.

‘No harm done.’ He touched the curly brim of his tall beaver and strode away to be lost in the crowds.

She let out a huge sigh and turned to look for Tom. He was standing on the edge of a knot of people watching a boxing match and had his back to her. She went to stand beside him and nudged his arm. ‘Fine look-out you turned out to be.’

He turned and grinned. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘Who did you think it was, Lord Longham?’

‘No, why?’

‘I just bumped into him.’

He seemed unconcerned, as he craned his neck to see the end of the bout. ‘Did he recognise you?’

‘If he did, he did not say so.’

‘There you are, then!’ He began pushing his way through the spectators to reach the front as the fight ended with the amateur challenger being carried off unconscious. The barker began haranguing the watchers for a new challenger. ‘Who’ll go a round with the champion?’ he shouted. ‘Who fancies themselves at the fisticuffs?’ One round, that’s all, one round and still standing and twenty yellow Georges will be yours. Come on, ain’t there a fighter among ye?’

Tom pushed his way to the front and had his hand on the rope before Lydia realised what he intended. She pulled on his coat-tails. ‘No, Tom, he’ll kill you.’

While Tom turned to remonstrate with her, his opportunity was lost because another contender had climbed into the ring. ‘Let’s go home,’ she said, more unnerved than she liked to admit by her encounter with the Marquis. ‘I’ve had enough for one night.’

‘After this bout,’ he said, turning back to the ring and gasping with surprise because the man who was stripping off his coat and waistcoat was none other than Jack Bellingham. ‘Oh, this will be a rum ‘n and no mistake.’

He would not leave and they were so near the front that Lydia could see every bruise the protagonists inflicted on each other and hear every grunt of pain; she found herself wincing and wishing she could look away, but she could not take her eyes from the two men, one huge and thick-set with cropped hair and a thick bull-neck which disappeared into massive shoulders, and the other, as tall as his adversary, but whose broad shoulders tapered to a slim waist and hips and whose long, supple legs were serving him well as he moved lithely about the ring. Jack Bellingham had boxed before, that much was evident, and he was giving as good as he got as they weaved and ducked and threw punches while the crowd yelled their support and Tom cried, ‘Go to it, Jack! Send him to grass!’

The heavy pugilist, frustrated that he could not get the early knockout he was accustomed to, began to slow as the crashing punches with which he floored his less experienced challengers were, for the most part, knocked harmlessly aside. But the Marquis was not having it all his own way and Lydia winced and had to put her hand to her mouth to stop herself crying out whenever the fairground pugilist landed one of his ox-felling blows and Lord Longham’s head rocked back with a sickening crunch. The round seemed never-ending and both boxers were visibly tiring when the crowd began to yell, ‘The bell! Ring the bell, he’s done it!’

But the barker was reluctant to do so, hoping his man could still floor the challenger and save him his twenty guineas. The fight went on, with both men becoming more and more exhausted until Lydia was sure they would fall together in a heap and neither be declared the winner, in which case the challenger would leave empty-handed. In the midst of her concern for him, she fell to wondering why he had gone into the ring in the first place. He was surely not short of twenty guineas, nor could he possibly enjoy being punched black and blue. And Tom had thought he would have a go! How glad she was that he had been prevented, but if the Marquis won her ninny of a brother might even now fancy his chances on the next bout. She pulled on his arm. ‘Tom, let’s go.’

He turned to her, grinning. ‘What a mill! I ain’t going before the end. Wait for me beside the gypsy’s tent if you’ve no stomach for it.’

She turned and was trying to push her way out when the spectators, furious at the delay, began a concerted rush towards the barker, shouting again for him to ring the bell. Realising his danger, he complied and Lydia looked back to see Jack’s hand raised in triumph. He was hoisted on to the shoulders of the nearest spectators, among whom her brother, grinning from ear to ear, was prominent. Tom was not in the least concerned about her, nor the fact that she was being buffeted about by the exultant mob. If he brought the Marquis over to her… Oh, how could he have forgotten their predicament? She felt herself go hot all over and was sure that sweat was trickling down her forehead and face, making tracks in her make-up. She could not face the Marquis a second time. She forced her way out of the crowd and found a hackney. Climbing in, she bade the driver wait and sat inside trying to compose herself while the spectators, knowing the entertainment was over for the night, dispersed in great good humour.

She sat on until Tom appeared with Lord Longham at his side and began to look about him for his ‘cousin’. Shrinking back into the shadows of the hackney, she heard him say, ‘I left him here somewhere, told him to wait, had to come and offer my felicitations before I left. What a mill! Where do you train? Oh, drat Maurice, where can he be?’

‘Tired of kicking his heels and gone home perhaps?’ The Marquis sounded weary, as well he might. The flickering light round the booth was poor, by Lydia was surprised to see no outward evidence that he had been in a gruelling fight, apart from a slight pinkness around his left eye and a cut on his right brow which sported a plaster. ‘If it’s all the same to you, Wenthorpe, I’ll take this hackney and get off home myself.’

‘What?’ Tom sounded vague. ‘Oh, yes, of course, take it; I shall have to stay and look for L… Maurice.’

Lydia could not let that happen. ‘Tom!’ She sat forward, glad the fairground lights were being snuffed out. ‘Mon Dieu, where ‘ave you been ‘iding?’ She pretended a prodigious yawn. ‘Do come ‘ome; I am dead with l’ennui.’

Tom’s face lit with relief and he grinned. ‘Maurice! What a capital fellow you are to hold the last cab.’ He turned to Jack. ‘Will you join us?’

If she had hoped the Marquis would refuse, she was disappointed; he accepted cheerfully. She shrank to the opposite side of the carriage and pulled her hat down as Tom got in beside her and squeezed up to make room for the Marquis.

‘My cousin, Maurice, Comte de Clancy,’ Tom said, by way of introduction. ‘Jack Bellingham, Marquis of Longham. You should have waited, Coz, for it was a capital fight and the Marquis stood up for the round and earned his twenty pounds. Had it not been the last bout, I would have made a challenge…’

‘Poof,’ she said, affecting the voice of the Comte. ‘You Engleesh, I will never comprehend why you like so much the fighting.’

The Marquis laughed easily, though he must have been aching in every limb. ‘That is why we win our wars.’

There was an uneasy silence until Tom said, ‘My cousin has lately come from Canada; his father, my uncle, was French, you know. He took his family there at the beginning of the war to escape serving Bonaparte. He died there and so did his wife, but now the war is over Maurice has returned to claim his land and fortune. He came to England to see lawyers…’

‘I hope he may have luck with the lawyers,’ Jack said.

‘You ‘ave ‘ad trouble with the law, monsieur?’ Lydia put in, feeling she ought to make some contribution to the conversation.

‘A trifling matter,’ he said, then, to her consternation, added, ‘I am sure we have met before.’

She was about to deny it, when Tom dug her in the ribs and muttered, ‘Gypsy tent.’

‘Mais I ‘ave thought that also,’ she drawled. ‘I am not sure for there is not light enough to see.’

‘It is your voice, I think,’ Jack said, and Tom stifled a chuckle and turned it to a cough.

‘Ah je me souviens,’ she said. ‘We — how do you say? — bumped outside the gypsy tent, n’est-ce pas?’

‘Of course.’ He seemed to accept that. ‘And did you learn anything of value from the fortune-teller?’

She gave a low chuckle. ‘If the ‘ag speaks true, I will ‘ave once more my fortune. She spoke of gold and jewels, and a dark man. I am to beware of ‘im.’

‘Did she say why?’ Tom asked.

‘Non. The crystal does not tell much for ‘alf an Engleesh crown.’

Having said as much as she intended to on any subject, she lapsed into silence and Tom took up the conversation by asking where the Marquis lodged. On being told he had rooms at Albany, he ordered the driver to go there first, saying he would then drop his cousin off before going home himself. When the Marquis offered to share the cost of the hackney, Tom said it was his pleasure; after all, his lordship had furnished him with excellent entertainment and it was the least he could do.