‘How come you let him flatten you?’ Jared took another glass and a finger of brandy, took the seat Ralph had used and rolled the glass between his long, swordsman’s fingers while he looked over the rim at Cal, dark gaze assessing.
‘He took me by surprise. And yes, that should not have happened and yes, I will take more care with him in future. But it at least proved that he isn’t thinking of leaping on any opportunity to finish me off. He thought he had stunned me. He could have thumped my skull onto any sharp surface in this room and made it look like the chance result of a fair fight over a lady, a tragic accident. He wasn’t to know I had a knife drawn on him that he could not see.’
‘Or he is slower on the uptake than either of us and can’t grasp an opportunity when it’s under his nose,’ Jared mused. ‘Tell me about the lady.’
‘Bugger off,’ Cal said amiably. Jared grinned and they sat savouring their drinks in silence. There was something about the way that his friend lounged there that made him uneasy, but he couldn’t put a finger on it until the other man turned sideways, propped his elbow casually on the edge of the desk and crossed his legs at the ankles with a sigh of contentment.
‘What was the matter with him?’ Cal wondered aloud. Jared cocked one brow in question. ‘My cousin. Yes, he was in a state over Soph – over the woman. Yes, he had thumped me and then found himself being, apparently, forgiven. Before I left England he was the big brother, the dominant one. Now he ends up on the visitor’s side of the desk with a glass of my best brandy, having an amiable conversation, and yet he was as uneasy as a thieving servant hauled in here and trying to lie his way out of trouble. Look at you – sitting in the same place, doing the same thing, and you are as relaxed as an old pair of kid gloves.’ Although Jared usually was relaxed, up to the point when he became a lethal predator.
‘He is worried about something,’ Jared mused. ‘Something beyond a rivalry over a woman. The only question is whether he is worried for himself, or for his father, or for the pair of them.’ When Cal simply grunted the other man lounged to his feet, finished the brandy in one swallow and stood there looking down at him.
‘Now what? I’ve seen butchers eyeing a side of beef
with less intent.’
‘Come upstairs, let me check your head and your shoulder. I’d feel happier if you had two functioning arms and one of them your sword arm. An absence of concussion might be a good idea as well.’
‘In a while.’ Jared was right. He had neglected that shoulder and he had almost let himself be knocked out when he needed all the brain and all the muscle he could muster. It was not like him to ignore his fitness, or to let himself be distracted. Life was too dangerous for either. But first he needed to work out why his focus was so off. It wasn’t hard to find the answer, not when he was honest with himself. Sophie Wilmott.
‘Mr Thorne!’ Bother the man. Lady Pettigrew’s masquerade ball was a noisy, and to be frank, sweaty, crush. People shrieked to be heard above the babble of conversation, the musicians struggled even to be noticed and the windows were flung wide onto the humid summer air, giving the costumed, crowded, revellers as much relief as hot wet towels applied to their perspiring faces. It was, of course, a huge success, a magnificent squeeze destined to be written up at length in the Society columns of tomorrow’s Morning Post.
It was also an exceedingly difficult occasion at which to firstly identify a masked gentleman in fancy dress and then haul him off to a corner secluded enough to hold a delicate conversation in.
Ralph Thorne was tall, which helped, and not given to flamboyant displays, which meant she could eliminate a pirate king (shirt open to the waist and bare feet), both Chinese Emperors (too much macquillage and false hair), the Egyptian mummy (hardly moving in a tangle of bandages and a vast papier-maché mask) and Louis XIV (too fat). That left about a hundred and fifty men.
And then she spotted him. Trust Ralph to choose something as simple as a highwayman, just like last year. He was wearing plain riding dress, a black cloak, a cocked hat, red-spotted neckerchief and a simple black mask.
‘Mr Thorne!’ Sophie gathered up her trailing skirts of shredded blue silk in a myriad of shades and began to wriggle through the crowd until she was right behind him. ‘Ralph.’
He turned and peered at her mask of aquamarine silk encrusted with pearls and shells. ‘Madam? You know me… I mean, you think you know me?’
‘It’s Sophie,’ she hissed. Really, she was not vain, but no-one in London Society had hair quite the shade of guinea-gold of hers. The man had spent hours in her company and he still could not recognise her and her water nymph costume was not that concealing.
‘Oh. Good evening, Miss Wilmott.’
They were standing right in the path to the refreshment room. Sophie winced as Neptune’s trident prodded her in the ribs. ‘I need to talk to you.’ She tugged at Ralph’s arm.
‘This isn’t really the place for a conversation.’ He looked decidedly harassed.
‘As you have been avoiding me for a week it will have to do.’ She linked arms with him and began to work her way towards the terrace windows. At least he was too well-mannered to stick his heels in and refuse to move.
‘Phew.’ She fanned herself vigorously with her free hand once they reached the terrace. Mama had said she would need a fan, but she hadn’t been able to find anything that went with her costume and now she was regretting it.
‘Miss Wilmott, would Lady Elmham approve? We do not have a chaperone, would you not rather go back inside and I will fetch you a drink?’
‘No, thank you.’ She as beginning to wish for Neptune’s trident herself. ‘The terrace is brightly lit, there are people all over the place and I only want to go as far as this balustrade. See? Perfectly respectable.’ She turned and faced him, ‘Ralph, why have you been avoiding me for the past week?’
‘I have not,’ he began.
‘Even with that mask on you look shifty. Are you angry with me for going driving with Calderbrook? Because I did receive his invitation before yours. Honestly, I had no intention of snubbing you. I really do not want to lose a friend over something as foolish as this.’
‘Is that how you see me? As a friend?’ He shifted so he was closer, trying to search her expression behind the mask.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I was concerned that I had – Oh, the devil.’ He took a hasty pace away and then back. ‘I was concerned that I had perhaps raised expectations that I had not intended to raise. At least, not yet. I mean I might – But I thought that I ought to – ’ He broke off and tried to run his hand through his hair, realised that he was wearing a hat and stopped with a muttered curse.
His behaviour had been so possessive when they had encountered him in the park that she thought she would have every reason for assuming just that. Men were such idiots sometimes. ‘You had not,’ she said. ‘If, perhaps, I had a tendre for you, then I might have assumed… something. More from your frequent invitations than anything else.’