The Dangerous Viscount (35 page)

“Diana,” she said with a look that would turn a dairyful of cream to junket. “I didn’t know you were back in London. Allow me to felicitate you on your marriage.”

“Thank you, Lady Gee. I’d love to stop and talk but I have an urgent errand.”

“Wait! You can’t go in there.”

“I’d like to see anyone stop me.”

The hall porter of Jackson’s Boxing Saloon, a hulk of a man with a crooked nose, did his best. But though he was no doubt equal to the task of ejecting
any unwelcome man who tried to storm the premises, he’d never been faced with a determined female. His mouth worked up and down like a fish’s as he sought the words to express his confusion.

“I’m here to see Lord Blakeney,” Diana announced, her nose as high as she could raise it.

“You can’t come in here,” was all the prizefighter could manage.

“Nonsense.”

She breezed past him and found herself in a large, high-ceilinged room with sawdust on the floor. The walls were decorated with paintings and prints depicting feats of pugilism. In one corner stood an all too familiar sight, a weighing machine almost identical to the one in the hall at Wallop. The place reeked of that disgusting smell emitted by the exercising male, familiar to her from her brothers’ quarters: sweat and dirt.

Two or three dozen men were gathered in the place, some of them stripped to the waist. Rather a puny fellow crossed his arms over his chest in alarm at her approach. Diana rolled her eyes to the ceiling and refrained from telling him she’d seen it all before, and better. Two other gentlemen, similarly unclad, ducked out of her way with panicked croaks.
Like a pair of old spinsters,
she thought scornfully.

The majority of those present were concentrated in a group in the center of the place, among them Blakeney, who looked very good without his shirt. He was running in place while feinting punches with his hands, which were encased in funny padded mittens. The men surrounding him fell silent as she marched forward.

“Diana!” he said. “You shouldn’t be here. You must leave at once.”

“Boxing!” she hissed, poking him in the chest with her forefinger. “My sister is in trouble …” Poke, poke. “And you can’t come and help me …” Poke, poke. “Because you have an
engagement.
A boxing match?”

“Uh … Diana.”

“Don’t. Say. Another. Word! Put your on shirt immediately and come with me.”

A flurry of chatter arose among the company. She looked up and the crowd milled around to reveal another man stripped for boxing, one whose bare chest she knew intimately.

Sebastian was getting some quiet last-minute advice from Tarquin, who had sparred with Blakeney on numerous occasions.

“Overconfidence is his weakness. Keep your guard up and wait for him to drop his. Also, he tends to squander his strength in the early rounds. Keep in the fight and you’ll outlast him. Look at him now, jumping up and down, the big show-off.”

Sebastian offered his wrists for Tarquin to fasten his gloves and found he’d lost his friend’s attention. “I’ll be damned,” Tarquin muttered.

Sebastian peered through the crowd of men, who were chattering like a flock of pigeons thrown an unexpected bushel of grain. Since he wasn’t wearing his spectacles his vision more than three feet out was blurry, but he could tell that a woman stood next to Blake. She appeared to be jabbing at his chest and sounded highly agitated.

It couldn’t be. But of course it was. Poor eyesight couldn’t keep him from recognizing the way she stood, her glorious figure, the perfection of her grooming, the unmistakable scent that cut through the pleasant masculine odors of sweat and sawdust.

If he had a sword or a pistol Blakeney would be a dead man this very moment.

Then she saw him.

“Sebastian!” she cried and ran toward him.

As she came into focus he saw her face and at that moment Sebastian Iverley stopped being stupid about women. For even the world’s biggest idiot, and that’s exactly what he had been, couldn’t misinterpret the look on his wife’s face: joy, trust, and love.

“I am so glad you are here. Why didn’t you tell me you were in London?” She flung her arms around his neck, gulping back tears. “Minerva’s been arrested. You must help me save her.”

“Of course,” he said, putting one arm around her waist and shaking off his gloves. He angled around and held out a hand to Tarquin, who correctly identified his demand for a handkerchief.

“Here, my love. Dry your tears while I dress.” But he didn’t let her go immediately. Instead he gently mopped at the moisture gathered beneath her wide adoring eyes. “So what has your minx of a sister been up to this time? Never mind. You can tell me in the carriage.”

“Wait a minute!” Blake, always at hand to interrupt a tender moment, shoved at his shoulder. “We are supposed to be having a bout. Are you defaulting on the challenge?”

“Afraid so. I have something more important to do.”

His cousin looked at him with narrowed eyes, then at Diana who stood clutching his arm. His eyes dropped to the barely perceptible bulge at her middle, then back to her face, then back again to Sebastian, who could see Blakeney put two and two together and come up with the approximate date of conception.

“My congratulations, cousin,” he said curtly. “Perhaps I’ll see you here another day.” “Don’t count on it.”

Some muttering arose from the spectators who’d been laying bets on his and Blake’s “friendly” bout. Sebastian ignored it.

Five minutes later he climbed into the carriage after his wife. She told him about Minerva’s arrest while he buttoned his waistcoat and tied his neck cloth in a simple knot.

“It doesn’t sound too serious,” he said. “The new Seditious Meetings Prevention Act forbids political meetings of more than fifty people without prior permission of a magistrate. It’s a monstrous measure, but if they’ve really arrested fifty people the authorities will have worse problems than the threat offered by one young girl.”

“Will she have to stand trial?”

“I doubt it’ll come to that.”

“Thank God.” Then, after a minute’s silence, “When did you get to London?”

“Last night. I would have come sooner but there was another flood at the mine. Don’t worry. No one
was hurt, but I couldn’t leave until I’d seen to the repairs.”

“I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

“Why didn’t you come to Portman Square last night?”

“I wanted to bring you a gift and the jewelers had already closed.”

“I don’t need a gift. I’m just glad you are here.” She leaned her head against his shoulder and he could feel her smile into his sleeve. “Though don’t let me stop you from buying me something expensive to atone for your shocking rudeness at our last meeting.”

“I’m sorry about that. I was so jealous of Blakeney I jumped to conclusions.”

“Don’t do that. In future, if you want to know something, ask. I’d have told you why Blake wrote to me.”

“You don’t need to.”

“Did he explain?”

“No. I trust you.” His head felt thick with emotion. He took her hand in his own ungloved one, and undid the tiny buttons at the wrist. He pulled off the glove and her skin was soft and smooth and a little cool beneath his lips. “I trust you and I love you,” he said, the words emerging as easily and naturally as Northumberland rain. He kissed the palm before enlacing their fingers and tucking them in the narrow crevice between their bodies on the seat.

“I love you, too,” she said, squeezing his hand.

Joy pierced his heart and cleared his brain. “I know,” he said, grinning broadly.

“You do?”

“Yes, I worked it out all by myself.”

“That was very clever of you, not that I didn’t give you a few hints.”

“It was about time I stopped being a fool.”

“We’ve both been fools, right from the start. Although perhaps we should be grateful for that silly bet. Without it we’d never have got to know each other.”

“And what happened afterward, I thought I wanted to get back at you, but really I couldn’t bear never to see you again. I know that now.”

“We should thank Blake.”

“That’s going too far.”

She gave a hiccupping laugh. He tilted her chin up with his forefinger. “Are you crying?”

“Not really. I’m just happy. Do you think I could sit on your lap?”

Once she was settled they kissed a little but this wasn’t the time or the place to get overexcited. Besides, he had something he needed to say. With reluctance he broke the embrace. “I want to tell you a story. There should be time on the way to Bow Street.”

“What?” Her gaze was fixed on his face.

He looked straight ahead and took a deep breath. “When I was six my mother remarried. An Italian nobleman, Count Ugo Montecitta. Handsome devil, I suppose. I remember thinking he was like a character in a story.”

She snuggled into his chest. “Did you like him?”

“I hardly knew him. But I was glad. My mother was an emotional woman. She cried a lot. After my father died she cried almost all the time for a while,
but when she announced her remarriage she seemed happy again. And I was excited about going to live in Italy.”

He’d spent so many years forgetting this part of the tale, his brain felt rusty. “During her visits to the schoolroom she’d tell me about it. She said in Italy it was always warm and the sun came out every day, not damp and gray like London in winter. Grapes and peaches and oranges grew outside. She taught me some Italian words, like the word for grapes.
Uva.
It’s the same as the Latin. She said I could go outside and pick them straight from the vines, and eat them there, in the fields. She promised.”

Diana kissed his cheek. “Go on,” she said.

“The day of the wedding came. I was allowed to attend the wedding breakfast for a short while, then my nurse took me upstairs to get ready for the journey. We were to leave for Italy that day, by ship. I’d chosen my favorite books and toys because there wasn’t going to be room for all of them. But now my nurse said I could take everything after all. I was so happy, poor fool. I remember it now, chattering to Nurse about Italy and boasting that I could speak Italian and telling her the words I’d learned. She didn’t say anything about what was happening to me, just cleaned me up and sent me downstairs. Before I went she gave me a hug and a kiss goodbye because she wasn’t coming with me. My mother and new stepfather awaited me, and Lord Iverley, my father’s uncle. That day was the first time I met him. He was tall, like my father, but rail thin and seemed very old.

“My mother crouched down beside me and took me in her arms. ‘I can’t take you to Italy,’ she said.
‘The journey is too dangerous for little boys at the moment. You can visit me when you are older. You are going to live with your great-uncle.’”

He fought the pressure in the back of his nose. “That was the last time I saw her. Instead of going to Italy I went to Northumberland. You’ve seen Saxton Iverley. It was a disappointment.” He allowed himself a small sardonic smile. “No sunshine, no grape vines. ‘You are my heir. This will be yours one day,’ my uncle said as the carriage came up the drive. ‘One day you will be Viscount Iverley.’ I hated it. It was always cold, inside and out. Instead of peaches I got chilblains.”

“Did your mother write to you?”

He was so lost in his story Diana’s softly voiced question almost made him jump. “I received her letters but never the one I wanted, telling me I could join her in Italy. After a while I stopped reading them. It was too painful. She still writes occasionally but I never reply.”

She took his face in her hands and kissed him softly, his forehead, cheeks, and mouth. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because I thought of something the other day. I wondered if she’d had a choice about leaving me. Uncle Iverley was my guardian. She never said a word, but perhaps he insisted I remain in England.”

She nodded. “I think we’d better go to Italy and find out.”

Which was exactly the right thing to say. No wonder he loved this woman.

“I think so, too. But first we should bail your sister out of jail.”

* * *

A few words from Sebastian obtained Minerva’s release without charge.

“I think the magistrate was relieved to get rid of her,” he told his anxious wife who had awaited them in the carriage. “Arresting a young girl with good family connections on such a slim basis could raise inconvenient questions.” He frowned at Minerva. “Personally I wouldn’t want to be responsible for keeping you in jail. I warrant the guards at Bow Street got tired of listening to you.”

“What were you thinking?” Diana yelled, not ready to make a joke of the affair. “You could have been killed, going out at night like that.”

“Humbug. I took a hackney and the meeting was full of the most respectable people. The magistrates
claim
there were fifty people there but I doubt it. It’s my belief they acted illegally and Mr. Bentley and everyone else will be exonerated.” Minerva’s martyred face wouldn’t have disgraced Joan of Arc. “I ought to have remained with them to share their fate.”

“Being nibbled to death by rats in Newgate? I don’t think so,” Diana snapped. “But let me assure you that you will be locked up: in your room at night until I can find someone to escort you back to Wallop.”

“Oh no! Not Wallop again!”

“You can’t come out this year. It’s out of the question. One whiff of this exploit and half of London will cut you dead. We’ll have to wait for the gossip to die down.”

“Do you think so, Sebastian?”

“That they’ll find out? Certainly. Nothing stays secret in London for long. Very likely there was a
reporter at the meeting and my guess is you stood out in that crowd.”

They reached Portman Square to find the drawing room already occupied by Marianne MacFarland, Tarquin Compton, and the Chases.

Marianne rushed forward to embrace Diana. “I came as soon as I heard. My maid brought the news with my breakfast.”

“I heard about it at Hoby’s while I was measured for a pair of boots,” Lord Chase said.

“The clerk at Hatchard’s told me,” Juliana chimed in. “And Tarquin just confirmed it.”

Diana spun around to glare at her sister, who finally had the decency to look chastened. “I told you so! You’re disgraced. There’s obviously not a soul in London who doesn’t know what you’ve done.”