My Pleasure (12 page)

He would not allow anything to hurt her.

“Ye heard anythin’ from yer foreign mates?” Bill’s query broke the thread of his dark thoughts.

Over the years, Ram’s fame as a swordsman had grown to the point where he’d developed an international correspondence amongst the cadre of men who considered themselves experts. He had used these sources to try and locate their as yet unnamed adversary.

“Not yet,” Ram continued. “But if it’s Dand he’ll be wearing a rose brand, and if it’s Toussaint…Well, how hard can it be to find one French priest?”

St. Bride’s Abbey,

the Scottish Highlands 1792

“Good!” The new priest, Brother Toussaint, purportedly at one time an officer in the old French regime, said approvingly as Ram countered his feint.

Behind them, Ram could feel the eyes of the spectators: Douglas Stewart, analytical and concentrated; Kit, studying with the fierce determination with which he overcame every obstacle; and Dand, loudly suggesting that a good kick in the groin would end the matter most decisively—and he didn’t much care whose groin was kicked.

The only other boy the French exiled priest would agree to teach, John Perton Glass, sat apart from the rest. The years, and the hard work the abbot insisted all the boys do, had pared the fat from John but done nothing else in the way of improving his personality. Surprisingly, he showed some actual talent with a sword.

“Only a Frenchman could teach you the principal parries so well,” Toussaint said now.

“When I was a boy,” Ramsey answered, panting a little with exertion.

“You are still a boy.”

Ram smothered his irritation. At fourteen, he had long since ceased to consider himself a boy. Toussaint knew this just as he knew mentioning it now, while they were engaged in a bout, would distract him.

“Tell me. I insist on knowing. How came you by these skills? A poor orphan such as yourself.” This last was delivered with great irony, and Ram felt a stab of irritation. He did not want to be reminded of his past. He didn’t need it. He had these brothers.

Ram glanced sideways to see their reaction. They, too, looked decidedly uncomfortable. By unspoken agreement, they had left the years before St. Bride’s behind them, like a discarded carapace, empty and meaningless. Except, well, some things were simply self-evident.

Clearly, Kit had led a rough life before his arrival, and Douglas, who had been here the longest, was the most dedicated—always envisioning the noble deeds that they would someday do. Only Dand remained a complete puzzle. At times he seemed to come from a background nearly as elite as Ram’s and at others he seemed as wary and rough as Kit.

“Come. Tell me.”

“I read a treatise on it.”

“Ha!” The Frenchman laughed. “What orphan here has your sangfroid? Your education? You came here, or so the other brothers tell me, already knowing Latin and Greek. What Highland orphan knows Latin at the age of nine?”

“A pious one?” Dand suggested innocently from the sidelines.

Two could play such a game. “What of your talent, Brother Toussaint?” Ram asked mildly, the sweat pouring down his face, stinging his eyes. “For one who has eschewed being an instrument of war, you seem oddly well tuned.”

Toussaint’s smile was pleasant, but his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You are very neat at turning aside all sorts of feints, my young swordsman,” he said quietly. “Be careful, though. In pressing an attack, you may ultimately leave yourself vulnerable.”

And with a sudden flourish, he slipped the tip of his blade around Ram’s, the impetus jerking the sword from his hand.

“Like so.”

ATTACK IN PREPARATION:

an offensive action taken while one’s opponent is still setting up his attack

RAMSEY EMERGED from the alleyway onto a street where an earlier rain had swollen the gutter to overflowing, leaving pools of filthy water. The street was choked with traffic where a dray had tipped over, spilling its contents. A driver stood atop the overturned vehicle, shouting and swinging his whip at the swarms of ragged children who darted in to pluck at the soggy baled contents.

Ram leapt across the reeking channel onto the sidewalk and headed up the avenue. Two blocks further on, he mounted a set of steep marble stairs leading to the front door of his salle. The townhouse, erected a generation earlier by a merchant with too many pretensions to build modestly and too much pride to build in a more fashionable neighborhood, rose three stories high. Soot stained its classic façade, and the pediments were chipped and broken, but it still managed to exude a certain dignity.

Ramsey unlocked the door and his assistant, Gaspard, jumped to his feet from the chair he’d been dozing in and hurried to help rid him of his coat. Ram accepted the ministrations with a distracted word of thanks.

“Is the decanter full, Gaspard?” he asked.

“Yes.” The man’s single eye—the other being covered with a black patch—narrowed disapprovingly. Ram did not take exception. They had become acquainted in LeMons dungeon, where they had both been held. Ram legitimately for his intentions if not his acts, and Gaspard simply because he had taught his former monarch’s nephew a few dueling moves one summer long ago.

After he’d been freed, and after he and his one-time brothers had disbanded, Ram had wended his way to London, where he had found his former cellmate in a dingy salle, sharpening swords. Ram had offered him a position. They had been together ever since.

“Any correspondence from Scotland or the Continent?”

“A communiqué from your land agent in Scotland.” Two years ago Ramsey had set about discreetly, through secondary agents, acquiring the lands his mother’s family had once owned, with an eye to rebuilding the estate forfeited after the Battle of Culloden. It would be years before he could afford all of it. Unless he won the International Dueling Tournament.

“And four young men appeared at the salle early this evening applying for instruction.”

“Do you recall their names?”

“One was a Lord Figburt, I believe.”

Ah, the boys from Vauxhall. Grand. Now he had four new lads to play nursemaid to, a message from Scotland to answer, notes from paid agents to go through, letters from associates and would-be opponents to answer, and still attend to the preparations necessary—physical, mental and financial—to mount a worthy challenge in the tournament. Plus Helena Nash.

It was going to be a long week.

“Thank you, Gaspard. You needn’t bother staying up. I shall see to my own needs.”

“Very good, sir. But there is one more thing.” His remaining eye shifted away.

“What is it, Gaspard?” Ram asked.

“The marquis of Cottrell is in the drawing room.”

A very long week indeed.

Ramsey entered a room banked in night, the only light a beacon from a lamp set on the sideboard. At once, he saw the silver-haired old man standing beside a display of smallswords. He’d taken one out, a bright piece of Toledo steel, and was balancing it delicately across his fingertips. Upon hearing Ram’s entrance, he returned the blade to its display case.

“I heard you have put your early training to commercial use,” the marquis said without turning, “and am given to understand that this is your salle.”

“Poor,” Ramsey answered calmly, “but mine own.”

The old man picked up another sword. A rapier from Solingen, Germany. “You have collected some fine weapons.”

“I have retained the more significant of my childhood lessons. An appreciation of a good blade is one of them.”

“Ha!” The old man gave a short bark of laughter and turned. Old age had not yet completely robbed him of his sublime good looks, though advancing years draped the fine features in crepey flesh, and cataracts filmed the cold, implacable eyes. How he must hate that.

He was slower, too, the inner resolve no longer translating quite so quickly into graceful action. His joints were sticky, his hands slightly curled even though they held nothing. And nothing was what Ram felt looking at him.

“Your father was taught by the great Angelo, you know,” the marquis said.

Ram pulled a heavy armchair around and collapsed into it, sprawling with studied indolence. “I seem to recall some such thing, yes.”

The marquis regarded the younger man closely, trying to gauge what manner of man he dealt with. But Ramsey Munro gave nothing away. He had hoped to surprise a reaction from him by coming to him at night, unannounced and unanticipated, but a stiff spine inhabited that good-looking temple of flesh and blood. Stiff or hard. Harder even than himself? the marquis wondered.

“Your father was the best natural swordsman I have ever seen,” he remarked.

“Apparently,” Ram returned dryly, “you never saw the man who killed him.”

The marquis’s lips twitched. “You are being deliberately vulgar.”

“Am I?” Ram reached out and swept up the decanter of claret residing on the table beside him, spilling an inch of liquor into a glass and lifting it to his mouth. “And here I thought I was being remarkably restrained,” he said over the rim. “But I am sure you did not come here in so clandestine a manner at so clandestine an hour to comment on my parent’s fencing skills or lack thereof. Especially since I have refused to meet you in any venue or under any circumstances these last three years. Yet here you are. Which leads me to wonder, to what do I owe this…honor?”

At the calculated pause, the marquis smiled for the first time. “Begad, you are a cool one.”

“It’s a cold world, sir.”

The marquis’s smile faded. He stared at Ram, willing him to break the silence. But Ram only took a sip of the claret, replaced the goblet on the table, and stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankles. Then, settling his hands negligently on his flat belly, he regarded the marquis with a faintly interested air, as one might a child, with dutiful—and bored—politeness.

It was a tack designed to belittle and enrage, and it worked.

The door swung open, breaking the silence, and the one-eyed butler who’d shown him to the drawing room lumbered in under the weight of a heavy silver platter crowded with such accoutrements as might grace the sideboard of any fashionable young buck. Crystal dishes heaped with foie gras and toast, sugared grapes, and sugarplums crowded the platter, while a Sèvres teapot rose gracefully above the heaped bounty. Apparently the sources that had informed him that Ramsey eked out his living in as frugal a manner as possible had lied.

“Ah, Gaspard,” Ram said laconically. “Raided the neighbor’s larder, I see? The marquis’s consequence will be gratified. That will be all.”

So the butler had worried over the impression his master made. Thank God, someone had sense enough to know when appearances mattered and when they did not.

The butler cast his single eye worriedly at him before assaying a quick bow and noiselessly retreating, closing the door behind him.

“Pray, sir, have at it,” Ram said. “I would hate to think Gaspard had embarked on a career of crime only to have the fruits of his labor ignored.” He waved his hand at the small feast.

“No. Thank you,” the marquis replied. “You are very like him in manner,” he said. “Your father. Proud. Unyielding. Resentful.”

“Kind of you to tell me,” Ram replied calmly. “It’s a comfort to know at whose door to lay my character flaws. Not to mention quite inspiring. For we can only improve on baser clay, eh, sir?”

“And caustic,” the marquis shot back. “His tongue was caustic, too.”

At this, Ram’s smooth brow furrowed in distress. “Can we not say ‘witty’? Sounds better, don’t you think?”

With an effort, the marquis quelled the anger leaking through his cool façade. He took a deep breath and then, thinking better of his earlier refusal, poured himself a glass of claret. He had spent nearly four years coming to this point. At first simple logic had kept him from coming here. He’d been certain that Ramsey would eventually answer his summons. He was, after all, the marquis of Cottrell. Then, later, pride had kept him from coming. He was, after all, the marquis of Cottrell. And finally, the very thing that had held him away, drove him here. He was, after all, the marquis of Cottrell.

The last of the Cottrells.

Quickly he tossed back the wine. He looked down at Ram, the glossy tumble of black curls, the pale skin and beautiful blue eyes.

“You look like him, too. By God, you do!” he muttered.

“Had the look of a catamite, did he?” Ramsey asked in a bored voice.

The marquis could not stifle his gasp of outrage. “How dare you?”

“But, sir, I only repeat the last words I had from you,” Ram replied innocently. “Let me think…”

He tilted his head back against the seat cushion and closed his eyes as if trying to recall something.

“Ah, yes. I am sure of it. Pray, sir, think back,” he encouraged in bright, biting tones. “My mother and I came to your house in Mayfair. Your servant told us to wait in the back hall. Like tradesmen. I seem to recall a tweenie polishing the brass door plate.

“You finally appeared, and my mother asked, ‘What is to become of my son?’ She was crying. I recall that quite clearly because I had never seen her shed tears before.” He paused and looked across at the marquis. “And you answered, ‘The brothels in all likelihood—he has the look of a catamite.’ ”

Ramsey lifted his shoulders in an elegantly apologetic shrug that in no way apologized. “Thus, when you remarked on my similarity to my father, well, I naturally assumed that he too had the look of a—”

“Enough!” The word exploded from the marquis’s mouth.

The facile smile died on Ram’s lean countenance, leaving behind a fiercely scornful expression. “Yes,” he said softly, “Precisely what I am thinking.”

“He was my son! I was in pain! I spoke wanting only that someone else would feel such pain as I.”

Ram’s eyes slit. “Now, this is a surprise. I thought you had denied my father. ‘My son has been dead for over a decade,’ I believe you were reported to have said when informed of his death.”

“Do not throw my words back at me!” Palsy shook the marquis’s hand, and blood rose in patches beneath his skin, mottling his flesh. “I blamed your mother for his death,” he went on without a hint of remorse. “I still do. If he had done his duty and married within his class, he would still be alive.”