Riot Most Uncouth (20 page)

“But why can't I have both the now and the later?”

“The very thing that makes me radiant and desirable will carry me away from you. I need to rove. I will sleep in castles on cliffsides and listen to the ocean crashing against rocky shores. I will watch the sun setting behind minarets. And I will carry my love for you to all the places I will go, but my love will never be yours alone. There will be many other women and probably a few boys, and I'll love each of them as fiercely and wholly as I love you right now.”

“But if you really loved me, you would forestall your own selfish pleasure to protect me from pain.” She stepped backward again, into the far corner of the room.

I shrugged. “If you really loved me, you would not wish to deny me any pleasure. The minute you're out of my sight, you're no longer part of my now. The first time desire tempts me, I will succumb to it. My heart is an insect, drawn to the nearest flower by forces beyond its comprehension.”

“And as you flit to the next flower, I shall be left all alone to wilt and dry out and rot and die.” She crossed her thin arms over her breasts. “You're not a poet or a lover or a drunk or a hero, Byron. You are none of the things you claim to be. You are a changeling. You are always playing a role. And you have assessed me frightfully well, preying upon my unspoken desires and stoking my romantic impulses while dismissing the solid virtues of Mr. Sedgewyck. It's funny, the choice between a good man and a bad one ought not be so wrenching.”

I resisted the urge to tell her what I knew of Sedgewyck's virtues. “I would not go so far as to say Mr. Sedgewyck is a bad man.”

She laughed. “You clown and jest, and you're so quick with your magnificent tongue. But I'm sure you know that you are not the good man in this scenario.”

I circled around the bed and moved close to her. The wall was at her back, and she could retreat from me no farther. I touched her warm, pale cheek with my hand. “Why? Because I am imprudent? I am sure you know that a prudent man like Mr. Sedgewyck will never love you in a whole lifetime as much as I can in a single passionate embrace. It's not that he doesn't wish to; he is a sensible man, and loving you is a sensible thing to do. But he is incapable of my kind of ardor. He lacks the imagination to even realize such a thing could exist. You want me because passion is the opposite of prudence; its heat and its light attract you, though you know a thing so volatile can never endure.”

Her face rubbed against my hand, and she closed her eyes. “Is that the poet's gift?”

“Yes, but not the only one.”

“What else have you got?”

I moved my hand from her cheek and caressed her long, white neck, bringing my thumb to rest in the indentation at the base of her throat. “My magnificent tongue has uses beyond jest and clowning, and I can fuck you until your thighs shake and your toes curl up,” I said.

“You have a high opinion of your abilities, Lord Byron.”

“In a thousand years of tongues and fucking, there's never been anyone better.”

She pinched her eyes shut again, and exhaled with some force, and her breast heaved beneath my persistent caress. “That might be true. But I think I must decline your offer.”

“You think you must,” I said. “But what do you really want?”

“I don't want to endure a lifetime of shame as penance for a single imprudent act, while you bask in your infamy and write mock-epic poems about your conquests.”

“The present slips away while you fret about the future. You must choose, dear Olivia, to seize your now. I know what you want. I can give it to you. And it's better than you can possibly imagine. You need only to ask for it.”

A lingering silence passed between us. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to gather her in my arms, but the moment seemed wrong. Even with my confidence bolstered by drink, I knew that her desire was not tilting my way, and conquest was not at hand.

“Mr. Sedgewyck—” Olivia began. Her voice was soft and husky, and tears welled in her eyes.

“No, that's not what you want,” I said, uninterested in hearing whatever she might have to say about that unpleasant gentleman. “Turn me away if you feel like you have to, but don't ever lie to me.”

“Please, Lord Byron, you must let me speak.” Her tone was insistent, but her voice was so soft, it was barely audible. “Last week Mr. Sedgewyck visited my father and asked for my hand. My father gave his blessing. Mr. Sedgewyck is known to be well situated, and this match may ensure the future fortunes of my family. He intends to propose.”

“So, when he wandered into my home, uninvited, to insult me, he did so at your behest?”

“It was nothing so unkind as that. I think he was intimidated when he learned I was attending your party, and maybe he was trying to impress me.”

“He came into my home at your behest and insulted me in front of my friends. I was humiliated.” And then I realized something: “He asked your father for his blessing last week? Before the murder of Felicity Whippleby?”

“Yes. I don't see what the one thing has to do with the other.”

“How long has Sedgewyck been courting you?”

“Several months.”

“While he was purportedly betrothed to Felicity?”

I'd assumed Sedgewyck was merely a bachelor on the hunt for a smart match, and that his pursuit of Olivia had been his pragmatic contingency when the possibility of union with Felicity was extinguished. The fact that Sedgewyck had made secret plans to marry Olivia when Felicity was still ostensibly his intended bride changed my entire perspective on the events of the previous two days, as did the fact that Sedgewyck had apparently concealed his simultaneous courtship of two respectable young ladies from me and from the investigators.

“His engagement to Felicity was, as you said, merely a pragmatic arrangement,” Olivia said. “It is not unusual to break off an engagement when an opportunity arises to make a smarter match.”

“Why didn't he end things with her sooner, then?”

“His parents were infatuated with the idea of marrying into her good, old family. He was loath to disappoint them.”

“So he found a way to get rid of her that didn't require him to spurn the bride his father had chosen for him.”

“Leif didn't—he would never.”

“Killing her was a prudent thing to do, and Leif Sedgewyck is ever so prudent,” I said. “And you've chosen his prudence over my passion. The life he offers you is as cold and bloodless as the corpse of the last girl he was supposed to marry. You will never know what we could have had together.”

She collapsed onto the bed and began to weep. “On some level, I may resent Mr. Sedgewyck and my father for making this arrangement,” she said. “You're right that I don't love him, and you're right that he isn't passionate. I think that you have sensed within me some unspoken desire to undo the match, to wreck what's been built, and your insect heart can smell a flower ripe for plucking. Or perhaps I've committed some seductive act to draw you in; I cannot absolve myself of all blame. But I must stop before I embark upon your spectacular folly. I cannot forsake my duty to my family's interests merely to slake my own desire; not for something so fleeting as your limited promises of temporary passion.”

If I consider it in retrospect, I must admit that this new information didn't connect Sedgewyck to Cyrus Pendleton or Violet Tower, and it didn't explain how he could have attended my party, walked Olivia to her doorstep, and still had time to commit all the murders of the previous night. But I was full of fury at the discovery of the Dutchman's duplicity.

Olivia, for her part, seemed to find nothing suspicious about her suitor's strategic maneuvers. In the world where she traveled, one's entire purpose was to pursue the optimal marriage. But she had deceived me nonetheless, and I wasn't about to do her any favors.

“That's fine,” I said to her. “I don't really care. I'm moving on already, toward another carnal impulse.”

“What impulse?”

“I want to beat Leif Sedgewyck until he shits blood, and it's a desire I've got every intention of indulging.”

 

Chapter 26

First, I can hit with a pistol the keyhole of that door. Secondly, I can swim across that river to yonder point, and thirdly, I can give you a damned good thrashing.

—
Lord Byron,
insulting John Polidori

Insulting a man is a lot like seducing a woman. Both arts share similar linguistic structures and are, at their essence, tests of one's cleverness. The same kind of insight helps one spot a man's pride and a woman's longing. I'm good at insults. I can gently mock my friends, sting my rivals, and devastate my enemies. But there comes a point in any seduction when charm has run its course, and circumstances demand action. Insults, too, exhaust their function.

One of the first things you learn at Harrow is that one must never talk when one should be punching somebody. Past that barely perceptible threshold, language, no matter how quick or facile or magnificent one's tongue may be, is no longer appropriate. A man's skill at talking his way around violence is a good measure of his wits, but so is his ability to recognize the point when talking is of no further use. When diplomacy fails irreversibly, one must make a preemptive strike. Linger too long taunting or bargaining or cajoling, and you'll catch a mouthful of knuckles.

You don't give a warning. You don't make a threat. You don't tell a man you're about to hit him. He'll figure it out when his vision goes white and his brains slosh against the back of his skull and his nose smashes like a beam of rotten timber. You talk about fighting only to women. They tend to dampen their petticoats when somebody handsome regales them with tales of violent exploits. Among men, however, violence is its own vernacular, and it delivers its own messages.

So, when I found Leif Sedgewyck nursing a pint in the Modest Proposal, and I punched him in the side of the head, it meant: “I've learned of your schemes and depredations, and will have you punished for your sins, you blackguard.” He twisted around and fell off his stool, which I took as a confirmation that my point was well received.

Another thing most boys learn quickly at Harrow is that one shouldn't wait for a response or a conversation after punching somebody. The ideal fight is more of a monologue than an exchange. While it may seem polite to wait for one's opponent to take his turn after drawing first blood, to do so is folly and, moreover, bad for one's complexion.

So, I let Sedgewyck get only halfway to his feet before I punched him again, full in the face. His head snapped backwards, and the rest of him followed it to the floor. I kicked him in the mouth, with my weak foot. It hurt, but I enjoyed the irony. I kicked him with it again and he gasped and spat blood.

“You rotten sod,” I said. “These boots must be specially ordered, and now you've stained them with your putrid juices.”

“Byron,” he said.

“It is I. I came here all by myself, navigating the cobbled streets with surprising agility, considering my lameness.” As a sort of punctuation, I aimed the toe of my boot at his belly and kicked him again. I think the sound he made was supposed to be a scream, but it was more like a rattling gasp.

I looked around the barroom. The place was emptier than usual; nighttime activity had slowed because of the murders, and people were avoiding the Modest Proposal specifically, because Professor Fat Cheeks had met his end there. Nonetheless, six or seven drinkers were present in the bar, as well as the barkeep, a delightful fellow named Richards. He had a fine case of Calvados in his cellar, which he'd acquired before the war with France, and he kept a bottle of it under the bar, even though nobody but me ever asked for it.

As I stood over the battered wreck of Leif Sedgewyck, though, Richards's expression was anything but friendly. The spate of recent violence was ruining his business, and I was contributing to it.

Apologetically, I grabbed a handful of Sedgewyck's white-blond hair and dragged my foe out the tavern's front entrance. In the better neighborhoods of London, the streets were illuminated at night by gaslights, but such luxuries had not yet come to Cambridge. A few of the buildings nearby had oil lamps hung next to their doors, but those weak, guttering flames barely cut into the darkness of the thoroughfare.

“What do you want with her?” Sedgwyck said. He still hadn't found a proper voice in his bruised throat, but he was managing to whisper. “Will you give her what I intend to? She deserves more than your passing fancy. I would make her my wife.”

But this wasn't about Olivia anymore. She had deceived me and played a role in my humiliation. My desire for her had been as furious and urgent as a summer storm, and it had passed just as quickly.

“Are you
vrykolakas
?” I asked him.

“I am Sedgewyck,” he said.

“Are you
vrykolakas
?” I repeated. “Are you a vampire?” I grabbed him by the hair with my left hand, and punched his head again with my right.

He looked up at me with wide eyes. The white part of one of them was turning pink from the injury I'd inflicted upon it. “I don't know those words. Please, no woman is worth this trouble. I don't want to die. Stop hurting me, I beg you.”

“What do you know about Mad Jack? Does he live?”

“Mad Jack?” he said. “I don't know who that is. I will admit I plan to propose marriage to Olivia.” He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and produced a gold betrothal ring. “I've made arrangements with her father and accepted her dowry only last week. I can tell you, her parents will be most disappointed if our promised nuptials do not occur.”

I kicked him in the stomach again, and he curled up into a ball. “Why would you marry Olivia? Her father possesses no inherited title. A match with her confers no respectability upon your family.”