Page 22

Alistair waited, not patiently, while first Esmee and then McGann spoke with Violet. He prowled the enclosed space of the hall like a panther, every part of him yearning to go to her.

But he stayed away because McGann was right. He’d made a complete hash of his last conversation with her. Hell, he’d made a hash of every conversation he’d had with her.

If McGann thought he could smooth it over, he’d damn well let the man. But he wouldn’t like it. He paced the shadows once again, determined to wait for the right moment to re-engage with Violet.

Until he heard Violet demand McGann kiss her. And then all he saw was red.

The next thing he knew he’d charged into the tavern hall, lifted his fist, and thrown McGann a right hook that snapped the big man’s head back with the force of the blow.

“Alistair!” Violet exclaimed, while at the same time Esmee called out, “English!”

McGann staggered and then righted himself, holding a “huge hand to his throbbing cheek.

“Twas uncalled for, Crawford. I’d ask you not to do it again.”

Alistair just stared at him. “You’ll ask nothing,” he replied in his iciest tone, “of me nor of Violet, unless you’d like to meet at Putney Heath in the morning.”

“Scots don’t duel.” McGann looked like he was about to say more, when Esmee arrived from behind the bar and positioned herself between them.

“That’s enough,” she said. “You, English, take the lass upstairs. Violet, go with him. And no more talk of kissing.”

She turned to McGann. “Brother, stay here like the damn fool you are and put something cold on your face.”

“I don’t know why you call me the fool. He’s the one that hit me.”

“Aye, I saw it. And I know you well enough to know you deserved it. Now off you go before you make a shambles of my business.”

Esmee led Violet and Alistair up a long flight of steps and into a comfortable suite of apartments that sat atop the tavern a few moments later.

“Sit here,” she said and pointed at a small table. “I’ve asked the cook to bring you a bite to eat, lass. You need to soak up some of that whisky in your belly.”

A few moments later, plates of hot buttered bread, soup, and hand-held pies were placed in front of them.

“I’m sorry,” Violet said to Esmee. She took her seat while Alistair still stood. “I didn’t mean to—”

Esmee shook her head. “Don’t worry. When the whisky’s inside, the sense is outside, as they say. But you didn’t have much, so you’ll be right as rain with some lunch.”

She glanced over at Alistair. “Though I would recommend you not try to kiss that one either. I can tell he’s trouble by the look of him.”

“I’m standing right here,” Alistair said.

“I know you are, English. Take care not to bleed on the floor.”

And then she excused herself to go back down and run her tavern.

“You’re bleeding?” Violet asked and stood to better look at Alistair’s hand. The right two knuckles had begun to swell and bruise, and they were bleeding, although not badly.

“You’ll need a cold compress for that,” she said. “And make sure you have finger mobility.”

Alistair put his hand in his pocket. “I’ll be fine. Sit down and eat your food.”

“And remember to keep those cuts clean.”

“I said I’ll be fine, Violet.”

Violet sat and took a few bites of her lunch in silence before she asked the question that had been bothering her since Alistair had rushed into the tavern.

“What are you doing here?”

“ What am I doing here?” The words erupted out of him, startling her. “What in blazes are you doing here, Violet? Do you even know these people?”

He began to pace again, the cadence of his footsteps heavy against the floorboards.

“I do,” Violet said and gave the one shoulder shrug she’d learned from the modiste. “I mostly do. How do you know them? And what’s on Putney Heath?”

“Nevermind Putney Heath. Anything could have happened to you here. Do you understand that? Wandering around Covent Garden, getting foxed at,” he checked his pocket watch, “one in the afternoon. Asking strange men to kiss you. What in the bloody hell is happening?”

Violet stared at him until he’d finished speaking. “Are you done?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” The edge had left his voice, but he continued to pace.

“Good. Now listen, Alistair. To the first.” She held up one finger to make her point that it was one of many. “You don’t have the right to speak to me that way, and I ask that you never do it again. Even if you’re worried about me.”

She held up a second finger. “To the second, I am not foxed. I tasted the whisky that was thoughtfully offered to me. I did not want to be rude.”

“You were hiccupping,” Alistair interjected.

“Third,” Violet went on, ignoring him, “even if I was foxed at one in the afternoon, and I assure you I am not, you are hardly one to speak of it. Word is you’re rarely sober.

“And fourth—”

Alistair reached out and caught her hand before she could go on. “No more pointing or counting,” he said. “And I’ve given up drinking.”

“Since when?”

“Since I realized I’d made a fool of myself in front of you at the Somerville dinner.”

That made Violet pause. She hadn’t thought him a fool. She’d thought him irritating and erratic and making fun of her but not a fool.

“Oh,” she said for lack of anything better. “Well, then–” She removed her hand from his. “What are you doing here, really? I want to know.”

He stepped back and looked at her, his eyes the warm chocolate brown she remembered from the balcony.

“I am partnering with McGann. We’re to build a shipping and trading company together. Or I hope we are. We still need to raise the capital. I’ve been trying to convince my father to invest, but it’s not exactly going to plan.”

Violet vaguely remembered the Marquess from the Somerville dinner. Now that she thought of it, the man had spent the whole evening with Alistair’s brother and with nary a word for his other son.

“You don’t get along.”

He let out a short, stiff laugh. “More that my father cannot stand the sight of me, but I appreciate your diplomacy.”

“That cannot be true.”

Her family had always been close, especially after James died and all they had was each other. It was hard for her to imagine anything different than knowing you were loved. Even when her family hadn’t approved of her choice to become a nurse, she’d known they loved her.

“I’m afraid it is true. Since the summer I turned fifteen.”

“Did something happen?”

She hadn’t realized she’d moved closer to him until she found herself standing just an inch away, wanting to smooth that furrow between his eyes again.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m certain of it. But I’ve no idea what that thing might have been. We were fine, happy enough for the peerage, at any rate. And then one day we were not.”

“Tell me,” Violet said, stepping closer again until she’d closed the small distance between them. They were so close they were almost embracing.

“I was asleep in my bed at school,” Alistair began, “when the rank smell of tallow woke me up. The wax candles were reserved for the upperclassmen, you understand, not for us in the lower classes. To this day I can’t abide the reek of them.”

He paused and looked at her. “Do you really want to hear this?”

Violet nodded, so he went on.

“I was pulled from my bed and told to dress and then dragged down the hallway and pushed into the headmaster’s office.

The whole time I was thinking I was there for pranks.

The other boys and I played them often, hiding grass snakes in drawers or replacing the sugar with the saltpeter. That kind of thing, mostly harmless.

“But when I caught sight of my father standing in that office, I knew something much worse must have happened. He’d never come to Eton.

Not once. But there he was, standing beside the headmaster’s gaslight, his face grim from the shadows and his eyelid twitching the way it only did when he was truly angry.

“‘They were only pranks,’ I said, but he wasn’t listening. He was already pulling me outside to the waiting carriage. My luggage had been stowed in the back and we were off without so much as a word of explanation.

“I let the silence sit for as long as I could before I finally dared ask if I’d done something wrong. It is a question I regret to this very day.”

Violet reached down for his hands and grasped them before she asked, “Why?”

“Because he told me, that’s why. Don’t ever ask questions, Violet, that you don’t care to know the answer to.

“I really hadn’t realized until that moment the Marquess had been cataloging my faults for the entirety of my life. Or that he would take my question as an invitation to regurgitate them back to me.

“He called me petulant and changeable. Told me I lacked the constancy of character to even be the spare, much less the heir. He said I was not serious. Nor studious. He accused me of caring far too much for pleasure and not at all for work. In short, he told me I was an utter failure, and that I would spend this summer becoming what my family needed me to be or I would not be part of it at all. I chose the latter option.”

“You joined the Navy.”

“Not right away, but yes. First, I went back to Rosehips, my beloved home in Kent, and there I learned that Mother had taken Darius away to France. Throughout those two awful days of the carriage ride, I’d been harboring this secret hope that we would arrive home and Mother would be there and the whole strange interlude would end.

“But it wasn’t so. She’d taken my brother on a continental holiday instead. Do you know that I cried when I learned that? As if I really were the snot-nosed brat my father accused me of being.

“I was quite tall even then, but it didn’t matter that I looked like a man because I could not act like one. I bent my shoulders down right on the threshold of Rosehips, and I sobbed. Let’s just say the Marquess was less than pleased.