Page 18 of Bewitching Benedict (The Lovelorn Lads #1)
"Best save a dance for me too," Charles said cheerfully. "You're my favorite dance partner, for you're the only girl in London my mother won't be thinking of marrying me off to. The pox, now, Claire, or some such story for my mother, please?"
"I have no intention of saving a dance for a poxy man.
" Claire spoke with as much severity as she could, which wasn't much, and laughed as the gentlemen bowed themselves out.
As they exited, her maid Lucy came in bearing a platter upon which sat an attractive, lightly scented calling card.
Curious, Claire accepted it and sat to read it while Lucy waited.
In handsome script, the card read Miss Amelia Fairburn requests the honor of calling upon Miss Claire Dalton at the eleven o'clock hour on the morrow, and lit a flame of interest in Claire's breast. She hadn't even known Fairburn had sisters, though clearly this must be one.
She gestured for a pen and ink and responded in the affirmative immediately, sending Lucy away to have the card delivered.
Then, pleased and full of anticipation, she settled in to think up a suitable excuse for Charles's absence from the evening meal.
It could, Charles thought gloomily, be the last time all the Lads were gathered together as bachelors.
Benedict would be bound to matrimony desperately soon, and while Miss Hurst was a beauty, there was no hint of anything about her that suggested she could possibly understand the bonds that held the Lads together.
She was not the sort of wifely material who would respect their camaraderie enough to allow her husband the freedom he needed to spend evenings with his friends.
Of course, many husbands eschewed wifely companionship for male friendship, whether in the dining room for a smoke and port or in a carousing dance hall like the one in which the Lads were now gathered.
Perhaps that would be the saving grace of Benny's marriage, and perhaps not much would change, after all.
Content with this thought, Charles allowed himself to consider the ribald hall with a more cheerful air.
There was little in the way of formal wear to be seen: it was all buckskins and breeches, with loosened collars and untied cravats.
Smoke and the scent of alcohol filled the air, and the noise occasionally rose to such fervor as to become palpable.
Wantons danced or climbed into mens' laps.
O'Brien pushed one such off with a laugh.
Perhaps they could carry on like this once Fairburn was married.
Then again, Benedict was a decent sort, and likely to acquiesce to his wife's wishes.
Charles's momentary good mood faded with the fear that in no time the Lads would be—well, not decimated, since there were only seven of them to begin with. Septuginated, if such a thing existed.
"You're moping, Dalton." O'Brien, having sent the bird off, slid into the low-backed stool beside him and demanded whiskey for them both. "Is it as bad as all that, then?"
"Stop that," Charles said with utterly ineffective sternness. O'Brien looked at him with such cow-like innocence as to render the possibility of coherent thought behind the brown eyes impossible. Despite himself, Charles snorted laughter and accepted the drink O'Brien had ordered.
"Stop what, now?" O'Brien asked. "Sure and all I've done is sit and order a drink with a friend so."
"The brogue, Gar. Lay it on any thicker and I won't understand a word you're saying."
"Acht! That's a dreadful thing to say to a mate, mocking me for me own words spoken from the heart. Can I help it if me heart's voice is as Irish as the day is long?"
"I fancy you can," Charles said dryly, and finally O'Brien laughed.
"Maybe so, but it cracks that sour face of yours, Major, and that's worth it."
"No. Not Major. Not anymore, O'Brien. Please."
O'Brien shook his head. "You'll always be my major, Dalton," but he ended it with Dalton's name and not his rank, and that was enough. "Is it bad tonight, then?"
"No. Not the nerves." Charles gritted the word out through his teeth, hating that saying it admitted his failure of courage.
O'Brien made a sound hardly audible in the din, but it was enough.
They had had the conversation a hundred times; a thousand times, and it needed no more repeating.
O'Brien would never agree about Dalton's weaknesses, and for that Charles was grateful.
"Not tonight," Charles went on. "Anticipation of things changing, perhaps. You lads steady me."
"My Nan would tell you not to borrow trouble, God rest her. Benny's not married yet and six are nearly as good as seven anyway."
"Ah, but what about when it's five, and then three, and then myself all alone? What then, Gar? Or do you intend never to abandon me?" Charles smiled, but Gareth O'Brien straightened his strong back and met his eyes with a forthright gaze.
"Nor will I, Dalton, though I'd be nothing as fair in your service as your man Worthington. But I'll never take a wife who'd stop me from coming when you called, either. Not me and not Vincent, not ever. Nor that bastard Hewitt, either, I'd wager."
"What did you call me?" Hewitt swung past, already more drunk than was sensible, with a well-rounded blonde hanging off him and laughing uproariously. They crashed into Dalton, who braced to avoid spilling his whiskey. O'Brien clapped a hand to his shoulder.
"Good man, saving the drink. That's another sip ye won't drown in, in hell."
"Had hell been intent on drowning me, I'd have died in Spain," Dalton said, then, disgusted at his own moroseness, shook off the languor and shoved back to crash against Hewitt in return.
"Put the bird down, Evan. We've got some serious drinking to do.
Tonight we'll drink our sorrows for Benny so we may celebrate with clear hearts when he weds.
Fairburn!" he roared, and as if waiting for the call, the crowd ejected Benedict Fairburn with forceful deliberation.
The crowd may have somehow been waiting for it; Fairburn had not been. Possessed of a tall tankard foaming with beer and a look of surprise, he lost his footing and upended the beer over a burly, red-faced fellow who might have—by size—been Vincent's brother.
The burly fellow bellowed and swung an affronted elbow without so much as looking, catching Benedict in the eye.
Fairburn howled in pain, bringing Lads from all around the hall.
As they gathered, so too did the burly man's friends.
Charles came to his feet slowly, tension clenching his jaw.
He knew himself well enough by now to recognize that a blind fear or a blind rage could rise in a heartbeat, when trouble came knocking.
Gut tight, judging the potential for carnage, he spoke to— shouted to—the burly man, whose shoulders were sufficiently broad that his head looked like a small and poorly considered afterthought.
"It was an accident, sir, nothing more. There's no need for trouble. "
"Demmed if there isn't," Hewitt snarled from Charles's side. "There was no call for him to throw an elbow."
Vincent, too large to move so smoothly, none-the-less inserted himself in front of Hewitt, more than half-blocking him from the burly man's view.
Like a bear protecting an unruly cub, Charles thought tightly, though in the end it was Charles, not Hewitt, whom Vincent was trying to save from a scrape.
Fairburn, who had by this time regained his feet and some degree of speech, prodded gingerly at his bruised eye before attempting to tender an apology to the increasingly-florid brute.
His, "Forgive me, sir. I was clumsy," was a statement which, to Charles's mind, bordered on outright fabrication, but might keep the peace.
Fairburn went on, "Perhaps I could buy you and your friends a round of drinks, and accept the bill for the cleaning of your clothes," in his best attempt to make amends.
The burly man, who had begun to look appeased, reversed his attitude with Fairburn's last words.
He swept his hat off to reveal the bristly remains of hair on a balding head, not fashionable at all.
Even given the general lowliness of the dance hall, Charles wondered what sort of ruffian they were letting through the doors.
Then the pin-headed man spoke in an accent so clipped and refined that Charles could only compare it to that of Cringlewood's grandmother, the duchess.
It in no way belonged to a man with the face of a longboat-worker, and yet that face issued forth a cultivated, "Are you saying that I smell , boy? !"
Alarmed, Charles sought Cringlewood's gaze, desperate for some indication of who this velvet-voiced dockworker could be.
Cringlewood, to Vincent's right now, with Ackerman looking on from beside him, lifted one shoulder and let it fall.
He clearly didn't know the man either, which was curious; the peerage tended to recognize one another on sight.
Benedict, taken aback, blurted, "Er, what? No! Only that I poured beer all over you?—!"
"And now you hide behind half a dozen men! Are you a coward?"
A deadly silence rolled out from that query, broken only by the soft sound of shuffling feet as the establishment's patrons cleared a circle around the pending fight so they could observe without becoming embroiled. Whispers followed the shuffling, and the bets were on.
Benedict had not yet recovered enough from insulted astonishment to respond.
Charles slipped past Hewitt and Vincent both until he stood in front of them all save Benedict himself.
"In point of fact," he said with his own best vowels, and in as quiet a voice as he could manage through a haze of rising anger, "Mr Fairburn is standing in front of half a dozen men, which is more than I can say for you, sir.
As for your accusation, I should not say such things. "