“Whatever your heart desires tonight, I shall make it so,” he told her, his gaze flitting down to her lips against his will. He quickly snapped his gaze back up again, feeling suddenly disoriented as if the dance floor was spinning instead of him.
I am tired; that is all…he insisted to himself.
Leah’s lips parted as if to say something, but they closed again without a word, the dance drawing them apart for a short while as they joined arms with their neighbors and skipped around thrice.
As they came back together, she appeared to have rallied. “I think I shall walk awhile with my mother, so she gets her fill of the carnival. Then, perhaps, we might reconvene and have a walk of our own?”
“I should like that,” he replied at the same moment that something on the periphery of the dance floor caught his eye. A face that should not have been there, who beckoned to Nathaniel in a way that demanded attention.
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
“What is the meaning of this?” Nathaniel hissed to Bill, behind the relative safety of a theater tent that no one seemed to be interested in yet. “You are not supposed to be here. How did you gain entry?”
Bill gave a throaty chuckle that melded into a rattling cough. “I just wanted a word, Nathan. Nothin’ serious, so you can wipe that rough look off your face.” He paused, thumbing back toward a more forested area of the gardens. “We’ve got us a tent over there for boxin’. Callin’ it a 'Gentlemen’s Room'. The Countess asked for us personally, and it would’ve been rude to refuse.”
“Oh…” Nathaniel straightened up. “So, why were you beckoning to me?”
“I told you; I wanted a word with you.” Bill took out his pipe and lit a taper from a nearby torch before putting the flame to the tobacco. “Couldn’t help watchin’ you and that lass. Warmed me old heart, it did. I expect that’s why you haven’t been to Rotherhithe in a while.”
Nathaniel rubbed the back of his neck, feeling as if he had betrayed his old friend somehow. “I could not find the right moment, without alerting suspicions.”
“You’ve been entertainin’ that fine young lady, you mean,” Bill said, blowing bluish, acrid smoke into the air. “I’m not here to scold you, Nathan. I’m not your father. It don’t matter to me if you never box again though Arnold won’t agree. You’ll be losin’ him a lot of money, but there’ll be others who’ll come along and make up the difference again. To be honest, I wanted to see how you were farin’. I know you’ve struggled before when you haven’t been able to get in the ring for a while. But it seems I had naught to worry over. You’re somethin’, you look well, and you look happy.”
Do I?Nathaniel paused in his pensive rubbing, realizing that Bill was right. In previous years when his mother had made it impossible for him to leave the townhouse without her knowledge or to venture away from Bergfield without an interrogation, he had teetered toward a strange sort of madness as if there were things crawling through his veins, forbidding him from enjoying any peace. But since Leah, there had been no frayed nerves, no restlessness, no unease—not of the same kind, anyway.
“It has not been that long,” he pointed out, convinced that the unease was merely delayed. “I will return in due course, no doubt, when I have a moment to do so.”
Bill shrugged, drawing more smoke up the pipe. “You don’t have nothin’ to prove to me, Nathan. If this is the end of your boxin’ days, so be it. At least you can say you left while you were still a champion.” He smiled a brown-toothed smile. “You don’t have nothin’ to prove to your father anymore, either. Never liked him much to be honest with you. Couldn’t understand what he was doin’ when he brought you to fight as a lad. Thought he’d gone mad when he said it, but there wasn’t much I could do against a duke, you know?”
“Never liked him much? I thought you were close friends,” Nathaniel said, dumbfounded.
Bill snorted. “We made each other a lot of money. Didn’t make us friends. I was loyal, and he liked that. He kept me comfortable, and I liked that. But I’ve watched you grow from a littlun, and you’re nothin’ like him. For one thing, he couldn’t throw a punch to save his life, but it’s more than that. You’ve a good heart, Nathan. His was black as coal. Surprised no one killed him sooner, to be honest with you, after all he’d done to irritate the somethin’ dens and other such miscreants.”
“I always thought my mother would be happy when he was gone,” Nathaniel said, more to himself than to Bill. “But she mourned him as if he had been good to her, telling the newspapers that he had died a hero, trying to save the life of the woman he had been found with. I still do not know why the papers believed her. Although, perhaps that protected us all from ridicule and investigation, so I should be grateful.”
Bill sent another plume of bluish smoke into the air. “How is she?”
“Desperate to see me married and to become a grandmother,” Nathaniel replied with a chuckle.
“So, what are you waitin’ for? Somethin’ the matter with that fair lass who is keepin’ you out of harm’s way?” Bill cast him a knowing look.
Nathaniel shrugged. “She is wonderful, but I cannot risk becoming like my father. What if it happens against my will? What if, one day, I wake up and I say something that he would have said, and it swells from there until I amexactlylike him? He always said that I had the same devil in him that he had had since he was a child, and that it cannot be ignored forever. He said it was what made me so good at fighting.”
“Hogwash,” Bill muttered. “I haven’t had me a fine education, but I’ve seen enough rabblerousers and troublemakers to know if one’s born with it or bred with it. You haven’t got a jot of it in you. You can see it in the way you fight. You don’t fight dirty, you help a man up when he’s down, you keep it clean, you follow the rules, and you shake a man’s hand when it’s over. You’re a proper gentleman boxer but a gentleman first and foremost. So, if you’re worried about somethin’ like him, forget it. You won’t.”
Nathaniel wanted to believe his old friend, but forgetting all the things his father had said and inflicted was easier said than done. Besides, even if he found himself wanting to turn the ruse into reality, that was not what Leah wanted. She deserved her liberty, so she would never have to be disappointed by a gentleman again.
Just then, there was a rustle from the nearby bushes. Nathaniel’s gaze snapped toward it, his heart jolting. Was someone eavesdropping? If so, how much had they heard?
“I shall find you later, if there is time,” he whispered to Bill, who nodded and headed back into the cheer of the carnival, trailing smoke behind him.
Narrowing his eyes, Nathaniel crept toward the bushes, catfooted and silent as a snowy night. Even in the gloom, he could make out the shape of a silhouette between the fronds of the tall bushes. Someonewasthere, and someonehadbeen listening.
Edging nearer, he waited until he was practically standing right behind the shadow before he lunged forward, grabbing for whoever was hiding there. At that moment, a startled scream pierced the air. A woman’s scream.
“Leah?” Nathaniel looked pale and panicked in the torchlight as he waded through the bushes; his hand no longer grasping her arm.
She clasped a palm to her chest, breathing hard. “I thought we said no more grabbing of arms!” she gasped, feeling as if her heart was about to beat right out of her chest. “What were you doing, creeping in the darkness like that? You frightened me half to death!”
