wafting from the card room as someone briefly opened the door, brought both men back to their senses.
‘Damn...’ Eastman groaned, fumbling in his pocket for a handkerchief. ‘It’s going to be common knowledge in a matter of minutes that you’ve knocked me down.’
As if to prove him correct, Edmund heard someone exclaim, ‘Good God, Ashenden is having a set-to with Eastman!’
And someone else saying, ‘Ashenden? Never!’
Then the unmistakable sound of chairs scraping back and feet tumbling in their direction.
But Edmund never took his eyes off Eastman.
‘Oh, lord,’ Eastman said plaintively. ‘When I think of all the fellows who’ve challenged me to a bout and never been able to so much as to pop one in over my guard...’
‘Do you require someone to act as your second?’ said a voice at Edmund’s side. From the corner of his eye he saw Lord Havelock, eyeing him, and then Eastman’s prostrate form, with what looked suspiciously like approval.
For a moment, Eastman looked annoyed. But then his lips twitched, and he started to chuckle. ‘I’m not going to fight a duel over this little...misunderstanding. It’s bad enough to have been knocked down by a spindly bookworm like you,’ he grumbled, dabbing at his nose. ‘If it gets as far as meeting on a field of honour, they’ll be selling tickets. You should consider this,’ he said, gesturing to the blood streaming down his face, ‘satisfaction enough. And the fact that all these gentlemen here,’ he said, waving his hand at the men spilling from the card room, ‘are witnesses to your triumph. Here,’ he said, raising his free hand in supplication. ‘Help me up, there’s a good chap.’
Havelock bristled, and made a move to block him.
‘Oh, for the Lord’s sake, Havelock,’ grumbled Eastman. ‘You don’t think I’m going to start a mill, right outside a ballroom, do you?’
‘You had better not,’ he said.
‘You will apologise,’ said Edmund grimly.
‘Unreservedly,’ said Eastman. Which left Edmund no alternative but to hold out his hand as Eastman attempted, somewhat shakily, to stand up. Eastman’s eyebrows rose as Edmund hauled him unceremoniously to his feet.
‘Not so spindly, after all,’ he said, raising the hand that wasn’t held in Edmund’s grip to feel his upper arm beneath his coat. ‘You may be a slender chap, but you don’t spend all your time reading books, do you?’
‘That is beside the point.’
‘No, I don’t think it is. It almost makes me...’ He shook his head, and grimaced. ‘No, never mind. Please accept my sincere apologies,’ he said, sweeping Edmund an ironically deep bow, ‘for poaching on your preserves. I shall, of course, cease pursuing your...intended bride forthwith. Shake on it?’
Intended bride? The murmur rustled among the assembled spectators like a breeze through a forest. Making Edmund wish, more than ever, to ram a couple of Eastman’s shiny teeth down his throat. But if he made a production of Eastman’s sly allusion to the woman over whom they were fighting, it would only increase the chances someone would guess who the woman in question was. He could not say anything, with all those others watching, without making Georgiana the subject of scurrilous gossip.
He had, in short, no choice but to take the hand Eastman was holding out to him and shake it grimly.
Eastman grinned. ‘You must let me in on the secret of how you keep in such good shape, Ashenden.’
Edmund blinked at Eastman’s bonhomie. But then reflected that men of his ilk often appeared to believe they’d become firm friends with someone, simply because they’d either knocked them down, or been knocked down by them.
‘Rowing,’ he said curtly.
‘Rowing?’
‘Rowing.’
‘Rowing?’ Eastman’s incredulity increased every time he repeated the word. And Edmund saw he was going to have to offer some form of elucidation, or the idiot would be keeping him standing there all night, batting the word back and forth like a shuttlecock.
‘Yes. I took it up when I was sent, as a boy, to the Scilly Isles to recuperate from an illness.’ At the mere mention of the word, illness, the men who’d abandoned their card games in the hope of witnessing a brawl began to drift away.
‘It was the best way,’ Edmund continued, ‘to get from one island to another. And my physician encouraged me in that pursuit, hoping it would broaden my chest muscles and thus help with my breathing difficulties.’
‘Continued up at Oxford, did you?’
‘Well, the colleges are surrounded by water. And I found that the exercise was conducive to contemplative thought.’
At that Eastman burst out laughing. ‘Well, I never heard of you taking part in any of the races, so it never occurred to me that—’ before bursting out laughing again. ‘Damn, you must be the only man there who took to the Isis as an aid to study rather than to win a wager!’
As soon as all the men but Lord Havelock had gone, the jovial expression faded from Eastman’s features.
‘I think,’ Eastman continued, eyeing the card room, ‘that this would be a good time to try my luck at the tables. Since it is not running in my favour with affairs of the heart.’
‘You will need to clean yourself up a bit first,’ said Havelock, then snapped his fingers to summon a footman who must have been hovering somewhere close by. ‘Bridges here will take you to find water and a washcloth. And a fresh neckcloth. Cannot have you sitting down to play cards in soiled linen.’
Eastman sauntered off after the footman as though he hadn’t a care in the world.
And Edmund watched him go, his fists still clenched, bitterly regretting the fact that a man could wriggle his way out of fighting a duel if he made what sounded like an honest apology.
‘Come on,’ said Havelock, taking him by the arm.
‘What? Where are you taking me?’
‘My study. Only place Mary hasn’t put into use to raise money for Lady Chepstow’s blessed charity school. And you look as though you could use a stiff drink. And the privacy in which to pull yourself together.’
The privacy, however, was denied him the moment they entered Havelock’s study and found Lord Chepstow already in situ, nursing his own drink, in an armchair before the empty fireplace.
‘Ah, Havelock,’ said Chepstow, raising his glass. ‘You don’t mind, do you? This was the only room I could find that ain’t infested by charitable types attempting to separate me from my money.’
‘Not at all,’ said Havelock affably, pushing Edmund in the direction of another armchair. ‘We came in here for much the same reason.’
‘Good God,’ Chepstow suddenly exclaimed, straightening up from his slouch. ‘What the devil happened to you, Ashe?’
‘He
