gulp.
‘I discovered something about your fashionable adversary,’ Pomroy said.
Tanner sat forward. ‘Tell me, man.’
His friend took a sip of his ale instead. Tanner drummed the table with his fingers while he waited. Pomroy placed the tankard down and brushed the moisture from his coat sleeves, merely to delay and to annoy Tanner.
‘I discovered.’ he finally began, pausing to give Tanner a teasing smirk ‘.that your friend is not welcome at several of the brothels in town.’
‘This is all?’ Tanner took another drink.
His friend waved a finger in the air. ‘Think of it. Why would a man be barred from a brothel?’
‘Not paying?’ Tanner ventured. ‘Emitting too great a stench?’
Pomroy shook his head. ‘He has been barred because of cruelty. He inflicts pain.’
Tanner recalled Greythorne’s eyes when his sword drew blood. He frowned. ‘I remember now. Morbery went to school with him. Told me once Greythorne passed around de Sade’s books and boasted of engaging in his practices.’ He halfway rose to his feet. ‘Perverted muckworm. I must take my leave, Pomroy. The devil is set to dine with her this night.’ He dug in his pocket for some coin, but sat back down. ‘Dash it. I’m spoken for tonight. Clarence again.’
‘Send the ever-faithful Flynn,’ drawled Pomroy.
The rain settled into a misty drizzle that Flynn did his best to ignore as he stood under the scant shelter of a tree bordering the Grove at Vauxhall. There were a few other hearty souls who had braved the weather to listen to Rose sing, but Flynn had not seen Greythorne among them.
He’d listened with alarm to what Tanner had told him about Greythorne. A devotee of the Marquis de Sade, the man who said ‘the only way to a woman’s heart is along the path of torment.’ Flynn knew the man’s works. De Sade’s books were more popular at Oxford than the texts they were meant to study. Flynn had read the forbidden volumes as assiduously as the other Oxford fellows. De Sade had a brilliant mind and a perverted soul; if Greythorne meant to practise his brand of pleasure on Rose, Flynn would stop him—no matter what he had to do to accomplish it.
As he listened to her, Flynn thought Rose’s singing altered. She sang with less emotion, less energy, perhaps due to the rain, or Greythorne, or strain from her voice lesson. He could tell she was attempting to put her newfound knowledge into practice, trying to breathe as they’d taught her, to sing the highest notes as they’d taught her, but she seemed self-conscious, as if fearing her knuckles would be rapped at any moment if she made an error.
He missed the undisguised pleasure that had come through in her voice before, but he well understood her determination to improve. His own ambition was as keen. They both burned with the need to rise high, as if achieving less than the highest meant total failure.
Flynn knew Tanner would let him open doors for Rose, like the one he’d opened for her at King’s Theatre. The marquess had the power to fulfil her dreams.
When she finished singing her last note and curtsied to the audience, the applause was nearly drowned out by the sound of the rain rustling through the leaves and hissing on the hot metal of the lamps’ reflectors. Flynn quickly made his way to the gazebo door. A few other admirers also gathered there.
He knocked on the door and gave his name and card to the servant who answered it. When he was admitted, he heard another not so fortunate fellow say, ‘How did he get in?’
The servant left him alone in the gazebo’s lower room, and a moment later Rose came rushing in, directly into his arms.
‘Oh, Flynn! I hoped you would come!’
He could not help but hold her as she clung to him and buried her face in the damp fabric of his caped greatcoat. When she finally pulled away, tears glistened on her dark lashes.
‘When does Greythorne come?’ he asked.
She glanced up in surprise. ‘You knew of it?’
He nodded.
A faint smile flitted across her face. ‘He cancelled. Postponed, I mean.’
He gazed at her. ‘Let us go somewhere we can talk.’
She went to take her cloak off a hook on the wall. When they walked out, the bedraggled men outside could be heard saying, ‘That’s her!’ and ‘Dash it! He’s cut us out.’
He whisked her away, leading her down the Dark Path. It was dotted with small classical structures where couples could be private. Flynn tried the knob of the first one they came to, and, finding it unlocked, brought her inside. Rushlights lit the interior. A table was set with wine and two glasses.
‘I am guessing this party has been cancelled,’ Flynn said, gesturing to the table. ‘Come.’ He led her to the single chaise-longue, the only place to sit. ‘If they do show up, we will make an apology and leave.’
He unfastened her cloak and laid it aside with his greatcoat, hat and gloves before coming to sit next to her. Taking her hand in his, he pulled off her gloves, one finger at a time.
She could barely breathe for the feel of his bare hand upon hers. ‘Greythorne gave my father money for my company.’
He held both her hands in his.
She stared at them. ‘But … but when the rain came he … begged off. He sent a message. So I do not know when I shall be required to meet him. I do not wish to meet him at all, Flynn!’
He nodded, squeezing her hands. ‘Have no fear. I will think of some way to help.’
Rose gazed at him, feeling relief and something even more powerful. She could not believe he had come to her, rain and all. Now that his hands folded over hers, tethering her with his strength, she had not realised how keenly she needed him.
But he released her and stood, turning his back to her. ‘Lord Tannerton is prepared to better any offer Greythorne makes.’
She bowed her head. Tannerton again. Standing between them. ‘When?’ She felt the gloom descend upon her.
He answered in a low voice. ‘I must go to your father with Tannerton’s offer. If he accepts right away and does not wait for Greythorne to make a counter-offer, then it would still take me a week to make arrangements.’ He turned back to her. ‘Two weeks, perhaps.’
‘Two weeks,’ she whispered.
He came to sit next to her again. ‘There is no other choice, Rose.’
Her mind had accepted this. She wanted to sing. She wanted some day to sing Elvira’s part in Don Giovanni, to be a name everyone knew, like Catalani, and she wanted nothing to stop her. She wanted to live the life her mother had lost.
Only her heart warred with that ambition. Her heart pined for love. For Flynn.
She pulled away from him and rose from the chaise. ‘I do not want to stay here, Flynn. I.I feel as if I am trespassing.’
She bent down to pick
