father spent most of his time on business ventures, and his mother—”
“Ah, ladies, here you are, and looking as lovely as a painting,” Mr. Smythe-Medway declared as he sauntered into the room, followed by Lord Bromwell and a darkly inscrutable Sir Douglas.
Why did they have to interrupt now? Juliette thought with dismay.
“I hope Fanny hasn’t been telling you she’s made a terrible mistake marrying me,” Mr. Smythe-Medway continued as he sat beside his wife on the sofa.
“Not likely.” Lord Bromwell smiled as he settled in an armchair. “She’s had years to learn all your bad traits, Brix, yet miraculously loves you just the same.”
Apparently paying no attention to the conversation, Sir Douglas strolled over to the drapery-covered windows. He parted a panel and looked outside, as if he was more interested in the weather than the conversation.
Some inner demon prompted Juliette to call out, “Do you agree it is a miracle, Sir Douglas?”
He turned and regarded them impassively. “Not at all. I believe it was inevitable.”
“Well, I say it is a miracle that Fanny fell in love with me,” Mr. Smythe-Medway declared with a grin. “And one I’m thankful for every blessed day—but no more so than now, for gentlemen and Miss Bergerine, I have an announcement to make. Fanny’s going to have a baby!”
Juliette cut her eyes to Sir Douglas. For a moment, it was as if he hadn’t heard his friend, although Lord Bromwell rushed forward to kiss a blushing, smiling Lady Fanny on both cheeks and pump Smythe-Medway’s hand while congratulating them both.
Yet when Sir Douglas finally turned and walked toward them, his smile appeared to be very genuine, and she could believe he was truly happy for his friends. It also made him seem years younger.
“I’m delighted for you both,” he said, kissing Lady Fanny chastely on the cheek before shaking his friend’s hand.
Maybe he meant what he had said. Perhaps he had never really loved her, after all, and was truly delighted for them.
Or perhaps, Juliette mused then, and as she lay awake later that night, he was an excellent liar.
Chapter Six
I know full well Drury doesn’t have any use for the French, and why, but I don’t understand his increasing hostility toward Miss Bergerine. He’s treating her like a particularly annoying species of flea.
—From The Collected Letters of Lord Bromwell
Drury sighed and leaned back against the seat of the hired carriage two days later. God, he hoped they found the louts who’d attacked them soon! It was damned inconvenient having to live away from his chambers and not being able to take long walks to contemplate the tack he would take in the courtroom and the questions he would ask.
Furthermore, he was no longer used to living surrounded by servants. For years now Mr. Edgar had been both butler and valet, with a charwoman to clean daily, and meals brought in from a nearby tavern when he wasn’t dining at a friend’s or in his club.
Not only did Drury have to put up with the ubiquitous servants, he had to endure the presence of a very troublesome Frenchwoman who asked the most annoying questions.
Was it any wonder he couldn’t sleep? Hopefully an hour or two of fencing would tire him out enough that he’d fall asleep at once tonight, and not waste time thinking about Juliette Bergerine’s ridiculous questions.
Such as, was Fanny his mistress?
To be sure, there had been a time when he’d believed Fanny was the one woman among his acquaintance he could consider for a wife, given her sweet, quiet nature—until it had been made absolutely, abundantly clear that she loved Brix with all her heart. No other man stood a chance.
And whatever the sharp-eyed, inquisitive Miss Bergerine thought—for she’d watched him like a hawk after Brix had made his announcement—he was genuinely happy about his friend’s marriage and their coming child. Brix and Fanny would be wonderful parents.
Unlike his own.
As for kissing the outrageous Miss Bergerine, he’d simply been overcome by lust—both times, whether he was awake or not.
At least the mystery of what he’d been trying to remember had been solved, for as soon as she’d spoken of the kiss, he’d remembered. It had been vague, like a dream, but he knew he’d put his arm around what had seemed like an angelic apparition, and kissed her.
Which just proved how hard he must have been hit on the head.
The carriage rolled to a stop and he quickly jumped out. He wouldn’t even think about women—any women—for a while.
He dashed up the steps of Thompson’s Fencing School. Entering the double doors, he breathed in the familiar scents of sawdust and sweat, leather and steel, and heard clashing foils coming from the large practice area. He’d spent hours here before the war, and then after, learning to hold a sword again, and use a dagger.
A few men sat on benches along the sides of the fencing arena. It was chilly, kept that way so the gentlemen wouldn’t get overheated in their padded jackets. A few more fencers stood with a foot on a bench, or off to the side, and one or two nudged each other when they realized who had just walked in.
Drury ignored them and followed Thompson’s voice. Jack Thompson had been a sergeant major and he shouted like one, his salt-and-pepper mustache quivering. He moved like it, too, his back ramrod straight as he prowled around the two men en garde in the practice area cordoned off from the rest of the room by a low wooden partition. Beneath their masks, sweat dripped off their chins, and their chests rose and fell with their panting breaths.
The first, thinner and obviously not so winded, made a feint, which was easily parried by his larger opponent.
“Move your feet, Buckthorne, damn you, or by God, I’ll cut ‘em off!” Thompson shouted at the bigger man, swinging his blunted blade at the young man’s ankles. “Damn it, what the deuce d’you think you’re about, my lord? This isn’t a tea party. Lunge, man, lunge! Strike, by God, or go find a whore to play pat-a-cake with.”
The earl, who must be the fourth Earl of Buckthorne, and who was already notorious for his gambling losses, made an effort, but his feint was no more than the brush of a fly to the young man opposite him. He easily twisted the blade away, then lunged, pressing the buttoned tip of the foil into the earl’s padded chest.
“So now, my lord, you’d be dead,” Thompson declared. “It’s kill or be killed on the battlefield—and the victors get the spoils, the loot, the women and anything else they can find. Think about that, my lord, eh?”
The earl pushed away his opponent’s foil with his gauntleted hand. “I am a gentleman, Thompson, not a common soldier,” he sneered, the words slightly muffled beneath his mask. His head moved up and down as he surveyed his opponent from head to toe. “Or a merchant’s son.”
That was a mistake, as Drury and half a dozen of the other spectators could have told him.
Thompson had Buckthorne by the
