by Evie Dunmore
She heard them first, raucous singing that made her ears prick with caution.
She slowed.
A group of men appeared on the footpath ahead.
Her shoulders tensed. It was five of them, some in pairs, arm-in-arm, weaving toward her. They must have set up camp in the park, drinking until night had fallen. Or perhaps, they had avoided the gates via the Cherwell, and their abandoned punt was now drifting downstream.
Wet steel glinted as they passed beneath a streetlamp. Foils. Her stomach gave a nervous lurch. Members of the fencing club? They frequently practiced in the park. They were also known to cause trouble around town.
Their bawdy singing ceased, and she knew they had spotted her. Bother. They had not stopped out of politeness. A woman alone in a park near midnight was not a lady, and the awareness crackled in the dark air between them. Their faces came into focus: leering mouths, eyes keen. Three sheets to the wind, each of them, and wealthy, judging by their top hats. The entitled ones were the worst.
Her heart was beating unpleasantly fast. In a moment, she’d have to walk right through them. There was no evading to the right—risky and humiliating, to leave the lit footpath and stagger over the lumpy grass of the meadow. The copse of trees to her left was a menacing black mass.
She squared her shoulders. They were young, just students.
As if on a silent command, the men fell in line next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, a wall of smirks and lewd anticipation.
Fear ran down her neck, cold like ice water. They were not going to let her pass.
Her right hand slid into her skirt pocket.
Too late, she noticed the man who had come up from behind.
Her body recognized him before she did, from the familiar warm scent of tobacco and spice, and it quelled the rush of alarm.
“There you are,” Tristan said lightly. “For someone so short, you are bloody fast.”
His hand slid around her waist and pulled her flush against his side. She let him sweep her along, dumbfounded, wrapped in the strength of his arm.
The rigid front the men had formed across the path dithered. Tristan moved toward them as if they were not there at all. And then he slowed. Intent coursed through his body in a dark current, and for a breath, panic flared. Was he not aware there were only two of them and five of the others? No, he became slower still, his heels grinding to a halt on gravel.
“Bloody hell,” someone said. “It’s Ballentine.”
Tristan stopped in front of the tallest one of the group, an inch too close as was polite. The stench of liquor breath and male sweat assaulted her senses. Her right hand was in her pocket, clutching cold metal, but she turned her face into Tristan’s coat and held her breath.
“Gentlemen,” he said. His voice was amicable. His voice lied. She was held snug against him, and through the layers of wool and cotton, she sensed something sinister crawling beneath his skin, something primal and keen. The feel of it raised all the fine hairs on her body.
The athletes had sensed it, too. They stood straighter, a little more sober.
“A fine evening for a stroll, isn’t it,” Tristan said, still friendly.
“Indeed,” drawled the young man with whom he was toe-to-toe. “Very fine.”
“Lovely and mild,” said Tristan.
“We should continue with it,” the ringleader remarked, “the strolling.”
“An excellent idea.”
Top hats dipped as nods were exchanged.
Still Tristan did not move. They had to walk around him, and therefore Lucie.
“Let me challenge him, and you grab the female,” someone slurred, a few paces on.
“He will make mincemeat out of you, idiot,” said another.
“I have a sword, he has a shtick.”
“There is a blade in the stick, fool.”
Their voices faded as the distance between them grew.
Her back was still tense, as hard as rock, half expecting an angrily hurled foil to hit between her shoulder blades. After a few paces, she glanced back.
The athletes swaggered onward in a disorderly heap, slapping each other’s backs. Someone laughed.
A shudder ran through her. They would have tried to make casual sport of her and moved on, looking like exuberant but respectable gentlemen. No one on the other side of the park gates who saw them walking down the street would have been any wiser.
Tristan’s arm around her tightened, and her cheek was pressed against the smooth fabric of his coat. The smell of damp wool mixed with his scent. Her shoulder easily fit under his, like a chick under a wing, protected from the elements and predatory eyes.
She felt anything but safe. The way he moved, on the cusp of a crouch, called to mind a predator’s prowl, and his silence was entirely too preoccupied. Just like there was apparently a blade hidden in his silly cane, there was a mean, well-honed cutting edge to him, concealed by his glibness and his crimson waistcoat.
She peered up at his face.
He was focused on the path ahead, a faint smile on his lips. A shudder ran down her arms. A Nero would smile this way, while turning down his thumb. He was a thousand shades of angry.
She strained against his hold, and he released her easily. The night was immediately colder without the shelter of his arm. She’d have welcomed any one of his annoying remarks now, but he remained silent as they walked side by side. He wordlessly stood back as she wriggled through another gap in the park fence and watched as he, somehow, vaulted the fence without becoming stuck on the wrought-iron spikes. He followed her like a formidable shadow down Norham Gardens, and she knew better than to try and send him away.
She would have to thank him.
Her lips were still trying to form the words when they arrived at the gate to her front garden. Still trying when she climbed the two steps to her door.
She slid the key into the lock and glanced back over her shoulder.
Tristan had remained standing at the bottom of the stairs. It put her slightly above him, an unfamiliar vantage point.
The rim of his hat cast most of his face in shadows, revealing only his mouth and the clean curve of his jaw. The usually alluring, soft lines of his lips were tense.
She turned to him fully and took a deep breath. It was just three simple words, was it not? Thank you, Ballentine.
Instead, she said, “Go on then, say it.”
His lips gave a humorless twitch. “Say what?”
“Are you not eager to lecture me on the perils of walking around alone at night?”
His head tilted speculatively to the side. “Would lecturing you keep you from doing it again?”
She blinked. “No,” she conceded.
He gave a shrug. “Then I would be wasting my time. There are more pleasant things upon which to waste time.”
He was still seething; she could tell from the silky coolness of his voice and the stiffness of his usually languid posture.
“It might make you feel less displeased,” she suggested.
He gave her a dark smile. “Oh, it would not be nearly enough for that.”
“I don’t make my excursions unarmed.”
He processed this with an unreadable expression. “A pocket pistol?”
She nodded.
His chin tipped up in appreciation, and then he held out his hand. “May I see it?”
She reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out the double derringer. It was dainty and ornate, made for a woman’s hand, but it was cold and impersonal to the touch.
Tristan turned it over in his palm with deliberate care, checking the lock and running his thumb over the shimmering pearl handle.
“Lovely,” he said, and handed it back. “But are you prepared to use it?”
The line of leering faces in the park flashed before her eyes
. A primal aggression had swirled around the men, and the mere memory tightened her throat.
“I am,” she said.
Tristan was quiet.
“You disapprove,” she said, and wondered why this would give her second thoughts.
He shrugged. “It is a funny thing, shooting at a fellow man,” he said. “You go about it as the situation requires, but few people, if any, will tell you that a while later, you may turn morose at the oddest of times, and your nights may become haunted by peculiar dreams.”
“Haunted,” she echoed.
“Just try and avoid putting bullets through people unless you must.”
Rain dripped off the rim of his hat. He could not stand here indefinitely—he’d catch an ague; besides, he must not be seen at her door, as it would cause talk.
Why was he still standing there?
Because she had not thanked him yet, and of course he would want to hear her say the words. This was the man holding her suffrage coup hostage and blackmailing her in a most appalling fashion, after all.
“It’s a good thing then that you have no need for a pistol,” she said. “You can walk around on your own quite undisturbed. Your mere presence was enough to let us go on our way even though they vastly outnumbered you. Remarkable, isn’t it?”
“Vastly outnumbered?” He sounded surprised. “Hardly. And approaching a woman who is already claimed by another man goes against instinct; I expected no trouble.”
She leaned against the door frame. “I had no desire to be claimed,” she said quietly. “I was merely walking home on a public footpath.”
She felt him study her sodden form. She was too fatigued to pull herself together; her strength was rapidly draining from her legs into the damp bricks beneath her feet.
“You know,” he said casually. “I could still go and shoot them. On your behalf.”
A chill spread over her skin, which was not caused by the cold nor the rain. It was the dark thing she had sensed coursing through him in the park, simmering just beneath his attractive surface again.
“You just told me to aim wide,” she said.
“Oh, you should,” he said. “However, I have long missed the boat.”
He would have, she thought; he had been in the army for years.
Did he feel morose? Were his nights haunted?
Her knees were shaky. Her collar was drenched inside and out. She wanted to crawl beneath downy covers, already warmed by a bed heater, and demand a sugary drink, like the spoiled girl she had once been: an earl’s daughter with a vast bed at her disposal and kindly servants who brought hot chocolate at the ring of a bell.
The last thing she needed now was to let Ballentine see her unravel. He would take it and forge it into one more weapon for his armory, to be used against her on a better day, because this truce was an illusion. Midnight was near; he’d soon turn back into a scoundrel and she into a woman with a target on her back.
“Thank you, my lord,” she said. “For escorting me home.”
She turned and unlocked the door.
Boudicca’s accusing cat face greeted her. She had sat right behind the door like a furry little sphinx, overhearing every word and not liking it. She was wary of men.
Lucie removed her damp glove and bent to run her hand over Boudicca’s soft black back.
To her surprise, the cat strode past her, her green eyes fixating on Ballentine.
He hadn’t moved from where she’d left him, a sentinel in a top hat at her doorstep.
“Good evening,” he said politely, surprisingly, to the cat.
Incredibly, Boudicca slunk down two rainy steps to investigate. If there was anything her cat disliked more than men, it was getting her delicate black paws wet.
She watched with narrowed eyes as Boudicca made a figure of eight around Tristan’s legs. He bent and scratched beneath Boudicca’s chin with two fingers, just the way she liked it. “That’s a dear girl,” he crooned.
“How do you know she is a she?” Lucie asked indignantly.
He looked up. “Because she took one glance at me and was enamored?”
There was the Tristan she knew, smug and alive behind his eyes.
What he said was true, as well. Boudicca was rubbing her head on his trouser leg, shamelessly demanding another stroke.
Traitress.
She whistled. “Come inside, Boudicca.”
Tristan straightened.
It still took two more progressively insistent whistles until her feline ladyship obliged and came back up the stairs.
Tristan stood waiting until she closed the door in his face.
Her arm full of damp cat, she peered out the reception room window from behind the curtain and caught a glimpse of Tristan vanishing into the night. For the first time since the encounter, she wondered what had brought him to the park at that hour of the night.
* * *
She had not slowed down. The thought kept circling with the grim persistence of a vulture as Tristan strode through the rain. Round and round the image went, of Lucie’s narrow shoulders pulling back as she marched toward five men.
His feet took the turn onto Broad Street on their own volition, driven by a cold emotion which had to be rage. Was she unaware how easily she could be harmed? Was she suffering illusions about her size and strength? She does know. She carried a pistol in her skirts. He was the fool, having for inexplicable reasons deemed her unbreakable.
His pulse was still high by the time he strolled into the ivy-covered porter’s lodge of Trinity College and infused his gait with an inebriated sway.
A porter manned the desk, looking as uncircumventable as his position demanded: stout, and with a decidedly resolute face beneath the hat of his uniform.
Tristan placed his signet ring onto the counter.
“This must be delivered to Mr. Wyndham posthaste,” he announced. “Room number twelve, in the west wing.”
The porter squinted at him, then the ring, and back at him, his watery eyes assessing.
It was past the curfew, and thus the gates to the Oxford colleges were locked and blocked by porters who had become quite inured to lordly behavior after years of managing student antics, and as such were a rather formidable match for a would-be intruder. Any students returning at this hour required a special permission to enter; any visitors would find themselves out in the cold unless they, too, had a written permission. Or, unless they remembered from their own student days where to climb the wall surrounding Trinity gardens from the Parks Road side.
“I would place it in his pigeonhole,” Tristan said, leaning in close and speaking too loudly. “But as you may have guessed, since you have the look of a clever chap about you, this”—he gestured a vague circle around the ring—“has some sentimental value attached to it.”
The porter’s expression became very stolid. “Indeed, my lord.”
“Excellent,” said Tristan, his eyebrow arching expectantly.
“If his lordship returned tomorrow, during the daytime, Mr. Wyndham would be available, here in the lodge, for a safe delivery of the valuable.”
He shook his head. “This is a matter between gentlemen which must be brought to conclusion tonight.” His voice had lowered to a dramatic murmur. “So if you were so kind as to deliver it to room number twelve, in the west wing, right now, I should be much obliged.”
“The hour is late, my lord.”
“Much obliged,” Tristan repeated.
The porter clearly wished to boot him out of the lodge posthaste, but much as Tristan had expected, he decided to bow to rank on a matter as inconsequential as a room delivery rather than rile an already troublesome and intoxicated nobleman.
“Very well,” the man said. “Is the ring destined for room number twelve in the west wing, then, or for Mr. Wyndham?”
“Good man, you spe
ak in riddles. I’m not in the mood for riddles.”
“No riddles—Mr. Wyndham is not in room number twelve in the west wing.”
Tristan tilted his head. “You are jesting, then.”
“I don’t jest, my lord.”
“Oh good, for I’m not in the mood for jests, either.”
He really was not, in fact. He wanted to get his hands on Mr. Wyndham.
The porter’s lips set in a line. “You have either the room correct, or the recipient—which one shall it be?”
“Who delivers things to rooms?” Tristan wondered. “What would a room do with my ring? Of course it must go to Mr. Wyndham.”
“Very well,” said the porter, at this point, quite possibly, thinking the French had had the right idea to cull the titled classes. “I shall deliver the ring to Mr. Wyndham.”
“To room number twelve,” Tristan said brightly.
“No, because he does not reside there.”
“And yet I have it on good account that he does,” Tristan said. “It saddens me to say so, but I am losing faith in a safe delivery at your hands.” His eyes narrowed. “Is it a trick, perhaps? Assuring me the ring will be brought to Mr. Wyndham, but because of an unfortunate confusion over the room number, it never arrives at all? Ends up in the wrong hands altogether, perhaps?”
The insinuation that the man was presently planning to steal his signet ring had the porter draw himself up to his full height and straighten his hat. “Tricks!” he snarled. He turned to pick up the sacred leather-bound ledger from the porter’s desk, to which it was attached with a chain, placed it onto the counter, rapidly flicked through the pages, then spun the ledger round and thrust it toward Tristan, his blunt fingertip tapping on a line.
Mr. Thomas Wyndham resided in room number nine in the east wing.
“I see,” he said softly. “A misunderstanding, then. No, no.” He placed his hand over the ring before the porter could pick it up. “Perhaps the matter is not quite as pressing. I shall take my leave.”
