Last Night's Scandal (The Dressmakers 5)

Lisle pretended to brush a speck of dust from his notes. Without looking up, he said, “Wit? Was that what it was? I beg your pardon, Lord Belder, for not responding to your remarks. I mistook you for a saint.”

“A saint?” said Belder with a laugh—for Olivia’s benefit, no doubt, to show how little he cared about being reprimanded publicly like a boorish schoolboy.

“Certainly,” Lisle said. “In Egypt, you see, those of slow understanding or no understanding are called saints, and their peculiarities of appearance, speech, and behavior are regarded as signs of divine blessing.”

The audience roared. The scholars took a moment to exact their revenge, making Belder the butt of their jokes. He obliged them by turning redder than Olivia’s hair.

Having administered the setdown Belder had been begging for, Lisle delivered the rest of Daphne’s paper in peace.

When he’d finished answering questions and the audience began to disperse, he broke through the wall of men surrounding Olivia—dim-witted fowl clustered about a dozing crocodile, as he saw it—and offered to take her home. Turning away from Belder, she bestowed a smile on Lisle so dazzling that he couldn’t see straight for a moment. Then she took his arm. They walked to her carriage, her maid, Bailey, trailing after them.

The footman had put down the step and Olivia was moving toward it when a boy flew along the pavement straight at them. He was running at top speed, dodging the groups of scholarly gentlemen arguing about pharaohs as they walked along the Strand.

He dodged Lisle as well, but then he made the mistake of glancing Olivia’s way, and the blaze of beauty blinded and unbalanced him. His step faltered and his focus went astray, even while his legs kept moving.

At this same moment, Lord Belder was hurrying toward Olivia’s carriage. The boy ran straight into him, and they both stumbled. The boy landed on the pavement and Belder in the gutter.

The lad scrambled to his feet, threw Belder a horrified look, and set off.

“Stop, thief!” Belder roared. A couple of his friends caught the boy as he tried to run past them.

His lordship rose from the gutter. Passing acquaintances treated him to the usual lumbering wit: “Just waking up, Belder?” or “Is that the latest in beauty baths, Belder?” and so on.

Brown and black substances of unsavory origin splotched his fawn trousers and blue coat, his elaborately tied neckcloth, his waistcoat, and his gloves. He looked down at his clothes, then at the boy. The look made the boy squirm and yell, “It was an accident, your worship! I didn’t take nothing!”

“It’s true,” Olivia called over the noise. “I saw what happened. If he’d been stealing, he would—”

“Wait in the carriage, and let me deal with it,” Lisle cut in before she could explain how petty theft was properly done. She was, after all, an expert.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I can settle this.”

He tried to lead her away, but she shook him off and marched to the men holding the boy.

“Let him go,” she said. “It was an accident.”

To Lisle, the warning signs were obvious: the flush rising from her neck to her cheeks and the You blockheads implied in her stress on “accident.”

Since he couldn’t drag her away bodily, he would have to drown her out. But Belder spoke first.

“You don’t know what these wretched creatures get up to, Miss Carsington,” he said. “They bump into people on purpose, to pick our pockets.”

Lisle said, “That may be so but—”

“Not this one,” Olivia said. “A proper thief would have been so quick and efficient, you’d hardly notice him. He’d take care not to knock you down or draw attention to himself, and he wouldn’t pause, but get away instantly. Furthermore, they usually work in pairs.”

She was absolutely right, and any rational man would recognize this.

But Belder was in a temper, he had scores to settle, and the boy was the easiest target. He only gave her a patronizing smile and turned to the bystanders. “Someone fetch a constable,” he called.

“No!” the boy shouted. “I didn’t take nothing!”

He pulled and kicked, trying to get free.

Lord Belder cuffed his head.

“You great bully!” Olivia cried. Up went her furled umbrella, and down, sharply, on his shoulder.

“Ow!”

“Release that child!” She swung the umbrella at the men holding the boy.

Belder grabbed her arm to stop her beating his friends.

Lisle saw the dirty, gloved hand wrapped about Olivia’s arm. Then he saw red.

He advanced, took Belder roughly by the arm, and yanked him away. “Don’t touch her,” he said in a low, hard voice. “Don’t ever touch her.”

Chapter 3

Two minutes later

Oh, miss,” said Bailey. “They’re going to kill each other.”

Lisle had flung Belder away almost as soon as he’d grabbed him, but Belder wasn’t about to let it end there. He pushed Lisle, and Lisle pushed back harder, knocking Belder against the fence. Belder bounced up, tore off his gloves, threw down his hat, and put up his fists. Lisle did the same.

Don’t touch her, he’d said, in a low, deadly voice that made her shiver.

How silly. She was no schoolroom miss—yet her heart raced as it had never done before, though men fought over her all the time, and though she knew it meant nothing special to Lisle. He acted instinctively, protective by nature. Belligerent, too.

But she hadn’t seen him fight in years.

She hadn’t seen any fights in years, she reminded herself. Men usually met at dawn, well out of the public eye, because dueling was illegal.

Fisticuffs, however, were not. Still, they were hardly common among gentlemen, in broad day, on a major London thoroughfare.

No wonder she was excited.

“They will try to kill each other,” she told Bailey. “But all they’ll do is pummel each other, and that’s preferable to pistols at twenty paces. Belder’s spoiling for a fight, and Lisle will enjoy accommodating him.”

A glance at her maid told her that Bailey, too, was not unmoved. A petite, pretty brunette, Bailey was not as delicate as she looked. She would not have survived her employment with Olivia otherwise.

“You’ve never seen Lisle fight,” Olivia said. “He looks so angelic, I know, with his fair hair and those cool grey eyes of his, but he’s a ferocious pugilist. I once saw him make mincemeat of a great ox of a boy, easily twice his size.”

It had happened on the day she’d started on her Noble Quest to Bristol. Lisle hadn’t approved of Nat Diggerby as a traveling companion for her.

Truth to tell, she hadn’t been overly fond of Diggerby, either. Though she’d pretended not to care, she’d been vastly relieved when Lisle took his place.

She turned her attention to the fight, wishing she could see more of it. She could hear the grunts and the thuds of fists connecting with body parts, but a great crowd of men blocked her view. They were shouting encouragement in between betting on the outcome.

Even she knew better than to try to break into that circle. A lady did not get mixed up in throngs of bloodthirsty males. A lady waited at a safe distance from the fray.

If she could have climbed onto the footmen’s perch at the back of the carriage she could have a better view, but she mustn’t do that, either.

She could only wait, listening and making do with glimpses, and hoping Lisle would come out of it in one piece. He was used to fighting, she told herself. People were always trying to kill him in Egypt. Still, Belder was for some reason madly jealous of him, and Lisle had humiliated the man in front of an audience of important men.

After what seemed hours but could only have been minutes, there was a shout, then quiet. Then the wall of men b

egan to give way. She saw Belder lying on the ground, and some of his friends going to him.

She pushed forward, using her elbows and her umbrella to make way through the thinning crowd.

She grabbed Lisle’s arm and tugged. “Come away,” she said.

He looked at her blankly. His hair was tangled and filthy and his lip was bleeding. Blood spattered his neckcloth, which was torn. A sleeve of his coat had been partly ripped away from the shoulder seam.

“Come away,” she said. “He can’t fight anymore.”

Lisle looked at the man on the ground, then turned back to her. “Are you not going to comfort him?”

“No.”

He took out his handkerchief and started to wipe his lip, and winced.

She took the handkerchief from him and dabbed at his lip. “You’ll have a prime black eye by tomorrow, and you’ll be eating soft foods for the next few days,” she said.

“You have a knack for attracting idiots,” he said.

She stopped dabbing. “Your lip is going to swell,” she said. “With any luck, you won’t be able to talk.” She shook her head, turned away, and started for her carriage.

He followed. “You oughtn’t to encourage them when you don’t want them,” he said.