To Seduce an Angel (29 page)

He stripped off the coat, tossed his hat in the ring, and let Xan strip him down for the weigh-in procedure. He could feel the crowd's eyes and their judgment, but he was somewhere else, apart from the scene. He noted the scramble to change odds when the onlookers got their first glimpse of the gash in his arm. With the Croaker out of the picture, the old bets were off, the odds would change with each round. None of them were likely to favor Dav.

From his corner he looked out over the crowd, a restless mass of browns and grays, nothing to arrest the eye except the occasional checkered neckcloth or vivid waistcoat. A purple expanse caught his eye and nagged his memory, but the boys cheered for the Stinger, bouncing in their seats, making the carriage rock on its springs. He raised his fist for them. His eye paused again on a woman in a black bonnet looking down, but she did not lift her head, and he was deceiving himself to imagine any resemblance to Emma there.

The umpire called him to the mark, and he gave his attention to the Leveler. He had wanted this encounter chained by Harris, hounded by his grandfather, trapped in the gilded palace his family wanted for him. It was not the dream it had been on the night Xander had taken him to the Fives Court to see the champion in that exhibition match, but it was what he must do.

Emma watched Daventry as he stood in his black velvet coat. A breeze lifted his hair, and the sun flashed in it. His wide stance spoke of easy confidence, but he appeared detached as if he inhabited some untouchable space. He had not believed her note. Her love had not reached him. He shoved his hands into his pockets.

She watched him draw a folded thing from his pocket, open it, and freeze like a man stunned.

Across the ring Wallop climbed heavily up into his carriage. The Leveler was clearly his man, but the Leveler would only be a part of the strategy. If Aubrey and the duke were behind Wallop, there would be other enemies in the crowd. She asked the man next to her who the white-haired man was who'd gone into the ring.

“Sawbones,” he said. “Gotter 'ave one on 'and.” That was not good. The man didn't look like any physician she would trust. She would go to Wallop and let Will Jones spot her there. She would expose the truth, and the crows could have her.

EMMA watched three rounds, working her way through the dense crowd. At first the two adversaries eyed each other and moved to position themselves to advantage. When Dav got in a body blow, the Leveler glanced a blow off his opponent's head. In the second round the Leveler came out with a whirlwind of blows while Daventry seemed to hoard his lightning strikes. Emma could not determine who gained the advantage, but the odds makers still called out three to one for the Leveler, who bloodied Daventry's mouth when he slipped on the wet grass and took a heavy fist to his jaw as he went down.

It wasn't until the Leveler connected with Daventry's ribs in the fourth round that Emma recognized that something was wrong. The blow sounded wrong and Daventry reacted oddly, but she had spotted Lark and Rook. Lark could take a message to Daventry. He would believe Lark. She pushed harder to make her way through the crowd during a furious exchange in the fifth round, enduring curses from men intent on the action.

Lark was shouting himself hoarse when she touched his elbow. He swung toward her, nearly knocking her senseless.

“You!” He turned back to the fight as Daventry and the Leveler went to their corners.

“The Leveler is the duke's man,” she told him.

Lark whipped back to her. “Wot do you mean?” he hissed.

She pointed out Wallop. “That man in the purple waistcoat he reports to the duke's nephew. He's been in Somerton for weeks collecting information about Daventry, trying to do him an injury.”

“You mean the roof?”

She nodded.

“How do you know that?”

“I spied for him.”

Lark swore at her and turned back to the ring as the fight resumed.

“The Leveler's cheating in some way, isn't he?”

Lark watched the fight. “He has loaded hands.”

“What?”

“He's got something in his fists to make them heavier.”

“Tell Daventry.”

“He knows.” Lark turned his face away from her.

Emma could see that Daventry was somewhere else, in a state of alertness that blocked out everything except the Leveler. Lark was right. Daventry was good at noticing things, the smallest details. He wanted the challenge. He wanted the match to be as brutal and punishing as it could be. He wanted the Leveler to be a dangerous opponent.

The round was Daventry's. He worked out a way to invite wild sweeping shots from the Leveler that he could block with an elbow while his right fist flashed at the Leveler's jaw. But the tactic opened the gash on his arm, which bled freely. The third time Daventry connected, the Leveler swayed on his feet, a man dizzied by blows. The big man shook his head and spit out a tooth. With a roar he lowered his head and rushed Daventry, his shoulder catching Daventry's ribs, driving him against the ropes until he'd trapped Daventry where he could pummel his side with those fists.

Daventry went down on the slippery grass, and the Leveler drove a punishing fist into his back. Daventry arched under the blow. Xander Jones shouted at the umpire, but his words were lost in roar of the crowd. The boys screamed. Adam Digweed lunged forward, slicing through the crowd, held back only by the ropes. Daventry struggled to heave himself up. He had one foot under him, ready to push up when the Leveler moved in to land a blow to his ear.

Adam's hand shot out over the ropes and caught the Leveler's right wrist and yanked it back. It shocked the crowd silent for an instant. Lark screamed madly, “He's got loaded hands.” Adam twisted the Leveler's arm until his fist opened and three round brass cylinders fell out. It stunned those closest to the ring. The umpire rushed forward to push the Leveler away from Dav.

Dav's ears rang. His eyes stung with sweat and blood, and his breath was a harsh, hot rattle in his chest and throat. The umpires had a hold of the Leveler, pulling him away. The man's hands hung limp at his sides. His barrel chest rose and fell like a great bellows, and his bloodied face looked alarmed.

Will stepped into the space between the Leveler and Dav and said something that Dav couldn't hear over the roar in his ears. Then his brother dashed off.

The white-haired physician took Dav's bleeding arm. “Let's treat that, son.” He reached to press a cloth over the wound.

“No!” The cry came from the crowd.

Dav twisted out of the man's grip, turning to see who had shouted, and his gaze found Emma Portland, standing openmouthed in the crowd, the blue of her eyes was clear and sweet and true as the sky. He had thought her a sweet clever lie from beginning to end, but his understanding underwent a complete reversal.

 

 

He knew it was the truth.

As he watched, the crowd swallowed her as if a muddy pond had closed over her. Dav started in her direction when Xan caught his good arm and pulled him around to face a large man in a purple waistcoat, caught in the grip of a pair of stout vinegars.

 

 

AUBREY descended from his carriage at a discreet bend in the road where a stand of beeches concealed his business from the masses. An evil-looking fellow in a workingman's cap and dusty tan corduroys pointed a wicked if ancient pistol at a kneeling Emma Portland, her black bonnet askew, her hem crusted in mud. Aubrey savored the image.

For sheer effrontery the chit deserved every bit of what was coming to her. The little vein in his forehead throbbed in a mildly disagreeable way, and it was her fault. She had cost them the best chance they'd had in months to rid themselves of Sophie Rhys-Jones's inconvenient brat. With Wenlocke's health in question, they could not afford lost chances.

Behind him his servants went about their business as they were trained to do, readying his horse and carriage. Already an ambush was in place for the Joneses' carriage as it returned to the hall. Mates of the man in front of him would wait to finish the injured.

It was unfortunate that Aubrey had had to take matters into his own hands. Wallop's people had proved quite hopeless. And Wallop himself, who was supposed to be the master at providing accidents, had failed dismally, not only with the chimney pot fiasco but now with the sham fight and the phony physician. Aubrey had been lucky to find a gang of footpads preparing to work the crowd. The man's pistol never wavered. He did not look the sort to find blue eyes appealing.

Aubrey came to stand over the kneeling girl. The temptation to nudge her with his boot passed quickly. His boots would not benefit from contact with her soiled skirts. “Miss Portland, you disappoint me.”

She made no answer. She neither trembled nor appealed.

“We gave you every opportunity to prove your worth, and you failed.”

He used the tip of his crop to tilt her face up. The blue eyes had something in them he had not seen before. He dismissed it. If the girl didn't mind murder, she should not have quibbled at mere spying.

“We save you from the law and dress you in silks and ask only a small favor in return. Instead you thwart our efforts. You repay us by false information and an ill-judged flight into wretchedness.” He brought his riding crop down on her shoulder.

The girl flinched, but did not cry out.

“I suppose I should have expected as much from an unnatural woman, a murderess. As things stand I have no choice but to turn you over to the mercies of the law.

“Take her to Horsham. They'll know what to do with her. I want her in jail tonight. Don't let her out of your sight.”

Emma recognized her usual luck. She knew a bad guard when she met one. This man would spit in the soup. Aubrey's man shoved her into the carriage and took a seat opposite her and settled a long, wicked pistol across his lap. He grinned.

DAV'S ear opened, and he heard Xan say, “We've found a man of Wenlocke's named Wallop.”

It was the name the constable had given for the brewer who shed suspicion on Emma. Wallop had been in Somerton recently. Dav turned to the vinegars holding a fleshy fellow in a purple waistcoat and plaid trousers and experienced another moment of dislocation.

Xan's hand on his shoulder, the din of the crowd, and the purple silk expanse of the stranger's midsection created a shift in time and place, a narrowing of his vision. He was momentarily a boy again on a November night, excited by his first mill and the champion's victory, throwing wild punches in imitation of his hero as the crowd streamed out of the Fives Court into Leicester Square. That night Xan's hand on his shoulder had kept him from punching a man in a purple waistcoat, who had given them a fixed stare.

“You.” A jumble of images tumbled through his mind, and another piece in the puzzle of that long-ago night fell into place. His head cleared. “You were there. You pointed me out to Harris, didn't you?”

Wallop's broad face kept its genial lines, but his eyes shifted, looking for an escape.

“Who pays you? Wenlocke?”

Dav grabbed Wallop by his wilting neckcloth.

Wallop twisted to look at Xan and Will. “Your boy's a bit confused. His first match, isn't it? Promising lad. My apologies about the Leveler. I was quite misled. Wanted to see a match go forward.”

Dav hit him. Hard. In the diaphragm.

Wallop doubled over gasping like a fish on sand. The vinegars jerked him upright again.

“Who pays you?”

Wallop gasped, his mouth working soundlessly, his eyes squeezed shut in the folds of his fleshy face. Dav waited for it. “Lord . . . Aubrey.”