Page 38 of Some Like It Wild
But the duke simply retrieved his cup and took a delicate sip of tea, his dark eyes bright with fascination as he watched the proceedings. The two footmen rushed to peer over the edge of the terrace, no longer able to maintain their own pretense of indifference.
As Connor drew back his sword, Crispin lifted his own weapon to block the coming blow, but did nothing else to defend himself.
Connor’s two-handed blow severed the thin blade in two. The basket-hilt of the epee went tumbling from Crispin’s hand, leaving him unarmed and at Connor’s mercy.
Connor just kept coming. Even as Crispin scrambled backward, nearly losing his footing in the slick grass, Connor drew back the massive broadsword a second time.
“Oh, Lord,” Pamela whispered. “He’s going to cleave his head clean off.”
Although her every instinct urged her to hide her face, she could not take her eyes off of Connor. His eyes burned in a face as beautiful and terrible as the visage of an avenging angel cast down from heaven to deliver God’s wrath.
Crispin’s eyes widened as Connor swung. At the last possible second, Connor turned the blade to its flat side, striking Crispin a jarring blow to the side of the head.
Crispin went down like a stone, howling an oath. Lady Astrid sank back down in her chair, pressing a napkin to her bloodless lips.
It took Crispin several minutes to shake off the initial effects of the blow and sit up. He glared at Connor, clutching his left ear.
Connor offered him a hand but he smacked it away. “Monsieur Chevalier was right,” he snarled. “You’ll never be anything more than a barbarian.”
“And you’ll never be anything more than the nephew of a duke and a drunken ne’er-do-well who cheats at dueling as well as cards.”
“Bravo, lads!” The duke’s dry applause echoed through the garden. “Such dramatic flair, such delicious melodrama! I haven’t been so entertained since Mrs. Siddons played Portia inThe Merchant of Venice.” He made a shooing motion with his hands. “If I were you, I’d take your bows and exit stage left now. You should always leave your adoring audience clamoring for more.”
Shooting his uncle a look of pure loathing, Crispin climbed to his feet and went staggering back down the path.
Propping his sword against a tree, Connor returned to Pamela’s side. He knelt beside her, checking the shallow scratch on her arm for any sign of fresh bleeding. “Why would you do anything so foolhardy, lass? Weren’t you the one who told me that one careless blow can destroy even the most steadfast of hearts?”
“Yes, but how cowardly is the heart that won’t even risk that blow?” she quoted back to him. Shooting a wary glance at the terrace, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Besides, where was I going to find another imposter if Crispin ran you through? You know actors aren’t to be trusted.”
Connor wrested thefleuretfrom her hand, studying it through narrowed eyes. “Apparently neither is the duke’s nephew.”
“For a minute there, I thought you were going to cut off his head,” she confessed.
“For a minute there, so did I. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to collect my prize if they carted me off to Newgate and hanged me.”
“Your prize?”
“Aye…have you forgotten, lass? You owe the winner of the contest a kiss.”
He leaned closer, his smoky gaze dropping to her lips. For a dazed moment, Pamela thought he was going to collect his prize right there in the garden in front of the duke, Lady Astrid, the gawking footmen and God.
But he simply plucked an apple blossom from her hair with his deft fingers before gently tugging her to her feet.
Crispin ducked into a back stairwell, determined to reach the haven of his bedchamber without any more of the servants witnessing his disgrace. He knew the two smirking footmen from the garden would waste no time telling everyone in the servants’ quarters what they’d witnessed. By nightfall, it would be all over London that the Duke of Warrick’s nephew had been bested in a fencing match by a Scots barbarian wielding an antique broadsword. His uncle wouldn’t be the only one laughing at him then.
He dragged himself up the stairs, wiggling his aching jaw between two fingers to make sure it wasn’t broken. His ears were still ringing and a vicious devil of a headache was just beginning to throb at the base of his skull.
He’d faced many a man over both swords and dueling pistols in the past few years, but he’d never stared death directly in the eyes before. Somehow his cousin’s mercy had been even more galling than his wrath. If he had been cut down where he stood, at least his uncle wouldn’t have been able to deny him a place in the family tomb. His former lovers would have wept prettily into their handkerchiefs and his friends would have gathered at their favorite gambling hell to toast his fine head for liquor, his skill at the faro table and his droll wit.
Perhaps once he was gone, his mother would have understood how badly he had wanted to protect her after his father’s death and his uncle would have realized how very hard he had tried to be a son to him. And how deeply it cut to watch while he embraced a stranger. Crispin snorted, his amusement at his own folly as bitter as the metallic tang of the blood in his mouth.
He rounded the corner of the second-story landing only to crash right into someone hurrying down the stairs. They bumped heads, then both sat down abruptly, a shower of rumpled linens tumbling around them.
Crispin clutched his brow, the sudden change in position setting off a hellish chorus of bells between his ears. “Bloody hell!” he swore as a ruffled mobcap bobbed in his bleary vision.
“Why don’t you look where you’re going, you clumsy oaf?” a musical female voice snapped. “Are you blind?”
Still gripping his head, Crispin scowled. He’d never before been spoken to in such an insolent manner by a servant.
