When he’d been fighting for a living, he’d earned himself the sobriquet of the Gentleman Gravedigger, on account of his cut-glass accent and his formidable fists. It wasn’t as though he’d made any friends there. No one knew what to make of him there anymore than they did here. He didn’t fit. He was a puzzle piece with too many jagged corners, and no one could be comfortable when he was around.
Well, that was well and good, and he’d spare them the anxiety, he decided, swallowing the rest of his glass and getting to his feet. He’d been absent long enough that there were places he could go where no one would know or care who he was, so long as he kept his mouth shut. And as he wasn’t going for the conversation, he felt that would not be a problem. There was only one way he knew of to ease the simmering fury in his blood, and he doubted it would go down well at Longwold.
***
“I think we’d best start without him,” Violette said to Garrett with an unhappy smile as the butler nodded and went away to give the instruction that dinner should not be delayed any longer. “I’m so sorry Lady Russell.”
“Oh, dear child, call me Seymour please,” Aubrey’s grandmother said, waving away her apology.
Her sister, Lady Dorothea Sinclair, sat forward a little and added. “And do call me Dotty, everybody does.”
Seymour cast her sister an impatient glance before she continued. “And there is no need for you to apologise. It is clear that your brother is a troubled man. Are you sure that he will stand all the nonsense this house party is likely to bring?”
Violette shrugged, deflated at the fact her brother couldn’t even face this small gathering for her, and gave Aubrey a grateful smile as he sought her hand and held tight. “I don’t know. I admit I’m beginning to wonder if I haven’t made a horrible mistake.”
“Nonsense,” Seymour replied with characteristic certainty. “The man can’t hide from the world forever. He’s a marquess, he has responsibilities.” She stamped her walking stick on the floor with impatience to illustrate her words. “A firm hand is what he needs, someone who won’t pussy foot about him and let him bully them.”
Violette sent Aubrey a doubtful look and wasn’t encouraged by his expression. Her brother was large and intimidating in the first instance. Add to that the fact he seemed to have lost any grasp on the social niceties since his disappearance, and she doubted there was a woman in the whole of the country who could be bold enough to stand up to him and win. Still, she had wished for him to find such a woman, and she would do everything in her power to help that wish along. She only hoped the fates were playing too.
***
Halfway down the first bottle, Eddie wondered at the fact that alcohol only increased the tension that was singing through his veins. He clenched and unclenched his knuckles, feeling the familiar rage that seemed to boil up out of nowhere as it crept into his blood and bones and tensed his muscles. His eyes scanned the dark corners of the grubby tavern looking for a likely target.
A group of young bucks, laughing and raucous, gained his attention only to be dismissed. Too pretty and nice to give him the kind of fight he was looking for. A solitary figure, head bent over his glass was similarly dismissed. That one would take a beating alright, but he wouldn’t fight back.
Then his gaze settled on a bald-headed fellow with the build of an angry bull and an expression to match. The fellow split his mouth in what might have been a grin, to show a lot of gum and few remaining teeth. He spat on the ground beside him, never taking his gaze from Edward, who gave a soft laugh. Finally.
***
By the time he’d reached the fifth tavern, Charlie was at his wits’ end. The moment he’d heard that damned snooty butler inform him that his lordship had done the off, Charlie had known just what to expect. The problem was that he didn’t know where.
In the Dial, he had at least known Eddie’s usual haunts, and if he lost him, he knew the folks to ask and find what he needed to know. Here, though, he was lost. Too many acres of green and trees and cows and clean air. Bleedin’ ‘ell you didn’t even know you was breathing out here. In the Dials, if you sucked in a lungful, you felt the weight of it, could chew it, almost, and spit it out again. Not here.
The taverns, though, they were more familiar. Sweat and smoke and liquor and the stench of those determined to find a good time or a good fight. That was something Charlie knew well enough, and that was what Eddie would hunt down, too.
When he heard the crash of breaking furniture, Charlie instinctively knew he’d found his errant master.
Cursing, he hurried into a half-timbered building with covering of heavy thatch and a faded sign that proclaimed it to be The Lamb. Once through the door, he found a crowd gathered and bets being taken as the marquess and some big, ugly brute knocked seven bells out of each other. Charlie sighed and realised he had little chance of dragging his lordship home until one or other of them was unconscious. Accepting the inevitable, he sidled up to a dodgy-looking bloke who was taking everyone’s money.
“Gi’ me a quid on the pretty one,” he said, as the fellow looked at him in surprise.
“Pleasure to take ye money, sir,” the fellow beamed, turning his attention back to the fight where the marquess had just been knocked to the ground with a fist resembling a ham hock.
“Oh, ‘e ain’t dead yet,” Charlie observed with a grim smile as his master dragged himself upright and went back for more. With a resigned sigh, he found a good vantage point and settled in to watch the remainder.
***
“Well, that’s a beautiful shiner you got yerself, my lord,” Charlie remarked with a grim smile as he poked at the swollen skin around Edward’s eye.
Eddie batted his hand away and grinned back at him, the mellowing effect of the bottle he’d just finished taking the sting out of the worst of his injuries. Oh, he’d hurt like the devil in the morning right enough, but for now he felt really quite content.
“Like one to match, Charlie?” he asked his dismayed-looking valet, hearing the words slide together and blur. But Charlie just grimaced and shook his head.
“No ta, my lord, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Then,” Eddie replied, waving the empty bottle at him, “do what I pay you for and get me home,” he said, with all the dignity a drunken marquess could summon.
“Oh,” Charlie retorted, trying to get his shoulder under his much larger employer’s arm. “Is that whatcha pay me for? And ‘ere I was thinkin’ I was ye valet.”
Eddie snorted and almost pulled Charlie back to the ground with him as the smaller man staggered under his weight. “Shiny boots,” he said, shaking his head and then pausing as Charlie looked back at him in confusion.
“If you want to truly be a valet, you need to discover the secret of shiny boots.”
Charlie frowned at him and tried to stop him sitting abruptly down again. “Your boots is shiny!” he objected, looking aggrieved. “At least they was, before this turn up.”
“Nope.” Eddie gave a solemn shake of his head and wagged an unsteady finger in Charlie’s general direction. “You’ll see. Duke of Ware, look at his boots when he arrives. See your face in ‘em, you can.”