the feat lacked force. Three touchés to Tanner’s zero. The odds against Tanner winning went up.
Tanner breathed hard as they stood en garde again. Greythorne began the same pattern of thrusts and parries he’d executed before with great success. This time, however, they merely informed Tanner exactly what would happen next. At Greythorne’s counter-riposte, Tanner parried and lunged, forcing Greythorne’s blade aside. He quickly attacked again, the point of his épée pressing at Greythorne’s heart.
The onlookers applauded, and the wagering recommenced. Greythorne’s eyes widened in surprise.
They began again. This time Tanner went on the attack. He picked up the pace of his swordwork, then slowed it again, until Greythorne’s brows knitted in confusion and he began making simple mistakes. Tanner drove Greythorne back again and again, each time striking a different part of his body, all potentially lethal had the épées not been affixed with buttons to prevent the sword from running straight through the flesh. He earned three more touchés.
With the score four touchés to Greythorne’s three, Greythorne rallied, giving the contest more sport and increasing the frenzy of betting among the onlookers. The blades sang as they struck against each other, the sound much more pleasing to Tanner’s ear than what he heard in King’s Theatre or Lady Rawley’s music salon. He relished it all. The strategy and cunning, the rumble of the onlookers, the danger, the sheer exertion.
He and Greythorne drove each other back and forth across the floor as the onlookers shouted louder and louder, odds changing with each footstep. Greythorne engaged more closely in an impressive display, the look of victory on his face. He lunged.
Tanner twisted around, parrying the attack from behind. He continued to spin, lifting Greythorne’s blade into the air, forcing him off balance. Tanner made the circle complete as he swung his blade back to press against Greythorne’s gut. The surprised man stumbled and fell backwards to the floor.
‘That was five! Five touchés!’ someone cried from the side.
Tanner continued the pressure of the dulled tip of his blade on the buff-coloured pantaloons Greythorne wore. The fabric ripped.
‘You’ve damaged my clothes!’ Greythorne seethed.
Tanner flicked the épée slightly and the tear grew larger. ‘What say you?’
Greythorne moved the blade aside with his hand and sat up. He did not look at Tanner.
‘What progress?’ Tanner demanded.
Greythorne struggled to his feet. ‘I am to dine with her tonight at Vauxhall.’
The onlookers had not attended to what must have seemed to them an epilogue to the drama. Wagers were settled and the onlookers dispersed, a few gentlemen first coming up to Tanner and clapping him on the shoulder. The winners of the betting, he surmised. Pomroy waited while he dressed. After thanking Angelo, he and Pomroy walked to the door. Greythorne was just ahead of them.
Outside rain was falling as if from buckets.
‘My clothes will be ruined!’ Greythorne snarled.
He held back, but Tanner and Pomroy did not hesitate to step out into the downpour, breaking into laughter as they left Greythorne in the doorway.
‘Damned prig!’ Pomroy said.
They ducked into the first tavern they came to, already crowded with others escaping the weather, including some of the gentlemen who had witnessed the swordfight. Tanner accepted their congratulations good naturedly. He and Pomroy pushed their way to a small table in the back.
When they were settled and some ale was on the way, Pomroy said, ‘What the devil was that all about?’
Tanner grinned. ‘I exerted myself to discover what Greythorne next planned in his conquest of Miss O’Keefe.’
‘Such a trifle?’ Pomroy pointed to the cut on his cheek. ‘There was not an easier way to come upon that information?’
‘And miss that sport?’ Tanner felt his injury with his finger.
A harried tavern maid brought them their ale, and Tanner took a thirsty gulp.
‘I discovered something about your fashionable adversary,’ Pomroy said.
Tanner sat forward. ‘Tell me, man.’
His friend took a sip of his ale instead. Tanner drummed the table with his fingers while he waited. Pomroy placed the tankard down and brushed the moisture from his coat sleeves, merely to delay and to annoy Tanner.
‘I discovered.’ he finally began, pausing to give Tanner a teasing smirk ‘.that your friend is not welcome at several of the brothels in town.’
‘This is all?’ Tanner took another drink.
His friend waved a finger in the air. ‘Think of it. Why would a man be barred from a brothel?’
‘Not paying?’ Tanner ventured. ‘Emitting too great a stench?’
Pomroy shook his head. ‘He has been barred because of cruelty. He inflicts pain.’
Tanner recalled Greythorne’s eyes when his sword drew blood. He frowned. ‘I remember now. Morbery went to school with him. Told me once Greythorne passed around de Sade’s books and boasted of engaging in his practices.’ He halfway rose to his feet. ‘Perverted muckworm. I must take my leave, Pomroy. The devil is set to dine with her this night.’ He dug in his pocket for some coin, but sat back down. ‘Dash it. I’m spoken for tonight. Clarence again.’
‘Send the ever-faithful Flynn,’ drawled Pomroy.
The rain settled into a misty drizzle that Flynn did his best to ignore as he stood under the scant shelter of a tree bordering the Grove at Vauxhall. There were a few other hearty souls who had braved the weather to listen to Rose sing, but Flynn had not seen Greythorne among them.
He’d listened with alarm to what Tanner had told him about Greythorne. A devotee of the Marquis de Sade, the man who said ‘the only way to a woman’s heart is along the path of torment.’ Flynn knew the man’s works. De Sade’s books were more popular at Oxford than the texts they were meant to study. Flynn had read the forbidden volumes as assiduously as the other Oxford fellows. De Sade had a brilliant mind and a perverted soul; if Greythorne meant to practise his brand of pleasure on Rose, Flynn would stop him—no matter what he had to do to accomplish it.
As he listened to her, Flynn thought Rose’s singing altered. She sang with less emotion, less energy, perhaps due to the rain, or Greythorne, or strain from her voice lesson. He could tell she was attempting to put her newfound knowledge into practice, trying to breathe as they’d taught her, to sing the highest notes as they’d taught her, but she seemed self-conscious, as if fearing her knuckles would be rapped at any moment if she made an error.
He missed the undisguised pleasure that had come through in her voice before, but he well understood her determination to improve. His own ambition was as keen. They both burned with the need to rise high, as if achieving less than the highest meant total failure.
Flynn knew Tanner would let him open doors for Rose, like the one he’d opened for her at King’s Theatre. The marquess had the power to fulfil her dreams.
When she finished singing her last note and curtsied to the audience, the applause was nearly drowned out by the sound of the rain rustling through the leaves and hissing on the hot metal of the lamps’ reflectors. Flynn quickly made his way to the gazebo door. A few other admirers also gathered there.
He knocked on the door and gave his name and card to the servant who answered it. When he was admitted, he heard another not so fortunate fellow say, ‘How did he get in?’
The servant left him alone in the gazebo’s lower room, and a moment later Rose came rushing in, directly into his arms.
‘Oh, Flynn! I hoped you would come!’
He