Adrian gratefully headed toward a wooden stand where a dozen swords were kept, carefully putting his back among them.
“I heard you had a duel recently,” Caizo mentioned then. “But you chose pistols. That’s what happens when you skip practice!”
“Not at all, Maestro. If I chose swords, I would have sliced him to ribbons. The man was too inept to lose a proper fencing bout without damage. Whereas with a pistol, I simply aim to the left, miss him by a mile, and the demands of honor are met.”
“Ah, that makes sense. But a pity all the same. Guns have no elegance, no heritage. Any man can pick up a gun and fire it.”
“I believe that’s the goal.” Adrian had once harbored a desire to join the army, drawn to the image of glorious battle and serving bravely and all the sorts of things young boys believed. His father roundly refused to pay for a commission and his mother told Adrian that she’d throw herself into the sea if he ever put on a uniform.
It wasn’t until he was older that he learned that his own father’s poor health had been the result of a campaign in the American wilderness during hostilities between the British forces and an upstart bunch of colonists. He’d been shot, suffering a punctured lung at the tender age of eighteen. He’d lived (surprising everyone but his fiancée back home). However, he’d never been fully healthy since then, and when a particularly nasty winter brought pneumonia to his lungs, he couldn’t fight it off. He’d grown thinner and weaker, until he was just a shadow of himself, an old man in a massive bed. Adrian visited him every day, listening to his father’s whispered words, but at the end, he’d actually grown scared of his father’s form. Was it possible that such a strong man could be reduced to this? Was this the fate of everyone?
Perhaps that revelation was part of what spurred Adrian to his hedonistic ways. After all, his bad behavior started not long before his father’s death. He’d left childhood behind and plunged directly into a very adult world. And for the most part, he had survived it.
Adrian returned home to bathe and dress for the evening, though he found himself strangely at loose ends—London offered a buffet of amusements for gentleman who could pay, and Adrian couldn’t think of a single one that appealed to him at the moment.
So he made his way to his favorite club, not having made any decision about how he ought to spend the rest of his evening. He had time. Like many gentlemen of his class, Adrian considered the social “evening” to last until dawn streaked the sky.
At the club, he slid into a comfortable chair near one of the fireplaces, and sipped a very fine brandy while he stared into the flames. As Adrian was known to be prone to bouts of moodiness, not a single man there would have thought his introspection odd. But in fact, he was thinking along very different lines than usual. Lines of thought that were heavily colored with rose…
Later, perhaps three brandies later, a voice broke into his musings. “Norbury, are you plotting something really nefarious?”
At that question, Adrian looked up from his seat at the club to see none other than Carlos de la Guerra looming over him, which Carlos could only do because Adrian was sitting—he was a good three inches taller than his friend. Unusually, Carlos wasn’t smiling. Instead, his normally merry brown eyes held a spark of concern.
“What gives you that idea?” Adrian asked. “And what took you so long to get here?” Carlos usually dropped by the club earlier, knowing Adrian often hid out there when the social demands of London became too annoying, which was to say nearly every evening.
Carlos replied, “I’m late getting here because I’ve been getting stopped left and right by men wanting to know the latest about you, which of course they assume I’m privy to.”
That was a fair assumption, because Carlos was probably Adrian’s closest friend. It was an odd pairing, to be sure. Adrian was a son of aristocracy and close to the cream of English society. Carlos was…not. He was wellborn in his way, the child of wealthy landowners near Santo Domingo on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. After all, the two had met at Eton. He was educated and skilled, as likely to be reading a book or sailing his own ship to ports on his family’s business.
However, Adrian happened to know that the de la Guerra family business was only partially legitimate. Yes, they were importers and exporters of goods. Santo Domingo relied upon importation to supply many things the islanders simply could not produce on their own. And in turn the de la Guerra family fleet loaded up what Santo Domingo did produce, namely tobacco and beef, and sold it in European ports.
What also got bought and sold in those parts was none of Adrian’s business. Carlos often hinted that he knew far more about the smuggling trade than any upright citizen should. But as Adrian didn’t rely on taxes on goods for his income, he didn’t care at all if smuggling was alive and active on the English coast. As long as Carlos watched his back and didn’t get himself killed, all was well.
“There’s been chatter tonight of you pursuing some sweet little deaf maiden. I thought it sounded like a lot of nonsense. Didn’t you just duel against the Earl of Tindell over a few indiscreet letters?”
Adrian waved a hand to indicate his disdain. “The affair with Victoria ended two years ago. Unfortunately, it seems a spiteful servant just happened to find some of my letters to her, and just happened to moved them to Tindell’s study, who just happened to be already irate about his dwindling finances. Sometimes a man loses his sense of proportion, and Tindell dealt with his problems by insisting on fighting with me. A matter of honor, as he put it. I chose pistols to keep things simple.”
“So you deliberately missed him? Good,” Carlos said, sitting down across from his friend.
“I think he was so happy to not be dead at the end of the duel that he’ll be content to live quietly for a while.” Adrian paused, reflecting. “In all honesty, I’ve been mostly respectable for years now.”
“Yes, but everyone still recalls your past. Anyway, I’m glad you’re not dallying with debutantes fresh from the schoolroom.”
“She’s a couple years out of the schoolroom,” Adrian said thoughtlessly.
“Then there is a deaf maiden?” Carlos put his drink down, his expression alarmed.
“Miss Blake is blind, not deaf.”
“Wait, you really are seducing a virgin?”
Adrian glared at him. “The ton must be completely starved for gossip if this rates as a scandal. I met her by chance yesterday, and quite liked her. But it was only a dance. I’ll probably never even see her again.” Except that he’d called on her once, and already told her he’d call on her again…twice more than he usually allotted for misses on the marriage mart.
“Well, glad it’s just a rumor, especially after…well, let’s not get into it. Now come on. I’ve had a hankering for a game of cards.”
Adrian and Carlos left the club, searching out livelier entertainment. They found the card games they sought, amid the gaming hells that offered gamblers every game of chance imaginable, from a simple round of vingt-et-un to wagers on the latest boxing matches, cockfights, and more obscure bets. Adrian once saw a pool on when the Theatre Royal would catch on fire next. Some men would gamble on anything.
He preferred cards, and so did Carlos. They spent a few hours at the tables, Adrian losing a little and not minding it at all. His family had enough money that he rarely thought about money, truly an indicator of his lucky position in life. Carlos won a little and looked quite pleased about it.
