It was all so confounding.
An odd, unfamiliar tightness pressed down on her chest, and Pen increased the pace, as if to outrun it. She ran across the street, around the curve into Bond Street—and crashed with great momentum into a hard body. Both tumbled down.
She landed on top of the other person, buffered from the hard ground, yet the impact knocked the wind out of her. Their heads clashed, and she saw stars.
“Oof,” both said simultaneously.
For a moment she remained lying on top of the creature she’d so expertly felled, catching her breath.
“My dear fellow,” a voice gasped underneath, “no doubt it will occur to you to remove your body from mine in your own good time.”
Pen scrambled off and sat on the ground. “I apologise,” she blurted out. “I didn’t do it on purpose. It was an accident. Truly. Are you hurt?”
The man sat up and held his head. “You certainly have a head made of marble. Good heavens! My own seems to have split in half, and I may have cracked a rib or two while cushioning you from the ground, but otherwise I seem to be intact.”
He pulled himself up with a grimace. He was a head taller than Pen. His hat had toppled off, exposing blond hair, which was now slightly dishevelled from the fall. The man’s shirt points were a tad too high, his cravat extravagantly tied, his tailcoat expertly cut.
Pen gulped. This was no ordinary man. There was no doubt this was a gentleman from polite society. He was too well-dressed, too athletic. An Exquisite. A Pink of theton.
“Do you demand satisfaction?” Pen blurted out. Oh dear, why did she have to say that? Clearly, her brain must be infested with maggots.
The man seemed to think so as well. He picked up his hat and stick and paused. “Satisfaction? My dear —” His eyes ran down her wardrobe, taking in her dusty, ill-fitting suit and haphazardly tied cravat. “… fellow,” he ended weakly.
Pen felt a flush crawl over her cheeks.
“No doubt you are new in town?” the man drawled, raising an eyebrow. “Mister…?”
“It really isn’t any of your business.” Pen said gruffly. Her embarrassment made her rude.
He raised his second eyebrow. “Pardon me, but you have made it my business by fairly blowing the wind out of my sails. The last time a person managed to do that was Gentleman Jackson himself.”
“And I apologised.” Pen felt intimidated that he’d boxed with Gentleman Jackson, the legendary boxer. Even she had heard of him.
“So you did,” the man mused, taking a pinch of snuff. He offered some to her. Pen shook her head. He pocketed his silver snuffbox. “May I not enquire about the identity of the person who’s so expertly felled me?”
“Pen Kumari.”
She picked up her hat and jammed it back on her head. It had been an ugly specimen to begin with, but now it was completely dented out of shape. The gentleman followed each of her moves with interest.
“Where are you from, Pen Kumari?”
He turned a pair of heavy-lidded eyes at her that somehow seemed more alert than they appeared. That simple question threw her into confusion.
“I’m from… around,” she said lamely, aware that she was being unaccountably rude to the tulip.
“Around.” The corners of his lips twitched. “Aren’t we all? Are you mayhap from India?”
She rolled her eyes. Always the same question. Always the same assumption. Her first impulse was to ignore it. Even though her mother had been Indian and her father British, she’d never identified with either nationality. She was neither. She was both. She didn’t know herself what she was. But people tended not to understand. They wanted, no, theyneededto classify her. Put her in a box with a label.
Well, Pen refused to be labelled. But explaining that to people daily was rather tiresome.
“Bikaner,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “I’m from Bikaner.”
That was half the truth, but he needn’t know that. She was certain he did not know where Bikaner was, and she would not tell him, either.
“Pen Kumari from Bikaner. How extraordinarily interesting.” He twirled a stick with a golden handle. It was very fashionable.
Pen threw him a sharp look. Was he laughing at her?
But no. He bowed elegantly. “Alworth, at your service.”
This made her feel even more uncouth. She nodded curtly. “Well. I need to go. As I said, I am sorry for the, er, accident. But no harm done.”
Pen backed away. She felt his gaze pierce her shoulder blades.
She fled.
