That wasn’t quite true. He argued with his mind as he paced the streets, avoiding drunks, whores, and the pleading calls of beggars. He felt almost drunk himself, exhaustion scrambling his thoughts. They were heavy and wisp-thin all at once, words and phrases and looks all falling over each other in his memory.
“You humiliated me, Jack,”and,“How dare you!”
Good God, Lucy with tears in her eyes. Lucy defeated, shoulders slumped. And it was all his doing. Some friend he was!
He looked up as someone shouted his name, grimacing as he recognised Warde and some others of his acquaintance. They were all bleary-faced and bosky. Warde in particular looked well and truly foxed, his arm on a friend’s shoulder, his grin lopsided. The brothels and theatres of Drury Lane weren’t far from here.
“Ho, Orton, well met, fair traveller. You’ve returned to us, have you?” Warde’s voice was loud with drink. “You’ve finished sprinkling your largesse over all the land—a chestnut or pair here, a hunting lodge there. Much obliged to you, sir!”
Jack inclined his head curtly to the group. “Warde. Leighton. Gentlemen.”
Leighton, the only clear-eyed one of the group, gave him a look that was as much amusement as sympathy.
“And now I hear you’ve liberated the fair Caroline Sedgewick too,” continued Warde. “Come, drink with us, celebrate your boon!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Hasn’t there been a shift in your loyalties? It was Miss Fanshaw you followed around the whole of Somerset House.”
“She’s an old friend. New to the city. It’s my duty to look out for her.”
“Ah. Of course. And as an old friend, perhaps you know the terms she stands on with her aunt?”
“Not wholly.”
Warde laughed, a dark edge to it. “Come now, Orton.Weare old friends too. It’s why I’m a little hurt you’re interfering in the sport of men who are…ah…far more in need of the prey than you. Though I suppose you now have your own reasons for preferring the heiress to Caro. Money is the perfume that makes any girl sweet, eh?”
Jack’s jaw tensed.
Warde leant forwards, grinning. “You have to admit even those awful freckles are prettier than the King’s Bench. And the figure she’s got is full enough. Blow out the candles, no need to look, I could easily find my way around her in the dark.”
Jack moved quicker than thought, but someone stepped between him and Warde. An iron grip circled his upper arm, and a seemingly invincible force marched him halfway down the street, Warde’s laughter echoing behind him.
“If you really are looking out for the lady,” came Leighton’s low voice in his ear, though Jack could hardly hear it over the hammering of his heart, “you’ll do a better job of it alive. Warde never fights fair. Besides…” He let Jack go with a not-unfriendlyshove. “The devil owes me two hundred guineas. And I mean to collect while he’s still breathing.”
Leighton left Jack with a rough pat on the shoulder, strolling unconcernedly back to his friends, who were already beginning to move off in the other direction. Jack took several deep breaths, rage thudding in his ears, blurring his vision. But was it any wonder he worried about Lucy’s safety when the world was full of rogues like Warde? He knew what men could be. He’d moved freely in every circle of society. In his wilder years, he’d seen some of the very worst.
Jack flexed his fingers, taking another deep breath, easing the tension from his body. He tugged his cuffs straight, smoothed his coat front. Lucy had no idea what men could be, and wasn’t it a gentleman’s prerogative to protect a woman? That’s what he’d always been taught. That’s what all good society agreed upon.
But…“I’d go mad, Jack. If I can’t create the things I want to, I’d go mad…”
The ghost of Lucy’s despair haunted him as he turned and walked resolutely away, Warde’s sniggers ringing in his ears.
If Lucy followed her heart, the spiteful gossips and rogues would win. But if she didn’t, they’d also win, wouldn’t they? Because Lucy would be miserable. Like a prisoner, she’d said.
Wasn’thealready chafing and angry because he no longer had the freedom to spend money however he wished? He had to be careful now, circumspect, think and judge and weigh every move. He felt vulnerable in a way he’d never done before. Watched and judged, and God, he felttrappedwhen he really thought about it, a great choking worry forever around his throat, almost every avenue cut off. Might that be how Lucy felt when the world told her no, she mustn’t do what she so desperately wanted to do?
He saw her again, standing outside Thornton’s, the tremor in her voice, her shoulders rigid. And that was his fault. Even now,as he itched to take the memory of her in his arms and soothe all that frustration and despair away, he knew it was his fault…
But how to help her?
If, by some miracle, it were possible to go back in time to the moment he left Cotton at the Cocoa Tree, how could he have helped her? Because devil take it, the gears in his brain had finally turned and the answer they presented was so obvious he could have shot himself in irritation.
Protecting Lucy meant protecting her dreams and freedoms. If she was determined upon this path and he couldn’t protect her reputation, then he could still try to protecther, herself, all the things that made her who she was, and for Lucy, that was her art and her dreams and her peculiar stout determination to do what she thought was right, no matter how Jack or anyone else tempted or teased her otherwise.
It was time he listened.
It was time he helped.
