“Will this do, Miss Gallant?”
“Yes, thank you.” She crossed the room and handed him the letter. “Please see that this is sent out at once.”
The tic he’d apparently acquired over the last few hours made his cheek twitch. “Lord Kilcairn said nothing was to leave the house without him seeing it first.”
She folded her arms, not the least bit surprised. The letter was more for him than for Emma Grenville, anyway. “I see. Please inform him, then, that Shakespeare has left him something to inspect in the corner.” Alexandra pointed.
He bowed and dragged the awestruck Bingham out of the room. “I’ll do that, Miss Gallant.”
After the footmen left, she wandered the edges of the cellar, searching for another errand on which to send her guards. Eventually they were bound to leave the door unlocked by accident. Her bored gaze settled on her prison’s single window. It was at the top of one wall, very small and obscured on the outside by garden vines, so that little light made it through to illuminate the cellar.
With another glance at the door, Alexandra dragged her dressing table’s chair to stand beneath the dim opening. By climbing up on the delicate filigree seat and balancing on her tiptoes, she could just reach the bottom of the casing. The builders hadn’t made it to open, blast it, but the wood frame gave a little when she jabbed it with her finger.
Climbing down again, she went looking for something with which to dig out the old wood. A table knife would have been perfect, but they’d already removed her luncheon tray. Lucien had been thorough in his search to collect and remove all possible weapons and escape implements.
With a grimace, she finished her circuit and sat in the chair. She could give in and let him do whatever he wished with her life, as he already did with everyone else around him. The years she’d worked to be independent and to be able to make her own way would be for nothing, though, if she allowed him to manage her life according to his own whims.
Alexandra stood and went to root in her trunk. Beneath the clothes and the shoes, she found what she was looking for—a decorative pin that had once been her mother’s. Flower petals rounded the top, but the bottom consisted of several nicely pointed stems. Lucien Balfour needed to learn one more lesson: surprising her and locking her in a cellar was one thing—keeping her there was another.
Lucien shed his coat and dropped it onto the bench beside Francis Henning. “Do you mind?” he asked, confiscating Henning’s rapier.
“No, of…of course not, Kilcairn. Have my mask, too.”
“No need.” Lucien flexed the blade, watching Robert Ellis’s bout with Monsieur Fancheau, the establishment’s owner and most-favored trainer.
“It’s the rules, Kilcairn,” Henning insisted. “Don’t want an eye gouged out, you know.”
“I am the gouger,” he said absently, waiting for Robert to notice him. “Not the gougee.”
“Ah. Is that French?”
“I doubt it.”
Lord Belton won the match and, breathing hard, removed his face mask. As his gaze met Lucien’s, he stiffened. “Kilcairn.”
“Care for a match?” Lucien asked.
“No.”
“I’ll let you win.”
The viscount whipped his rapier up and down, the air humming with the speed of the motion. “No more of your damned games.”
Murmurs began around the edges of the room. The more gossip he started, the more things he’d have to set right later. Lucien determinedly kept the smile on his face. “No games. I just need a word with you.”
Robert dropped his mask to the floor. “I don’t want to talk to you right now. I thought I was being fairly clear about that.”
So much for being proper and polite. Lucien swung his rapier across Robert’s path, stopping him. “Talk to me, anyway. And if you argue about it, I’ll beat you senseless and then talk to you. Is that fairly clear?”
For a moment he wasn’t certain which course the viscount would take, but with another hard glare Robert tossed down his weapon. “Outside.”
Lucien recovered his coat and waited while Robert shed his padded chest guard and collected his own coat and waistcoat. He then followed the younger man out to the front steps. He wasn’t certain exactly what had transpired last night, but obviously it truly troubled his friend. Though Robert’s anger didn’t affect him nearly as strongly as Alexandra’s, it bothered him, anyway. He scowled as he started down the steps. Apparently once one began developing a conscience, the damned thing could arise at any time, no matter how inconvenient.
“All right, I’m listening. What’s so bloody important, Kilcairn?”
“Rose was concerned that you left her soiree early last night, and that you appeared to be upset. Did she trounce on your toes during the waltz?”
Robert’s face paled. “I warned you. No games. I am not in the mood.”
