He added this last little bit just for himself. Hehadbeen the hero, after all. He deserved a tiny reward, didn’t he?
The earl rounded on Lady Clio, perhaps thinking her the weaker target. She was, after all, still massaging her brow like she felt an almighty headache coming on. Hector hadn’t thought to ask her if she’d bumped her head in the accident, but he suspected that this particular pain was manmade, not brought on by a physical ailment.
“So, this is what you settled for?” he demanded. “Some bit of rough is good enough for you when I was not? He’s not even a whole man!”
He gestured at Hector’s leg.
Lady Clio was not so easily cowed.
“Haven’t you been hit enough times for one day, Gwanton?” she demanded. “You’re practically inviting another beating—and from a man who just lifted a full-grown woman out of a carriage with just the strength of his arms.”
Shedidn’topenly call him an idiot, but it was very clearly implied.
“Wait,” Hector said. It felt a little strange to put himself on the same team as the princess, but he found herfarless objectionable than this Gwanton creature. “Didyouhit him?”
She shrugged, which, to his irritation, made him like her just a little bit.
“Since you’ve already been pummeled by a girl today, I’ll spare your pride and not deliver another beating myself,” he offered magnanimously. “Besides, it would be unsporting of me to beat a man with your … deficits.”
“Mydeficits?” Gwanton demanded, glaring at Hector’s leg.
“Aye,” Hector agreed amiably. “It is clear that I was wrong—I’m man enough to admit it—and the aristocracyhasturned you into a complete imbecile.”
“Aye,” Gwanton mimicked in a poor imitation of Hector’s accent. “Listen to you. You think that I’m supposed to believe that some provincial scum with a ruined leg and a rough accent is … a duke …”
Hector saw it the moment the pieces all fit together in Gwanton’s mind.
His eyes went wide.
“Holy hell,” he said. “You’re the Duke of Metford. The Broken Duke.”
Hector felt the weight of that label, the one that he knew his brother was spreading around England as fast as he could, land heavily upon him.
“You know,” he told Gwanton casually, “I wasn’t even going to hit you.”
And then he landed a punch that knocked the man straight into the muck of the filthy London street.
The earl was too stupid to know when he was beaten; he pushed himself back to his feet, shaking his head in a telltale way that told Hector that his ears were ringing, and then took a clumsy swing in Hector’s direction.
Hector dodged, then brought his walking stick down on Gwanton’s back as the earl lunged past. This knocked Gwanton down again.
“Will you stop it?” Lady Clio shouted at them. She had to raise her voice over the jeering of the onlookers. “You’re causing a spectacle. Besides, it’s unfair to hit someone weaker than you.”
Gwanton glared up at her, blood staining his teeth. “He seems to be holding his own.”
Lady Clio looked disgusted. “Nothim, you idiot. You’re the weaker one.”
“But—his leg—” Gwanton said, the words a whine.
“I’d have to have both my hands lame before I lost a fight to the likes of you,” Hector said. But he didn’t hit him again … and not only because Lady Clio reached out a hand to stop him from giving Gwanton one last whack with his stick, to remind him of his manners.
“It will cause a great deal of unpleasantness if you kill him,” she said. “You’d probably be doing the world a service, but the talk would be very irksome.”
She was using a calm tone, but Hector recognized that there was a real warning in her tone. He didn’t think himself particularly close to actually killing Gwanton—he’d been careful enough with his blows that the man wouldn’t suffer from more than abrutal headache and a bruised shoulder—but he supposed it was unkind to beat a man who could barely get back to his feet, no matter how odious he was.
“Fine,” he said, snatching his stick back from Lady Clio. “He isn’t worth the bother, anyway.”
“You’ll see no arguments from me,” she said.
