“Hold your hands like this,” he said, and lifted his fists so they partially blocked his face.
She tried to focus on what he was saying and doing and lifted her hands to copy him as best she could. “Like this?”
He stepped forward and adjusted her gently, lifting one hand, setting the other at a different angle. Then he touched her clenched fist, cupping it with his big hand.
“Your only problem is that you shouldn’t trap your thumbs. Here, remove them.”
“Why?” she asked as she tried to keep her breath while he helped her.
“Because if you threw a hard enough punch, you could break the bone and you definitely don’t want to do that.”
She winced at the thought. “My brother said boxing was violent.”
“It’s a combat sport,” Sebastian said with a small smile. “So yes, it’s violent. But in the best matches there is great respect. A desire to compete well with a good opponent. Friendships can be made in the ring more often than broken.”
“Men are so odd,” Marianne said with a sigh.
“Are we?” Sebastian laughed. “How so?”
“IfIwere to punch another lady, I doubt we would be friends,” Marianne said.
He tilted his head back and laughed, the sound working through her body in unexpected ways. Ways that made her tingle. “I suppose not. I’m having a hard time picturing you throwing a punch at some lady’s head.”
“I hope not, as that is what you’re to teach me to do.”
He lifted his brows. “Oh, is that your true purpose, my dear? To rampage through Society, knocking out beauties left and right?”
She smiled, but there was a faint sting in her chest. “Can you imagine? I would be well and fully shunned then. They’d have every excuse to stop inviting me to their soirees.”
“You think they don’t want you there?”
“I’m a reminder that failure is a possibility for every lady,” she said, and saw the flicker of pity in his stare. She recoiled from it. “Honestly, this cannot be an interesting topic to you, Sebastian. Won’t you show me what to do next?”
He hesitated for a moment, as if he wanted to say something else to her, but then he nodded. “Of course.”
For the next half an hour he showed her various punches, letting her practice the moves of them over and over in the air. Though she felt awkward at first, as she had always been taught not to move her body too broadly, never to take up too much space, as she became accustomed to doing so she found it…liberating.
He smiled after a while. “Why don’t we take a break? Rest your arms before the next part in the lesson.”
She shook out her tingling limbs. “That’s likely a good idea.”
He motioned to a sideboard along the back wall of the room and she flushed as she realized a tea set was waiting there. She’d been so wrapped up, she hadn’t realized anyone had come in with it. He poured her a cup and she drank it greedily.
“This sort of exertion really parches a person,” she said, watching him over the lip of the cup.
“Indeed it does,” he murmured but didn’t meet her eyes.
She cleared her throat. “I wanted to…ask you something.”
He did look at her then. “About what you’ve learned?”
She shifted with discomfort. “Not exactly. You said something earlier and I-I shouldn’t question you about it, but I find I must.”
“That sounds dire.” Sebastian held out a hand toward two chairs before the window, faced out to look at the view. She took one and focused on the green expanse outside rather than her companion. She didn’t want to see his pity again.
“When I arrived, you told me you were my friend,” she said. “But that…that isn’t true, is it?”
“You don’t think of me as a friend?” he asked, and there was hesitation in his tone.
