Chapter Twenty Two #2
A piercing screech burned through the air. “You’ve broken my nose!”
Grace’s brows lifted in surprise. Had that been Lord Latimer’s voice, so very high and tinged with panic? On impulse she let her partner’s hand fall from hers, turned to investigate. Through the teeming crowd, she caught only fragments, glimpses of the commotion.
Two bodies upon the floor, one crouched above another which lay supine. A sickening thud as flesh connected. A seething roar crested over the din, interspersed with bone-rattling strikes. “You”—thud—“don’t speak”—pound—“her name!”
Henry? It couldn’t be.
And yet it was. Latimer whimpered as blood poured from his nose, and Henry struck him again, wrenching yet another mewling, pathetic sound from the man sprawled across the floor.
Henry snarled into the wide, terrified eyes of his prey, “You don’t look at her.
” Another devastating blow. “You don’t speak to her.
” A wicked, unexpected assault on Lord Latimer’s midsection, which drew the man’s hands away from his wounded face.
“I won’t!” Latimer whined. “I won’t; I’m sorry! Miss Seymour—”
“On second thought,” Henry growled, pulling back his fist once again, “don’t speak of her at all.”
He’d been brawling on her account? Grace’s hands fisted in the smooth satin of her skirts, palms abruptly gone clammy beneath the thin cloth of her evening gloves. What in the world had come over him? Had he taken leave of his senses? Abandoned all concern for his reputation?
He would be lucky to find himself invited anywhere at all after making such a spectacle of himself.
Her heart skipped into a frenzied rhythm as she turned, weaving nimbly through the press of bodies to the circle of her family at the side of the room. “Uncle Chris,” she called breathlessly as she drew near enough at last to tug upon his arm. “A little help, if you please?”
Uncle Chris, who had been peering through the crowd to glimpse the spectacle from a safe distance, drew his attention away from it only long enough to ask, “What for? ‘E seems to be doing well enough on ‘is own. Got to say, Gracie, I never would ‘ave thought ‘is lordship ‘ad it in ‘im.”
“They’ll kill each other!”
“Each other?” Uncle Chris echoed incredulously.
“Latimer ain’t even puttin’ up a fight, Gracie.
” He blew out a breath. “Looks worse than it is, anyway. Noses bleed like mad. Got to commend Lockhart for it, though. ‘E knows how to throw a punch. And besides, Latimer well deserves it.” Not to his credit, he sounded very nearly proud. Surprised, even, as if Henry had revealed some facet of character that Uncle Chris had thought he’d lacked.
For brawling in the middle of a crowded ballroom! Unbelievable. Men were the most obnoxious and irrational of creatures.
“Uncle Chris,” Grace hissed insistently.
“Oh, all right, then,” he grumbled, slanting her an irritated glance, plainly less than pleased to be called to break up a fight he’d been enjoying.
“If you insist. Can’t do it alone, though—my knee, you know.
” Uncle Chris lifted his cane, jabbed the end of it into the small of Anthony’s back.
“Come wiv me, and grab whoever else you can,” he said.
“Gracie wants us to rescue ‘er lord for some fool reason.”
“He’s not my lord,” Grace gritted out between the clench of her teeth, though nobody seemed to mark her words as they pressed through the crowd in the service of reaching Henry. She watched as Uncle Rafe seized Henry’s right arm on the backswing, holding it tight as Anthony reached for the other.
“Damn you, let go!” Henry snarled, yanking at his arm, his bloodied hand flexing into a fist.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” Uncle Rafe said pleasantly as he tightened his grip on Henry’s arm. “That’s quite enough excitement for one evening.”
Henry gave another reflexive jerk, his breath coming in rough pants, his jaw taut and tense.
There was the odd hiss of metal on metal as Uncle Chris withdrew the sword concealed within his cane. In the light, the sheen of silver was briefly blinding as Uncle Chris deftly maneuvered the point of it just beneath Henry’s chin. “That’s enough now, Lockhart,” he said smoothly.
The fire that glowed within the glacial blue of Henry’s eyes suggested he strenuously disagreed.
Even on his knees and with both arms now restrained, still he projected an air of such menace that Latimer whimpered and cowered, hiding his bloodied face behind his trembling fingers.
“I’m not finished with him,” Henry said spitefully.
“Gracie says ye are,” Uncle Chris said, his voice inflected with boredom. “I’d listen, were I you.”
That had calmed him down a fraction. Just enough that he took note at last of the gleaming metal notched beneath his chin, of the dozens of curious—and shocked—onlookers.
Of Latimer, still splayed upon the floor, cringing and whimpering in fear.
Latimer’s face had not been the only thing to take a nasty beating.
His pride had suffered as well. Perhaps even a fraction of the respect he would otherwise have been due owing to his standing in society, which he would likely find somewhat diminished now that dozens of people had borne witness to his sound trouncing.
She could almost feel sorry for him. Almost, but not quite. Latimer had been deserving of a good thrashing for a long while. But Henry, of all people, ought to have known better than to do it here. What had he been thinking?
“All right,” Henry grumbled at last, in surly assent. “All right, then.”
Uncle Chris shook his head in exasperation as he slid his sword back into its sheath, concealing it once more within his cane. “Heave ‘im up, then, and don’t let ‘im go. Don’t quite trust that look in ‘is eye. We’re going to haul ‘is arse outside.”
Probably he was right not to let Henry free just yet; there was still an unaccountably feral glint to his eyes.
Grace would have given it even odds that he’d dive straight back into pummeling Latimer once more, had they let him go.
She curled her hand over Uncle Chris’ arm.
“What will you do with him?” she whispered.
“Same thing I’d do with any other fellow who’d just beaten the piss out of a particularly deserving son of a bitch,” he said as he straightened the cuffs of his sleeves and fisted the head of his cane once more in his hand. “I’m going to buy ‘im a damned drink.”