Chapter Seven #2
“I said,” Alan said, a little testily now as the crowd roared around them, another fight about to commence, “you lost focus there. I wonder why.”
His gaze fell heavily on the woman between them.
Lawrence smiled weakly. Well, what was he supposed to say? How could he deny it?
“I am quite well,” he said to Julia, ignoring the throbbing pain in his side and the sense he had bitten his own tongue.
“Come, you need fresh air, you cannot possibly stay here,” she said, slipping her hand into his.
Lawrence stared down at their hands, his hand and hers. Entangled so naturally, so easily, it was like breathing. No one had ever taken his hand before.
“Madgwick, I really—”
“I’ll see you later, Alan,” Lawrence found himself saying as he was led carefully by the hand that felt so warm in his. “Tomorrow.”
“But Lawrence—”
“I really shouldn’t go with you,” murmured Lawrence to the woman who so expertly weaved her way through the crowd, Alan’s words disappearing behind them.
It was outrageous, really. He had a job to do. There was no point in being here, undercover, if he was going to permit himself to wander off in the middle of bouts.
Yet how could he deny what was happening right now?
Oh, not the fact that he was leaving with Julia.
As they stepped out onto the street, the fresh air filled his lungs.
But that wasn’t what he was most conscious of.
No, it was the way his heart was beating rapidly, how irregular it had become.
No amount of fighting, of twists and turns in the ring, created this sense of heady giddiness, of joy, of almost… euphoria.
Julia grinned. “You may thank me for rescuing you later.”
“I think I’ll thank you now,” Lawrence said honestly, breathing in the admittedly less fresh air than he had supposed. A horse had recently done its business just a few feet away. “But I cannot permit you to—”
“I did not ask your permission, so you do not need to give it,” Julia said quietly, her smile softening, but if anything, becoming more mischievous. “Come on.”
It did not occur to Lawrence to inquire where they were going. It did not appear, in fact, that Julia knew. At least, he could not imagine she frequented these streets often, not with her breeding.
And so they meandered. Only after about a minute did Lawrence realize, with some sadness, that Julia had released her hand from his grip. The fact she had immediately slipped it into his arm was small comfort.
“That’s a bit better. Somewhere you can walk it off. Now, Lawrence, tell me,” said Julia finally, as they promenaded along a street that was a little more reputable. “How do you make a living?”
He had to laugh. “Does it ever occur to you that you ask the most inappropriate questions?”
She looked up into his eyes, and Lawrence’s stomach lurched as his gaze met hers. A twist in his soul, a heartbeat skipped over, and he looked away.
He was not falling in—no. That was nonsense. He had more important things to be doing that finding young ladies attractive!
If only he could persuade his mind not to notice the gentle swell of her breasts, the curve of her cheek as she laughed, the way she had pressed her lips against his own…
“Yes, I am rather forward,” Julia said with a dry laugh. “My mother, she…she always…”
And just like that, the light within her went out.
Lawrence almost stumbled, his attention was so wholly focused on the woman beside him rather than where his feet should be going.
It was astounding. Never before had he seen such an immediate change. All at once, the glow of excitement within her disappeared, the joy she had been radiating was gone.
Now a woman who was but a shell of the Julia he was getting to know walked beside him, head lowered, eyes downcast.
Lawrence swallowed. He had never…well. He had bedded many a woman, but actually courting?
Not that this was—oh hell’s bells.
How was he supposed to ask what had clouded her heart, when she thought him naught but a man who fought for a living?
“I-I win a percentage of the gambling takings,” he said quietly. “And I’m paid for each fight. A penny for a loss. A shilling for a win.”
Julia looked up, her eyes bright with unshed tears that Lawrence could not understand. What had her mother said?
“And is that enough?”
Lawrence laughed dryly. Enough? Dear God, he spent more in candles in a month at Penshaw Place than he was earning a week at the moment.
Thank goodness Alan had taught him a few ways to make the pennies go further.
“I survive,” he said cagily. His curiosity prodded him to ask, “You were about to say something about your mother, just then.”
And there it was again. There had been a brief spark of interest as he had explained his—temporary—income, but the moment he mentioned her mother, it was gone.
Julia shook her head as she looked away at the pavement on the other side of the street. “It’s nothing.”
Lawrence bit down the instinct to immediately say it was certainly not nothing, and that he wanted to hear all about it. All about her. Know her dreams and hopes and pressures. Understand what she loved and what she reviled. Hear the whispers of her heart.
Because there was surely something deeper here, something about her that—
“Mothers,” said Julia darkly, “always have plans, don’t they?”
Her eyes blazed with a sort of anger Lawrence had never seen before. His breath caught in his throat, his entire being attuned to her frustration, though what she could possibly be frustrated about he could not tell.
After all, she was a well-dressed, well-spoken lady. She evidently had much independence, or else she would never have made her way to the Almonry Den in the first place.
Her brother was a little…lax, Lawrence thought ruefully. But then who was he to judge? He had left his own sister for six months, and she had little idea where he was.
“I don’t really know,” he said honestly, for it was quite clear by the look on Julia’s face that she was expecting a reply. “My mother died when she gave birth to my sister, I was only a few years old.”
The anger in Julia’s face softened. “I am sorry.”
He shrugged. “I used to think one could not miss what one did not know, but now I am not so sure. Plenty of men have mothers—I mean, everyone does, obviously—but many of us are raised without mothers. If yours is…overbearing…”
It had been a guess, that was all, but Lawrence was almost certain he was correct—and Julia’s dry laugh seemed to confirm it.
“Overbearing is not quite the right word,” she said dryly as they stepped around a corner, their pace slowing as their conversation continued.
“I mean, yes, mothers surely have a right to dictate some of their children’s lives—not that I suppose you would know much about that.
You chart your own course, choose your own destiny. ”
Julia’s voice was almost wistful, but Lawrence stiffened. What had she guessed? Had he been too polite, too formal? Had there been a mannerism as yet undetected that had betrayed him?
“What do you mean?”
She smiled softly. “Why, just that you are a man. Men do not get told what to do, where to go, who to—but hark at me, wittering on. You don’t want to hear that.”
Lawrence acted instinctively. “Yes, I do.”
He had halted, and thanks to his grip on her arm, had halted her, too. Julia stared, almost nervously, but that was his own fault. His gaze darted down to her lips, and a hint of longing must have shown on his face.
He wanted her. God knew how he should not even be touching her now, how he should be back in that ring fighting for his life and looking for a killer.
But here, with Julia…
“And what would you be doing, if you were not fighting? As a boxer, I mean?”
Lawrence swallowed. Ah. Now that was an interesting question. “Do?”
Julia nodded. “Everyone has to earn a living—at least, if not a gentleman.”
This was the trouble with a cover story like his, Lawrence thought darkly. He and Alan had not considered much beyond the fact that he had left the north needing work, and had found it at the Almonry Den.
He had not expected conversations to reach any sort of depth that would require more.
“Lawrence?”
“I—I suppose I would be working,” Lawrence invented wildly, trying not to think of the truth. Dancing at Almack’s, gambling at the Old Duke’s, trying not to get caught in a mama’s scheme to marry… “Working. Yes.”
The trouble was, Julia was not that foolish. She smiled. “You’re hiding something.”
Lawrence stiffened. “So are you.”
The answer came to his lips without conscious thought, but the arrow evidently hit home.
Julia laughed, then turned and started walking, her arm still slipped in his. “Who isn’t?”