Chapter 13 #2
“Manelli.” Dorsey put up his sword. “We were just talking about you.”
About how Cerys was instructed to manipulate him for the benefit of the company. How much had he overheard?
She glanced at his face, his jaw set, brow creased. All of it. He’d heard all of it.
“May I?” He walked to the pile of stage foils Dorsey had just inspected.
Dorsey watched him warily. He never liked letting outsiders see behind the stage curtain. “Put the blossom on if you mean to use a sword. I can’t have my actors sliced up. We’ve a matinee to perform at Thompson’s Spa tomorrow, soon as the scaffolding’s in place.”
“Then let us hope it will not rain.” Dante tested two of the swords, then chose one and attached the small protective button to the tip.
“You are abroad early,” Cerys observed, although the day had fully broken and most people who earned their way through the world were awake and moving about in it. Only those with the luxury of wealth could lie abed till noon and count on servants to bring their breakfast.
Dante aspired to the rank of gentleman, but nothing about him seemed to suit that distinction that men seemed to guard so jealously.
He didn’t have the soft, rounded shape of the over-fed.
He was well-built and powerful, and as he made a few practice lunges and feints, she could see he was all muscle.
He didn’t have the indolent manner of a lordling, either; he had the sharp, brooding stare of a hawk.
Instead of lying about at his leisure, he was abroad at daybreak like a man of industry.
He worked with his mind as well as his hands.
He earned his own way in the world. He could wear a fine coat and a starched neckcloth to dinner and cut his meat with all the tidiness of one trained to high circles, yet he seemed perfectly at his ease here with them, a ragbag of actors who had come from all stations of life and followed a trade generally considered far less respectable than his own.
“’E’s not a gentleman,” Meek observed, echoing Dorsey.
“That is true, Master—?” Dante stepped into the group, foil pointing toward the ground. He knew how to hold it properly, Cerys noted.
“That’s Meek.” Dorsey pointed with his sword.
“You played the melodies,” Dante said. “They were well done.”
“His own compositions,” Dorsey said. “That’s Fred.”
“Fortinbras.”
“And other roles as assigned. Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir.” Fred simply nodded from his seat, the surest sign they didn’t consider Manelli above them.
“And this is Kiddell,” Dorsey indicated.
Dante lifted his sword in salute. “An excellent Laertes. I enjoyed your impatience with your father’s lengthy speech.”
“He will be a windbag,” Kiddell said, making his own salute. “I already know to mine own self be true.”
“Touché,” Cerys murmured. “Mr. Manelli, do you mean to join our exercise? Stage fighting is different from a regular duel.”
“So I would imagine. But I cannot bear to see a lady undefended.”
“She’s no lady,” Kiddell scoffed.
“Speaking of ladies.” Dorsey made a lazy thrust, testing Dante’s form. “Have any sway with Lady Baeccon? She made a big show of putting down blunt on our theater if the crowd liked our show. Well, I say they liked us well enough, so time to make good on her promise, aye?”
“I have no influence with her ladyship,” Dante answered. “But I have known her to break a promise or three, so while I share your disappointment, I cannot say I am surprised.”
He said this so blandly. This from a man who had looked like he’d had his guts ripped out when Bathsheba Baeccon walked into the parlor only a few days before. He’d strengthened his mask.
Or he had less reason to be susceptible to her wiles. Was that the reason?
He glanced at Cerys. “Have you asked Miss Evans to approach her ladyship? She seems the sort who knows how to be persuasive.”
Cerys scowled at him. He had indeed been listening in on their conversation, without their knowledge. How uncouth.
“I cannot imagine why,” Cerys said, “but Lady Baeccon seems quite set on refusing to be charmed by me.”
“I cannot imagine why, either.” He watched Dorsey’s approach. “Where did you learn your tactics? Angelo’s?”
“The school of Angelo’s.” Dorsey gave a smug grin, throwing back his shoulders.
“From reading the book.” Kiddell snorted.
Dorsey shrugged. “From one as said he learned from Angelo. The son, not the master himself, but runs the fine school in London all the same. How can you tell?” It seemed Dorsey had decided to like the architect, for all he meant to exploit him in any way possible.
“Angelo has his own inventions, modified from the Italian style.” Dante watched Cerys as she defended an attack from Kiddell, then slipped forward under his foil and scored a hit to his side.
“And Miss Evans fights in the French style. Why should her style be different, if you were all taught together?”
Cerys stood back and put up her sword, blowing a curl out of her face.
Dante’s regard brushed over her like fire.
His gaze dipped over the front of her tightly buttoned frock coat, the quickly tied cravat, the breeches.
He followed the curve of her hips with his eyes, then tore his gaze away as if the sight pained him.
Well, one couldn’t fence in a frock, could one? At least not when rehearsing for Hamlet.
“Oh, Cerys had had some lessons afore she came to us,” Dorsey said. “I only needed to show her the stage tricks. En garde!”
“And where did Miss Cerys study?” Dante watched as Cerys parried Dorsey’s heavy attack, then advanced lightly, quickly. She kept her steps small, her movements focused in a small range. She left nothing of herself open or vulnerable.
“A fencing master retired to Newport a few years ago. A friend of Sir—a friend of a friend’s.”
“The one who taught you falconry?” He watched her with a narrow stare, trying to read out her past.
Her past could stay safely where it was, thank you. She was here to be someone new. Someone without a history. “Yes,” was all she said.
“I think Cerys is a lady,” Fred called.
“I think you are right, young Fred.” Dante flipped his foil into play as Kiddell came at him and easily turned his thrust.
“I’m not a lady. I told you all how I was raised.” She blew at her damnable hair, wishing she’d stowed a bandeau in her pocket. Her hair was a curse.
“I think there are parts you are not telling us,” Dante observed.
Dorsey shrugged. “Does it matter? Girl’s an excellent mimic. She can play a lady in the drawing room and a barmaid in a brawl. She can be Lady Teazle or Lady MacBeth, and that’s all I need to know of her.”
“Thank you, Dorsey. That’s the nicest thing I’ve ever heard you say about me.” Cerys pushed back her hair.
“Just don’t prove me wrong,” Dorsey grumbled. “Fred, want a go? You can fight Mr. Manelli.”
“Where did you study, Mr. Manelli?” Cerys asked, watching as Dante parried thrusts from Kiddell.
“A friend of my father’s family came to England and opened a school of his own, trying to capture Angelo’s success. But he kept to the Italian style of the southern regions.”
“But how would they differ? Are there that many ways to fight?”
“You’d be surprised.” His smile was crooked, as if he did not often smile in genuine delight, and might have forgotten how.
At last, at long last, his guard was slipping. That tight, careful reserve with which he held himself was beginning to loosen, perhaps from the exercise, perhaps because the easy camaraderie of their group told him there was no one he needed to impress. A crack in the marble facade. Cerys pounced.
“Show me.”
“The stance I was taught is different, for one thing. Like this.” Cerys tried to model his crouch, and he frowned. She was beginning to develop an affection for that scowl. “No. More like this.”
“I’m doing it,” she protested.
“Lower. Wider. Distribute your weight.” He turned to her and pressed a hand on her outthrust knee, then tapped her rear thigh. “Back more. Lower, I said.” He pressed a hand to her hip.
He had not thought about the impropriety of touching her, because she was dressed as a man, Cerys assumed, or because they were, for the moment, both sportsmen.
But his hand on her body seared as if she’d fallen against a hot stove.
He smelled of that blend of Hungary water that stirred and teased a different hunger in her body.
He froze. So did she.
“Is this right?” she breathed, purposefully leaning into his hand.
Oh, she was so far from a proper young lady. And she didn’t even have the grace to be ashamed.
He didn’t move his hand, though he’d realized what he was doing. His palm rested on her hip, heavy, warm. His artist’s hands, long, supple fingers, small scars from nicks that she wondered how he had acquired. His fingers squeezed into her flesh, gently, possessively.
He cleared his throat, his voice gruff when he spoke, like a man parched with thirst. “Too much weight on the back leg. Angelo teaches that, and I don’t know why.
It makes it easier to parry, I assume, but you have to shift your weight to advance, and that gives your opponent too much time to see you coming.
Try balancing your weight on both feet.”
“Oh.” Cerys looked up into his face. “I can feel the difference.”
He caught and held her glance, and so much moved in the dark depths of his expression. His eyes burned with a dark flame.
Her breath tangled in her chest, forgetting the way out.
He took away his hand. He cleared his throat again.
“The way I was taught, the Italian way, relies on strength as well as agility. Lunge at Kiddell. Attack.”
She stepped forward, as she’d been trained, and he shook his head, planting both hands on her hips this time. “No.”
Cerys caught the glance Kiddell exchanged with Dorsey. She couldn’t follow what it meant, because her entire being was slammed with a sudden, overwhelming heat. Her mind staggered with it.
“The weight moves from the back leg to the front,” Dante said. “You don’t mince. You leap. Lunge as if you mean to run him through.”