.
The blow caught Thomas square on the cheek, nearly turning him around and dropping him to the ground. It would have, if he hadn't caught the brick wall that Blythe had been standing against with one hand. She yelped, dodging out of the way, and even before he had entirely figured out what was happening or who had decided to hit him, Thomas was putting his body between Blythe and his attacker.
If he’d had time to think about it, he supposed he would have guessed that someone had followed them from the stews, though stalking them all the way to Grosvenor Square was an unlikely thing for the common footpad. Then Thomas recognized his attacker, and along with that recognition came a wave of irritation and disgust.
"What the hell are you doing with Blythe, Amory?" bit out Tristan Carrow, the newly made Duke of Parrington.
Thomas laughed. "What is it to you, your grace? Have you resorted to taking lovers from the good sisters? Have I poached on your territory?"
"You're Thomas Martin? That's you?" Blythe murmured, right before Parrington snarled and reared back to hit him again.
Of course, there was nothing that said Thomas had to be there when Parrington struck him, and almost lazily, he slipped around the taller man's reach.
"Slow, Parrington," he murmured almost in the other man's ear. "Very slow. You got the first one in because I was literally looking the other way. Do you actually think you can do better when I'm standing and facing you?"
"You'd better hope I can't," growled Parrington.
Thomas didn't take his eyes off Parrington to see if Blythe was still there. As much as he might have liked to see Parrington laid out by that heavy umbrella the girl carried, the smart thing for her to do was to get away, especially if Parrington was her lover or her employer or some damned thing. Thomas found the idea of Parrington making any claim to a girl as brave and bold and bright as Blythe incredibly irritating, and it lent some viciousness to the way he rounded on the duke now.
Parrington took another shot at him, and Thomas was tired of simply dodging. They went at it with none of the niceties of the formal boxing rings and, given the fact that those niceties were mostly against kicking your opponent when he was already down, it wasn't long before they were both bruised and bleeding, Thomas from a split lip and Parrington from a scrape earned when Thomas pushed him against the brick wall.
They might have kept on going at it if a woman in a starched white apron hadn't come out of one of the rear entrances of the houses nearby.
"What in the devil's name is going on there? Scoundrels, leave off that brawling when decent people are trying to get their day started!"
Thomas and Parrington broke off with a start, turning toward the woman who had the authoritarian bearing and discipline of a great manor house's cook.
Her scowl turned to a look of dismay when she saw Parrington. "Your grace! Forgive me!"
She disappeared back into the house, and a glance up and down the alley told Thomas that Blythe was gone as well. Parrington looked slightly abashed to have been caught scrapping like a schoolboy.
Thomas gave him a wary look. "If you want to start again, we might leave off scandalizing your neighbors by setting up a session at the boxing rings."
Parrington, cold bastard that he was, gave Thomas a look that managed to be both disgusted and superior. "I've had quite enough of wasting my time with you. What the hell were you doing with my cousin?"
"Your... cousin?"
The pieces clicked into place, and Thomas wasn't sure what picture he was meant to be looking at. It wasn't really a secret that the wealthy Carrows had a cousin who stayed with them, some kind of poor relation who was so pious she could barely stand to be seen in the light of the wicked world. That poor relation couldn't have been the spirited fighter Thomas had met just a few hours ago, but that seemed to be precisely the case.
"Yes, Blythe. Damn you, what the hell were you doing with her?"
Thomas stood back from Parrington in case the man decided to have another go at him. He knew with an acute certainty that anything he said or didn't say could be held against Blythe, and he hated the idea of her subject to the likes of Tristan Carrow.
"I suppose I was having a bit of a rough night," he said at last. "The hack I hired got sick of me and dumped me off somewhere close to here, and I wandered into this alley. I yelled enough that that drab little thing came out to see what was the matter and—"
"And you decided that you wanted to smear yourself all over her. Trust a Martin to turn a simple meeting into something sordid. My God."
"Trust a Carrow to think the worst of everyone," retorted Thomas. "Your cousin's fine, Parrington. Wouldn't give me the time of day, and I'm not so much of a monster that I chase after girls fresh from the dame school."
"I don't think the worst of everyone, just of Martins. It was a hard-won lesson. Now get out of here, Amory. I wouldn't like to disgrace myself and my family further by giving you the beating you deserve."
Thomas was about to say that he'd like to see Parrington try it, and then he shrugged. The Duke of Parrington was already in a foul mood, and there was a chance he might take it out on poor Blythe.
"Good morning to you, then," Thomas said, his voice only a little sarcastic. "You couldn't pay me to stay."
As he turned and walked down the alley toward the main thoroughfare, Thomas had to shake his head. To think that spirited little do-gooder, Blythe, was associated with the damned Carrows. The idea of a girl with that kind of pluck living with a pack of ancestrally stuck-up prigs riled him up in a way that he couldn't quite explain, and he tried to put the thought of his head.
The Martin townhouse on Park Lane was elegant, gracious, and above all, used to dealing with Thomas when he wandered in at all hours. His father, the Duke of Southerly, kept house in the country and did not come to Town so frequently, and that left the townhouse mostly to Thomas. The butler met him with a soft greeting and promised to send his valet up directly.
Despite the late night he felt he was still having, Thomas didn't feel any urge to sleep. Instead, he washed and cleaned his wounds, traded his rumpled clothing for fresh, and prowled the house, letting it slowly wake up around him.
A light melody playing on the pianoforte in the drawing-room captured his attention, and with a slight smile, he opened the door to see his sister, Georgiana Martin, at the bench, her back straight and her face composed. She was more at peace when playing the pianoforte than she was at any other time, but then they were Martins. They would never be known for peace or quiet.
Thomas leaned against the doorway and listened to the music. He didn't recognize it, but he thought there was something wistful about it, even melancholy. When the song ended, he tilted his head at his sister.
"A trifle heavy for you, little sister. If I closed my eyes, I would have thought it was Tabi playing and not you."
"Tabi's not had much time for playing lately. She's always running down old volumes of history and genealogy at the bookseller's. Father sent her to Leeds this week with some pocket money to get more books and also, perhaps, so she will stop telling him about the illustrious doings of our ancestors. I suppose the Martin reputation for the feminine arts must fall to me, then."
Thomas grinned. "If our reputation depends on the two of us, then God help us."
"So Father says, although he certainly had his own rakehell moments when he was young... Why, Thomas, what in the world happened to your face?"
Thomas started to say that it was nothing, but then Georgiana was on him, turning his face left and right in the sunshine coming through the window. She was almost as tall as he was, with his blond hair and clear gray eyes, and in many ways, she was his match in all things. Hell, as quick as she was, she might have given Parrington a run for his money as well.
"Whatever are you smiling about? Father won't like to hear that you've been brawling again."
"Well, Father's unlikely to hear about it from the party I was brawling with. It was Tristan Carrow."
Even his father, the dignified and very proper Duke of Southerly, could never resist cracking a joke at a Carrow's expense. There was a saying in the north of England that it was more likely for lions and wolves to mate than it was for the Carrows and Martins to get along. Their days of bloodshed and violent hatred were long past but far from forgotten.
Georgiana made an expression of disgust and dismay. "Tristan Carrow? What a waste of good effort. I hope you did worse to him than he did to you."
"Never fear, I gave a good accounting of myself. It was ridiculous. He thought I was molesting his cousin, Blythe something."
"The missionary? Thomas, I usually trust you to have better taste than that."
"She's not..." Thomas didn't keep much from his sister. They were close and had been ever since their mother died, but there was something about this that made him still his tongue. "Yes, the missionary. Do you know of her?"
"Only what most of London knows. She's a pious little poor relation from the north, sent to live with the main Carrow clan after her parents died. Too prim and proper to go to balls or to promenade, and if she could get away with it, she'd probably run off to join the Quakers."
Thomas thought of the Abegg family that he had met just a few hours ago. Just like it was hard to see the Blythe he had met as a staid and stuffy Carrow, it was also hard to see her fitting in with the pious Quakers as well.
"Well, it's not like the poor girl is going to have much of a social life with Tristan Carrow keeping her locked up," Thomas said. "The man's like the worst parts of a Cromwell preacher and a prison guard mixed."
Georgiana turned to him, faintly appalled. "You don't suppose he's going to marry her, do you? The poor relation, the would-be Quaker?"
Thomas felt something in him roar up at that. "No!" Then, when Georgiana gave him a strange look, "No. That... doesn't seem to be something Parrington would do. I figure he'll wait until he's fifty and then find someone who he tolerates and who will tolerate him as well."
Georgiana shook her head, nibbling on a knuckle absently. Thomas was surprised; it was a habit she had mostly given up as she grew, shunning it along with toys and fairy tales for scandalous fashions, daring horseback stunts, and even his old fencing saber. He pulled her hand from her mouth gently, making her look up, startled.
"Don't waste your time thinking about Parrington. He didn't hurt me so very much."
"Good. I would run him through."
"Fierce little sister. Anyway, what are you even doing in London? I thought that you were going to stay at Harcourt with Father for a few weeks?"
Georgiana shrugged, and Thomas knew that something had happened at Harcourt again. Georgiana and their father the duke were too alike sometimes to really get along, and after a lifetime of shouting, threatened punishments and exiles, and threatened runaways, some distance was the best for the two of them when things grew complicated.
"I felt the need for some London air," she said lightly. "I have heard that my favorite modiste is back from Paris anyway, and I mean to stop by and see if she brought any interesting ideas back from the Continent."
"Good. Give yourself and Father some time to cool down," Thomas advised.
"I'll take your advice, if you'll take mine?"
"All right, what is it?"
"Stay away from Tristan Carrow and the rest of his damned family."
Thomas laughed at that, looking at his sister with curiosity. "I'm not going to slink around in fear of my life from any damned Carrow, let alone their biggest bully dog."
"You hear all sorts of things from the ladies' circles I travel in, Thomas, and there's plenty to say about the Carrows right now. That Tristan's gone strange and savage since he was invested with the title of duke, that Edward, the son in the army is doing terrible things in Spain. Just... perhaps come with me. It has been such a long time since we stepped out together."
Thomas sighed. "To every single crush and play you get invited to this season?"
"Of course. After all, if I get you married to some simpering Society miss, Father will almost certainly give me a bit of a longer leash."
Thomas had his own ideas of what a good time looked like, and it didn't involve any of the well-heeled addresses his sister favored.
Still, it might not be such a terrible thing to step back into proper Society for a while. He could use the distraction, and even as he thought it, his mind flashed back to dark eyes in a pale face, and a spirited expression that made his heart beat a little faster.