Stroke of Genius (8 page)

Apparently these bullies hadn’t read the same books. The five of them turned toward her as one, their teeth displayed in smiles that held no mirth at all.

“Well, lookee what we ‘ave ‘ere,” one said. “A fair bit o’ muslin, ain’t ye, peach?”

“My name is not Peach,” she said primly, stepping back a pace. “And I’ll thank you to keep your distance. We’ve not been properly introduced and I have no wish to become acquainted with those who prey on someone weaker than themselves. Shame on you.”

The man Grace was trying to help swore softly.

“Don’t she talk fair?” the ringleader said. “Makes you wonder what else that little mouth can do. Shall we give it a go, luv?”

Panic curled in her belly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she babbled. “Whatever you’re referring to, I’m disinclined to oblige you. I’d rather not ‘give it a go.’”

“Shut up, Grace,” the man with the cane murmured.

How does he know my name?
She squinted at him, but the man’s face was in shadow.

“Aye, good idea. Shut up, Grace,” the bully said. “Gorblimey! If you don’t, we’ll have to find something to put in your mouth what’ll make you shut up.”

“I gots somethin’ right here, mate,” one of the others called out, clutching his own groin.

Grace’s eyes flared wide. Panic blossomed into full-blown fear. She stepped back, but caught her heel on the raised rock-edge of the path and fell flat on her bottom on the long grass. This was far worse than landing on her mother’s Hakkari carpet.

“Aye, that’s the ticket, luv. May as well get comfy. You’ll be on your back a while this night.” The leader laughed and shoved the groin-grabber back. “Me first, mate. You can ‘ave her afters.”

Then suddenly the man with the cane leaped forward and knocked the head ruffian’s legs out from under him with a deft flick of his cane. The miscreant went down with a yelp and then a yowl of pain when the point of the cane came crashing down on the back of his knee with such force, Grace heard bone crunch from where she sat.

Then the man resumed his casual stance, leaning innocuously on his walking stick, before the fellow on the ground could even roll over to face him.

It all happened so fast, if Grace had blinked she might have missed it. But she hadn’t blinked and in the faint light, she’d caught sight of the man’s face.

Crispin Hawke.

She’d left his home that afternoon determined to treat him with cool disdain the next time they met. Now she’d never been so happy to see anyone in her entire life.

“The cripple’s gone and damaged me, mates!” The bully hugged his ruined knee to his chest, rocked in pain and loosed a string of inventive and anatomically improbable curses. “Get ‘im!”

Chapter 7

It was usually a simple matter for Pygmalion to keep folk at a distance. All he had to do was beat them away with his scowl.

The four upright ruffians leaped to do their fallen leader’s bidding. They circled Crispin, looking for the right opportunity. Grace’s hand flew to her lips to shush herself. If she cried out, she might distract Crispin and he needed his full attention on the fellows darting in to take punches at him.

Each time one of them tried, he received a smart rap on the knuckles from Crispin’s walking stick.

“Told you he were no easy mark,” one of them said, shaking his stinging hand. “Let’s shove off, Doyle.”

“No, he gots to pay for damaging Cooper there,” the one presumably named Doyle said. He was a big hulking brute, easily Crispin’s match for height and weight.

“But I think the bastard broke me hand,” the first one said. “I’m no’ giving him a chance to break the other one.” He loped away into the shadows, cradling his injured paw.

Doyle and the downed Cooper shouted threats after their retreating friend and called his parentage into question for several generations. 

“I likes the look of his cufflinks meself,” Doyle said, turning his attention back to Crispin. “Toss ‘em over, cripple, and we’ll leave you and your doxy go free.”

“Doxy!” Grace exclaimed. She’d intended to remain quiet, but honestly, she couldn’t let a slight like that pass unchallenged. “I am no man’s doxy, and even if I were, I assure you I wouldn’t be his.”

There! That should disabuse Crispin Hawke of any notion that she’d given a second thought to that kiss he’d pressed on her.

“Suit yerself, luv,” Doyle said with a shrug. “We’ll take ye with us when we go, then.”

“You most certainly will not.” She scrambled to her feet and gave the still groaning Cooper a swift kick. “I’ll have you know that I’m Miss—”

“Missing a bit of her brainpudding, but I like my women a little on the bovine side with respect to intellect,” Crispin interrupted, drawing their eyes back to himself. “Mistress
Vache
  and I will be leaving this grove together and with my cufflinks still in place, thank you, gentlemen. However, if you are adamantly determined about trying to remove them from me, might I suggest you make a concerted effort?”

The remaining trio blinked at him stupidly.

Crispin sighed and shook his head. “Come at me two at a time.”

“Oh, right,” Doyle said. “Get ‘im, lads.”

Two of them rushed Crispin and Grace gasped, her heart pounding in her throat. He was surely done for. Why had he egged them on? But at the last second, Crispin took a quick step back and the men butted noggins with each other with a loud thud. He whacked them both on their bottoms with his walking stick as they crumpled to the grass.

Then he feinted a swing at Doyle. When the man moved to intercept the strike, Crispin whipped his cane around and jabbed the head of it full on the man’s breast bone, knocking all the breath from his lungs in one deft blow. Doyle sank to his knees, sucking wind.

Grace blinked in surprise.

“Come, Mistress
Vache
,” Crispin said, moving to her side with more speed than a man with a perpetual limp ought to possess. He offered her his arm. When she didn’t take it, he grasped her hand instead and pulled her along the path back toward the well-lit part of the park. Even though he leaned heavily on the cane now, his canting stride was long enough that she had to trot to keep up with him.

“I don’t appreciate being called a cow,” she said between huffing breaths.

“So you do command a modicum of French,” he said with a scowl. “If you don’t wish to be taken for a cow, then don’t act like one,
Vache
. Are you truly so stupid you’d have given those miscreants your real name? Have you any idea what happens to well-heeled heiresses in certain parts of this city?”

No, she didn’t, but she suspected she wouldn’t like it.

“You might at least say ‘thank you,’” he said, still dragging her along.

“I will if you will.”

“And why should I thank you?”

“Because I distracted those men for you when they had you surrounded,” she said, huffing to keep up. “I offered you help before I even knew who you were, so you have several reasons to be grateful.”

When they reached the group frolicking around the Maypole, he stopped and released her hand. Her heart pounded against her ribs, whether from the excitement of her adventure or their mad dash away from it she wasn’t sure.

“I had planned to talk my way out of the situation without resorting to violence, but your intrusion made that impossible.” Crispin raked a hand through his hair. “Did it look as if I required your help?”

“No, you acquitted yourself quite well,” she admitted. Even a man without a cane might not be able to best five who were determined to take him down.

Grace looked up into his face. He didn’t seem angry now. The scowl lines around his mouth faded, but his eyes glinted with the remnant of something like fear.

“You were afraid,” she blurted out.

“Yes, you little ninny, I was afraid for you,” he said. “What if they’d been smart enough to realize you were worth far more than my cufflinks? I knew I could take those clods, but if they’d decided to snatch you and run off, I wouldn’t have been able to catch them.”

He looked away from her, back up the dark path. He’d obviously honed his self-defense skills despite his infirmity. She suspected it cost him dearly to admit there were some things he couldn’t do.

“May we sit for a moment?” she asked, settling onto a nearby bench without waiting for his answer. When he plopped down next to her, she noticed the long muscle in his thigh twitching beneath his skin-tight trousers. He laid a heavy hand on it to still the spasm.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” she said, glancing sideways at him, “what happened to your leg?”

“How convenient polite discourse is. Even if I do mind, you’ve already asked your question.”

“Pardon me.” Grace worried her bottom lip.

Her mother would say she’d committed two
faux pas
just then. Minerva Makepeace wouldn’t dream of asking a personal question. Conversing about the weather was always safe and recommended.

And she’d never be indelicate enough to use the word ‘leg’ instead of the more ladylike ‘limb.’

“I don’t wish to pry.” Grace folded her hands primly on her lap.

“Like hell you don’t,” he said with a laugh. “You’re burning with feminine curiosity, so even if I don’t tell you, you’ll ferret out the tale some other way.”

Grace flinched. Not because of his casual swearing. Her father’s speech was always peppered with rude words and mild blasphemies that agitated her mother into near incoherence. Grace suspected that was precisely why he used them.

No, she flinched because Crispin seemed to be able to hear exactly what she was thinking. How did he know her mind so well?

“Ask anyone. They’ll tell you.” Crispin stretched his lame leg out to its full length and grimaced. “No doubt when you inquire around you’ll hear that my lover’s husband came home unexpectedly and I injured myself leaping from a second storey window.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised.” She curled her lip at him in disgust. Private immorality was one thing. Making a public virtue of it, quite another.

He laughed. “I started that rumor myself because it’s far more entertaining than the truth.”

She rolled her eyes. “One wonders if you’re capable of the truth.”

“When it suits me.”

She shook her head. “You are without doubt the strangest man I’ve ever met.”

“I don’t know whether to be flattered or sorry that you’ve met so few men.” He leaned toward her and she caught a whiff of his clean masculine scent.

Her toes curled inside her slippers.

“On the grand scale of things, I’m really not so strange. Believe me, Grace, the world is filled with people who would permanently cross your eyes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take that gang around the Maypole, for instance.” He smiled indulgently at the bacchanalian-style revel. “They dress themselves in gaiety and deck their brows with mirth. Just to look at them, you’d think they haven’t a care in the world.”

Grace nodded. In fact, her feet itched to join their dance on the broad green lawn. Could she ever be that wild and free?

The amused grin faded from his lips. “But I’d bet my favorite chisel every one of them bears a secret that, if you only knew it, would break your heart.”

They sat in silence for a few moments and Grace wondered what heart-breaking secret Crispin bore. He made her feel terribly . . . young. She’d experienced no real heartache, known no grand passion or loss.

She’d never even remotely considered leaping from a second storey window.

In truth, her run-in with those scallywags on the Dark Walk was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. The trembles in her belly still hadn’t subsided. Now that she realized how much danger she’d actually been in, she was beginning to think adventures were not nearly so fine to
have
as they were to read about.

“About my leg,” he said softly. “The truth is, I had an argument with a large block of marble. The stone teamed up with gravity and won in a rather unfair fight.”

“Oh, my.” Her imagination painted a lurid picture of Crispin pinned beneath one of the monoliths she’d seen at his studio. If that’s what happened, it was a wonder he wasn’t killed outright. She glanced at his thigh and was glad to see that his muscle had stopped tremoring. Then she pulled her gaze back to his face before he could notice she was taking an inordinate interest in the state of his trousers. “I’m sure it was horrible.”

“And stupid. Not at all the thing one expects from an acknowledged genius.” He shrugged. “You see why I had to invent something more in keeping with my public image.”

“You think leaping from an upper window to avoid your lover’s angry husband sounds less stupid?”

“Less stupid? I assure you it’s nothing short of brilliant. The tale secures my reputation as an incorrigible rake. It’s more than enough to earn the respect of my fellows and the fear of virgins and their mamas.” He chuckled. “How little you know of people.”

“That’s what you think,” she said. “I happen to know a great deal.”

He cupped her cheek suddenly and tipped her face up to his. “Do you know when someone is about to kiss you?”