THE NATURE OF HIS CONNECTION TO MAJOR STURGEON occurred to Trev over his morning coffee. It struck him full blown, apropos of nothing but a chipped white cup that reminded him of one he'd used in the Peninsula.
"Putain," he muttered slowly, looking up, his eyebrows lifted.
Jock turned round, his big head bent down to clear the low beam over the hearth. "You know yer mama won't like you to be saying them filthy words in French."
Trev took a sip and grimaced. "I'm sorry to sully your pretty caulif lower ears with my language lessons, 'Jacques,' old son, but your coffee deserves it." He always gave his manservant's name that little Gallic moue of accent, partly to encourage the unlikely impression that he was actually French, and partly just to torment him.
Jock snorted and returned to clattering with black pots and skillets. Sleet pattered against the small square window, promising an ugly day, but Jock had not stinted on the coal fire. The huge hearth gave out a steady heat. Trev stared at his valet's massive back, drinking the foul brew and frowning pensively.
Salamanca. It was easy to recall everything because it had been at Salamanca. The scalding sun of July, the dust and smoke-it seemed dreamlike now in the wet chill of an English autumn. Trev had been a new prisoner, brought in under Geordie Hixson's guard, both of them still panting from exertion and heat in the British cavalry officer's tent. Geordie had started to say something about sending Trev to the rear, but the words were interrupted by a new barrage of shelling from the dead ground to the west, exploding so close that a handful of spent shot pelted against the canvas. A pair of aides and a sentinel ran out to discover the range, leaving the tent empty but for Geordie and his commanding officer, both of them bent over the map in grim discussion of the reconnaissance.
Trev hadn't known the field officer's name or given a damn. He'd just been relieved and ashamed and sick of starving; sick of the sound of artillery and what he had become. He wasn't even concerned about the guns so close; it had seemed no more than a pretty irony to be killed by French cannon a bare half hour after his surrender. When Wellington's wounded courier had staggered in, covered in blood and black soot, with orders to attack immediately into the teeth of the unseen battery, Trev had barely taken note of the dying man's words. The courier had expired almost at his feet, but all he'd felt was that numb wonder at how the poor bastard had managed to make it so far after being shot in the chest.
He remembered a brief silence from the guns, and the blood from the courier's mouth. Then Geordie's officer had ordered the body carried back outside and laid by the man's horse.
The strangeness of that order had not penetrated Trev's mind. It was only Geordie's protest and expres sion of shock that had even caused him to look up at the field officer. Into that same challenging, pale-eyed stare he had met yesterday.
Trev remembered Sturgeon.
Trev and Geordie had carried the corpse, left it as if the courier had fallen from his saddle. As if the orders to attack the battery had never arrived.
When they returned, Geordie stood at attention, staring expectantly at his commanding officer. The guns thundered again, and Sturgeon ordered him to call for the tent to be repositioned behind the knoll. Geordie stood still and then requested permission to speak. Sturgeon snapped at him to shut up and strike the tent. The young aides galloped in a few minutes afterward from their reconnoiter, cursed at the courier's death wounds, and hauled the body into the shade of a tree while the tent was struck.
Nothing else happened. No attack on the French guns had been mounted. They moved down behind the safety of the hillside. Not long after, Trev had been taken in a set of light irons to join the other prisoners in the rear.
He had never heard any more of it or given the incident particular thought. There had been far more pressing concerns on his mind than some nameless British officer's decision in the heat of battle, as long as it didn't include shooting at him. He'd put the memory away along with all the other things he didn't care to dwell upon. Wellington had soundly crushed the French at Salamanca, so it made no difference to anyone, except perhaps a few French and British soldiers who would have died and hadn't.
But here and now-Trev suddenly appreciated that he had been a witness to a court-martial offense. Sturgeon had been ordered to attack, and he had acted as if he'd never received the order.
"Son of a…" Jock dropped the coffeepot with a hiss and clang, sending dark liquid over the f loor. He added several more colorful words, holding his fingers in his other hand and blowing on them. Then he looked down at his stained trousers-the fashionable yellow ones-and let out a string of expletives that would have burned the ears off a bosun's mate. "My buttercup cossacks!" Jock's deep bass cracked. He grabbed a dish towel, daubing in a frenzy of vigor.
Trev squinted one eye at the stain on Jock's billowing trousers. "I fear they're past hope," he said, heartlessly honest.
"Thirty guineas!" The valet's voice reached a pitch that Trev had not supposed it could attain.
Trev put down his cup. "Damme, you spent thirty guineas on those things?"
"Worth every groat, sir," Jock snarled.
Trev would admit that they made the big man look quite the Cossack. All he required was a saber and some tassels hanging off his ears to be fit to ravage a town. But Trev made it a strict policy never to mock his valet's sense of style. He did not care to have one of those ham-sized fists in his teeth.
"You'd better take them down to the inn directly and find out a launderer," he advised. "Perhaps they can be boiled."
"And shrink to nothin', and bleach besides," Jock mourned.
"Then you can give them to me," Trev said sooth ingly. "I'll wear them to bed, like a sultan's pajamas."
Jock made a rumbling growl, stalking toward the kitchen door.
"You're certain this doctor has our right direction?" Trev asked after him.
"No, sir, I told 'im to go to Madrid," Jock snapped, holding the door in his giant paw so that a gust of freezing wind blew in Trev's face.
"You're so fetching when you're savage," Trev murmured.
The door closed with a solid thud, shutting out the sleet. Trev contemplated the dark splay of liquid trickling across the stone f loor, oozing its way toward his polished boot. He heaved a sigh and got up to find a mop.
Callie had been out to feed the orphan calf and back to change long before her sister and Lady Shelford joined her in the breakfast room. She sat beside the window, gazing out at the drooping trees and sleeting rain, trying not to dwell upon the empty gate where one large and placid bull had not been awaiting his morning treat.
"It's my sister's personal correspondence, ma'am." Hermey paused by the door, allowing Lady Shelford to precede her into the room. "She is quite mature enough to dispense with anyone's approval of any letters she may receive."
The countess was carrying a sealed missive. She ignored Hermione and held it up, looking at Callie. "I do not think it suitable for Lady Callista Tallefaire to be in clandestine communication with a bachelor, however mature she may be. Not in this house!"
"Clandestine!" Hermey exclaimed. "Oh, that is not true! It was delivered quite openly!"
Callie stood up, a familiar tightness forming at the base of her throat. She could not bear a scene with Dolly, not just now. "What is it?" she asked dubiously.
"It's a letter addressed to you, Callie," Hermey said hotly, "and she has no right to keep it from you!"
"I'm sure it's only a note from Mr. Rankin about the cook for Dove House." Callie looked at her cousin's wife. "Please, read it if you like, ma'am."
Dolly held the note, looking down at it. Callie could see that there was an imprint of deer antlers upon the cover, the inn's insignia. She hoped that Lady Shelford would not decide to throw some obstacle in the way of hiring a cook.
"Most unseemly," Dolly said, lifting her pale and elegant chin. "I don't know why you wouldn't use an appropriate intermediary when dealing with a common innkeeper."
"I've known Mr. Rankin since I was a little girl, ma'am," Callie said.
"Indeed." She walked across the room and handed the note to Callie. "Pray leave any reply beside the table in the hall, and it will be forwarded for you. You need not concern yourself to convey it in person."
"Thank you, ma'am." Callie kept her voice gentle. She wished only to escape the room. Hermey could not wed her baronet and give them an opportunity to depart quickly enough for Callie. She took the note, laid it down beside her cup, and offered to pour some tea. She did not want to retreat too hastily, for fear of arousing new suspicion. There was a slight chance that the letter was from Trevelyan-it was thicker than a mere confirmation of the cook's acceptance needed to be, and he might have used the inn's stationery to write. She dreaded to open it here. His earlier note to her had been quite unexceptionable, but with Trev there was no predicting.
"I've already had my tea," Hermey said as Callie filled a cup for Lady Shelford. "Come up to my room, Callie, when you've done with yours. I want to tell you what Lady Williams said to me yesterday. You won't credit it, but she insists that striped redingote only needs to be edged with blue fur to make a winter coat. Pink and blue for winter! Can you just imagine what a sight I should make? Come and help me choose another lining."
Callie took advantage of this transparent scheme, since they both knew that Dolly found nothing so tedious as discussing anyone's wardrobe but her own. "Perhaps the coquelicot wool you purchased in Leamington?" she asked.
The countess made a sound of revulsion. "Please, you can't mean it, Callista. That garish poppy orange? It should be burned, to spare me having to look at it again. You ought to have bought a few more yards of the primrose I'm going to use for my pelisse, Hermione, as I advised you."
"I think the coquelicot would be lovely," Hermey said loyally. "Come with us, ma'am, and we'll spread it out on my bed with the pink. You'll see."
"I couldn't bear to look at it," Dolly said.
"I'll come." Callie took a perfunctory sip of tea and then walked to the door, carefully timing her excuses to coincide with the arrival of a footman with Lady Shelford's barley water. "I can bear to look at anything."
"Yes," Dolly murmured, "we've noticed."
Callie walked with Hermey to her sister's bedroom. Neither of them spoke. As soon as the door closed, Hermey turned. "She's jealous! I vow it. You should have seen her yesterday, pawing at Madame's son. It was revolting. She can't even tolerate that he brought you a posy from his mother, of all things!"
"Oh dear, I hoped no one knew of that."
"Why shouldn't anyone know it?" Hermey demanded. "He made sure to correct the footman about it, and rightly so. I hope he may elope with you and put her in her place!"
"I'll be certain to write to you from Madagascar if he does." Callie broke the seal on her letter.
"Perhaps that's from him," Hermey said, leaning over her shoulder.
"No doubt these are my instructions on how to make a ladder out of bedsheets." Callie stepped away. "You laid the coquelicot wool in your cedar trunk, if I recall."
"You noodle, you don't truthfully think I'd pair that with pink?" Hermey shook her head and put her hand over her eyes. "And I won't peek, I promise."
Callie looked down at the letter. It was directed to her, under cover of Shelford Hall, in a precise, broad hand that she did not recognize. She had not really expected it would be from Trev, but it was not from
Mr. Rankin, either. She frowned, allowing the damp outer wrap to fall away.
My dearest Lady Callista Taillefaire,
I humbly beg you will accept my heartfelt apologies for causing you distress at our recent encounter. Such was far from my intention. My only possible defense is that, in my wonder at seeing you, I allowed my feelings to overcome me.
Yet I cannot pretend that I came to Shelford without the express hope of calling upon you. I had intended to request your permission in writing before I imposed myself. However, I found myself taken utterly off guard to realize that I was in your presence. I think now that I should have picked up a newspaper and feigned that I did not exist. Indeed, how should I suppose you would even recognize me-instantly, as I did you?
You think me a scoundrel, of course. And so I am. By what audacity I make this request, I myself can hardly fathom. You have and you should refuse me. Nay, I think you would be even more disgusted if I should tell you that my wife, God rest her soul, passed away these two years ago, and it was not a happy marriage, to my shame.
What a botch I make of this. I am not a man to whom words come easily. I do not wish to impose myself on you, and yet I would do what lay within my poor power to stand your friend and amend the unforgivable.
I have removed from the Antlers so that you may be easy, and will remain a guest at Col. Wm Davenport's house at Bromyard until Friday. I believe you are acquainted with him, as he tells me he has recently obtained a singular bullock from the Shelford stock.
Do I have any hope that I have not sunk myself
beneath reproach? If Friday passes and I have no
sign of it, I shall know and leave you in peace.
God bless and keep you, Lady Callista.
Yr Servant,
John L. Sturgeon, Maj. 7th Royal Dragoon Guards
"Oh, do tell me what it is!" Hermey made an impa tient little hop. "You look as if you've seen a ghost!"
Callie drew a deep, shaky breath. "Indeed. I believe I have." She handed the letter to her sister.
Hermey snatched it and read, bouncing on her heels. Her mouth began to open wider and wider. She looked up at Callie as she finished. "And who is this gentleman? Is he a scoundrel in truth? Callie! Oh my, what have you been up to while no one was attending?"
"I haven't been up to anything, I assure you. I was once engaged to marry Major Sturgeon. You don't recognize his name?"
"Oh," Hermey said. "Ohhh." She sank slowly down onto the window seat and read the letter again. Then she looked up. "You've seen him?"
Callie nodded. "He came into the Antlers yesterday morning, when I was discussing the cook with Mr. Rankin."
"What did he say?"
"Very little. He requested to call on me, and I refused, and he looked as if he'd like to run me through. And then he left. I can't imagine what he supposes to gain with this." She sat down on the dressing stool and pulled her shawl closer around her in the bedroom's chill. "Oh, I hope he will not persecute me all week."
"Persecute you! But it's so romantic!"
"Not in the least." Callie lifted her chin. "His wife has died, bless the poor woman, and now he wishes to take another look at my fortune. No doubt he needs a mother for his orphaned children too."
Hermey looked down, still holding the letter. "No, I suppose… you would not consider it."
"Certainly not. The man cried off, Hermey. Don't you even remember how angry Papa was? No reason given, but then Major Sturgeon up and married that Miss Ladd within the two-month. It was ghastly."
"Yes, but-it was all so long ago, wasn't it? He's had a change of heart."
"I doubt that very much. I suppose you were a bit young to know the particulars. You must have been no more than-oh, fourteen perhaps, at best."
Hermey bit her lip. "I do remember that it made you cry."
"Merely on Papa's behalf," Callie said staunchly.
"Men are horrid." Hermey stood up and f lung the letter. It f luttered into the air and gently down onto the carpet.
"Well, I've not had much luck with them, but I'm sure that you'll find it a very different matter." Callie leaned down and retrieved the letter. "For one thing, you would never wear coquelicot with pink."
Hermey gave her a distracted smile and sat down again on the window seat. She toyed with the new ring on her hand, tracing her fingertip round and round the opal cabochon. Callie watched her sister's profile against the gray light. Quite suddenly, she remembered Hermey's fear that Sir Thomas Vickery might not wish to have a spinster sister intrude on his marriage. "Oh-" she said and stopped herself.
Hermey looked up.
Callie avoided her eyes and spread the paper on her lap. She felt a tightness in her throat, some thing threatening to fill her eyes. She cleared it with a cough.
"It's such an odd letter," she said, pretending to read it again. "My first impulse was to tear it up, but I must confess-this part where he admits he's making a botch of it…"
"Perhaps he's realized he made a botch of it years ago," Hermey said fiercely. "Which he most certainly did."
"He does say it was not a happy marriage. Perhaps he was…" Callie tapped her fingers on the sheet. "Well-things can happen, I suppose. Gentlemen find themselves… embarrassed."
Hermey looked at her aslant, her neat eyebrows raised. Callie did not know if she understood.
"I think perhaps he was in love with this other lady," Callie said.
"Oh poo. Then why did he ask you to marry him?" Hermey asked naïvely.
"Papa arranged it. But-" She broke off, at a loss to explain to her sister that it was quite likely Major Sturgeon had not been faithful to Callie during their engagement. "I'm not the one to cause a gentleman to forget his prior feelings, I don't think."
Hermey rose abruptly and crossed the room. She sat down on the bench and gave Callie a hard hug. "This dreadful major doesn't seem to have forgot you, though. I wish you may make him fall wildly in love, and then give him the cut and let him pine away until he dies of consumption."
"While writing poems in a garret."
"A freezing garret. With rats."
Callie turned the letter and squinted at it. "I'm not certain Major Sturgeon could bring himself to write a poem."
"For you, he would do anything!" Hermey opened her arm in an eloquent wave.
"Hmmm," Callie said. "Perhaps I will subjugate him and marry him after all, and keep him enslaved to my smallest wish for years."
"Yes! Exactly like Sir Thomas," Hermey agreed.
"I daresay it would annoy Dolly to have him call on me."
Hermey's eyes widened. "Oh yes!" She caught Callie's arm. "Oh, you must. For that alone."
Callie looked down at the letter. She blinked. "Yes," she said resolutely. "Yes, I think I must."
The London physician did nothing to allay Trev's worst apprehensions. He had ordered Jock to bring back the finest professional man he could locate, and the valet had gone right to the top, it seemed. Dr. Turner came with excellent credentials, chief ly that he was an esteemed friend of Sir Henry Halford, president of the Royal College and physician in ordinary to the sovereign. According to Sir Henry's letter, Trev could repose his full confidence in Dr. Turner, to whom Halford preferred to delegate his regular practice while he was in attendance on the king.
With that strong a recommendation, there seemed little hope that Turner's discouraging opinion could be dismissed as quackery. He didn't even try to replace the medicines with his own concoctions, as every other doctor Trev had ever known had done. After the examination, he sat with Trev in the parlor, writing instructions in a businesslike manner, before he finally looked up and said in an even voice that the duke would be wise to help his mother to put her affairs in order.
His meaning struck Trev like a blind-side blow in a sparring match. He had thought tentatively of future concerns, of course. He'd even sent his letter just yesterday to the French Chapel Royal in Little George Street, to request the attention of a priest to his mother's illness. Merely as a comfort, because he knew she must have been unable to attend any mass herself for some time. Certainly not for any idea of immediate danger. But to have it said so frankly, by a medical man… Trev found he could not seem to grasp the news. He only sat motionless, gazing at the physician's pen as it scratched across the page.
When he finally composed himself far enough to protest that she had been improving since he arrived, Dr. Turner merely nodded. That was characteristic of such cases, the doctor said; the patient underwent a sudden burst of energy and activity just before the final crisis, caused by migration of blood from the lungs to the heart. The winded speech and high color in his mother's cheeks were a sign of this phase. It might last a few days or a month, but she was much debilitated, and the doctor did not think she had a great deal of strength to spare.
Dr. Turner had brought with him a nurse, and a surgeon to assist with bloodletting. Trev was not fond of surgeons. He recalled too well the sensation of faintness and nausea that had accompanied the bleeding treatments his grandfather had insisted upon until Trev was old enough to bodily rebel. He had not let a knife or lancet touch him since the age of eight, and he didn't intend to allow it again, however impru dent and eccentric that might be. He didn't think his health had suffered a jot from keeping his ill humors shut up inside, though he was willing to admit it might have contributed to his dubious character.
He imagined trying to speak to his mother about putting her affairs in order and felt a familiar and potent urge come over him-the strong desire to be elsewhere. London. Or Paris. Or better yet, Peking. He hardly realized that Dr. Turner was rising to depart, or even felt the sleet on the back of his own neck as he escorted the physician under an umbrella to lodging at the Antlers. He woodenly expressed his gratitude for the doctor's forethought in making a professional nurse available for as long as his mother might require it, and promised to convey all instructions to the local surgeon. When he stood in the street again, he could think only that he needed fortification before he could face his maman. Not to put a fine point on it, he needed to be deeply, blessedly, besottedly drunk.
Not at the Antlers, of course. Nowhere in Shelford. Feral instinct pointed him toward a small alehouse that he recalled having passed on the Bromyard road. He was not a habitual tippler; he liked to keep his wits about him too much for that, but barring Peking, drink seemed the only recourse. He began to walk, holding the umbrella until the wind threatened to collapse it, and then put his face down and strode into the stinging drops.
At the pace he set, it was hardly more than a quarter hour before he saw the low thatched roof and cheerful smoke rising up through the sleet. As he pushed open the door, the scent of damp, sweaty wool and home brew engulfed him, carried outside on the rumble of laughter and talk.
He shoved his way in among the crowd of laborers and idle sportsmen. The Bluebell was clearly one of those places deplored by moralists in lecture and print, where all levels of society mingled on free terms. A convivial gathering to escape the weather, relentlessly masculine but for a barmaid who could give back as good as she got-it was just the situation Trev preferred at the moment. He used his smile to ruthless advantage, obtaining a tankard from the barmaid and a jeer from the table she ignored on his behalf, but he bought them all a round and dragged up a stool, downing his ale in one long draught. He knew well enough how to purchase a welcome here.
The crowd was in the middle stages of alcoholic mirth, singing bawdy songs and wagering on whether a carter could lift a table on his back with five men atop it, when a pair of gentlemen joined the company. They stood near the door, peeling out of wet overcoats and checking the oilskin covers on the locks of their rif les.
Trev left off watching the carter's losing struggle and glanced at the newcomers as they hiked their guns into a rack. It took him a moment to recognize Major Sturgeon, dressed as he was for shooting and wet to his skin. The two men seemed in excellent humor in spite of the weather, hanging a bulging game-bag beside their guns. Sturgeon's companion appeared to be some respected local squire. Men touched their forelocks and vacated the inglenook by the fireplace, leaving the best seats open for the new arrivals.
Trev set his stool back on two legs, his elbows propped behind him on a table. The others were laughing and yelling at the carter now, goading him for his defeat, while he shouted back, red-faced, demanding another try and making himself look a fool on top of a failure. He was clearly not the sort to take a ribbing.
Trev lifted his mug in the air and began to sing "The British Grenadiers." He raised his voice over the carter's hot complaints. "Whenever we're commanded to storm the palisades," he bellowed in good John Bull style, "our leaders march with firelocks, and we with hand grenades!" By the time he got to "tow, row, row, row, for the British Grenadiers!" he had his own table singing along at the top of their drunken lungs. He finished off his ale and saw Sturgeon looking at him with a cold gaze. The rest of the tavern had taken up the song in loud chorus, forgetting the carter in their new enthusiasm.
A familiar sense of waywardness possessed Trev, a moody antagonism riding on the lift of ale and latent violence that he could always find in a place such as this. He f lipped an insolent salute to Sturgeon. The officer only stared back. His good humor seemed to have evaporated.
Trev wondered if the major had realized what basis they had for acquaintance beyond their meeting at the Antlers. From his scornful expression, Sturgeon appeared to bear Trev a marked dislike, considering only their brief contact the day before. So Trev followed up the grenadiers with more songs in a military mode, offering a few British camp tunes he'd learned from the wounded Light Bobs who'd hobbled alongside him in the baggage train. None of those tattered infantrymen had been in a patriotic mood, and the lyrics were all highly disrespectful, in addition to being lewd, taking cheerful and deadly aim at worthless officers and lack of pay. As he'd expected, there were enough worn-out soldiers in the Bluebell to approve this theme. They took it up with fervor.
Trev could see Sturgeon's face growing ever more rigid. As the major's lips curved in disgust, Trev sat back, gulping ale, abandoning the thin skin of gentility. He knew this wild temper in himself-he'd regret it later, but at the moment it was amusing. Sturgeon deserved an insult, by God, for crying off on Callie.
With a wink and a lift of his mug toward his prey, Trev plunged into a song about a deserter, singing merrily in celebration of cowardice. It was a lampoon of "The British Grenadiers," set to the same melody, but the words turned upside down. Instead of storming the palisades, this grenadier hero repaired to town a little too early in the verses, and found a girl who cried "Hurrah, boys," and fondled his grenades. The twist in the usual words had the men at Trev's table laughing so hard that they were spitting.
Trev could see the furious color rise in Sturgeon's face. Still he grinned and plowed into the next stanza, where the craven grenadier turned tail, stuck branches in his unmentionables to impersonate a bush, and ended up with a promotion. In the original ditty, he'd been made into a grenadier sergeant, but Trev slotted "major of dragoons" into the verse instead, which fit the cadence better anyway. His tablemates were almost prostrate with hilarity. The man next to Trev gripped his shoulder as they all leaned together and howled, "Tow, row, row, row, row, row, row, for the British Grenadiers!"
He was well into the third round when the voices round him died away to a sudden quiet. Trev recov ered his balance as his neighbor let him go. His chair legs hit the f loor, an audible thud in the new silence.
Sturgeon stood over him, white and stiff. "You puling French bastard."
Trev rose from his seat. "Oui, Monsieur?" he said politely and made an unsteady bow. He had not expected to draw blood so soon.
"Shut up, you fool."
Trev gave him a sweet smile. "But what have I said to offend you?"
Someone giggled drunkenly behind him. Sturgeon's lip curled. "It's enough to know what you are."
"Indeed." They were of a height, with Sturgeon at an advantage in weight. Trev drew a breath to clear the ale fumes from his brain. "But explain further, my friend. What am I?"
"Blackmail," Sturgeon hissed through his teeth, almost a whisper, so low that Trev wasn't sure if he'd caught the word or if the major had called him a blackguard. He wondered if he was more inebriated than he had thought.
"I fear you must speak more plainly," he said, "if you wish for everyone to hear."
The major drew his lips back over clenched teeth. He reached out and gripped Trev's lapel, but said nothing.
Trev pried his fist loose, thrusting it away. "You may unhand me," he said coolly. "And be sure that I know what you are. We've just been singing about it, eh?"
The major seemed to swell, the blood beating in his temple. "Shut up! You nauseating bloodsucker, shut up."
"I'll tell you what's nauseating," Trev said in a conver sational voice. "A man who insults a lady and then comes skulking back and bleating for her favor. Keep your distance, Sturgeon; she doesn't wish to see you."
"You dare! You!"
"Of course I dare. Do you suppose she has no friends to take her part?"
Sturgeon was dead white with rage. "By God, I ought to kill you, you slimy little French worm."
"You son of a whore," Trev said calmly. And then he repeated it in French, for good measure.
Sturgeon stood so still that Trev could see the faint tremor in his fingers as he yanked off his glove. In the slow instant, Trev felt his own blood rise with a mad pleasure. A decade of rage pressed in his chest, lost years, impotent shame that he had stood and taken that blow from Callie's father and left her to be slighted by a man like this. With a sense of fascinated doom, he watched Sturgeon fold his glove over his fingers and lift his arm.
A duel, it was to be. He was that much an English gentleman.
The major slapped him across the face, the glove a brisk snap against his skin. "Name your weapons."
Trev hauled back and struck with a right cross before Sturgeon's mouth was even closed. He put his full weight and five years of ringside training and all his hatred for arrogant English gentlemen behind it, smashing Sturgeon's jaw with an impact that he felt all the way to his heart, deep down in his chest.
He caught the officer utterly off guard. Sturgeon went down backwards, sprawling against a table. Men leaped up to stay clear. Someone grabbed Trev's arm, restraining him. He turned round and threw another punch, hard to the gut of the major's esteemed comrade. The man doubled over. Trev jerked free of some eager bystanders and saw his tablemate hurl a blow at Sturgeon before the major could launch himself at Trev.
People scrambled, yelling and shoving at one another. Chairs toppled and bottles smashed. The barmaid shrieked in frustration as the Bluebell descended into a drunken melee.