Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,69
wanted to punch somebody, in any event. He wasn’t used to self-denial and didn’t like it. He needed to do something.
But there was Lady Charles frowning, and Miss Flower all wide-eyed, and a lot of people uncertain about what would happen next and not wanting to be hit, knocked over, or stepped on. Also a lot of drunken men who’d jump in once a fight started, and turn it into a melee. In a small, narrow room with precious few escape routes.
He’d promised Lord deGriffith he’d look after the ladies. He was responsible for the precious Miss Flower.
He paused, and his hands relaxed. These were merely drunken boys, and only two of them against one big, dangerous Ashmont.
Keeping hold of the first numbskull, he caught the other with his free hand.
“I say,” said one, trying to shake him off.
“Let me go,” said the other, trying to pull away.
He ignored them.
He was large. He was strong. He was a duke. Whether, being so drunk, they realized who he was, they recognized power and absolute self-assurance. Though they continued protesting, it was all words. They offered only halfhearted resistance as he lugged them through the crowd.
It was fairly easy work to take them to the door. There he let them go with a shove and said, “Don’t come back.” He signaled a box-keeper, to make sure they didn’t.
Idiots.
He shook his head and turned around.
To dead silence.
Every face was turned toward him. Nobody moved. A few blinked. A great many mouths shaped O’s.
He sighed.
Not a prayer now of getting at Owsley unnoticed, and no time to give him something to think about, in any case.
Ashmont started back to collect his charges.
Then he saw her face. Aglow. Silvery eyes alight. She was looking at him—at him, this time, as though he’d singlehandedly killed Scylla, Charybdis, and six or seven dragons for her.
He’d done it. He.
If Cassandra had heard what Mrs. Roake had been saying to her, nothing stuck in her mind but the word Owsley. She didn’t try to find out what she’d missed. It was fortunate that the interval was ending as Ashmont made his way across the swiftly emptying saloon, because she was incapable of pursuing an intelligent conversation with anybody.
She’d watched it happen. She’d heard about riots in theaters. She’d caused riots inadvertently. But not in a narrow space like this, with a dense crowd containing so many drunken men, the majority gathered about her sister. Her aunt was here, and friends. All of them in danger.
For an instant, she’d stood frozen, seeing what was about to happen and trying to determine how she could stop it.
Then Ashmont had stepped into the incipient fray like—like the golden hero of her imaginings. Like the boy who’d stepped into her battle all those years ago, at the moment when matters could have turned either way—against her or in her favor—and she’d fully expected the former.
He could have made it worse. He could have precipitated a disaster. Instead, he’d acted with restraint, so sure of himself and what ought to be done that nobody could doubt him.
He’d stopped the trouble before it could slip into the next, unstoppable phase.
He’d made it look so simple. For him, it was. But he was one of the few men who could do it, and he’d done it, easily and quickly, before matters could escalate. His doing it made other would-be brawlers think twice.
It was but one quiet act, one which perhaps only she, or a very few others, could fully appreciate.
All she could see was him.
He offered his arm and she took it, like one in a dream, her face turning up toward his impossibly beautiful one.
“Lucius,” she said, and indeed, it was as though a light had dawned. She added, her voice soft and wondering, “Well done.”
He was looking down at her, his eyes so blue in that angel-devil face. “What? Those boys, you mean?”
She nodded.
He smiled, and it wasn’t the cheerfully homicidal one. It was a sweet smile, almost but not quite innocent, that for a moment recalled the boy he’d been once. The boy who’d told her stories of the stars and helped her fight a monster.
The boy she’d loved so long ago.
With all her heart.
The boy, she now understood, who’d left no room there for anybody else.
She looked up at Ashmont with stars in her eyes, and the rest of the world dissolved. He steered her straight to the box, whose door his servant promptly opened. Ashmont closed the door and backed her