Page 54 of Teach a Rogue New Tricks
She lifted a brow. “More of a statement than a question, that is.”
Yet he could not articulate it any other way, force any other words to take shape around the idea.
She chewed her lip and nodded. Then her brow furrowed, and she shook her head. “I was going to say, yes, good. Seek your brother’s approval. But I’m not feeling well disposed toward giving others power over our lives at the moment.”
“So what will you say instead?”
“Why not say to hell with him and do as you please?”
“Ada!” he gasped. “Language.”
She chuckled, but her face did not take on the lines of mirth. “It’s not kind, I know. But”— she squirmed with frustration, searching for the words—“what is the worst your brother could do to you? You onlyattemptedto kidnap his wife, and you’re a peer of the realm. I am not terribly pleased that you and your lot are mostly immune from official punishment for such actions, but”—she shrugged—“it remains true whether I like it or not. Your brother cannot truly send you anywhere. You choose to run away.”
Her words twisted like worms inside him, but he could not deny them. It had been his choice to leave, but it had also been his brother’s desire. “I could stay, you’re right. I could live openly and flagrantly flaunt my life in London under my brother’s nose, but…”
She gazed at him, patient, waiting.
“I want him to want me to stay.”
Understanding dawned on her face, and she inhaled the new information with the air around them. “I see.” Her hand snuck into his. “I see.”
He turned and tried to stalk away, embarrassment rising high on his cheeks, burning his chest, shaping his fingers into fists.
But she did not let him go. Her strong grasp yanked him back. “I think you are entirely ready to speak with your brother, Cassius.” Her words whispered quiet around him, and they calmed his rising heat.
He nodded and pulled her arm through his, turning his attention to the amphitheatre before them.
She squeezed his forearm, accepting the embrace. “It’s huge, is it not! And all those signs!” She tilted her head up and admired the building.
Cass’s head tilted down, admiring her. With this woman on his arm, her confidence in his ears, he felt like an entirely new man. Right now, he’d experience Ada experiencing things, but when he returned to the hack, he’d pull out his notebook and writeDon’t worry about a good woman; find one who gets excited—not that way, you arse.
He really was a new man, one who wrote books and one whoplanned.
He pulled her tighter to his side. “It’s more crowded here than I imagined it would be.” The crowd jostled them about. “Shall we go inside?”
She nodded and let him sweep her forward into the nearly unnavigable mass of bodies. Ada jolted forward, a body slamming into her from behind. Cass caught her, steadied her, and turned to face her attacker.
But the man behind them swayed, listing to the side with red cheeks and a wall of liquor wafting from every pore of his body.
Cass grunted, “Soused.”Keep your distance. He knew too well this man’s story—drowning in wine, brandy, and whisky and sick to the gills with liquor and with life. What a miracle Cass no longer lived like that. Looking at the sot offered an unwelcome window into Cass’s past. The man stumbled through the crowd ahead of them, stopping right at the amphitheatre wall. He swayed. His eyes fluttered. His pale face lifted heavenward as he braced one hand upon the wall, palm flat, and busied the other hand in his fall.
“And he’s—oh fu—” Cass bit off the obscenity before it fully left his lips, and he dashed into a run, but too late.
The man pulled out his cock and pissed. In front of everyone. On Astley’s Amphitheatre.
Cass jumped between the man and Ada, blocking his revealed appendage, he hoped, from her and all the others as well. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, man?” he hissed, moving as close to the drunken sot as he could without gagging.
“Gotta piss, don’t I? Get out of here! You’re in my way, and I’ve had a bit too much gin to aim well.” The man’s accent rose in cultured cadences despite the slur. A Cambridge or Oxford buck, no doubt, who’d just begun a serious course of raking his way through the London season. A mirror image from Cass’s past.
Cass hated him for it. “Pull up your fall, or I’ll cut off your bollocks! Good God, man, exposing yourself in front of women and children!”
“Who do you think you are, my governess?” But the man, apparently having finished, buttoned his trousers, gave Cass an impolite gesture, and shuffled into the building.
Cass lunged after him. “I’m going to kill him.” Maim the drunken man because he could not injure his past self, could not reach back and plant himself a facer.
Ada swung in front of him, her pale, bright face unreadable. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Murder.”
