‘I have known Miss Wickford since we were children,’ he therefore said, deciding to get right to the nub of the matter.
‘Indeed? She hails from Bartlesham, then? I was not aware.’
‘Yes. Her father was the master of the local hunt.’
‘That would account for it,’ said Eastman, propping himself against the panelling and folding his arms across his chest.
‘Account for what?’ replied Edmund against his better judgement.
‘Her rollicking sort of air. Can just see her riding to hounds. A bruising rider, I’d wager. Eh?’
‘I haven’t come here to discuss her prowess on horseback.’
Eastman laughed. In a distinctly dirty manner.
‘Ashenden, you astonish me,’ he said, reaching into his waistcoat pocket for his snuffbox with a sly grin.
‘I do not—that is, Miss Wickford is—’
‘Makes no difference to me,’ said Eastman casually flicking open the lid.
‘What makes no difference?’
‘Her virginity. Or lack of it,’ he said with a shrug.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Edmund couldn’t believe his ears. Even though this was what he’d suspected all along.
‘No need,’ said Eastman, taking a pinch of snuff between his thumb and forefinger. ‘I don’t mind not being the first. She clearly still has much to offer a man, being so, ah, spirited. I shall look forward to...taming her,’ he finished with an evil smirk. A smirk that Edmund simply had to wipe from his face.
Before he knew it, he’d clenched his fist and lashed out.
And Eastman went down like a felled oak, snuff exploding in all directions as the enamel box went flying.
For a moment, Eastman simply lay there, looking as stunned as Edmund felt.
‘Good God,’ he gasped, lifting a rather shaky hand to his nose, which was bleeding. ‘You knocked me down.’
‘So I did,’ said Edmund, reeling. And not just at the fact he’d just done something so rash, without a moment’s hesitation. Nay, not even so much as a moment’s thought. But the fact that it would mean a duel. Nobody knocked a man like Eastman down and got away with it.
Edmund would choose pistols, he decided. He’d be a fool to fence with a man whose reach was so very much longer than his own. Pistols would make the contest fairer.
Having reached that decision, Edmund felt a surge of anticipation stirring deep within him. It would give him a great deal of satisfaction to blow a hole in the smirking lecher who’d not only assumed Georgie wasn’t a virgin, but admitted it made no difference to his plans.
The sound of a chorus of groans, followed by a burst of laughter wafting from the card room as someone briefly opened the door, brought both men back to their senses.
‘Damn...’ Eastman groaned, fumbling in his pocket for a handkerchief. ‘It’s going to be common knowledge in a matter of minutes that you’ve knocked me down.’
As if to prove him correct, Edmund heard someone exclaim, ‘Good God, Ashenden is having a set-to with Eastman!’
And someone else saying, ‘Ashenden? Never!’
Then the unmistakable sound of chairs scraping back and feet tumbling in their direction.
But Edmund never took his eyes off Eastman.
‘Oh, lord,’ Eastman said plaintively. ‘When I think of all the fellows who’ve challenged me to a bout and never been able to so much as to pop one in over my guard...’
‘Do you require someone to act as your second?’ said a voice at Edmund’s side. From the corner of his eye he saw Lord Havelock, eyeing him, and then Eastman’s prostrate form, with what looked suspiciously like approval.
For a moment, Eastman looked annoyed. But then his lips twitched, and he started to chuckle. ‘I’m not going to fight a duel over this little...misunderstanding. It’s bad enough to have been knocked down by a spindly bookworm like you,’ he grumbled, dabbing at his nose. ‘If it gets as far as meeting on a field of honour, they’ll be selling tickets. You should consider this,’ he said, gesturing to the blood streaming down his face, ‘satisfaction enough. And the fact that all these gentlemen here,’ he said, waving his hand at the men spilling from the card room, ‘are witnesses to your triumph. Here,’ he said, raising his free hand in supplication. ‘Help me up, there’s a good chap.’
Havelock bristled, and made a move to block him.
‘Oh, for the Lord’s sake, Havelock,’ grumbled Eastman. ‘You don’t think I’m going to start a mill, right outside a ballroom, do you?’
‘You had better not,’ he said.
‘You will apologise,’ said Edmund grimly.
‘Unreservedly,’ said Eastman. Which left Edmund no alternative but to hold out his hand as Eastman attempted, somewhat shakily, to stand up. Eastman’s eyebrows rose as Edmund hauled him unceremoniously to his feet.
‘Not so spindly, after all,’ he said, raising the hand that wasn’t held in Edmund’s grip to feel his upper arm beneath his coat. ‘You may be a slender chap, but you don’t spend all your time reading books, do you?’
‘That is beside the point.’
‘No, I don’t think it is. It almost makes me...’ He shook his head, and grimaced. ‘No, never mind. Please accept my sincere apologies,’ he said, sweeping Edmund an ironically deep bow, ‘for poaching on your preserves. I shall, of course, cease pursuing your...intended bride forthwith. Shake on it?’
Intended bride? The murmur rustled among the assembled spectators like a breeze through a forest. Making Edmund wish, more than ever, to ram a couple of Eastman’s shiny teeth down his throat. But if he made a production of Eastman’s sly allusion to the woman over whom they were fighting, it would only increase the chances someone would guess who the woman in question was. He could not say anything, with all those others watching, without making Georgiana the subject of scurrilous gossip.
He had, in short, no choice but to take the hand Eastman was holding out to him and shake it grimly.
Eastman grinned. ‘You must let me in on the secret of how you keep in such good shape, Ashenden.’
Edmund blinked at Eastman’s bonhomie. But then reflected that men of his ilk often appeared to believe they’d become firm friends with someone, simply because they’d either knocked them down, or been knocked down by them.
‘Rowing,’ he said curtly.
‘Rowing?’
‘Rowing.’
‘Rowing?’ Eastman’s incredulity increased every time he repeated the word. And Edmund saw he was going to have to offer some form of elucidation, or the idiot would be keeping him standing there all night, batting the word back and forth like a shuttlecock.
‘Yes. I took it up when I was sent, as a boy, to the Scilly Isles to recuperate from an illness.’ At the mere mention of the word, illness, the men who’d abandoned their card games in the hope of witnessing a brawl began to drift away.
‘It was the best way,’ Edmund continued, ‘to get from one island to another. And my physician encouraged me in that pursuit, hoping it would broaden my chest muscles and thus help with my breathing difficulties.’
‘Continued up at Oxford, did you?’
‘Well, the colleges are surrounded by water. And I found that the exercise was conducive to contemplative thought.’
At