Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

" H yacinth?"

She gave him a curt nod, her topaz eyes cold.

"Are you all right?" Leo asked, because he didn't know what else to say. This woman should have been his wife. Would have been, if not for his father's actions.

"I-I am. Thank you, my lord." She was shivering now.

"We must get you dry, Cyn," the woman who had been in the boat said. Leo didn't recognize her, but he had been out of society for years. "Good evening to you, sir, and thank you for saving my friend."

"Here, wrap my coat around her," Lord Bancroft said, shrugging out of it.

The woman fed Hyacinth's arms into the sleeves as she continued to glare at Leo, who had just saved her.

"Wh-why are you here?" she asked. "You n-never frequent such places." Her teeth were chattering. The woman was now behind her, running her hands up and down Hyacinth's arms.

How did she know what he did or didn't do?

"I needed to find something," Leo said, unsettled. His head was all over the place, and he couldn't seem to make sense of his thoughts. Hyacinth was standing before him.

"Do you have my cuff link?" he blurted when nothing else came to mind.

Leo was the Nightingale who was coolheaded in every situation. He was far from that now.

"I beg your pardon?" She spat the words at him.

"My cuff link. Do you have it?"

Someone gasped. Someone else groaned—he thought maybe it was Ram. But Leo never moved his eyes from the beautiful woman before him.

She wore no bonnet, and her long dark blond hair was half down and half up now. The collars of Lord Bancroft's jacket were up. She looked far from the elegant society miss she had once been. Her face was pale, but the years since he'd seen her had only enhanced her beauty. The once darling of the ton had grown into a stunning woman. Even if she was wet as a drowned rodent.

He watched as she forced a soggy gloved hand into her pocket and pulled out something. She then slapped it into the sodden shirt over his chest.

"Thank you for saving me, and I hope never to see your face again, Lord Seddon."

"I beg your pardon?" His words came out in a growl.

"It seems you are excellent at locating things," Ram said, looking at the cuff link Leo now held in his palm and clearly sensing the tension between Hyacinth and him. "Good evening, Lady Lowell," Ram added, bowing before her. "If I may suggest you make haste to get warm before you catch a chill."

"Who is Lady Lowell?" Leo demanded, shooting his friend a look before returning to Hyacinth.

"Me," she said, her tone cold, face expressionless. She then sneezed twice, which suggested she was indeed going to catch a chill.

A memory slid into Leo's head as he looked at her. "I sneeze when I'm nervous sometimes. It's embarrassing, but I fear there is little I can do about it."

"You are married?" Why was it such a shock that she could have children and share another man's bed? After all, you walked away from her.

Leo had not once considered she would marry someone else, but then he'd barely thought of her at all, if he was honest. Which said what about him and the feelings he'd once had for her?

"Did you expect me not to?" Her tone was haughty. "To sit about the place pining in the hopes you would change your mind, my lord?"

Her tone was mocking now. It was a shock, considering the woman she'd once been. It seemed not only he had changed.

"Speak up below. We can't hear!"

Looking at the bank behind them, Leo saw people were now lined up, listening to them. One of them had called out those words, and others were listening with rapt attention.

"You really should get out of those wet clothes, my lady," Ram said, clearly eager to get Leo away from her. "And lower your voice," he whispered.

"Yes, Cyn," the woman at her side said. She was now glaring at Leo. "Come along, or you will catch a chill as Mr. Hellion has said."

Hyacinth's eyes moved from Leo to Ram.

"What odd company you keep, Mr. Hellion." She then sent him a glare filled with anger. A sneeze had her eyes closing briefly.

"You married the Earl of Lowell?" Leo asked, not wanting her to leave, even though he knew they both should .

She nodded. "My husband was a good man."

Was. She was a widow now. He remembered her husband. A somber man at least thirty years her senior. Had her family forced her to wed him?

"I say, is that Seddon?" someone above them asked.

"Hard to say, as he is quite sodden and has no doubt changed in the years since his family's disgrace."

"Yes, it is Seddon. I'm sure of it."

"And to think I nearly didn't come tonight. I would have missed all the excitement."

"This is not a sideshow!" the lady with Hyacinth called back. "Go about your business!"

No one moved. Leo would have known that without looking to check. Gossip was part of the foundation that society was built on. He refocused on Hyacinth.

"Why did you have my cuff link in your pocket?" Leo asked.

"To remind me, I will never be something for a man to discard with ease ever again." Her chin lifted.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Cyn, we really must go," Lord Bancroft, who had been standing silently listening, intervened. "We are drawing attention, and you will end up ill if we do not get you warm."

She ignored him and continued glaring at Leo. "Has age caused your hearing to fail you, my lord?"

This Hyacinth was very different from the woman he'd once known. She never would have spoken to him this way. She'd always adored Leo and hung on his every word. Not once had she mocked him.

"There is nothing wrong with my hearing," he snapped.

"Let me explain it in words you will understand, my lord." She leaned in closer; her lips were now turning blue with cold. "I kept it to remind me that most men care little about women. That one day, they will be there for you, and the next, gone without a word, discarding you like a tatty old shoe."

"I did what needed to be done," Leo gritted out.

She snorted in his face. Hyacinth, the epitome of elegance and poise, just snorted. She then turned her back on him.

"I could offer you nothing. It was all gone," Leo added under his breath.

She spun back, hearing his words. Her eyes narrowed into angry slits. There was definitely emotion now. Before he could stop her, she'd shoved him hard, sending him back into Ram, who steadied him.

"You should have sent me a note, anything. But you left me without a word."

"And said what?" He moved closer once more, no longer cold. Now he felt the heat of anger.

"I really don't think this is the place?—"

"You knew what was going on. The gossip would have reached you," Leo cut off Lord Bancroft's words.

Hyacinth jabbed him in the chest with a pointy finger.

"Oh, now they are really going to have something to discuss over their crumpets," Ram muttered.

"I had a right to be told from you, Lord Seddon. I had a right as your future wife to know that you would no longer marry me."

"Cyn, I really think?—"

"I had nothing to offer you," Leo said, cutting off the woman who had spoken. "And when your family heard the circumstances, they would never have allowed us to marry. That should have explained everything to you," he said, sounding every inch the lord he was.

"Had you lost the ability to write? Did I mean so little to you that?—"

"I lost everything," he cut her off.

Her face softened briefly before resuming its stony mask. " I know, and I'm sorry for that. But you did not give me the choice to support you. Did not allow me to choose?—"

He snorted. "What? To walk away from all that you had loved to live with an outcast in shame away from your family? I would not have asked that of you. You had the right to continue to live the life you loved," Leo said.

"How magnanimous of you," she mocked him.

Everything ceased to exist around them. There was just Hyacinth and his anger.

"Don't you dare mock me." This time, it was he who leaned into her, finger pointing, eyes blazing, the demons inside him roaring to be let out. "I did what I believed was right for my family and you."

"And I had no say in the matter?"

"I doubt your life changed a great deal. Balls, parties, and pretty things." The words were insulting and beneath him, but he spoke them anyway.

She inhaled a sharp breath at that, almost as if he'd slapped her. He watched her fingers curl into fists. "I should have been given a choice to support you or not!"

"Clearly it did not take you long to get over your feelings of neglect on my part if you married Lowell."

He heard Ram groan and then saw the hand coming. He took the slap to his cheek, because perhaps he had deserved that.

"You, sir, are a brainless idiot, and I no longer wish to be in your company. If you see me again, then I suggest you go the other way. As you can be assured, I will do exactly that!"

She then left with Lord Bancroft and the other lady at her side. Leo looked above them and saw the bank was lined with people watching. They would be gossip fodder for society over the breakfast table tomorrow morning.

"That went well," Ram said.

"Shut up. "

"Let's go." Ram nudged him forward, and Leo went, because now he was no longer arguing with Hyacinth, he was cold again. Gripping the cuff link hard, he felt the edge of the small gold disk dig into his palm. He needed the small bite of pain to ground him.

Climbing the stairs behind her, he heard the voices whispering. Some were asking after her; others were speculating over what had just happened.

"It is Seddon," a woman gasped. "The cheek of the man!"

"Lady Lowell, you have my apologies that you had to suffer in such a way, but what can you expect from someone such as a Nightingale? For him to have spoken to you in that manner, it is not to be borne. Allow me to escort you to your carriage."

Leo stiffened as he looked at the owner of that voice. Baron Ellington stared back at him, his eyes filled with hate. The man had been a friend of Alex's once but turned his back on the Nightingales along with many.

"Ellington," Ram said, striding forward. "If you speak ill of my friend again, I will break your nose and likely take out a few of your front teeth."

"Ram," Leo cautioned, looking at the interested spectators who were taking everything in.

They had indeed put on a show, and Leo had just done what he'd vowed to never do. Made himself gossip fodder for London's wealthy and elite. He'd lost control and now loathed himself for it, because that was what his father used to do. He'd throw tantrums, and then they all had to walk around him as if on broken glass.

"That such a man is among us again," Ellington said, refusing to back down, "is?—"

"Ellington, Lord Seddon just threw himself into the water to save Lady Lowell. I did not see you doing the same," an elderly woman said, stomping forward. Leo tried to place her in his memory and thought maybe she was a duchess, but the name wouldn't come to his waterlogged thoughts. "I've always found that those who crow the loudest are the most cowardly."

Baron Ellington opened and closed his mouth several times, looking like a codfish.

"Well done, Seddon," she said with a gracious nod.

"B-but he should not be among us! His father?—"

The woman who Leo guessed was about eighty or older spun with surprising agility, considering she was stoop shouldered and walked with a cane, to glare at the woman who has spoken. "I have never been one to believe a child should pay for his father's sins. Were that the case, Lady Albright, then surely you and your brother would be called light-skirts, as your father was quite free with his favors."

"Well!" the woman gasped, clutching her heaving bosom.

The old lady turned back to face Leo. "Pay these idiots no mind. Every society has a few, but for the most, we have a good bunch, which you will see if you rejoin us." Beside her was a large shaggy- and gray-haired dog. He made a rumbling sound deep in his throat.

"Thank you." Leo managed a curt nod.

"He is a coward, like his father!" Ellington yelled.

Leo stepped toward Ellington with Ram at his side.

"Allow me," his friend said and punched the baron in the nose. There was a definite crack, and then the man was falling onto his ass. The elderly lady and her dog moved closer and peered down at him.

"You, sir, are a fool, and considering the rumors about you, I would suggest you are not one to cast about insults. Now be gone, as I have no wish to look upon your face any longer. You are making me nauseous."

"He hit me!" Baron Ellington cried.

"You're lucky someone else hasn't done so already," someone muttered. Leo couldn't see who, as his teeth were now chattering loudly. He looked for Hyacinth, but she had disappeared into the crowds of people.

"Don't let the fools keep you from living the life you were born for any longer, Lord Seddon," the duchess then said, returning to him. One gnarled hand patted his cheek. She then stomped away, clicking her fingers to the dog. "Come along, Walter."

"Well," someone said. "The Duchess of Yardly is not one to take a backward step when a forward one is needed, but I have never seen her behave quite like that."

"Come, Leo," Ram said, gripping his shoulder. "We need to get you dry, and then you have some explaining to do."

Leo walked away, squelching, leaving his name on everyone's lips, and wondered if tomorrow was too soon to leave the continent.

I just saw Hyacinth, and she was married.