Wren looked to Shrike for guidance.
To his astonishment, Shrike rose and strode out to stand in the lantern’s light.
The guard stood almost as tall as Shrike. He looked to be in his early thirties, with a strong chin, blue eyes, and a waxed moustache. His blue coat hung well on his broad shoulders, and his white trousers and gleaming black riding boots clung to his brawny thighs and well-turned calves. He appeared no less surprised than Wren felt to see Shrike approach. But as he held up his lantern to cast its light across Shrike’s face, his shock faded into a wry smile. “Well, halloa there! Changed your mind, have you?”
“Perhaps.” Shrike glanced back where Wren yet crouched in the darkness. “It depends on the opinion of my friend.”
Wren supposed that was his cue and unbent his aching knees to join him in the limelight.
The guard took it well, all things considered.
“We require a steed,” said Shrike.
“I’ll bet you do,” the guard replied with a smirk.
Wren’s bewildered gaze flitted between the two of them. He knew well the reputation of the Horse Guards—and so, it seemed, did Shrike. Still, Wren thought better than to voice his confusion. Instead, he put on a lofty tone and asked Shrike, “This is the fellow of whom you spoke?”
Shrike, who’d told Wren less than nothing about any horse guard, nodded.
Wren would certainly demand the whole tale from him—but in due time. He turned to the guard. “I see you’re everything he claimed and more.”
The guard’s smirk broadened into a grin. “That I am.”
Wren decided to take a gamble. “Would you walk with me a while? I should like to know a little more of you before I give my opinion.”
The guard raised his brows. “Most toffs take me or leave me.”
“I’m no toff,” Wren replied—which was true enough. And indeed, he’d never felt less like a gentleman than he did at this very moment.
The guard chuckled. “Come along, then.”
As the guard turned to lead the way out of the stable, Wren cast a speaking glance at Shrike, hoping he understood what Wren meant to accomplish by distracting the guard. Shrike returned him the barest hint of a nod and more than a hint of a smile. Only when Wren had passed over the threshold out into the fog did he catch in the corner of his eye the blue spark of the will-o’-th’-wisp and Shrike’s long shadow moving towards the horse.
The guard, his attention on the path from the barracks to Hyde Park, noticed none of it. Nor did his patrolling comrades raise any alarm as their silhouettes flitted by through the fog. Wren hardly dared breathe, much less speak, until the cobblestones beneath his boots became clipped grass and trees outnumbered lamp-posts. Shadow felt safer than light for a man of his predilections.
“Fine night,” the guard remarked in a low voice as they meandered through the darkness. Fog and foliage alike muffled the city’s incessant noise almost as well as the curious nook of Staple Inn.
“It is,” Wren forced himself to agree. His panicked pulse had only increased its frantic pace in the interim since his discovery in the stable. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets to disguise their trembling. Untold nights he’d spent in furtive self-abuse at the thought of what a moment like this might feel like. Now it’d come upon him and he hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with it.
The guard strolled along oblivious to Wren’s internal torment. Or perhaps quite aware of it, but better prepared to weather a nervous wreck. After all, if one believed the Horse Guards’ reputation, then Wren could hardly be the first nervous john that this particular guard had ever encountered. Wren envied him his experience and the courage required to attain it. He couldn’t see much of the guard at present, save for his strapping frame, but he recalled his features from their brief introduction in the stables, and from the tone of his voice he could well imagine the handsome smile now upon them.
“What shall I call you?” Wren asked, the fae custom oddly fitting for an anonymous tryst.
“My friends call me Jack,” the guard replied with casual cheer. “And yourself?”
Wren, who’d used but one pseudonym since his resignation from the Restive Quills, blurted, “Gawain.”
Jack took it in stride. “Welsh?”
“On my mother’s side,” Wren admitted, for that much was true.
Jack seemed pleased. “What did your friend tell you of me?”
“We intend to ride out this evening,” Wren said after some consideration. “He said we might find a suitable steed here.”
To Wren’s relief, Jack laughed. “That’s one way of putting it.”
Silence fell. Wren, having as little gift for conversation as for flirtation, concocted and discarded a half-dozen phrases to break it before he settled on, “Do you often find the opportunity for steeple-chasing? Or does the guard keep you too occupied for sport?”
