They went at each other, easily and with the particular intimacy of two men who had been hitting each other across a ring for ten years and knew by now exactly what they were and were not permitted to do to one another’s faces, for a quarter of an hour.
At the end of the quarter of an hour, Cassian had a small cut in his lip, and Richard had the beginning of a bruise above his left eye, and Cassian had not, in the whole quarter of an hour, thought about Alice for more than two seconds at a time.
It was the longest he had managed in four days.
“Stop,” Richard said, panting. “Stop, you are not paying attention.”
“I am paying attention.”
“You are paying attention to your right hand. You have hit me with your right hand twelve times. You have not hit me once with your left. You are slow tonight, Langton, and I would very much like to know why.”
Cassian dropped his hands. “I am getting married, Richard.”
“I have heard.”
“At the end of next week.”
“I have heard of that as well.”
“I have secured a special license.”
Richard, who had been wiping his face with a small linen towel, paused. His eyebrows flew up. “Have you, indeed?”
“I have.”
“In how many days from this afternoon?”
“Eight.”
“Cassian.”
“I know.”
“You said three weeks.”
“I know what I said.”
“You said three weeks four days ago. Now you have moved up your wedding from three weeks to eight days, and you have come into Threadgill’s with the look of a man planning to murder somebody, and you have only hit me with your right hand. I would like to know, my friend, what has happened in the last four days that has led to these particular circumstances.”
Cassian did not answer at once. He went to the side of the ring, picked up the small cup of water that had been left for him on the post, and drank it. He set the cup down and looked at Richard.
Richard was a great many things, but he was not, on any account, a stupid man.
“I went to the orangery this morning.”
“Whose orangery?”
“Westbury’s.”
“With his eldest daughter.”
“With his eldest daughter.”
Richard waited.
“On the whole, it was not an orangery sort of visit.”
Richard laughed. “Cassian.”
