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Chapter eighteen
Showdown
BeforeMcCraecouldattack, she jumped in first.
“Betrothed? Are you really that deluded? Our betrothal never was and will never be. So why do you continue with this fantasy?”
“Why do you continue to associate with DeGuerra? Did I not make it clear you were to stay away from him? He is not what he seems.”
“Do not change the subject. I asked you to refrain from this betrothal nonsense. When my father finds out you have been lying to him—”
“It is not a nonsense. I told you I intend to marry you, and I have succeeded in persuading my uncle you can be of use to us. Why is it whenever we talk your hands fly up to your hips and you feel compelled to argue like a fishwife?”
Her jaw dropped open so wide it took some doing to get it moving. “A fishwife! How dare you. Of use to you? I will not be used by anyone.”
“Which is exactly why I warned you to stay away from DeGuerra. He is using you to throw us off the trail.”
“I have never heard such nonsense,” she huffed. “DeGuerra is not your man.”
“I told you to stay out of this. It is a delicate matter. Yet you constantly wade in and sabotage everything. The treaty negotiations with Spain require discretion and cooperation yet now I hear you have driven them out of Whitefriars. Are you satisfied with your handiwork?”
“They deserved it,” she said through gritted teeth.
“What were you thinking? Using a whip on the Spaniards?”
“Not on them, next to them, simply to divert their attention so we could pull them apart and stop them from killing each other.”
There was a change in his expression, almost shifting to one of amusement, a hint of the old twinkle briefly returning to his eyes. He shook his head slowly from side to side. “Oh Lucinda. I would have liked to see that. What am I going to do with you?”
“You are not going to do anything with me, Robbie, apart from stop calling me Lucinda. It is too familiar. We are not betrothed.”
“Perhaps not after this but never fear, I shall keep working on it, Lucinda.”
She gave him a glowering look, fists still clamped firmly on her hips which only prompted more head shaking and an irritating indulgent smile. “I have never met a woman like you Lucinda Evans. I do not intend to lose you to that actor or whoever else lines up when they hear of the lady with the whip. You made quite the impression.”
“Do you think the story will get out?”
“Does the sun rise in the east?”
“Will it really cause that much trouble? With the Spanish?”
” Being whipped out of a fencing academy by a woman for brawling does not cover them in glory, so I suspect they will pretend it has not happened, but please, please, please, I implore you, could you stay out of trouble for once in your life, at least until the Spanish business is concluded?”
“And what of the other business?”
“The betrothal?”
“No. My friends. Your sister…”
“You must especially keep your nose out of that.”
Oh how she wished she had her whip in her hand at that moment. Every time she began to think Robert McCrae was an ally, he would go and destroy her trust with a dismissive command.
“I shall bear that in mind,” she said, while under her breath she muttered, “Go and stick it in your pipe and smoke it.”
If McCrae was hard to bear, the nudges and winks and comments of a room full of fencers was enough to set her face into a permanent frown. She had two options, firstly to blithely ignore the mimicking sound of a whip cracking every time she walked past, or secondly to give back as good as she got. She tried both options and found ignoring far less tiring. Her brain badly needed a rest. A faint trembling still coursed through her body; talking to Robert McCrae never helped with that. Her lack of control over her physical responses whenever he was around maddened her the most.
The only bright spot for the rest of the afternoon was that Father did not seem to be terribly angry. If anything he almost seemed somewhat proud of his “little whip cracker” like he used to be when she was younger and a dab hand with a sword. The afternoon dragged on endlessly. She longed to collapse into bed and shut out the world. She was not in the right frame of mind for a meeting with Moll once the workday was finished, but Moll was quite insistent and would not be put off.
