He laughed.
So did a good number of the people close to them.
So did Clarence.
“But it was always your idea to climb, Jasper,” he said. “It was only right that you were the one to be punished.”
“And so it was,” Jasper said, and laughed again.
Jasper had fallen out of the tree because he had dared Clarence to follow him up, and Clarence, standing on the ground, had pulled at his heel-before running home to tell on him. Jasper had been caught up on the balustrade because Clarence had run away and bolted the door leading down before running to tell on him.
Once a weasel, always a weasel.
The wrestlers were back for the next round. They had all learned something from the first round. This one lasted much longer as the slimy brown figures of the wrestlers pulled and pushed and clawed at one another and struggled to maintain their own balance. The crowd shrieked and moaned and cheered and jeered through it all. But inevitably there were just two men left standing in the end.
There was another break in the action while the four men loped off to dive into the lake again.
“Some of these men,” Jasper said loudly enough for a large number of people to hear, “have about as much sense of balance as I have-which is not a great deal at all. Do you remember the time, Clarence, when we wrestled in the boat and I ended up in the water while you were left standing solidly on your feet? I learned my lesson that time. I do not believe I ever wrestled with you again.”
He laughed.
So did a crowd of his guests.
“Yes, well, Jasper,” Clarence said, puffing out his chest and speaking loudly enough for their audience to hear, “my father saw to it that I had the proper instruction in all the manly sports at a young age. You always thought to get your way with brute force, but brute force is never a match for practiced skill.”
“Alas, that is true,” Jasper said.
He had been about to take the boat out without first going back to the house to change out of his good clothes and to get permission, which would doubtless have been denied. He had been standing in the boat, about to sit down, his back to the bank. Clarence, standing solidly on the bank, had taken an oar and tipped him in.
“What other sports did you learn, Sir Clarence?” Hortense Dubois asked. “You must be very good indeed if you can defeat Lord Montford. He has a reputation for winning everything he tries-or so Mr. Gladstone was telling us just yesterday, was he not, Marianne?”
“Well,” Clarence said, “I am handy enough with my fives, Miss Dubois. I have gone a few rounds with Gentleman Jackson himself.”
“With Gentleman Jackson,” a young man from the village said. “I have heard of him. He is said to be one of the best.”
“Not one of the best, young man,” Clarence said. “The very best.”
“Clarence is too modest, Miss Dubois,” Jasper said, “to tell you how good he is at fencing. I take it you are still as good at it as you used to be, Clarence?”
“Well-” Clarence said.
Jasper clapped a hand on his shoulder again.
“Now don’t be modest,” he said. He grinned about him. A large crowd was listening now, including-at some distance-a wide-eyed Katherine. “Remember the afternoon when you routed me in every single bout? And at the time you had only just started learning. I would say it was a good thing the rapiers were tipped or I would have looked like a fountain of blood. Sorry, ladies, that is not a pleasant image, is it?”
“Oh, do tell us about it, Lord Montford,” Miss Fletcher begged. “I love to watch two gentlemen fencing. There is no more manly sight.”
“I simply could not get past Clarence’s guard,” Jasper said. “Yet he could get past mine with ease every time. It was really quite lowering for me-but a grand display by Clarence. I daresay he was his fencing master’s star pupil.”
“Well,” Clarence said, “he did say I was the best he had ever had, but he had been teaching for only five years or so at that time. Perhaps later he discovered someone who was better.”
“I most certainly doubt it,” Jasper said with a sigh.
“Devil take it,” Merton said, exchanging a pointed look with Jasper, “if we had known Sir Clarence was coming, Monty, fencing could have been added as a sport for today. Is it too late?”
“I have no rapiers in the house,” Jasper said. “You do not have any with you by any chance, Clarence, do you?”
“I do not,” Clarence said, sounding rather as if he had almost swallowed his tongue. “Unfortunately,” he added.
“Very fortunately for me,” Jasper said with a laugh. “Of course, you were just as good with an oar.”
“One can hardly fence with oars, Jasper,” Clarence said, and looked about him, smiling at the laughter his words provoked.
“It would have to be something more creative than simple fencing,” Jasper said. “Not a jousting match with oars while standing in the boats-that would put too severe a strain on my lamentably poor sense of balance. Although having to keep one’s balance would add spice to such a jousting match, would it not? What is a little more solid than boats but not quite as solid as the ground?”
The head groom-the only person whom Jasper had taken into his confidence-spoke up on cue.
“There are these planks, my lord,” he said, pointing to them. “The ones we set across the mud pit so that we could get right over it to add more water. They are eight inches wide.”
“You are suggesting, Barker,” Jasper said, aghast, “that Sir Clarence and I stand on one of those planks each-over the mud-jousting with oars? When I am wearing a white shirt?”
“It is a mad-” Clarence began, equally aghast.
“And against a star fencer?” Jasper added.
“I will wager, Monty,” Merton said, looking very deliberately at him, “that you cannot win a bout but will be tipped ignominiously into the mud.”
“Now wait a minute,” Jasper said, holding up a hand. “This is foolish. I wish I had not said anything about Clarence’s fencing skills. Much as I find any wager hard to resist, this one-”
“I will wager against you too, Jasper,” Uncle Stanley said, looking at him with narrowed eyes.
And suddenly there was a chorus of voices, all urging this impromptu jousting bout between Lord Montford and Sir Clarence Forester. The two wrestlers who were returning from the lake ready for the final bout were almost forgotten.
Jasper held up a hand.
“Now wait a minute here,” he said again. “For very pride’s sake I will feel forced to take on the challenge and suffer a proper dunking in the mud for my pains. But perhaps Clarence is more sensible. Indeed, I am sure he is. And perhaps he does not allow pride to cloud his judgment as much as I do. Perhaps he will not mind if half the guests here believe he must have lost the skills he used to have. What do you say, Clarence? Do say no, old chap.”
“If any nephew of mine proves to be such a sniveling coward,” a thoroughly irritated voice said from the crowd, “I swear I will disown him.”
Seth Wrayburn!
“Uncle Seth!” Lady Forester said. “Can you not see what is happening here? Do you not see that Jasper is deliberately-”
“Silence, woman,” Wrayburn said. “Clarence? What is it to be?”
Clarence attempted nonchalance, but Jasper could see that the hands he clasped behind his back were trembling.
“If Jasper insists upon taking a mud bath and humiliating himself before all his houseguests and neighbors,” he said, “then there is nothing I can do to stop him, is there?”