“Young sir.” Jonathan’s voice startled him from the other side of his door. “You have a visitor, young sir.”
Rowen opened the door and arched an eyebrow. Thinking better of the wrinkle that too would eventually bring, he slid his eyebrow back into place and stared flatly at Jonathan. “Who is it at this hour?”
Jonathan smirked. “At this hour? It is nigh unto one in the afternoon, sir.”
Rowen grinned. “Well, that explains why I am so famished.” He reached out and smacked Jonathan on the back. “And just who is here visiting me?”
“Lady Catrina of House Hollindale.”
“Sweet Jesus. What a way to ruin a man’s appetite.” He dropped his arm from around Jonathan and rubbed at his brow. “Why is Catrina here?”
“It seems your good mother sent for her.”
“Of course.” He groaned.
“Your good mother has a stake in a successful match being made of you,” Jonathan pointed out. “If you rise, she will be better taken care of in her advancing age.”
“I am well aware of my mother’s grasping nature,” Rowen assured. “And quite unimpressed with it.”
“Catrina may be a bit of a reach.”
Rowen snorted. “Perhaps according to rank, but…”
“Understood, young sir. She does seem to be quite smitten with you. I daresay she has been for some years.”
They walked down the hallway side by side, Rowen shaking his head. “It matters not one whit. Not any of it.”
“Because you are in love with Lady Jordan?”
Rowen stopped dead and, turning, stared at him. “I am not in love with Jordan.”
“Right, right,” Jonathan said. “My mistake.”
“You could send her away.”
“Would you wish me to? Your lady mother would be incensed.”
Rowen sighed. “No, no. But do bring us some sandwiches from the kitchen, please. With cucumber aplenty.”
“But, sir … Cucumber and you…”
Rowen’s smile slipped to one side of his face. “Agree as much as Catrina and I do.”
That day Lady Astraea slept soundly. She did not cry out, she did not die, she showed no sign of fever—if anything, she showed so little sign of life Laura was puzzled about the true nature of her existence. As far as Laura could tell her ladyship had not even rolled or moved in bed since John first placed her there the night before.
Laura gently removed the pillow from beneath her ladyship’s head, fluffed it, and reset it. Then she moved around the room dusting and adjusting the positions of things so it did not seem so absolutely unlived in. She returned to her lady’s side and carefully unwrapped the bandages on her arms, laying the skin bare to the air’s caress. It was odd knowing how little time had passed and yet how healed the flesh was already.
Laura applied the salve to her arms and rewrapped them. It was not impossible that if she slept a few more days and the salve continued its miraculous work her wounds would be completely closed—perhaps even to the point no mark remained.
That evening found Rowen on a table, arms wrapped around Kenneth Lorrington and Chadwick Skellish, two of his like-ranked fellows, while belting out a song few of them remembered when sober and Rowen only recalled when drunk off his ass. But drunk off his ass he was and his friends didn’t mind because at least Rowen was moving forward—in a sodden and weaving sort of way, but still it was forward. Never had “The Apparition of a Dandy” been so boldly sung and the regular crowd knew, if Rowen stayed on, he’d follow it up with “All for Me Grog.”
Rowen released his friends, watching them waver a moment beside him, and then swung his arms wildly, the crowd in the tavern joining in on the chorus as the bartender clanked an empty tankard on the bar in time to the song. They roared at the end and Rowen swept them a bow and tumbled off the table and into the surprised arms of several men and their ladies.
Well, not so much ladies as wenches, Rowen reassessed, tearing his eyes away from their overly displayed décolletage as he apologized for his clumsiness. The women grinned at him, one running a hand over his stubbly cheek and saying through a laugh and a haze of ale-scented breath, “You can tumble into me any time, love.”
“Men tumble into you too easily, you sly thing,” her companion teased. She placed a finger in Rowen’s dimple and smiled, wiggling her eyebrows at him. “You should come pay us a visit later this evening…”
Kenneth hopped off the table and, swinging an arm over Rowen’s shoulders, belched in his ear. “Emphasis on the pay,” he said with a laugh.
The women tittered but denied nothing and Rowen, swinging around to seek a new source of fun, knocked into the back of a well-dressed man who responded with a string of well-used curses.
“Apologies, good sir,” Rowen said, realizing the man’s drink had spilled across his front.
“Apologies?” the other countered. They locked gazes. “Apologies!” The man grinned, lips twisting like snakes, and he said, “You cannot begin to apologize to the likes of someone like me, Rowen Burchette. Not anymore.”
Rowen cocked his head. “What mean you?”
“I mean, boy, that you are so low of station now—having nearly become engaged to that whore’s offspring—that nothing you say comes close to correcting the dishonor your mere presence brings to a room.”
“So low of station—” Chadwick rounded on the man, but Rowen thrust his hand between them and focused as keenly as one in his cups might on the narrow-faced man before him.
“Whore’s offspring?” he asked as if he’d gone hard of hearing. Rowen blinked and Chadwick stepped back, recognizing the look on his friend’s face.
“You heard me, lout.”
Rowen merely blinked again, but Chadwick and Kenneth noted the faint lowering of his brow and the way his jaw jutted forward—the slightest bit more pronounced.
“Jordan Astraea is the result of a whorish pairing. Until her the Astraea clan had been clean of magick’s taint and now—they have produced a Weather Witch? Morgan Astraea’s heritage is clean yet he is ruined because of a woman’s indiscretion. And your trollop—”
Rowen seemed to swell in size, casting a larger shadow across the man.
Kenneth stepped back, spreading his arms wide to signal the crowd back, too.
“Trollop?” Rowen spit the word out in two sharp bites.
The man snorted. “So was it fun, I wonder—spending time with a Weather Witch? Cavorting? I’ve heard they burn like wildfire in the bedroo—”
The crack of Rowen’s fist into the man’s jaw stopped his talking. And caused him to fly back half a pace. He fell against the table Rowen had so recently danced his way across. Rowen rubbed his knuckles and glared at the other man.
His opponent was rubbing his jaw, his eyes huge as he found his balance and stood once more, shocked. His friends patted his shoulders, brushed off his back and whispered words of—Rowen couldn’t make them out as the blood pulsed in his ears—were they advising him to back down or encouraging him forward? Rowen didn’t care. Insults rolled through his head like they were connected in one continuous string.
“Breathe, Rowen, breathe,” Chadwick said, watching the other man spread his feet into a fighter’s stance and tap the place where his sword would have normally hung.
“You,” Rowen said with a grunt. “Take back what you said about Jordan. Now.”
“I will not,” the other said with an impertinent shake of his head. “I never apologize for speaking the truth.”