Page 99 of Gentleman Jim

Our lad.

St. Clare vaguely registered the words. Just as he’d registered the old men’s stares and whispers when first he’d entered the Crossed Daggers. He knew what it all meant, but there was no time to dwell on it. He had his old rival to contend with.

The two of them faced each other at the edge of the shadowed taproom.

“Come here,” Fred commanded Maggie. “Now.”

“She’s not going anywhere with you,” St. Clare said. “Not tonight—not ever. She belongs to me.”

“You!” Fred glared at him with something very like hatred. The same unbridled hatred with which he’d once regarded St. Clare so long ago. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”

One of the grizzled old men stood up from his seat at the corner table. “Don’t you know who you’re talking to, boy? Why, that’s Gentleman Jim.”

Another of the men laughed. “He’s not Jim, you silly sod. He’s too young.”

“He looks like him right enough,” the first man replied. “A damned mirror image. Must be his son.”

Fred stared at St. Clare in dawning realization. His mouth opened and closed. His chest heaved. He shook his head, as if in denial of what was right in front of his eyes.

“I am his son,” St. Clare said. His mouth curved in an arctic smile. But his blood wasn’t cold. It was swiftly simmering to a raging boil.

This was the man who’d driven him from Beasley Park. Who’d beaten him and scarred him and separated him from the love of his life. This was the man who would have let him hang for a crime he hadn’t committed.

And here St. Clare was at last, facing him, not as a cold-blooded viscount but as himself—as the hot-tempered lad who had fled Somerset ten years ago.

“Don’t you know me, Fred?” he asked.

“Nicholas Seaton,” Fred uttered in tones of disbelief. “It’s not possible.”

“Oh, it’s quite possible, I assure you,” St. Clare said. And he cocked his pistol.

Maggie’s heart jumped in her throat. Until a few minutes ago, St. Clare had been in complete control of the situation. She’d been content to follow his lead. But somewhere between the last two steps on the staircase and the taut moment in which they were now embroiled, he’d let his emotions get the better of him.

She felt as though she was standing atop a tinderbox. Not only were Fred and St. Clare pointing their pistols at each other, the rest of the men in the tavern had risen to their feet. Some of them appeared to be in possession of weapons of their own. Even the barman was armed. He’d withdrawn a heavy wooden club from behind the counter, as if in eminent expectation of an all-out brawl.

“Jim’s son!” one of the old men said. “Knew it as soon as I saw him, I did. Didn’t I tell you, Bill?”

“A family matter, he said,” another replied. “Did you ken?”

Ignoring the upraised voices, Maggie set a hand very gently on St. Clare’s arm, careful not to startle him. He was entirely focused on Fred. “This isn’t going to solve anything.”

“Probably not,” St. Clare said without looking at her. “But it will make me feel better.”

Fred had cocked his pistol as well. It shook a little in his hand. Not the most heartening sight. Indeed, Maggie had more fear that Fred would fire upon St. Clare accidentally than that St. Clare would shoot Fred on purpose.

“Put it down, Fred,” she said, “before you hurt someone!”

“I mean to hurt someone,” Fred replied. “Him.”

Mr. Beresford backed against the counter, half shielding himself behind his valet. “Pray tell, Cousin, just who is Nicholas Seaton?”

“I’m Nicholas Seaton,” St. Clare said, without batting an eye.

Maggie winced. Good lord. This was all her fault. She’d known full well that St. Clare had wanted to leave his old identity behind. Dead and buried, he’d said. And now, because of her, he was forced to confront it again, and in the most public way possible.

“The bastard son of a whore and a highwayman,” Fred said. “Born at Beasley Park, wasn’t he, Margaret? He used to muck out Squire Honeywell’s stables.”

Maggie’s fists clenched. “Shut up, Fred.”