Page 23 of The Untamed Heart

Nothing.

“Lord Darenth.”

Sherry stared at him, wondering if he was being an arse on purpose—Hawkney had warned him—but on closer inspection he realised the fellow was somewhere else entirely and still hadn’t heard him.

“Darenth!” he bellowed.

The fellow leapt a foot in the air and turned to glare at him. “Are you mad? What are you thinking, roaring at a fellow without a by-your-leave?”

Sheringham let out a breath, meeting his glare with one of his own. “Well, all previous attempts to gain your attention failed.”

Darenth blinked. “They did? Well, I was thinking.”

“So I surmised.”

“If you knew, why did you interrupt me? I was revising Vauban’s principles of fort design,” he said crossly, tugging irritably on his shirtsleeves and settling himself more comfortably on the luxurious seats of his carriage.

Sheringham gazed at him, none the wiser. “You were what now?”

Darenth gave a long-suffering sigh. “I was given a treatise to review by the prime minister. The author proposed a bastion with a salient angle of sixty-five degrees! Do you see how utterly ludicrous that is?”

Sheringham did not see, but he was startled to discover that the prime minister himself had sought the man’s opinion.

“And then… and then,” he continued, sounding increasingly indignant, “I discovered he’s also misplaced the ravelin, so it ceased to protect the approach to the gate. Damned amateurs,” he muttered in disgust, folding his arms.

“And you were… recalculating?” Sherry ventured, wondering if the fellow could really do such a thing without even paper and pencil before him.

“Indeed.”

“But we are no longer at war.”

Darenth shrugged as if this was of little consequence to him. “Incompetence at any time is unforgivable. If the government must spend money on such plans, at least give them to some fellow with a brain.”

“Like yours?”

He returned a scathing look. “Good lord, no. No one else has a brain like mine, and I have no interest in designing forts.”

“But you were just—”

“Because it was wrong!” Darenth said irritably.

Sheringham laughed despite himself.

“Darenth, why has no one murdered you yet?”

“Oh, they’ve tried,” he replied in amusement and Sheringham found his delighted smile just a little disturbing. “I’m remarkably difficult to kill, you know. I have learned a good deal about fighting. Boxing, sword fighting, cane fighting, and I employ a marvellous fellow named Liang Shen. From China. He considers himself indebted to me as I saved his sister from being hanged for stealing. In return, he taught me the most wonderful form of fighting. Would you care for a demonstration?”

There was a devilish light in the fellow’s eyes Sheringham did not trust.

“No, I thank you.”

Appearing somewhat crestfallen, he huffed. “Suit yourself.”

“How long have you known Hawkney?”

“Since he was at school.”

“You didn’t go to school with him,” Sherry protested, for he had done so and would certainly have remembered Darenth.