Page 24 of The Untamed Heart

“Heavens, no. I had learned all any educational establishment could teach before I was ten, but my father had the odd notion I ought to spend time with boys my own age. My parents know his grandmother well, and they invited Hawkney to spend a few weeks at our home one summer.”

He still looked perplexed by the notion.

Sheringham smiled. “So you became friends?”

Darenth frowned again. “He broke my nose within an hour of his arrival.”

Sherry gave a choked laugh. “Good old Hawkney.”

Darenth grinned, showing too many teeth. “I got my own back.”

“What did you do, Darenth?”

Darenth made an impatient gesture. “Oh, call me Lucius. I cannot abide the damned title.”

A little startled, Sheringham acquiesced. “You may call me Sherry. My friends do.”

Lucius regarded him thoughtfully, and Sheringham wondered if he would ever grow used to that strange and penetrating gaze.

“In those days I was not so adept at fighting. I found the urge to batter fellows one was supposed to consider friends somewhat bewildering. So I took a different approach.”

Sheringham quirked an eyebrow, waiting.

Lucius sighed, rolling his eyes. “He had a box containing sweetmeats, none of which he had offered me. So I mixed a harmless but dramatic concoction of vinegar, chalk, and powdered charcoal and poured it into the box, which I sealed with a little wax.”

“What happened?” Sheringham asked, not understanding what that combination might do.

“It exploded, obviously,” Lucius said with a tsk of impatience. “It took him three days to scrub the soot from his face and hair, he reeked of vinegar for almost as long, and the sweetmeats were ruined,” he said with satisfaction.

“Good God,” Sheringham said. He could see the scene in his mind’s eyes, Hawkney, soot-blackened, dripping with vinegar, and utterly furious, and Lucius smirking with satisfaction. “And he didn’t murder you?”

“No,” Lucius replied, looking rather perplexed. “I thought he would at first he was so shocked and angry, but then he laughed. He laughed and laughed until he was almost sick. Then he demanded I show him how it was done. We rubbed along well enough after that.”

“I imagine so,” Sherry replied dryly, shaking his head.

Silence fell between them once more as the carriage rattled down a cobbled street.

Lucius fidgeted, drumming his fingers on the seat for a moment.

Sheringham could not help but feel like he’d woken a sleeping bear and rather wished he had not done so. His companion’s next words confirmed his worst suspicions.

“You know, if the glacis were properly sloped, it would deflect the cannon shot,” Lucius said eagerly, and Sherry read his desire to explain every nuance in his glittering eyes. He did so, in tedious and utterly incomprehensible detail for the next half an hour.

Sherry slouched back into his seat and covered his eyes with his hand. “I preferred it when you were silent,” he grumbled.

Lucius didn’t hear him.

Horse Guards, Whitehall, London, 22nd September 1816

It was raining when they reached Whitehall. The pale stone of the imposing structure that was Horse Guards glowed in the grim, grey light. The mounted sentries stood with inhuman stillness, rain dripping off their noses. They did not so much as twitch.

Sheringham stepped down from the carriage, realising too late that he did not know precisely what tack they were going to take once they were inside. He was used to his title opening doors that remained shut to most people, but this was different. Tact would be required.

They were doomed.

Sheringham wondered morosely if they would end the day clapped in the Tower of London.

He turned, about to sternly advise Lucius that he leave the talking to him, only to find the fellow had already marched ahead, his long black coat snapping in the wind behind him.