“I do know better, and I didn’t come alone. I have two servants waiting outside.” On a stupid impulse, she added, “And we have a signal.”
One dark eyebrow lifted. “A signal.”
“Yes. A signal.” She forged on before he could inquire further. “I would not have needed to come here at all if you’d left some other way of reaching you. I tried calling at the Harrington.”
“I no longer have rooms at the Harrington.”
“So they informed me. They gave this as your forwarding address.” She followed him toward what seemed to be the living quarters. “Do you truly live here?”
“When I’m training, I do. No distractions.”
Clio looked around. She hadn’t been in many bachelor apartments, but she’d always imagined them to be cluttered and smelling of unwashed things—dishes, linens, bodies.
Lord Rafe’s warehouse didn’t smell of anything unpleasant. Just sawdust, coffee, and the faint aroma of . . . oil of wintergreen, perhaps? But the place was spartan in its furnishings. In one corner, she glimpsed a simple cot, a cupboard and a few shelves, and a small table with two stools.
He removed two tumblers from the cupboard and placed them on the table. Into one, he poured a few inches of sherry. Into the other, he emptied the remaining contents of a coffeepot, added a touch of pungent syrup from a mysterious brown bottle, then into it all he cracked three raw eggs.
She watched with queasy fascination as he stirred the slimy mess with a fork. “Surely you’re not going to—”
“Drink that?” He lifted the tumbler, drained it one long swallow, and pounded the glass to the tabletop. “Three times a day.”
“Oh.”
He pushed the sherry toward her. “That’s yours. You look like you could use it.”
Clio stared at the glass as waves of nausea pitched her stomach to and fro. “Thank you.”
“It’s the best I can do. As you can see, I’m not set up to receive social calls.”
“I won’t take much of your time, I promise. I only stopped by to—”
“Extend a wedding invitation. I’ll send my regrets.”
“What? No. I mean . . . I gather you’ve heard that Lord Granville is finally returning from Vienna.”
“I heard. And Piers has given you permission to plan the most lavish wedding imaginable. I signed off on the accounts myself.”
“Yes, well. About those signatures . . .” Clio twisted the papers rolled in her hand.
He walked away from the table. “This will have to be quick. I can’t be wasting time on chatter.”
He stopped beneath a bar hanging parallel to the floor some three feet over his head. In a burst of quickness, he jumped to grab it. Then he began to lift himself by means of flexing his arms.
Again, then again.
“Go on,” he said, clearing the bar with his chin for the fourth time. “I can talk while I do this.”
Perhaps he could, but Clio was finding it difficult. She wasn’t accustomed to carrying on a conversation with a barely dressed man engaged in such . . . muscular exercise. Awareness hummed in her veins.
She picked up the tumbler of sherry and took a cautious swallow.
It helped.
“I wouldn’t expect you to have heard, but my Uncle Humphrey died a few months ago.” She waved off the condolences before he could offer them. “It wasn’t a shock. He was very old. But the dear old thing left me a bequest in his will. A castle.”
“A castle?” He grunted as he cleared the bar again. Then he paused there, muscles tensed with effort. “Some crumbling pile on the moors with a mountain of unpaid taxes, I suspect.”
“No, actually. It’s situated in Kent and quite lovely. It was one of his personal properties. He was the Earl of Lynforth, if you recall.”
Good heavens, she was babbling. Pull yourself together, Clio.
“Ideal for a wedding, then.” His voice tightened with exertion.
“I suppose it could be. For someone. But I’m on my way there today, and I stopped by to—”
“Inform me.” Lift.
“Yes, and also—”
“To ask for money.” Lift. “I just told you, you’re free to spend as much on the wedding as you wish. Send the bills to my brother’s men of business.”
Clio squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. “Lord Rafe, please. Would you kindly stop—”
“Finishing your sentences?”
She suppressed a little growl.
He paused midlift. “Don’t try to tell me I got that one wrong.”
She couldn’t tell him that. Not honestly. That was the most galling part.
He went on, “As I said . . . I’m training.” Each phrase was punctuated by another lift. “It’s what prizefighters do. We concentrate.” Lift. “Anticipate.” Lift. “React. If it bothers you, try being less predictable.”
“I’m calling it off,” she blurted out. “The wedding, the engagement. Everything. I’m calling it all off.”
He dropped to the floor.
The air prickled around them.
And his dark expression told Clio, in no uncertain terms, he hadn’t predicted that.
Rafe stared at her.
This was not how his month was supposed to be going. He’d holed himself away in this storehouse to train for his comeback. When he met Jack Dubose for the second time, it would be the biggest bout of his life and the largest purse ever offered in English history. To prepare, he needed intensive physical conditioning, undisturbed sleep, nourishing food . . .