Everything but the Earl by Willa Ramsey

Author:Willa Ramsey
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: 0
Published: 2018-07-02T18:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A dam’s heart was still racing as he walked into Corinthian Luke’s.

He was so eager to see Caro, to see her standing with both feet on firm ground, and to touch her and ensure that she was still flesh and bone and breath, that he wasn’t quite himself. He was tense and excited, unable to calm down, and unsure how to pass the time until Edie’s coming dinner party.

So he had made his way to the boxing gymnasium, for the first time in over a decade.

“Ryland? Funny seeing you here,” Quillen said, getting up from a stiff-backed chair along the wall as he entered. His old friend had cherubic, golden curls, trimmed just below his ears. He was a great favorite with the ladies, if Mother was any indication; she had once described his pale blue eyes as the color of “washed-out violets, at the end of the season.”

“Quillen—I was hoping you would be here. Let me join you.” He took the chair opposite him and before long, fresh coffee appeared on the low table between them.

“I haven’t seen you in a fortnight, Ryland. And here I’d thought that with you finally in town, I’d have some conversation for once.”

“You didn’t see me at Lady Blick’s? Playing the matchmaking mama?”

“Sadly, no!” he replied, folding up his newspaper. “It was such a crush that I left for other haunts before midnight.” Quillen had cultivated a reputation of some mystery, and had come to be known as a smooth-talking dealmaker who knew everyone worth knowing—in government, the underworld, the aristocracy, and the arts.

Adam glanced around. They were in the coffee room, but with the gymnasium just next door, the shouts and muffled thuds of the sport carried easily into their conversation. A steady stream of young bucks strutted to and from the gym, their boasts and back-slaps further punctuating the salty, sour atmosphere of the place. Adam’s leg was pumping up and down before long, and he put his hand on his knee to still it.

“Pardon the intrusion, Ryland. But you don’t seem well.”

Adam whipped around. “I am fine.”

“This place makes you uneasy, still?”

He glanced around again. Tattered old postings hung on every wall, advertising once and future bouts, and the walls themselves seemed deliberately shabby, as if the owner knew that his wealthy patrons would enjoy the sensation of having left their rarefied world for the grit of the underclass—albeit just in their heads, and only for a short time.

“It’s odd,” Adam began, shaking his head. “This place just seems sort of…sad to me now.”

“How so?” Quillen laced his hands together and sat back, looking at him sideways. There was no fooling his old friend. Quillen had never been one to tease him about boxing, or about his interests in the art and engineering of landscapes.

He shrugged. “As a boy, all I wanted to do was to please my father, and that meant practicing athletics much of the day. Mainly boxing. When he died, I turned to the things that I liked, but I have always been ashamed of not continuing the things that Father loved.

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