“Look, it’s only thirty I want. I lost a level pony on that deuced fight, and it cost me a sov to get brought back here.
You said you’d pay each time I was bloody bottleholder.”
“You shall get your fee at the proper time,” she said with contempt. “What you lose on wagers is not my concern.”
Enmity flashed between them. Vibart snatched up a silver statuette. “I’ll take this, then, if you haven’t the ready money. All these bloody trinkets should be mine by rights, anyway.”
Speaking deliberately, Isabel said: “You will replace that figurine on the mantelshelf or I shall tell Robert to break your arm.”
There was no doubt in anyone’s mind about Isabel’s determination. Nor did anyone doubt D’Estin’s willingness to cooperate.
Vibart flung down the ornament and left the room.
In the silence after, Jago detected a quickening in Isabel’s breath. Her lips parted fractionally. Her shoulders jerked.
She was giggling like a schoolgirl. Finally she tossed her head and laughed convulsively.
D’Estin, too, was smiling.
“It was most uncivil of you to take the trap,” she scolded him, still vibrating with amusement. “After he’d given Henry his knee for nine rounds, too. He was exhausted!
How you could sit here, Robert, enjoying your roast duck and thinking of Edmund possibly legging it back across the fields, I cannot understand!” Laughter rippled from her again.
“If he hadn’t tried to abandon us in the first place, he wouldn’t have been caught,” said D’Estin. “That’s so, ain’t it, Jago? Look alive, man!”
Jago tried to appear animated.
“Of course, you must be used up!” Isabel said. “While we prattle on with our ridiculous family jokes the hero of the evening wilts away! Your poor flesh, Henry! Are you terribly stiff from your exertions?”
Here was the cue for an exit. “Somewhat,” Jago agreed.
“Then you will want massaging. It will relax you before sleep. Take him to the morning room, Robert. The chaise-longue will do.”
“No, thank you, D’Estin,” Jago hastily intervened. “I think I’ll just retire. You won’t want to massage me as late as this.”
“Me?” said D’Estin. “You think I’m the masseur? With this?” He held out his mutilated hand. “No, my friend.
Isabel will tone you up. Don’t think she isn’t strong enough, eh, Sylvanus?”
The Ebony said nothing, whether from fatigue or for his own reasons.
“It really isn’t necessary,” Jago protested.
“I shall enjoy it,” Isabel said.
“There’s no escape, you see,” D’Estin pointed out.
“I think I should like to sleep, if you don’t mind.”
“You will sleep more comfortably if your muscles are loosened.”
Jago struggled for a stronger excuse.
D’Estin came to the rescue. “The lad’s totally spent, Isabel. I think we should let him get to bed, as he says.”
She smiled at the wilting pugilist. “Very well. Good night to you, Henry, and thank you for acquitting yourself so capably today.”
Jago at once stood to go. The Ebony, too, nodded and removed himself, leaving Isabel and D’Estin alone. It was well past midnight. The candles had burned to a molten liquid at the bottom of each glass. D’Estin’s cigar glowed against the weird background like a demon’s eye.
“You didn’t get your way, did you?” he said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You know what I mean. You wanted to get your hands on his body. You can’t resist the feel of a man’s flesh, can you?
Tired, bruised flesh that you can knead back to vitality.”
She was angry. “Don’t speak in that way.”
“Is that why you watch them through your peephole as they work in the gym? Do you like to see them suffer, Isabel?”
“You’re mad!” she cried in agitation. “I want the best performance out of the fighters we keep here. They have to be watched, or they won’t work. It’s for their own good. I want no more failures among my pugilists. The last episode was all too sordid.”
D’Estin breathed cigar smoke across the table. “It doesn’t sound very convincing, Isabel. We both know the truth. Why try to conceal it? That isn’t a training regimen you devise for them each morning. It’s a sentence of punishment meticulously planned so that they suffer progressively more from day to day. It has nothing to do with fist fighting. Power-that’s the point of it, isn’t it? No need for you to bother yourself with women’s rights and such nonsense. You get all the self-esteem you want watching strong men shake with fatigue at your whim.”
“I won’t have you talk in this way-”
“There’s no need to agitate yourself,” said D’Estin coolly.
“I’m not the only one in this house to see why you do it.
You’ve noticed the way the black looks at you, haven’t you?
He knows as well as either of us. That’s why you turn to new prey. But Jago has eluded you for tonight at least, so-” he stubbed out the cigar with deliberation-“you can take notice of me. I’ve waited too long.”
“For heaven’s sake, Robert!” she said, uncertain how to treat him.
He stood and pulled her from the chair and into an embrace. His mouth clamped on hers. She jerked herself free.
“Don’t tell me you’re too weary,” D’Estin snarled. “You never used to be. You’d have been willing if Jago had found the strength.”
Her hand swung through the semi-darkness and slapped his face, catching him more on the temple than the cheek. It gave the final impetus to his aggression. He caught her arm with his maimed hand and with the other successively wrenched the dress and undergarments from her shoulders.
Then he forced her to the carpet. Above them the dying candlelight played on the grinning features of Kali.
When it was over, D’Estin held her for some seconds.
There was tenderness in his whisper. “It need not have been so, my love. We should never have allowed misunderstandings to destroy what was so precious.”
But she was looking past him, at the statue, and her voice was expressionless. “You chose an appropriate setting, Robert.
Our relationship is dead-dead for ever.” She pushed him from her as though he were some unwanted counterpane and began fastening her clothes. “Forget that I ever showed you affection.” As she got to her feet, clasping the torn dress to her, he crouched, watching, cowed by her self-possession. “And remember that only a fool forces himself on women when he can give them no pleasure whatsoever.”
CHAPTER 9
Constable Thackeray reported early at the Waterloo Road Police Station on Monday morning. Whatever happened that day, he was resolved not to offend Cribb. The Constable’s impish pleasure in his sergeant’s predicament after the fight had drained away rapidly. Prometheus unchained was no more alarming than Cribb humiliated.
Mercifully, Sunday had provided time for the fury to subside. So far as police duties were concerned, Cribb was a strict Sabbatarian. He arrived as jaunty as ever, tossing his bowler and umbrella deftly onto the stand.
