Peele tumbles off the bench and curls into a ball on the ground, his fingers pressed to his face as blood seeps between them.
“Good Lord!” Mortimer drops to his knees at Peele’s side and cradles him in his arms, like this is a valiant death upon the battlefield. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he shouts at me.
I don’t know! I want to shout in return. Peele is keening in Mortimer’s arms and I have just broken his nose without meaning to and can’t even protest it was an accident because all three of them saw there was nothing accidental about it. The handful of passersby likely saw it as well—I hear a woman on the next path over gasp, and her companion says, “Good gracious, is he all right?”
“Adrian, we need to go.” Louisa pulls me to my feet, trying to drag me down the trail and away from the carnage, but I stumble, unable to find my footing. My head spins. I’m breathing too fast. Panic over nothing and also everything is clawing at my chest, filling it up like a boat sinking slowly into the ocean, and am I dying? I may, truly, be dying this time. Now I’m once again panicked that I’m dying—I’m at least seventy-five percent sure I am. I cannot get a breath to eke its way through my porridgy lungs and my heart feels as though it’s about to burst and I can still feel Richard Peele shaking me by the shoulders like a dog with a pigeon in its mouth.
“Get back here!” Mortimer shouts after us, but Louisa keeps pulling me toward the gate leading out to the street.
“Ignore them,” she says, though her pace is quicker than I feel it should be if I were entirely without fault. She clasps my hand suddenly in both of hers and presses it to her chest. “That was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” She kisses my knuckles, breathless for an entirely different reason than I am. “Is your hand all right?”
“Yes—yes,” I manage to stammer. I may have been as surprised as anyone by my attack, but I wasn’t stupid enough to tuck my thumb into my fist or some other amateur mistake like that. I doubt my knuckles will even bruise. “I didn’t hit him that hard.”
“I know. Try to get some more momentum before you swing next time.”
“How are you joking about this?” I ask, my voice coming out in a squeak.
“You’ve killed him!” I hear Mortimer wail behind us, and I start to turn back.
“Oh God, have I?”
Louisa nearly wrenches my shoulder trying to keep me from going back.
“You absolutely haven’t. He just wants attention.”
“I think I’d better—” I glance backward, and catch a glimpse of the small crowd forming. Mortimer is still holding Peele like they’re Achilles and Patroclus at Hector’s feet. There seems to be some debate among the congregation of what to do next, and whether or not this is a rehearsal for a new tragedy playing in Covent Garden.
“He’s fine,” Louisa says again, stepping on my untied bootlace and nearly tripping us both.
“Then why are we making a run for it?”
“We are not running!”
“An overly fast walk for it.”
“Because in spite of being blameless, no one is going to side with the young radicals punching noblemen of a certain age. Hurry up!”
We are nearly to the park entrance when a man on horseback veers suddenly from the street, blocking our path. Louisa and I both skid to a stop to avoid being trampled, as he pulls on the reins to avoid doing any trampling.
“What’s going on here?” he calls, and I recognize his blue coat, marking him a member of the Bow Street Runners.
Louisa glances over her shoulder, like she hadn’t noticed the commotion until he pointed it out. “Oh, I think a gentleman took a fall.”
“That man attacked us!” Mortimer screams, and when Louisa and I turn, he has forsaken his pietà to stand and point an accusatory finger at me. “They were trying to force their Whig puffery upon us, and when we politely declined, he attacked Lord Parkgate!”
And though only the barest foundations of that story are anything near to true, I feel so truly and deeply that I have done something wrong, I almost start to cry.
“We did no such thing!” Louisa protests, and the constable looks from Peele and his valet to us and Dear Lord, don’t let me start crying, please, let me stop thinking about crying for that will only hasten it.
“We?” he repeats. “Who are you, precisely?”
And there’s really no good answer to that, for we are two raggedy-looking political agitators whose identity would not be believed if we said it, and heaven help us if it were.
“Did anyone witness this attack?” the constable asks, swinging himself down off his mare. The crowd shifts, but no one comes forward. He turns back to us. “I think it’s best,” he says, “if you come with me.”
As the Bow Street Runner takes the reins of his horse, I feel Louisa’s hand slide from its death grip on my wrist and into mine. “So I was wrong,” she says with a huff. “We may get arrested.”
Just then, it begins to rain.
2
The constable sees a bleeding Lord Parkgate and a howling Mortimer installed in a carriage and takes their names in case a further investigation is required, then escorts Louisa and me to Bow Street, where the Runners have their offices in the first story of the home of their founder, Henry Fielding, who is, coincidentally, my favorite writer. And who I pray to God is not at home, for if I’m made to meet Henry Fielding under the circumstances of my arrest by his constabulary, I think I shall have to excuse myself to dig my own grave and then lie facedown in it. In fact, I hope to never meet Henry Fielding, in detention or otherwise, as I suspect I will be even worse at meeting people whose novels I have obsessively read over and over than I am at meeting ordinary people, which I’m quite rubbish at.
Thank God, the office is empty, except for another blue-coated constable Louisa begs to run to Edward’s and ask him to come fetch us. He agrees, only after her offer comes with a guinea, though he departs not at the promised run but rather what might be generously termed a saunter.
“Edward will come,” Lou assures me as we sit on a long bench pushed up against the hallway wall opposite the open office door, through which we can see the man who collared us making careful documentation of the incident, no doubt in hopes we are some sort of criminal gang and he can collect a government bounty upon us.
When I don’t say anything, Louisa adds, “He’s been arrested loads of times.” Then, “He won’t be bothered. And he won’t say anything. To anyone. And he’ll pay the constables.” Then, lower, “Are you all right?”
I am impossibly far from all right. I can still feel Richard Peele’s hands on my shoulders like a ghost standing behind me, and I can’t let my mind circle too close to the memory of feeling trapped between him and his valet, that final grain of anxiety that tipped the scales into panic. My head is spinning and my heart still feels as though it’s trying to break free of my rib cage. My throat is raw, like I’ve been screaming.
I double over, elbows on my knees and head between them.
“May I touch you?” Louisa says gently, and when I nod, she takes my hand, pressing her thumbs into my palms. She may have hoped it would be soothing, but instead, it somehow feels like more evidence that she hates me and my nerves and my sweat and my inability to speak for myself and the way I sat there while Richard Peele harassed her and his valet undressed her with his eyes. No matter how much I tell myself that that is an irrational conclusion to vault to so quickly and with so little information, my brain refuses rationality.