Someone to Love (Westcott #1)(29)

He had persisted with a dogged determination and endless additional practice time until he turned some invisible corner early in his second year by winning another of what he had privately dubbed the amusement rounds in boxing by knocking down an opponent two years older and a foot taller and several stone heavier than he in the second round. Admittedly it had happened when the boy was striking a pose for his friends and grinning like an idiot, but it had happened nevertheless. The boy had even had to be carried off to the infirmary, where he had watched stars from dazed eyes for the next few hours.

The great change, though, had come when Avery was in his next-to-senior year. He was walking back to school from some unremembered errand and had taken an unfamiliar route for some variety. He had found himself walking past an open plot of waste ground between two old, shabby buildings and witnessing the strange sight of an old man in loose white trousers and tunic moving about barefoot in the middle of the lot with exaggerated steps and arm gestures, all of which were strangely graceful and slow, rather as if time itself were moving at less than half its usual speed. The man was about Avery’s own height and build. He was also Chinese, a relatively unusual sight.

After many minutes the movements had ended and the old man had stood looking at Avery, seemingly quite aware that he had been there for a while but unembarrassed at having been observed behaving in such a peculiar manner. Avery had stared back. He was the one who had broken the silence. He doubted the old man ever would have.

“What were you doing?” he had asked.

“Why do you wish to know, young man?” the Chinese gentleman had asked in return—and he had waited for an answer.

Just curious, Avery had been about to say with a shrug. But there had been something about the man’s stillness, about his eyes, about the very air surrounding him that had impelled Avery to search his mind for a truthful answer. Two, even three minutes might have passed, during which neither of them moved or looked away from each other’s eyes.

The answer when it came was a simple one—and a life-changing one.

“I want to do it too,” Avery had said.

“Then you will,” the man had said.

By the time he finished school two years later, Avery had learned a great deal about the wisdom of the Orient from his master, both philosophical and spiritual. He had learned too, not just about certain martial arts, but also how to perform them. The most wonderful discovery of all had been that his small stature and whip-thin body were actually the perfect instruments for such arts. He practiced diligently and endlessly until even his unrelentingly stern and demanding master was almost satisfied with him. He had made of himself a deadly human weapon. His hands could chop through piled boards; his feet could fell a not-so-very-young tree, though he proved that to himself only once before falling prey to remorse at having killed a living thing unnecessarily.

He had never practiced the deadliest of the arts on any human, but he knew how if he should ever need to use his skills. He hoped that time would never come, for he had also learned the corresponding art of self-control. He rarely used the weapon that was himself and never to its full potential, but the fact that he was a weapon, that he was virtually invincible, had given him all the confidence he would ever need to live his life in a world that admired height and breadth of chest and shoulder and manly good looks and a commanding presence. He had never told anyone about his meeting with the Chinese gentleman and its consequences, not even his family and closest friends. He had never felt the need.

His master had had only one criticism that had never wavered.

“You will discover love one day,” he had told Avery. “When you do, it will explain all and it will be all. Not self-defense, but love.”

He had not explained, however, what he meant by that word, which had more meanings than perhaps any other word in the English language.

“When you find it,” he had said, “you will know.”

What Avery did know was that men feared him even while they believed they despised him. He knew they did not understand their fear or even openly admit it. He knew women found him attractive. He had learned to surround himself with the weapon that was himself like an invisible aura, while inside he observed his world with a certain cool detachment that was not quite cynical and not quite wistful.

Lady Anastasia Westcott, he suspected, did not find him either fearful or irresistibly attractive, and for that he admired her too. She had even called him absurd. No one ever called the Duke of Netherby absurd, even though he frequently was.

“When a gentleman walks with a lady,” he said as they approached the park, “they make conversation. Shall we proceed to do so?”

“About anything at all?” she asked. “Even when there is nothing to say?”

“There is always something to say,” he said, “as your education will soon teach you, Anna. There is always the weather, for example. Have you noticed how there is always weather? It never lets us down. Have you ever known a day without weather?”

She did not reply, but around the hideous brim of her hideous bonnet he could see that she was almost smiling.

Carriages and riders were making their way in and out of the gates. Their occupants glanced Avery’s way and then returned for a harder look. He turned off the main carriageway to cross a wide expanse of green lawn in the direction of a line of trees that hid the streets beyond from view. He did not intend exposing her to the curiosity of large numbers of the fashionable world today. There was a path through the trees where one could expect a measure of solitude.