ARGOSY ARRIVED PROMPTLY at eight thirty in a slinky blue jaguar wearing a sleek blue Hugo Boss-esque suit, neither of which surprised Isabel. She was in fact certain nothing about him would ever surprise her, what made him seem infinitely safer than Malcolm Coburn. Argosy was terrain she could navigate blindfolded.
Not that she intended to be doing anything quite so adventurous as getting blindfolded with Argosy.
She and Poppy had done three tequila shots each last night; both were old enough to know when to stop, even if they didn’t have all the answers when it came to men. Fortunately, Poppy didn’t press when Isabel nimbly dodged the word “Malcolm” the moment Poppy slyly brought him up. And as for Argosy: “Hot but a bit douchey, don’t you think?” was her take. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun with him.”
“Well,” Lord Hot-but-Douchey greeted Isabel when she emerged from her building, “Asking you out was an excellent decision.”
She looked all right, she supposed. She’d hiked and rolled up the one sensible, stretchy knee-length black pencil skirt she’d packed to reveal a few inches of thigh and topped it with a snug blue t-shirt that rode up a little to show a slice of abdomen when she lifted her arms. She’d tamed her hair with the veritable buffet of unguents curly-haired people traveled through life with and wore it down and loose, then whipped out a black eye pencil and given herself a smokey eye. She didn’t have any tights packed, so bare thighs it was, meticulously shaved. Lip gloss, earrings, black leather jacket, boots and done.
“Complimenting yourself is kind of a funny way to begin a date, Jerrod, don’t you think?”
He laughed, pleased with her and probably with himself and the world, and helped her into the Jag with the grace of a guy who routinely handed short-skirted women into low-slung cars.
Twenty minutes and any number of probable traffic violations later, they were at The Riot, which turned out to be a big, charmless brown box of a building with a pair of narrow, barred windows flanking the door and a white marquis sporting big red plastic letters that spelled THE R OT. A bouncer half the size of the building stood cross-armed to the left of the door, shifting from foot to foot.
The place was practically pulsing like a cartoon from the volume of the music inside.
This was precisely the sort of thing she’d once loved between the ages of about fourteen, which was when she’d started sneaking into clubs, to about twenty-three: It looked dirty and dangerous.
Argosy stood and stared at the building, utterly expressionless. He was an investment banker, he’d told her. Had never been to the Riot, too busy making money. Money money money money. That’s how it had sounded to her in the car, as she half listened, watching the countryside whip by in a blur.
“Shall we?” she said. But she didn’t wait for him. She was already moving toward it as though boarding the Mother Ship.
On stage, Declan Duggan was illuminated like an x-ray in blue-white light. His hair glued back from his face by sweat, a guitar slung low as he gripped the mic stand in two fists. He was swaying noticeably, which likely had a lot to do with the half-empty bottle of whiskey propped on the nearest very tall speaker.
“MAKE A NOISE IF LOVE HAS EVER DESTROOOOYED YOU...” he bellowed into the microphone, sounding a thousand times more Irish than he had this afternoon at the Pig & Thistle.
The crowd of a few hundred howled like animals.
“MAKE A NOISE IF YOU CAN’T BE WITH THE ONE YOU LOOOOVE...”
“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” The crowd obliged.
“This song is for you sorry bastards,” Declan sneered.
His arm windmilled and—KARRRANGGGG— slammed down on his strings, a blur as the band unleashed such an an onslaught of melodic, high-speed noise that it swept the breath right out of her lungs.
It was fantastic.
Dirty and dangerous places were often incubators for the best music. She instantly plowed through to the front of stage, forcing Argosy to follow her.
Duggan had a wonderful voice, big and dark and shouty, the band’s harmonies were tight, and Isabel was boinging in place with the rest of the crowd almost immediately. She didn’t even care that Argosy’s arms remained folded tightly around his body as if to keep himself from moving, or to shield his body from the flailings of unruly Plebeians. He was staring up at the stage with narrowed, assessing eyes. Jealous, if she’d had to guess.
If she danced hard enough, maybe she could sweat everything, Malcolm and yesterday’s toxic humiliations, her slight hangover and all of her fears and thwarted desires, right out of her system, at least for the next hour or so.
She nudged Argosy. “Come on, dance!”
She regretted her entreaty when he jerked his hips and shoulders a little, like a marionette at the mercy of a drunk puppeteer. Perhaps his suit was too snug.
So she ignored him and kept dancing.
“How’s the shoulder, Mick?”
“The bugger’s all right now, doc.” The bouncer mimed a cricket pitch wind-up to demonstrate. Malcolm had re-installed the shoulder in its socket after Mick had come into the clinic late one night. He’d preferred not to discuss how he’d managed to dislocate it in the first place. In Malcolm’s experience, reasons were bound to be embarrassing as often as they were nefarious. He didn’t ask.
Malcolm had told Finn to call him and he’d immediately return to the clinic if he was needed.
And when he opened the door of The Riot, a wall of sound washed over him and it was as good, as refreshing as diving into the Ouse.
Damn, Declan’s band sounded good.
Malcolm rather liked Declan Duggan, who wasn’t particularly easy to know or to like. Malcolm tended to give a pass to people who were unapologetically themselves, which in Declan’s case meant he was a showboating bounder, a dangerous charmer, acerbically insightful, hedonistic and opportunistic, among other things. But Duggan worked harder than anyone suspected. He was also both a better person and a worse one than people suspected. Malcolm, as his doctor and someone who had grown up with him, knew a thing or two that others probably didn’t.
Argosy’s relative stillness in the bouncing, densely packed crowd was like an arrow pointing right at Isabel. Her hair was a brilliant cloud in the blueish club light, flying about as she bobbed her head.
He realized he didn’t have a clue what to say to her if she saw him. Intruding on another man’s date was something out of Declan Duggan’s playbook. There was the unadulterated truth— that he simply preferred to be wherever she was—but that sounded like the Stalker Credo, when what he meant was that naturally he’d prefer to be where the sky was blue and the birds were singing, too. It was terrifyingly a bit like that. An apology wouldn’t be appropriate. Neither of them had done or said anything warranting an apology.
He could have said the other true thing, which was, “you know and I know how good it will be. Do you feel that? Like the beginning of a lightning storm? Why are we wasting time?”
He decided he would say, “it’s good to see you.”
Isabel danced through three fabulous songs, in the process accidentally colliding every now and then with Argosy. He’d progressed to bobbing his head. But mainly he seemed content to stand there and assess, as if wondering whether anything on stage was worth investing in.
And right before Declan Duggan brought the fourth song to an end with one final chop of his hand over his guitar strings, Argosy slipped his hand right under her skirt and lightly gripped one of her butt cheeks.
Isabel leapt backward in shock.
Then cocked her arm and slugged him in the shoulder. She hadn’t known she’d had that reflex in her, but wasn’t surprised.
Alas, he didn’t even so much as rock on his feet.
She was so genuinely astounded it took a moment to get the words out.
“What the actual fuck do you think you’re doing?” she yelled over the crowd noise.
The words, unfortunately, echoed, as suddenly everything was quiet onstage. Someone had just brought Declan Duggan another guitar, and they were having a murmured off-mic consultation about it. So Isabel and Argosy had a nice lull in which to argue.
Argosy was struggling to feign contrition, but it was clear he found her outrage amusing.
“Forgive me, Isabel. Your arse is so delightfully round and just there, right where my hand usually hangs, and it was was a reflex, that’s all. I didn’t mean to alarm you.”
She stared at him, awash in the purest of astonishment. She wasn’t as delicate as all that, when it came right down to it. He couldn’t make her feel diminished, primarily because Argosy truly didn’t matter in the least to her. She’d fight like a wolverine if he tried anything additionally untoward. It was just surreal that he thought a stealth ass-squeeze was funny, or thought that she might find this funny. Or that was a move he’d even deploy. Honestly. It seemed so regressive for such a clearly fashionable guy.
Well, she’d been warned, hadn’t she?
All the joy and escape she’d siphoned from the music seeped away. What the hell was she doing here with this handsome idiot? Oh, that’s right. It was—how had Olivia put it?—she was indulging in a fit of pique and wounded pride. She’d been jealous of Malcolm and Jemima. And now here she was.
Her sudden epiphany was more blinding than stage lights: she completely understood why Olivia had shoved the gloves back at Lyon. Real feelings were anarchic. They laid waste to control and ego and you found yourself doing astonishing, ill-advised things. Like accepting a date with someone who was patently not a gentleman.
Argosy’s expression shifted to something that appeared truly apologetic, and he looked sincere as he reached out a placating hand, intending to touch her arm or shoulder. But she reflexively jerked backward.
And then something like a storm front moved in behind them. She felt it first, far more than she saw it as if the atmospheric pressure had actually changed. The little hairs on the back of her neck prickled.
She looked up.
Right into Malcolm’s face.
And the way her heart catapulted upward like a bird freed from a cage told her everything she needed to know. That it wouldn’t matter who he did or what he said. All of that was moot. It only mattered that he was here, and she knew it was because of her. Terrifying and liberating all at once.
“Grab her arse again, Argosy, and there will be nothing left of your hand but pulp. And I know how you feel about pulp.” Malcolm delivered this almost conversationally.
HOLY—!
Animosity crackled and arced between the two men like lightning in Tesla’s lab. The hair on the back of Isabel’s neck went erect. She had a sneaking suspicion her nipples, did, too, and refused to feel guilty about it. Literally no one had ever come so unequivocally to her defense before.
On stage, Declan Duggan twisted pegs on his guitar’s headstock. Notes swooped down, down, down. Apparently the next song required an exotic tuning.
“Think yer God’s Gift, Duggan, but ye’r ma gets around more’m you do,” A heckler shouted. “You probably both did my girlfriend! At the same time!”
Declan Duggan stopped tuning and shot eye-daggers at the heckler.
Argosy and Malcolm were shooting eye daggers at each other.
Isabel was barely breathing.
Perhaps a little Feng Shui would improve the attitudes here at The Riot. A ficus in the corner or something. Maybe Poppy’s friend would have some suggestions.
“Malcolm,” Isabel raised her voice to be heard over the murmuring crowd. “Thank you. It’s Okay. I’ll be all ri...”
He shot her a look of scathing incredulity, undershot with black amusement.
Malcolm had tried to warn her. And frankly, something retrograde in her, a joy that was equal parts holy and ungodly, wouldn’t have minded a bit watching them fight.
“Coburn,” Argosy finally said, voice raised, and yet in in such a leisurely, aristocratic drawl the word ‘Coburn’ lasted about a minute, “Your intrusion is unnecessary and unwelcome.”
Malcolm fixed him with a look so contemptuous and pitying it erased everything but confusion from Argosy’s’ face. He fleetingly looked as lost as a child.
And then Malcolm turned to Isabel. His expression was unambiguous. Reminiscent of the look Hawkeye leveled at Cora in Last of the Mohicans right before he said, “Stay alive. No matter what occurs. I will find you!”
And then he pivoted and swiftly maneuvered through the crowd, swallowed and obscured from view.
Isabel realized her hand was up and out, as if she wanted to tug him back.
She dropped it.
She looked at Argosy.
Who was determinedly not looking at her. He’d wrapped his arms straight-jacket style around his body again.
Declan was done tuning his guitar, it seemed. He seized the mic. “You’ve been remarkably patient for such rabble! Are you ready to—”
“Fuck you, Duggan, think you’re a rock shtar, you’re a nothin’ you’re N-O-T-N-G Nothing!” The heckler roared. And hurled a bottle.
He didn’t have much of an arm.
There was a peculiar hush as the crowd watched the bottle arc and glint through the air, clink to a landing and roll feebly to a stop just shy of the kick drum.
Declan Duggan shoved aside the mic stand, ripped his guitar from his neck and flung it to the stage, then leapt into the audience, limbs out-flung like a flying squirrel. He landed landed SPLAT, right on the heckler.
For a shocked millisecond it was silent as a tomb in the club.
And then it was a thunderous roar:
“FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”
Declan and the heckler staggered backward against the wall of people behind them, and like a wave displaced yet more people, sending them toppling or stumbling in every direction, including down onto the floor, whereupon they trod upon, shoved and tripped still more people.
This is when shrieks kicked in in earnest.
Isabel hadn’t even had time to gasp by the time the wave of chaos inevitably reached her and slammed her sideways, nearly knocking the air from her. She staggered and wheeled about but the rubber soles of her boots valiantly gripped the floor and kept her just barely upright.
She whipped her head around.
Argosy had vanished. As surely as if he’d been teleported off the dance floor.
She craned her head to look for Malcolm just as a stocky blighter in a long wool overcoat staggered backward into her. BAM! She was down on a knee suddenly eye level with a sea of butts and thighs, all of which were shifting and stomping in a deadly, panicked mosh.
She was able to press one palm against the sticky floor in an attempt to push herself upright, but she was forced to snatch it up again and again lest it be crushed under a boot. Terror zinged through her her; it was acrid in her throat. Finally she ruthlessly seized a fistful of a nearby woman’s skirt and tried to use it to rappel herself to her feet while the poor woman wearing it slapped at Isabel’s clawing fingers.
She gave a little shriek when she was seized by the collar of her jacket. But she was hoisted upward into merciful breathing space and ferried off to a patch of sticky floor currently unoccupied by grappling fighters.
Malcolm.
He lowered her to her feet, seized her hand, and pulled her forward. He pulled her tight up next to him as if she were a sidecar, and then he steered the two of them deftly and swiftly through the clot of grappling bodies and flailing fists.