The ceremony seemed fast and nearly intelligible. Celia was quite at sea over his names, there were so many. Rupert James Edmund Walter Charles. She was only Celia Augusta.
She longed for the familiar confines of St. Savior’s and the comfort of friends. She longed for Lizzie, for her advice and sensible disdain for pomp and rank. The guests were all so exhaustively elevated and grand. Dukes, Marquesses and Earls, Commanders and Lieutenants. Such a plethora of names and titles, Celia wasn’t sure she could keep them straight, until she reminded herself how very much like Latin plant names they were, rather a human system of classification. She herself was to be classified as a Viscountess—Viscountess Darling. One day, she would be Countess of Cleeve. It was all unbelievable. And so unnecessary.
Clearly Viscount Darling thought so. He looked as miserable as he did magnificent. He had chosen to wear his scarlet Marine Forces uniform, with its silver epaulettes and buttons, and wide red sash over his white waistcoat. But the brilliant color could not animate the impenetrable mask of his carefully blank face. He made no expression to give her any idea of what he was thinking or feeling. He made no intonation as he repeated his vows and handed her a small signet ring to put on her own finger.
They left immediately following a short, uneventful breakfast where everyone was cordial, but no one was happy. It was all very English.
The Viscount handed her into the Earl of Cleeve’s richly appointed traveling carriage but sat next to her for only the time it took them to pull out of sight of the house, whereupon he stopped the coach, disembarked, and mounted his black Hanoverian.
“Viscount Darling?” Celia had no idea what she was meant to call him. “May I ask how far we are to go?” She had not packed any bags, nor had she instructed Bains to do so.
“As far as we can.” And he was gone.
They left the city through the Tyburn Toll Gate and headed west by northwest on the Oxford Road. Exhausted from the tension, tired and bored, Celia fell asleep mid-afternoon and slept until Viscount Darling woke her late in the long summer evening.
They were at an inn. She stood transfixed, squinting upward with her hand raised to shade her eyes, by the sign swinging over the yard—a vibrantly painted depiction of a prancing dog wearing a scarlet doublet. “The Dog in a Doublet. How intriguing.”
“It’s just an expression.” He scowled. “It refers to a sort of daring, resolute fellow.”
“Yes, I know.” How extraordinary. Perhaps it was a sign—an omen, not just an advertisement—a sign she had done the right thing after all. She had been daring and resolute, and look where it had gotten her. Married to Viscount Darling.
But he did not appreciate her remark. “Ah. I had momentarily forgotten how shockingly well-educated you are.”
Celia kept quiet after that rebuke. She didn’t inquire about her accommodations, or his, for that matter. She was so astonished to be shown into a bedchamber and find Bains already there, waiting with all her baggage, Celia ran into her arms and promptly burst into tears.
“Miss Celia. There, there. Bains has you. You’ll be just fine now, my lamb. Your Bains has you now.”
He wanted to get drunk. He wanted not to give a damn. He wanted his wife not to address him as an object, a thing. He wanted a lot of damn things he was bloody unlikely to get.
But he could get drunk. It had been a long time since he’d indulged in the pleasure of oblivion. If he wasn’t to get it in the preferred form from his weeping bride, he could find it in a glass. Or a tankard. Several tankards.
The taproom of the Dog in a Doublet, where he began, appropriately enough, with a pint of bitters, was full of jovial fellows ready to drink to his health and help him pass his time and his money. Del was also pleased to find there was to be an impromptu prizefight held in the stable yard later in the evening. An ostler of the inn had been challenged by another man—a brawny footman from a traveling carriage, according to one source, or the son of the local blacksmith from another, equally unreliable report.
Here was sport to warm a man’s blood. Just the sort of thing he liked—violent, bloody, and straightforward. And no damn weeping.
Del wondered idly if the footman was one of his. He wandered out to the yard with a pitcher of ale and found his father’s driver, Bibbs, making good book. “How’s it running, Bibbs?”
“Four to one for the ostler. Mick’s his name. Big Irish kid. Good lad. Strong and quick. Good for a heavy mill.”
“And the challenger? One of yours?”
Bibbs shook his jowls. “Blacksmith’s apprentice from the village. I’m after thinking there’s history between them two. Wouldn’t be surprised to find there’s a woman in it.”
“I’ll put ten on the challenger.”
“Ha ha. You were always bloody-minded, even as a boy. But I’ll be happy to relieve you of your money, your lordship.”
He might have been bloody-minded as a lad, but he was more so that night, drunk and antagonistic. He almost wished he were going to be the one Mick the Ostler would mill into the ground. Anything would be better than his current state. Anything to bruise the bloody care out of him.
The fight was to be staged in the yard, in a fairly level area of the cobbles marked off by chalk. Del did have the presence of mind to note the ring was nearly under the “very best room” the innkeeper had allotted them, the room where his sobbing bride slept. But with this throng, she wouldn’t sleep for long. He almost thought of going up and warning her. Almost. But he was drunk and she was beautiful. It didn’t seem like a smart combination. And he was a little unsure of his ability to successfully navigate the narrow stairs. So instead, he took another drink and elbowed his way to the edge of the ring.
The two men stripped to their breeches and stepped in. The blacksmith’s lad was a long way from his last bath and stank of coal fire. And they hadn’t even broken a sweat. Someone, a small fellow with yellow teeth and a stentorian voice, called out the match under London Prize Rules, and the mill was on.
Mick the Ostler was a rangy fellow with a long reach, and he took his opponent’s measure with a few lightning quick jabs with his left. Bill the Smithy moved slowly and took both hits without making a stab of his own. Then Mick the Ostler simply let loose a cannon of a right and the smithy was down like a gunner. And stayed down.
The crowd shifted and surged in disgust and discontent. One of the lads from the stable threw a bucket of water on the smithy. Nothing. The man was out cold. The fight was over almost as soon as it had begun.
Deprived of their sport, the crowd began to get ugly and abusive, hurling invectives at Yellow Teeth and pushing and shoving at each other. In another minute the event would erupt into an out-and-out melee. Not that Del would mind in the least. A good brawl would finish his day off nicely.
With that thought fresh in his lushy head, Del stepped forward and said, “I’ll give him some sport,” and proceeded to strip off his coat and clothing.
Bibbs, knowing a thing or two about working the odds in a nasty crowd, appeared by his side and bawled, “May I hold yer coat for ya, Colonel, yer lordship?”
“Good man, Bibbs,” Del drawled. “We’ll have a go of it, shall we?”
The crowd erupted in rude pleasure at the thought of witnessing the thrashing of an aristocrat.
“Sure you want to be in my corner, Bibbs?”
Bibbs tipped him a wink. “You were always a dab hand with yer fives as a lad. Have ya kept it up?”
“I was four years a bullock in the Marines before I became an officer, Bibbs. What do you think?”
“Ah, ha ha. I think we’ll have a fine go of it, so we will.” Bibbs turned to address the crowd. “Who’ll lay me money against his lordship, the Viscount?” There was a surge of takers, fists of money were thrust under Bibbs’ nose.
Yellow Teeth sidled up and informed Del, “This ain’t Gentleman Jackson’s here, yer lordship. If you can’t take it no more, you’ve to cry off. Yeh ken?”
“I ken.” Del stripped off his shirt and stepped in. “I’ll give him a fair brawl.”
The crowd’s mood, though improved, was still restive. They were ravenous for blood.
“Mill the bastard, Micko,” and, “Serve that cull out,” were some of the less obscene calls. Del smiled. It was going to be a proper cat scrawl. He stepped into the ring, put up his hands, and they were at it. There was no easing in, no finesse. Mick came at him with the punishing right, but Del was fast and looking for it. He blocked him high and came under with a hook to soften up his insides. The lad took it with a hard grunt and came back with a rounder of a left that glanced along Del’s jaw and sent shards of pain cracking through him like grapeshot, clearing out his brains.
God, that felt good.
The crowd surged and backed around them, a living sea of oaths and obscene encouragement. “Tip the cove a muzzler, Mick!”
The lad swung out again with the right, but Del was already in with a straight shot that cracked hard against Mick’s mouth. Blood began to seep from his lip.
“There’s a proper muzzler,” Bibbs cried in response, right before Mick the Ostler laid Del out like an undertaker. It was a bruising cross from his left that came out of nowhere. Del’s knees hit the cobbles first, before he went down hard, landing on his shoulder. Pain lodged against his ribs and began to radiate down his side. But now he was fully awake. And he was all for it. The screaming and shouting was like a wall of noise closing him in, narrowing the world and all he wanted from it to these ten feet of pavement.
He surged to his feet, turned back upon Mick, and let the world explode from the end of his arm.
C
HAPTER
21
C
elia woke with a start to find herself still crunched uncomfortably in an armchair. She had not been able to bring herself to lie down upon the bed. It seemed too . . . definite, too . . . Oh, she could not even put to words the discomfort and disquiet she felt around him. Any ease she had ever felt with Viscount Darling had vanished with the distant, almost cold tone of his conduct at the church.
The fire had burned low and the sky had gone dark with night. But the shadows and lights from the inn yard played across the low-beamed ceiling. She had neglected to close the curtains. It seemed as if it ought to be the dead of night, but a veritable tumult was rising from the yard. Celia crossed to the window. The low firelight from within and the wavering torchlight from without made it hard to see through the mullioned windows what was happening outside. She opened the casement and peered cautiously out.
Men were everywhere, milling about, talking and laughing and calling at the top of their lungs. Beneath her window, money and ale were changing hands freely, and she went on her tiptoes to look farther.
Oh, good gracious.
The crowd encircled two men, who were stripped to the waist and pummeling the stuffing out of each other.
It was a fight—a bare-knuckle boxing match—of some sort. Celia’s stomach tightened. How appalling, the idea of two men pummeling each other for entertainment and profit.
There was something about the bare skin of one man, gilded by the torchlight, golden like a pagan idol.
Oh, good God.
Celia nearly tipped herself out the window, craning her head to see. It was
him
. It was Viscount Darling, her husband. She clamped a hand across her mouth to keep from crying out. He had shed all his clothes except his boots and breeches. No matter her opinion of the spectacle, she could not take her eyes off him. Light shone off the skin of his strong forearms and there was a glimmering of the fine hairs on his arm. He was taller than most of the men who crowded around him shouting and swearing and gesturing. The man fighting him was just as tall, but dark headed, and appeared to be pummeling her husband to a bloody pulp. Blood streaked down one side of his beautiful face and oozed from his mouth and several spots along his ribs.
Celia bit down hard on her lip to keep from making a sound. Darling’s body shone pale in the torchlight, like something out of Montague House—a marble statue of a Greek god, all sleek white skin and carved muscle. She could see the contours of his broad shoulders and the sculpted length of his arms as the muscles bunched and whipped out to strike.
He turned, following his opponent, who, now that she could see him, was as bloody as Viscount Darling, his split lip oozing blood down his chin. She watched as Darling’s arm lashed out and cracked the man hard across his nose, snapping his head back before he fell backward into the arms of the throng.
A roar rose up from the surging crowd as blood gushed from the dark-haired man’s nose. The men tried to push him back towards Viscount Darling, but he was unsteady and stumbled. Darling caught him before he fell, and they staggered and slipped slowly towards the cobbles together.
The spectators pressed forward, and for a long moment Celia couldn’t see anything. Then a huzzah went up and Viscount Darling and the other fellow were hoisted on shoulders and paraded around the throng. Men were patting each other and the two fighters on the backs and giving them drinks of ale. Viscount Darling tossed back a tankard and roared with laughter. When they let him down he shook hands with his fellow fighter and ambled unsteadily out of their midst back to Gosling and the driver Bibbs, who handed him his clothes. But he didn’t put any of it back on. The Viscount swiped the blood from his face and lips with the back of his arm, and tipped his head up to laugh and drink down another throatful of ale from a dripping jug.
His eyes, already swelling and growing black from the beating, met hers. She wanted to call out. Her instinct was to ask him if he was all right, to see if he was hurt, but he just stared at her. It was a look of such black, almost violent intent, she recoiled.
Darling laughed and started into the building, clearly intent upon gaining their room. Celia could hear his heavy, booted tread on the stairs, moving unsteadily up to her.
She tasted the acid pulse of fear in her mouth and without thinking, she flew across the room to the door and jammed the bar down, locking the door. The treads of his uneven footsteps sounded in the corridor and came to a halt outside her door. She could hear and feel him thumb the latch, and lean his weight into the door. He rattled it once.
“Celia,” his voice was a low, hushed growl that raised the fine hair on her neck. “I know you’re in there. Let me in.”
She held her breath and covered her mouth with her hand, lest her will give way before her good sense. She held her other hand over the latch, holding it firmly in place.
“Damn it to hell, Celia.” He rattled the latch once more, then turned and stomped down the passage and down the stairway.
She had never, even at the beginning of their acquaintance, let herself believe he was anything but what Emily had believed. She had never let herself consider that his reputation, although earned by bad behavior, was who he was. But she was no longer sure. She was afraid. Afraid of what her rash behavior had made her become.
Darling slept off the worst of his evening’s excess in a pile of hay in the stable. Not exactly the most salubrious of accommodations, but he’d had many worse. When Gosling awoke him, the ingenious man had somehow contrived to have hot water, shaving gear, and a fresh press of clothes at the ready. By the time he sent for his wife, Del was every inch the tailored aristocrat—with an enormous quantity of vivid, swollen bruises.
But even dressed flawlessly, he was surprised to find uncertainty making mush of his insides. He was not looking forward to the coming interview with his wife. While he had slept off most of his irrational anger at her barring the door to him—he agreed her actions had been prudent, given his state of inebriation and his general level of bloodlust—he was in no shape for a lecture. After all, it had been partially her fault his violently conflicted feelings for her had sent him in search of a brawl in the first place.
But there was no lecture, nor even so much as a reproachful look. She was the very picture of martyred, bashful timidity.
“My lord,” was all she said. She did not look him in the eye as he handed her into the carriage, and immediately took the backward facing seat, sliding to the far side of the upholstered bench.
“Good morning, madam.” He followed her in and sat in the middle of the forward facing seat, where she should have been.
Why would she assume he would not treat her with the most simple courtesy? Did she think him such an animal, so unmannerly, so ungentlemanly and savage not to know what was due her? God’s balls but martyrdom would get old very, very fast. He could not keep the mocking bite from his tone. “I trust you slept well.”
Her head snapped towards him at that, and he was surprised again—strange how he was not yet used to her surprising him at almost every turn—by what he saw in her eyes. She was afraid. Of him.
Del swallowed that piece of information as readily as a jagged shard of glass. He had only once before seen the same kind of fear shining in her eyes—in the alley on the way back from North Row that night.
Damn my eyes.
She was afraid, but at least she was honest. “I-I did not sleep well.” She managed to look him in the eye fleetingly as she answered. “I think you know that. The noise and the . . . violence—”
“I’m sorry,” he replied, though he hadn’t been sorry for the fight, not at all. He had instigated it, for Christ’s sake, looking for a way to bruise the bloody, frustrated hunger out of him. And he wasn’t sorry she’d seen. It had given him a thrill of almost savage, animal pride to see her watching him, to know that her eyes were on his body. But he had not counted on the violence making her afraid.
“Are you . . . are you very much hurt?” She was looking at his gloriously blackened eye. Gosling’s hand mirror had revealed a deep wash of purples and greens under his puffy skin.
“No.” He lifted one side—the unsplit side—of his mouth and gave her what he hoped was a cocky grin, although the effect lost something when he winced. “You should see the other fellow.”
“I did. He had blood all over his face and chest.” She shivered a little, pushing herself farther into her corner.
“Must have broken his nose. Bleed rather a lot, noses do. So do cuts of any kind to the head. Even this little one here”—he pointed to the plastered slit under his eye—“bled like a river. But they don’t hurt much.”
She nodded thoughtfully as if she were cataloguing that particular piece of information somewhere in the recesses of her scientific mind. At least they were talking, though she was still cramped up in that corner. They bounced hard from the rutted roads over the Cotswold Hills and she grabbed at the strap to keep herself steady.
“The fog is lifting. There should be some spectacular scenery. Why don’t you sit here, so you’ll have a better view?” He slid over in the seat, making ample room for her on the upholstered bench.
“No I-I wouldn’t want to bump into you. Your . . . ribs. They were all red and bruised, all smashed last night.”
So she had noticed.
“They’re purple this morning, though I daresay, they’ll keep. We’ve hours to go yet, and I doubt the roads will improve. You’d best come over.”
“I am fine here, thank you.”
“Suit yourself,” he growled.
God’s balls, but she makes it easy to be irritated with her.
He pulled his tall hat down over his eyes, folded his arms across his chest, stretched his long booted legs across on top of the middle of the other seat, and closed his eyes. He would be comfortable even if she chose not to be. Let her cower in her corner. He did not want her. He did not like her. He was not in love with her.
The motion of the carriage was unsteady, and when they hit a particularly jolting rut, she flung out her hand and grabbed his leg to steady herself.
And he knew it was all a lie, his protestation. He knew, because a shot of pure, unadulterated lust bolted up his leg straight to his groin at the feel of her hand clutching the inside of his knee.
Damn her.
He widened his stance, shoving his leg up next to her, bracing her into the corner. And still she hung on to his leg. He never lifted his eyes, but he could feel that hand. He could feel his nerves stretching taut towards the pressure of her fingers, sorting out each and every individual sensation they engendered, each and every tentative caress and flex of her fingers along the sensitive inside of his knee.
He learned something about himself then, about his own body. He, who had taught mistresses in a dozen languages, who had prided himself on his prowess as a cocksman, learned something about himself from this naive, terrified virgin.
It seemed the inside of his knee was a remarkably sensitive place. Had he ever been asked to name an area pertinent to arousal, he would not have thought to mention that small patch of his bodily real estate, but it seemed the whole world, every tactile sensation worth feeling, was concentrated there, where her hand gripped his leg. Even through the layers of his breeches and smallclothes. Even over the cotton of his stockinged leg.
He braced his legs wider still, snugging up against her, fencing her in tight with the weight of his body. And she didn’t protest. She clutched him tighter as they climbed into the rutted Cotswold Hills.
She had not been so timid the last time she had held his leg in a carriage, had she? Then she had looked at him with those wide eyes of hers and offered to fondle his aching cock. That would be a definite improvement upon the present circumstances. Del eyed her from under the low brim of his hat. What would it take for him to finish what they had started that night in the carriage? They were married now. He could do with her as he liked.
But she would not spare even a glance towards him. She was so resolutely stiff and anxious, despite her clutch of his knee, his pride would not let him relent. He’d be damned before he was going to extend an ounce of energy seducing her into a better humor. He turned his head away and closed his eyes again.
He thought of his small, snug house. It wasn’t large, by his way of thinking. It was nothing on the scale of his father’s seat, Cleeve Abbey, where he had grown up, or even Fair Prospect. It was just a manor house, but Del liked to call it his navy house—the property he had purchased with his hard-won prize money. It was his and his alone, something apart from the vast Delacorte holdings of which he would one day have to become the owner.
His house was not vast. It was small and private—a perfect retreat while he figured out what in the bloody world he was going to do with his reluctant bride.
Finally, in the early afternoon they pulled up the lane in front of a lovely, picturesque, moated manor house of the last century. “What a pretty house.”
Viscount Darling made no response, just handed Celia out of the carriage and walked her to the steps where an older couple waited.
“Mr. and Mrs. Level, this is my wife, Viscountess Darling. Mrs. Level is my housekeeper and Level is my steward.”