Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (58 page)

H
E WAS GAZING DOWNWARD, TRYING TO BLOCK out both sight and sound, trying to concentrate. It was not easy. This particular sparring room in Jackson’s boxing saloon was crowded with eager spectators. He had told no one and Bridge and Kneller had just assured him that they had not. But Lionel, of course, would have no reason for keeping quiet about the fight and every reason to publicize it.

Barefoot and stripped to the waist, he felt woefully inadequate. He knew that in appearance, even apart from his twisted foot and hand, he was laughably inferior to Lionel, tall and splendidly built and beautiful in his corner with Viscount Birchley, his second. He was flashing his grin on all comers and loudly greeting every new arrival.

“It is a good thing you are punctual,” he called gaily to someone who had just arrived. “It will not be a lengthy entertainment. But then neither is a hanging.”

He had obviously liked that analogy the evening before and had thought it worthy of repetition.

Jackson had agreed—reluctantly—to a fight that would end only with the unconsciousness of one or other of the combatants. Normally very strict and very
gentlemanly rules applied to the sparring bouts at his establishment. He had just finished explaining to both of them and their seconds and anyone else who cared to listen—there had been a dead hush in the room—that there would be a limitless number of rounds, each to last three minutes. There were to be no hits after he had called the end of a round or before he had called for the beginning of the next. All hits were to be cleanly above the waist.

“Pipe down, Jackson,” someone had called from the back of the room. “Your instructions are taking longer than the fight will last.”

Gentleman Jackson had fixed the offender with an iron stare and invited him to take his leave. It was a measure of the power he wielded within the doors of his saloon that Mr. Smithers rather sheepishly slipped away through the door and did not come back.

And now the fight was about to begin. The Marquess of Carew tried to concentrate, to remember everything he had learned over the past three years—though he had never expected to be using his skills in actual combat.

“Defend with your right and attack with your left,” Lord Francis Kneller advised him rather urgently. “Protect your head.”

“You will need to get in close, Hart,” the Duke of Bridgwater said. “He has a longer reach than yours and powerful fists. But protect your head. Keep your chin tucked in.”

“Go get him,” Lord Francis said. “Think of your wife.”

Poor advice. Very poor. He tried to concentrate on the
fight itself. A fight he could not win, perhaps. But one in which he must give a good account of himself.

“Round one,” Jackson said. “Begin, gentlemen.”

The marquess looked up and stepped forward to a swell of sound from the onlookers.

“Daniel and one of the lions,” some wit said.

“David and Goliath, more like,” someone else shouted from the other side of the room.

Lionel was grinning and dancing and waving his fists in a most unsportsmanlike way. He was making very little pretense of defending himself.

“Time to draw your slingshot from your belt, Hart,” he said. “See if you can get me right between the eyes.”

The next moment he was flat on his back on the floor while a roar of mingled astonishment and amusement went up from the crowd. And then murmurings of outrage and calls of “Foul!” and “Shame!”

Lionel roared with wrath as he scrambled to his knees. “What the bloody hell!” he shouted.

“Disqualification, Jackson,” Viscount Birchley cried. “The verdict goes to Rushford.”

“By God, Hart, splendid hit, old chap,” the duke said.

The bout appeared to have stopped.

“You were not listening, gentlemen,” Jackson said crisply. “The rule was that no hit was to be below the belt. That hit was full on the chin. The rule did not state that hits can be made only with the fists. The foot is a permitted weapon within the rules of today’s bout. Proceed, gentlemen.”

“I am not fighting a bloody contortionist,” Lionel said scornfully.

Since he was still on his knees, it took the marquess little effort at all to twist his right leg high enough to poke Lionel on the chin again hard enough to send him sprawling.

“Then yield,” he said coldly, “while you are still conscious. Before all these witnesses of yours, Rushford. And be stripped of what little honor you have remaining.”

Lionel scrambled to his feet and put himself in a far more respectful attitude of defense than before.

“Come on, Carew,” he said. “If one of us can kick, the other can, too. If you choose to fight dirty, then dirty it will be. But do not expect mercy of me. I might have spared—”

His speech was cut short when the sole of the marquess’s foot caught him on the shoulder and sent him reeling, though he managed to keep his feet this time.

Before the end of round one it became obvious that the Earl of Rushford was not going to be able to use his feet in the fight. The only time he tried it he kicked his cousin almost in the groin and received a severe warning from Jackson. He swore again about contortionists, but he had not had the hours of exercise and practice that the marquess had had in turning his body and throwing out his leg to the height of his own head. Nor had he had the training and experience of using that leg and foot as a weapon quite as powerful as a fist.

There had been little if any betting before the start of
the bout. What was the point of betting when the outcome was a foregone conclusion? The only betting there had been was on how many seconds the fight would last. At the end of the first round the real betting began. At the end of round two it was as fast and furious as the round itself had been.

After four rounds the marquess was feeling sore on every square inch of his body and weary in every muscle, even muscles he had not known he possessed. He had been down twice, Lionel three times, not counting those first two falls in the first round. Lionel had succeeded a few times in grabbing his leg and twisting it, throwing him off balance and causing excruciating pain. But Jackson had warned him about holding and it had not happened in the last round.

Lord Francis was squeezing a sponge of cold water over his head and down his back. It felt delicious. Bridge was waving a towel energetically before his face.

“Keep it up, Hart,” he said. “Show him a thing or two, old chap.”

“Think of your wife, Carew,” Lord Francis said quietly.

He had begun to think of her. Of the innocent, eager eighteen-year-old who had fallen prey to Lionel’s cynical scheming. Of the heartbreak his cruel rejection had caused her and—worse—the guilt that had been left behind to blight her life for six years. Of the woman of four-and-twenty who had feared that he would still have a power over her she would be unable to resist and who had turned to him—to Hartley Wade—to protect her and keep her safe from ugly passions for the rest of her
life. He thought of her last night, lashing out with her knee and her hands and even then lingering to throw defiance in Lionel’s teeth. He thought of her beside his bed last night, miserable because she thought
he
had rejected her, too. He had been refraining from sexual relations in order to conserve his energy for this morning.

He had promised her last night that she would never have to fear Lionel again. And there was only one way to ensure that. He knew that he had won the respect of his peers this morning, even if he was rendered unconscious in the very next round. And perhaps he had won his own respect, too, finally doing more than just enduring Lionel’s taunts, finally challenging him and facing him man-to-man.

But it was not enough. It was no longer enough merely to give a good account of himself in this fight. He had to win it.

He
had
to win it. And it no longer seemed an impossibility. Lionel was sitting across from him, in the opposite corner, gazing at him from one open eye and one swollen and half-closed one. His breathing was labored. And for once—and at last—he was looking with quite open and naked hatred.

“Time, gentlemen. Round five,” Gentleman Jackson said. “Begin.”

It was easier, of course, to tell oneself that one had to win than to do it. In round nine the marquess finally knew that he not only could do it, but would. Lionel was swaying on his feet. His guard was low, so it was possible to punish his face with both left fist and right foot. One
of his eyes was a mere slit in swollen flesh. The other was half closed. His nose looked as if it were broken.

His own strength had all but been used up. He was proceeding on sheer willpower and determination. And on the image of Samantha’s face that constantly swam before his tired vision.

There was very little noise now in the room, though it appeared that no one had left except the unfortunate Smithers.

“Think of her, Carew. Think of her,” Lord Francis said to him insistently at the end of the round, as he had said at the end of the round before, and the round before that. He was squeezing a sponge down over his chest. “Think of her, dammit, and don’t you dare let up.”

Kneller was in love with Samantha, he thought sluggishly. He had known that all along. But Kneller was an honorable man. Well, he would avenge her for both of them.

“It has to be this round, old chap,” the duke said, still vigorously fanning as he had between all rounds. “You are close to exhaustion. You will collapse in round eleven. This is round ten. This is the one, Hart. Go to it. There is not a man here, with the possible exception of those two opposite, who is not pulling for you.
This
round, Hart.”

It took him two and a half minutes to do it. But finally Lionel was swaying on boneless legs, his hands in very loose fists at his sides, looking at him—though perhaps not really seeing him—with implacable hatred. He would have fallen unaided and been unconscious by the
time he hit the floor. And it was tempting even then to have a modicum of mercy on him.

But the marquess saw an image of himself at the age of six, his child’s body shattered and in indescribable pain. And an image of his mother, who could not endure the sight of pain, especially when it was being suffered by her beloved only son. And of Samantha begging him to kiss her, telling him she loved him—and
meaning
it at the moment she spoke—because she had been frightened by Lionel’s reappearance in a life he had made unhappy for six years.

He gathered together his last remaining shreds of strength and jabbed out with his right leg. His last blow, like the first, landed squarely on Lionel’s chin, snapping back his head and sending him crashing backward.

He groaned once and then lay still.

There was noise then. Deafening noise. Men talking to him, laughing, thumping him on the back before Bridge roared at them all to keep their distance and Kneller swore at them to stand back and give Carew air or he would start laying about him with his own fists.

“Well, lad,” Jackson was saying from somewhere above him—someone had pulled him down onto the stool in his corner, “I feel compelled to say that you are perhaps my best ever pupil. But if you had just remembered to keep up that right hand—how many
times
have I told you?—your face would not be looking quite as raw as it does. Some people are a glutton for punishment.”

Viscount Birchley was fanning Lionel, who was prone
on the floor, and yelling for someone to fetch some water. No one was taking a great deal of notice.

“Go and give him a hand, Bridge,” the marquess said, not even daring yet to flex sore muscles or to try to get to his feet. His legs had turned to rubber.

The duke gave him a speaking glance, which he did not even see, and went.

Lionel was still on the floor, groaning with returning consciousness as Birchley sponged his face carefully and the Duke of Bridgwater waved the inevitable towel before his face, when the marquess finally got to his feet with Lord Francis Kneller’s help and limped stiffly from the room to retrieve his clothes and make his way back home.

There was going to be no keeping the morning’s events from Samantha as he had hoped to do, he thought ruefully. He did not think any story of walking into a door was going to convince her. Well, perhaps she would be happy to know that he had avenged her.

Perhaps she would even be proud of him.

S
HE HAD SPENT A
veritable fortune—far more, at least, than she had ever spent in a single day before. And she did not feel even a moment’s guilt. If he had taken her home today as she had asked, she would not have spent a single penny. He would not have had anything to grumble about. Not that Hartley would grumble anyway. She could not quite imagine him grumbling about anything.

Besides, he had told her to go out and buy Aunt Aggy and herself something pretty. Like a good little wife she had obeyed.

She bought her aunt a delicate ivory fan, laughing at Aunt Aggy’s protests that she was too old for such a pretty little trinket. And she bought her a pair of kid gloves, too, since her aunt had been saying all spring that she simply must buy herself new ones. She bought Hartley a snuffbox, though he never took snuff, because it was pretty and irresistible and because the silver lid was inlaid with sapphires and she had the sudden idea of giving it to him as a belated wedding present—though he was going to pay for it. It would be their “something blue” to replace the other horrid thing. She had not asked if he had kept it or given it back. She did not want to know.

She almost forgot to buy herself something, but remembered just in time and bought some silk stockings and a new bonnet so bedecked with ribbons and flowers that she half expected that her neck would disappear into her chest when she tried it on. But it was as light as a feather and looked so dashing and so very—extravagant that she had to buy it, though she was not sure if it was the type of bonnet she would wear in Yorkshire. She also visualized herself wearing it when she was huge with child and had to swallow her laughter lest she have to explain to Aunt Aggy and the milliner.

Despite herself, she was enjoying her last day in London.