Savagely, Ash kicked out, his heel smashing into the groom’s kneecap. A loud, sickening pop sounded above the shouts of bloodthirsty approval from the crowd. The Scot howled in agony, clasping his broken knee and stumbling backward.
Ash heaved himself to his hands and knees, shaking his head to clear the threatening mist from his vision, his ears roaring with the din of the crowd and the sobbed curses of his injured foe.
Stay focused. Stay with it. Two hundred pounds. Four-to-one odds. He needed to render the groom unconscious before the bastard did as much to him.
Ash found his feet and wheeled around, surprised to find the Scot, too, standing. The groom favored his injured leg, swaying from side to side. His mouth moved with a string of silent invective, flecks of red foam spraying from the corners of his broken lip.
The battered Scot charged again, coming at Ash with animal-like tenacity, seemingly impervious to the blows Ash rained on his battered face. Time and again the Scotsman came at him, what he lacked in skill more than made up for by his sheer ability to endure. Time and again, Ash managed to dance out of reach of the huge swinging paws and deliver a series of unanswered punches.
By now both men were gasping for breath, filthy with grease and sweat and stable dirt. The crowd roared with approval as Ash staggered back once more from a glancing blow to his jaw, each minute using up precious breath, expending energy he did not own. He jabbed out over and over again but try as he might he could not deliver enough power to end the fight. His blows only seemed to enrage the man.
He was going to lose.
The Scot fought from passion and Ash had thought he was fighting for money but now he suspected he fought for something marginally more interesting … his life. Without a doubt the Scot would kill him if he could.
“Shall we finish, mon ami?” Ash panted. “I have a lady waiting and I would like to—”
With a strangled sound of fury, the Scotsman launched himself once more at Ash. This time Ash was ready. He met the onrushing figure with knees bent, arms flexed. When the groom’s bull-like figure collided with him he did not try to stand up to the charge. He folded, letting his opponent propel him backward and adding his own weight to the impetus by digging in his heels and grasping the Scot’s thick arms. With a huge grunt, Ash jerked the Scot into him rather than thrusting him away.
Ash’s shoulders hit the ground and he heaved back, pulling the groom down as hard as he could. The groom’s face crashed into the unyielding ground. His thick body cartwheeled heel-over-head. The arms around Ash went slack and the heavy body completed its loose-limbed tumble, dropping into the dust with a powdery thud.
Clenching his teeth against the pain, Ash lay flat, waiting for the Scot to rise again like some bloody phoenix and kill him. He couldn’t have stopped him. Not an ounce of energy remained in his body. It was all he could do to breathe, his chest heaving up and down, his eyes staring in bewildered appreciation at the obscenely clear blue sky overhead, the dust settling like Pentecostal ash on his trembling limbs.
The Scot did not move.
For a long second there was absolute silence. The crowd began to murmur with delighted scorn. He heard a plunk beside his head and glanced over. A bitter smile curved his lips. They were tossing coins at him. Gold coins. God bless them.
The he heard the familiar voice.
“For God’s sake, get up, Merrick, or we shall be forced to declare a miscontest,” his father said, “and from the look of her, I doubt my dear ward would be able to stomach another bout.”
The pain in his side and hands and lungs evaporated before the wretchedness welling through him. He’d thought he understood his father’s game. He hadn’t even begun to understand.
Unable to help himself, he turned his head. His gaze found her figure with unerring accuracy. She stood between Carr and Thomas Donne. Carr held her arm, his long fingers stroking her hand comfortingly as he whispered in her ear.
She was not listening. Her head was erect, her posture poised for flight. Dark red-gold coils of hair gleamed in contrast to a face as pale as bleached linen. Absolute horror suffused every feature.
Ash’s lids drifted shut. Against the black tapestry of his lids he saw himself through her eyes, bloody and broken, covered with stinking dirt and rancid grease, a body he’d rendered unconscious—or worse—laying half across his legs along with that for which he’d beaten him. A few gold coins.
“Well, to give the lad his due, he fought ingeniously,” Carr said.
Rhiannon had been so transfixed by the hideous spectacle that she’d failed to note when Carr had taken her hand. She pulled it back.
No matter what depths she imagined Ash to have reached, he always managed to find a more profound debasement. The crowd was flinging coins at the two inert bodies. A redheaded wench dashed into the makeshift arena and knelt by the Scot. She grasped his upper body and tried to heave him upright, at the same time scraping the guineas and shillings into her skirts. The crowd roared with laughter.
“I have never seen anything so degrading,” Rhiannon said.
“I daresay Ash would agree,” Carr replied. “But everyone at Wanton’s Blush must pay for the privilege of being here, by whatever means they can.”
“You mean that you asked him to fight? You risked your own son’s life against that mountain of flesh?”
“Asked? I don’t ask, Miss Russell.” Carr said. He was not trying to charm her today. In fact, it seemed as though he was deliberately provocative, trying to alienate her. “I command. King George may rule in London, but I rule here. I may be exiled, but I still have my court.” He made a sweeping gesture around the crowd. “I don’t suppose I can let Merrick fight again tomorrow. Who would bet on him?” He scowled, displeased, but then his expression cleared. “But if he were by some miracle to win, think of the odds he’d have overcome! At least twenty to one—”
“You’re hateful.” As she spoke she saw Ash turn his head toward her and open his eyes. Something so raw passed between them that she had to look away. When she looked back, he’d lurched to his hands and knees, his head hanging low.
“Isn’t someone going to go to him?” Rhiannon swung on Carr.
He met her gaze disinterestedly. “Such concern. You have a soft heart, m’dear. But to answer your question, no. There are very few rules in this sort of thing but one of them does require the victor to leave the arena under his own power.”
“He needs attention,” she insisted.
“Does he? Well, I don’t know where he’ll find it. As far as I know there are no quacks in my castle.”
Rhiannon looked at her companions. Beside her Thomas Donne maintained his enigmatic composure. She glanced at Fia, expecting nothing from that quarter, and was surprised to find the girl looking greenish, her gaze flickering unwillingly toward the dirt in which her brother lay.
“I’ll go to him,” Fia murmured.
Carr’s head snapped around. “What?”
“I can clean him up. If you will just have some of the servants—”
“You will not!” Carr hissed before recovering his poise. “Absolutely not. Don’t forget, you are my hostess. Can’t have you coming to the table smelling of vomit and”—he glanced once more at Ash—“whatever other excrement Merrick has rolled in.”
He was all the monster Gunna had suggested and Fia had unintentionally substantiated. The charm Carr had exercised on their first meeting hid a soulless fiend. Even Fia looked startled by Carr’s venomous tone. And though Rhiannon was suspicious of why he would suddenly reveal himself to her, she was too concerned about Ash to pursue such thoughts.
A small cheer from the crowd drew Rhiannon’s attention. Ash had made it upright. He lurched toward the ring of spectators. They opened before him and swallowed his figure, closing behind. Now that a victor had been established, voices rose as wagers were claimed and satisfied.
“I’m going to him,” Rhiannon said. “You can’t stop me. You may rule here, Lord Carr, but you do
not ride me.”
“Just as I feared.” Carr sighed. “As you will, Miss Russell. Come along, Lord Donne.”
He secured Donne’s arm and led him off through the crowd. “I believe you actually bet on my son? How perceptive of you—”
Rhiannon looked toward Fia. “Where can I find Gunna?” she asked.
“She’ll be in my rooms,” the girl murmured distractedly. “How odd—”
But Rhiannon did not stay to hear what Fia found odd.
Carr looked too well satisfied. Few others besides Fia would have realized it. Rhiannon had just challenged his edict. Her disobedience should have been like a spark to tinder but Carr had left calmly, a buoyancy to his stride that bespoke complacency.
It made no sense. For days now Carr’s temper had been building. She’d heard him pacing in his office several times. Once, when she’d cracked the door thinking to offer him her company, she’d discovered him scribbling on a piece of paper, stabbing it with his pen. He’d been so involved that he hadn’t even realized she’d entered—in itself a telling sign. Carr noted everything.
Finally he’d thrown the writing instrument down and balled the paper up in his hand, hurling it to the floor. “How? Under what excuse? Simply have a change of heart and send her back? No. Someone must take her back, or forward. Or any bloody where but here.”
Fia had been too long under Carr’s tutelage to ignore the import of such a rare outburst just as she was too wise to let Carr know she’d heard it. She’d closed the door as quietly as possible and run to her room.
Now, watching Rhiannon stride off in the opposite direction from Carr, for the first time in her life Fia felt the pull of divided loyalties.
The problem was Fia liked Rhiannon. Of all her acquaintances the Scotswoman alone—with the exception of Gunna—treated her in the manner Fia imagined other fifteen-year-old girls were treated. At least, Fia amended, Rhiannon didn’t treat her like the polished and precocious woman everyone else assumed Lord Carr’s daughter must be.
Since her twelfth year Fia had been presented not as a child but as an unnatural hybrid—part woman, part doll. She’d been bribed with toys she was too old for and offered experiences she was too young for.
Rhiannon Russell did not flatter or patronize her. True, Rhiannon also neither trusted nor particularly liked her, but even this Fia found refreshingly candid. She was as close to a friend as Fia had ever known.
She didn’t want Rhiannon hurt.
She was being silly she supposed. She knew Carr had a reputation as a diabolical fiend. It had always amused her. Carr was no monster. He was a genius who chose not to be governed by the irrational emotions or the asinine laws made by lesser men for lesser people. It made perfect sense.
Or, Fia thought, her young face troubled, it always had before.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ash couldn’t make it up the servants’ stairs and he refused to ask the snickering footmen to carry him. By gritting his teeth and concentrating very hard, he managed to stumble into one of the small antechambers behind the great hall—a mean, dark room, presently unused and therefore as devoid of furnishings as it was of light.
Gratefully, Ash sank to the floor, his back against the wall. His ribs throbbed dully. He forced himself to twist and was pleased when it hurt no great deal worse than before, indicating that just perhaps his ribs weren’t broken. Scant comfort but all he was likely to get. His hand felt as though it were being crushed in a vise. His skin stung where the sweat and grease ground into innumerable abrasions.
He would have lain on the floor and allowed sweet oblivion to overcome his senses but each time he closed his eyes he saw her face and read again her horror. The pain in his body faded, becoming faint compared to the pain of that recollection.
From his earliest years he’d understood what he was. He’d never wasted a moment regretting it. A wise father may well know his child, but it was more important that the child recognize not only his sire but those parts of himself his sire had bequeathed.
Somehow he’d forgotten that. Indeed, it seemed lately that he’d lost the part of himself he knew best. Well, he’d bloody well remember, because this pain—this pain was unendurable. It had to end. It would end.
He’d finally accrued enough money to ransom Raine. He’d even written to the French demanding particulars of how and where the trade would occur.
The door opened and a bar of light fell across his injured eye. He winced, flinging up one hand against the intrusion and placing the other palm flat against the floor. He heaved himself to a crouching position, facing whoever entered.
He squinted against the bright rectangle of the door frame. “Another challenger?” he asked with a bitter laugh. “Why not? It might not be a very interesting confrontation but it might prove satisfying—for you. Hell, for both of us. Though being a gentleman I should ask you to take your place at the end of the queue.”
“Ash.”
It was her voice. Ragged and low and it nearly undid him.
He swallowed hard. Had his father sent her as a special reminder of the many ways in which he could bring his eldest son to heel or had she sought him for her own purposes?
“What, Rhiannon?” A small pleasure to speak her Christian name, but one he wouldn’t cede. “Have you come to condemn me for my chosen path, my ill-gotten gains, the depth to which I have sunk? Don’t waste your breath or my time. I don’t give a damn what you think.”
Liar.
“No.” She turned and spoke to someone in the hall. He climbed to his feet, weaving slightly. His little speech had cost him dearly.
“I’ll need more water than this and hot,” she was saying to whomever waited without. “Very hot. And bandages and he’ll need a shirt.”
“You’re not going to clean me up,” he ground out, sickened by the thought of her hands sloughing the filth from his limbs.
She ignored him, hefting a pail from the floor outside and setting it inside the room. She closed the door behind her, sinking the room into twilight.
“Where are you hurt worst?”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“You already know that. I’ve come to patch up your wounds.”
“The hell you say.” He made himself stand away from the wall. Sweating with concentration, he moved toward her. She did not back away and as he drew near and his eyes adjusted to the murky lighting he saw that she wore one of those new gowns Carr had insisted she don, a shimmering bronze striped through with rich green.
She looked elegant and regal, no longer the modest little beauty. No, quite evolved now. Quite different from that pretty wench.
This gown dipped low, far lower than anything she’d ever worn in Fair Badden. Her bound breasts, pushed up by the constricting bodice, trembled in an agitation delicious to behold. He’d never had the time nor inclination to lechery, owning a full complement of sins that already commanded his attention. But even battered and broken, just the sight of Rhiannon made him grow hard.
Yet it was not his hand that reached out and hovered inches above naked flesh. It was hers. Incredulously, Ash realized she meant to touch his naked chest. Like a wild thing unused to human contact, his stared at her in startled wariness.
Rhiannon shivered before the threat she read in his hot, smoke-dark eyes. He looked cornered, dangerous, and unpredictable. If she had sense she would leave. Whatever he was to his brother, he was her enemy, a scoundrel who’d used her, lied to her, and stolen her from her home for money. She began to move back toward the door and safety but her gaze, released from his, fell on the purpled skin sheathing his ribs.
He hadn’t wanted to fight the Scotsman. Carr had forced him to it.
Her hand rose, closed the distance, and gently, carefully, traced a deep gash across his breast. His eyelids fluttered shut. She sidled closer, her touch feather light, warily watching his face for signs of—
He grabbed her wrist, spinning her round and catching her by the throat with hi
s free hand, shoving her violently against the wall, hissing as his swollen hand, cushioning her wrist, slammed into the wall. His eyes opened on a blaze.
“You’ve changed, little Rhiannon,” he muttered thickly. He angled his head sideways. Around her throat his fingers tightened. “You’ve grown bold and headstrong. What happened to the sweet, obedient young woman I met? Don’t you remember, Rhiannon alainn? Or is that it? You want a reminder of her fate?”
There was nothing of kindness in him. She’d been wrong. Wrong to stay. Wrong to be moved by his pride and his plight—
“Remember now?” he whispered, the soft rough music of his voice mocking his violent actions. He pushed his body flat against hers, dominating her slighter frame. Even through the layers of thin silk petticoats and draped satin skirts she could feel the swollen part of him brand the outside of her thigh.
“Or now?” He thrust his hips graphically against hers. Her courage wavered. Eyes wide with stricken, mute appeal she stared at him. A muffled word—a curse? an endearment?—escaped him and then his mouth closed on hers, punishing and brutal.
His tongue dove between her lips, thrust deeply within her mouth, and stroked her tongue, seeking the warm sleek side of interior cheeks. Passion exploded within him.
Rhiannon.
He felt the weight of her breasts flattened against his chest. Her throat was a silky column in his palm. Her wrist was as delicate as a bird wing.
He could have her. Here. Now. Pain speared his side and throbbed in his hand. Pain sat like a vise in his chest and burned like acid in his thoughts. He knew only one way to make it stop—
He fumbled low at her knees, bunching the heavy satin up, savoring the long, smooth slide of his knuckles up her thighs. He dragged the skirt higher, and cupped the softly rounded swell of her buttocks, lifting her, pressing her even more tightly to the wall, vaguely aware that she was clutching his shoulders.
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