“Very much.” She shrugged. “I am older and wiser now.”
“I am happy to read Milton to you. You’re familiar with his work, I take it.”
“He is a poet.”
“Of a certain renown.”
She adopted her drawing room smile, but this time in jest. “I believe I’ve heard the name.”
He opened her book, flipped several pages and glanced up. “Make yourself comfortable. Please.”
She stayed perched on the edge of her chair. “Thank you.”
“You do not look comfortable.”
“I’ve nothing to do with my hands.” She lifted them from her lap. “A lady must always have her hands occupied, and here I have no sewing or knitting or embroidery. I don’t think I can listen and do nothing with my hands. It’s wicked to be idle.”
“Indulge me if you won’t indulge yourself.” He tapped the book. “One must be fully present when listening to Milton. No distractions.” He opened the book. “Shall I begin?”
CHAPTER 12
Thrale came down from that damned hill the second time with his thighs screaming at him and his feet complaining of hard treatment. His lungs had air and, though he felt the effort, he remained in control of his body. He could, if he pressed, take his breather a step faster. He could, if he wished, continue at this pace for some time yet. He came off the path worn smooth by the fighters who trained here, heading for The Cooperage rather than Johnson’s Academy.
He crossed the footbridge over the river and continued along the bank toward the path that would return him to the Sinclairs. The weather had cooperated this morning, as it had most mornings he took a training outing; cool enough for him not to feel the sun.
By personal preference, he ended his excursion at the pool where he’d encountered Mrs. Wilcott on the day she’d advised him to run at the bloody hill. Like a horse in need of a cool down, he walked beside the pool waiting for his breath to calm and his pulse to slow. Presently, both happened in sufficient amount, and he headed toward The Cooperage. He’d not got ten yards along the path before Roger came around the bend, tail wagging. That somewhere in his antecedents there was a deerhound was as indisputable as the many other facets of his mixed lineage.
Roger loped toward him with that gait so peculiar to the breed predominant in him. This could only mean that Mrs. Wilcott was not far off, and, indeed, by the time Roger reached him, she appeared on the path.
Once again, he was in no fit state to be seen by a lady. He’d stripped down to his shirt for his breather, and the material was plastered to his skin. He wiped his forehead with the side of his arm. His shirt stuck to his forearm. She was, as she had been before, unaffected by his indecent state. He found that unbearably arousing.
Those were no thoughts for a gentleman to have about a lady.
She arrived at the part of the path where he and Roger were. Not close. Not far either. She wore white muslin sprigged with blue and a blue cashmere shawl around her shoulders. Her attention was on the dog, and though she was more natural with him now, he could not help thinking she continued to hold back some essential part of herself.
“He adores tall men and must always make their acquaintance.”
“I shouldn’t wonder. Such men are superior in every way.” Roger pushed into his arms, a big enough dog to have knocked him over if he hadn’t been solidly planted. Her husband had been tall, too. Taller than he was. A prizefighter had carried her away from her family and made a life with her. Ungentle hands had been on her body, and her still so young. Thomas Sinclair had much to answer for in respect of his neglect of his daughters. His lack of vigilance had led to a ruinous elopement.
“I always wonder,” she said in a soft voice, “if he is looking for Devil. They were devoted to each other.”
“Who would not be devoted to this dog?” He straightened and remembered, then, that he was not fit for the company of a lady. Thank the Lord he’d not peeled off to bare chest. Though, how would he know she would be offended if he had? She hid her emotions too well.
She closed her blue parasol, a tiny thing more decorative than useful, and balanced the handle against her shoulder. “How was your breather this morning?”
Again, he wiped his face with his sleeve. When she talked about boxing she became another woman, confident and more knowledgeable than many men he knew. This had the peculiar result of him conversing with her as if she were a man. She wasn’t. God knows, she was not. “Twice to the top of the hill.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Impressive, my lord.”
She understood, she did, what such a feat meant about his physical condition and his mental fortitude. “Tomorrow, I spar at the Academy.”
“Well, Count, you are diligent in your training.” She knew the cant, and he wondered what other rough words she’d heard.
“With one of Johnson’s fighters.”
“A true enthusiast.”
Enthusiast. That was not how he felt when he faced another man, fists raised. Or what he did when he was in the ring, and that was so even though he did not, and could never, fight for money. Enthusiasm did not touch the intense satisfaction of having control over his body. Enthusiasm had nothing to do with the way his mind focused in the moment. Nor the importance, to him, of control.
She amended herself before he could voice an objection. “No, much more than an enthusiast, I’d say.”
He bowed. “I’m no Devil Wilcott.” He spoke lightly, but he saw a shadow fall across her face. No. He was not The Devil Himself. What had Wilcott felt when he stepped into the ring with his body fashioned into a weapon? Alive? Eager? Blood and breath singing through him? Eager to test himself or just determined to best his opponent?
“Don’t despair of that, sir. There was only ever one.”
Her smile betrayed her in every way. He’d never again be fooled by a facsimile. Lust whispered to him; The Devil Himself, that prime physical specimen, had come home from battle to fuck his beautiful wife, and Thrale had reason to believe she had not objected. Far from it. “Art, science, and strategy,” he said.
“There’s no harm in size and strength, too.”
“Not at all.” What art was lost when one stepped into the ring to vie for that two-thirds of the purse allotted to the winner? Had Wilcott thought of the art when he had a wife to support by dint of his fists? “He never merely pummeled his opponents, did he? Your husband. Even as a young man, he devastated the best with science and strategy backed by strength.”
“Tactics matter,” she replied. “You know that.”
“I do.”
“Devil studied his opponents and learned his own weaknesses.”
“He turned them to advantage.” A baseborn prizefighter, and yet he’d had the intellect to write a definitive treatise, and the wit to make a fortune long before he married. That told of ambition and intelligence; a man looking into the future and determined that it would belong to him.
“Pugilism was Devil’s passion. He lived and breathed it.” She turned her parasol.
Her beauty distracted from the mind behind those lovely blue eyes. What had Wilcott been thinking when he married a Sinclair sister of Bartley Green? He could not possibly have believed she would get him entrance through the front door of her home or any other. Had he seen Lucy Sinclair and been determined to possess her at any cost?
“I own,” she went on, “he learned the names, talents and weaknesses of every prizefighter of the last dozen years, whether he fought them or not.”
“Walk back to the house with me?” He dropped a hand to Roger’s head. “Or were you and this handsome boy intent on a longer ramble this morning?”
She eyed Roger. “This is about as far as we go these days. So, yes, thank you. We will escort you safely to The Cooperage.”
“I won’t offend you by offering my arm.”
“That’s kind of you.” Her frock was trimmed with ribbons and bows and the sort of whatnot ladies put on their gowns, and she was fetching in it. Th
e color and fit highlighted her delicacy, and his head filled with images of her husband sliding roughened hands over her body, and then, instead of Devil Wilcott, it was him in that place.
“Did he take you to matches?”
“He did.” Roger walked by her side. What kind of life had she faced, married to Wilcott, necessarily estranged from her family?
“I only saw him fight once. You must have seen more battles.” Many more. Why, she’d helped Devil in his training what with her detailed and meticulous study of his battles and those of other fighters.
“Not all of them, but more than a few.”
“Any match involving Devil Wilcott would have been a battle not to be missed.” There would have been hundreds of men present, lowborn and high. The money that changed hands when Wilcott fought had often been dizzying. Two opposing thoughts stayed in his head as they walked; envy of her experience, and the knowledge that no lady would attend a battle. Her reputation would be shredded for such a thing.
“The best I saw was his battle with Carter,” she said. “He won in the fifty-third round.”
“A famous battle.”
“Yes. The first battle I saw, though, wasn’t one of Devil’s but Goldberg versus The Stoneman.”
“You attended the Goldberg and Stoneman battle?”
“I did.” She nodded. “Devil made me stay in the carriage, but we had an excellent view, and while we watched, he told me what to look for and what made the match a good one.”
There was more, of course. “And?”
“It was brutal.” She slowed, pacing herself to Roger. “I was repelled at first. I did not understand why anyone would wish to see two men beat each other or why anyone would cheer at the sight of blood.”
“Your opinion changed, I gather.”
She nodded “A trained fighter knows how to attack his opponent and how to defend himself. He has learned to withstand the punishment. Naturally, he will be hurt, but he will be less damaged than an untrained man who brawls.”
“Just so.”
“There is an art, yes. And science, as you’ve said.” She turned her parasol in another slow circle. “Devil mastered both.”
“Best prizefighter in England in his day,” Thrale said. “Bar none.”
“He was.”
Her soft, sad reply hurt his soul. She’d lived a life no proper young lady ever did. Going to battles, watching men train. Discussing fights with her husband, and no doubt, the many sporting men or fighters who must have come to the house. She let out a short breath, then checked herself. When she did speak, it was softly. “I never talk about my marriage.” She glanced at Roger, waiting patiently for them both. “It would make no one happy if I did. I don’t know why I’ve talked to you about Devil. I shouldn’t.” She rushed on. “I know what you must think of me as a result. My family is ashamed, too, though they’d never say so to my face.”
“They are not ashamed of you.”
She met his eyes, this time, and she was hard. Brittle. “The price of a roof over my head is silence about my marriage. I don’t want to pay forever.”
This, too, was a puzzle. Devil Wilcott had amassed a fortune and here was his widow, destitute. “Did he make no provisions for you? There must have been something for you. What happened?”
Her mouth tightened. “Arthur Marsey stole every penny of it from him. Investment after investment, never bought. Devil tried to bring an action, but no lawyer would hear him without money to pay. Besides, Marsey was a gentleman, and Devil was not. He fought that last time because there was no money. He never thought it would be his last battle. Nor did I.”
Wilcott’s death had been even more tragic than he’d believed. He’d left behind a devastated widow who mourned him still, and that tugged at him. “I am deeply sorry for your loss.”
“We were happy. I know that seems impossible, but we were.” She shot him a glance. “I am grateful for the time I had with him, and I would not give that up for all the money in the world.” She touched his arm. “Come now, my lord. Let’s speak of something joyful for us both.”
“Do you miss the battles?”
She laughed. “What a question.”
“Do you?”
She gave him a sideways look and faced him on the path. Initially, he expected her to remonstrate with him for the indelicacy of his question. She did not. “He taught me to box.”
“He never did.”
“So you believe, my lord.”
“How did he come to teach you to fight? Why?”
“I made a joke of it one day. We were discussing his battles and how he had trouble with a certain fighter. One of the Americans, and I told him I’d seen him flinch. He wouldn’t believe it at first, but I showed him.” She was smiling at the recollection, proud and fond, and then she dropped her parasol to the ground and, one foot forward, dropped her weight on her back leg, fists raised. “I showed him, and he allowed as I was right, and from there, he taught me to box. In private of course.”
The moment she raised her fists, anticipation pulsed through him. When he boxed, no matter who stood across from him, he wanted to win. Even when he faced a woman.
“I am the last student of The Devil Himself.” She jabbed at him, a motion both precise and measured. If she’d meant to connect, he’d have felt it. “He said I was his best.”
“You’re quick.”
She grinned at him and crossed with her right. “Indeed, my lord.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“What do you think?”
He tipped his head to one side. “Did you spar with him?”
“Not in the way you mean.” Her joyous smile brought an answering smile from him. “He was twice my size, and many times stronger.”
“A given. He’d not punch you.”
“Not a nobber, a ribber, or a facer.” She punctuated each word with a feint to his head, his ribs, and his face. “He’d never have harmed me.”
Though he did not take the classic sparring position, he traded a few feints with her. “Did you punch him?”
“I was fast enough to.” She jabbed, and it was sharp and crisp. If she’d not pulled her punch, she’d have landed him a decent ribber. She jabbed again and this time he caught her fist. His hand fit easily around her clenched fingers.
“That’s no answer.” He released her and raised his fists.
Her eyes sparkled. “I did not wish to bruise him, sir.”
He came at her with a quick left, then a right. Neither touched her nor had he intended any such thing. He had control of himself. Once, she had to bend back—he’d meant that, testing her.
And again. But her heel caught in her gown, and he grabbed her shoulder and hauled her toward him and immediately released her because, for the love of God in heaven, he stripped down to his shirt, and he had no business touching her like that. He took up her parasol and handed it to her. “Those are no fit clothes for boxing, Mrs. Wilcott.”
“I shall start a fashion for ladies’ boxing attire.” She shook out her skirts.
Sparring with a woman. Who would have thought such a thing was possible, even in jest? In London, from time to time, he’d sparred with prizefighters in training. He was nothing like the fighter Devil Wilcott had been, and he was aware the fighters he faced pulled their punches. Yet he well knew his ability significantly exceeded that of the typical amateur. He wanted Mrs. Wilcott’s acknowledgment of that. And would never have it.
They continued to the house in relative silence and went in by the back entrance, Roger behind them. As they came in, a small mirror on the wall opposite them flashed into his peripheral vision. She put her shoulder to it as they passed.
He put a hand on the wall, barring her way to the stairs. This was not the first time he’d seen her avoid a mirror. “Why do you never look at yourself?”
She glanced at his arm, and he dropped it to his side. “I know what I look like.”
“That isn’t what I mean.” There was no one here.
Just them.
“It’s what I mean.”
With a firm grip on her, he turned her around until she was in front of the mirror. She closed her eyes. He devoured her reflected image. Heartbreaking to see her, this woman, “Have you always been beautiful?” He stroked fingers across the nape of her neck. His fascination with her threatened to become obsession. Such tender skin. He willed her not to move, and she did not. “Like this? As you are now?”
“I cannot help the way I look.”
“Yes, then. You have always been like this.” His fingers moved from her neck to the line of her cheek. “It’s true you cannot help your looks. So, why won’t you look at yourself?”
“I am not vain.” Her voice was tight. Curt. Another piece of the puzzle for him to arrange in his head.
“True yet again.” She smelled like lilacs. A faint scent. “I never met a woman less vain than you.”
“It’s my reputation.” She looked away from the mirror she’d refused. From his face, also reflected in the glass.
“An astute observation, my lord.”
He frowned. “Who made you ashamed of your beauty? It can’t have been your husband.”
“Devil married me for my looks. He was proud of me for that.”
He turned them around, both of them, away from the damned mirror. She opened her eyes. They stood inches apart. Her gaze was so aware she scorched him. He could not act on his desires. Not with her. He could not betray Aldreth and Cynssyr or any of her sisters. He struggled for safer ground and found he had no reserves of fortitude to see him there. She’d burned all that away.
“Would you fight me?” He meant fuck. Will you fuck me?
She searched his face. “Do you want me to?”
He heard the challenge there. His body came to attention. This was a dangerous game to play. So be it. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“You’d be a worthy opponent,” he said.
“Tomorrow, then? Or another day?”
Again, he touched her cheek with the tips of his first two fingers. “I’d be afraid to bruise you.”
In the silence, she said, softly, “Do you want to?”
A Notorious Ruin Page 10