“Well, then, the choice of weapons is mine, I believe. But then, perhaps you’d know more about this than I would?”
“I know about it,” Nick said cheerfully. “Choice of weapons goes to the challenged. Time and date at the mutual convenience of the parties, location generally chosen by the seconds for discretion. I’m feeling very discreet right here and now.”
“This is a premeditated assault, nothing more,” Ainsworthy spat. “Three against one, and the two of you titled and immune from prosecution.”
“We’re not immune, are we?” Nick looked adorably confused to ponder such a thing.
“Why, no,” Trent replied. “We’re prosecuted in the Lords, if we’re caught, except I’m not sure what our crime would be, since we’re not touching the man, are we?”
“I’m not.” Nick shrugged massive shoulders. “Darius, what’s your pleasure?”
“Either wave the goods before witnesses, Ainsworthy, or name your seconds. Makes no difference to me.”
It took another hour, but two men eventually posted from the nearest club, and the matter was taken out to the mews.
“Rules of engagement?” one of Ainsworthy’s reluctant seconds asked.
“I won’t kill him,” Darius said. “Trent, you’ll make sure I don’t?”
Trent’s expression became considering. “You might regret letting him live,” he said quietly. “He preys on women and children.”
“Don’t let me kill him,” Darius said, his gaze going from Nick to Trent and back. “Vivvie deserves better than a man who kills with his bare hands, whatever other crimes I’ve committed.”
“All right,” Ainsworthy’s man said. “You fight until one man is done in, by agreement of the seconds. I have to say, I can’t like this.”
“You think I’d give him a chance to tamper with my guns?” Darius asked as he began to strip from the waist up. “Or disappear with his present wife’s remaining funds? She has a child, by the way, much like her predecessors, though the boy isn’t Ainsworthy’s get.”
“One hopes it wouldn’t come to that,” the man replied.
“And one hopes it needn’t be said,” Darius added, “but this is a bare-knuckle fight, no weapons. Not knives, not cravats used to strangle, not rings used to cut.”
“A clean fight.” The fellow hustled over to Ainsworthy and gestured for Darius’s opponent to remove his several rings.
The circle was drawn in the cold dirt, and as will happen, the stable boys from the nearby mews soon gathered, then some other men coming to fetch their horses, until the circle was ringed with male spectators. Oddly enough, no one was willing to bet against Darius, and the crowd became strangely silent as Nick and one of Ainsworthy’s seconds gave the signal to come out swinging.
Darius toyed with his opponent silently, letting Ainsworthy start with a glancing blow to Darius’s ribs. The pain was a trifling thing, not enough to make a man intent on his objective blink.
A series of blows in rapid succession all over Ainsworthy’s lily-white midsection conveyed Darius’s initial sentiments.
“Damn, he’s quick.”
“Accurate too.”
“Blighter’s mad,” another man said. “Look at them eyes. Barkin’ bloody mad.”
Nick and Trent exchanged a look at that comment. Darius’s response was to land a single blow to the jaw that left Ainsworthy staggering. Darius backed away, despite all instinct screaming to the contrary, until the man was righted by the spectators and turned back into the circle.
When Ainsworthy was pawing the air with his fists again, Darius started in once more. For Vivvie, for the baron, for Angela, for the wives, their children, for William… Blow after blow fell, the sound and feel of each reverberating through Darius’s soul like a tocsin.
“Relentless as a mill wheel, that one.”
“A damned maniac.”
“Look at his eyes, lad. He’ll kill the idiot, see if he don’t.”
“Poor bastard shouldn’t have crossed that mad bugger.”
Another single hard right, only this time Ainsworthy went down. Darius didn’t back away immediately but hovered, until Nick and Trent marched him backward, while the rest of the crowd tried to jeer Ainsworthy to his feet.
“Have some damned pride, man!”
“On your feet, boyo. You’ve yet to land a decent shot.”
“Stay down, unless ye want him to finish ye for certain.”
The seconds conferred while Ainsworthy hung on all fours, lungs heaving. When he managed to get to his feet, he spat in Darius’s direction.
“Bad form!”
“Make him pay for that. This is me own mews he spat on!”
“Fetch the parson. The skinny bastard’s done for now.”
Darius waited, letting Ainsworthy weave closer, then closer still. With exaggerated care, Ainsworthy pulled back an arm, and while he was choosing his moment—a scientific fighter, clearly—Darius hit him with a right jab that sent him into the dirt again, unable to rise.
“Show’s over,” Nick said meaningfully. “Back to work, lads, before the King’s man reads us the Riot Act.”
Somebody tossed a cold bucket of water on Ainsworthy, while Trent threw his greatcoat over Darius’s naked shoulders.
“Trent?”
Trent put an arm around his brother and bent close. “I’m here.”
“Get me away from this place,” Darius said, chest working like a bellows. “I want to kill him. I want to put my hands around his miserable throat and choke the life from him. I want to kill them all.”
Trent started walking Darius toward the townhouse. “Kill who-all?”
“The damned skulking, bastard predators,” Darius panted. “Ainsworthy, Wilton, even the women.”
“I know.” Trent hugged his brother closer. “But you didn’t, Dare. You wouldn’t let yourself.”
“Trent?”
“Love?”
“It felt good to beat the shit out of him. It felt wonderful. I want to do it all over again. I’m going to be sick.”
* * *
Trent hovered, despite having obligations out at Crossbridge, and Darius let him hover for two days.
On the third day, they rose and went to the docks to watch as Ainsworthy scurried onto a ship bound for Boston.
“How many warrants did you say were drawn up against him?” Trent posed the question as the gangplank was raised and the ship drifted out toward the current in midchannel.
“Five felonies at last count, and at least three angry women are out for his blood. Ariadne seemed mostly relieved, but her fortune was still largely intact.”
Darius stood beside his brother, the bracing wind off the river slapping ropes against hulls and making unfurled sails luff madly. For a few minutes, they watched the ship slip farther from the dock.
“Does it help, to know you’ve hounded him out of the country?”
“It helps.”
To see the ship depart helped a great deal, like weight taken from Darius’s chest, like somebody had turned up the lamps and opened a window. Beating the stuffing out of Ainsworthy had helped too, as had having Trent and Nick’s unquestioning support. It all helped—but not enough.
“You’re for Longchamps?” Trent asked.
Darius nodded as Ainsworthy’s vessel caught the current and began to turn downriver.
“You have a special license?”
Another nod.
“Then what the bloody hell are you waiting for?”
* * *
“It’s like this.” Darius addressed the small bundle in his arms—though perhaps not quite as small as even a few weeks ago. “I can’t very well ask permission of anybody else, but I feel the need to ask permission of somebody, and you’re the only fellow on hand.”
The baby gurgled happily and grabbed Darius’s nose.
“None of that strong-arm business now.” Darius retrieved the paternal beak from the child’s grasp. “This is serious stuff, your lordship. Baby Baron
, your mama calls you, and you probably like it, don’t you?”
The infant made another swipe at Darius’s nose, but Darius was getting wise to his son’s tricks.
“So you won’t mind too much if I marry your mama?” He settled into a rocking chair with the baby. “You won’t get colicky and difficult because I love you both until I’m mad with it? You have scared years off my life, boy, just by being precious and dear. Say something, why don’t you?”
Except Darius knew damned good and well the baby was far too young to offer any words of comfort or encouragement. A child this young didn’t even understand—
“By God, you’re smiling at me,” he whispered. “You’re grinning like a sailor hitting his first tavern on shore leave. You, sir, are a rascal.”
The child beamed at him some more, and the toothless grin was the greatest blessing a man bent on courtship might have wished for.
Vivian deserved better than the not-always-so-very-Honorable Darius Lindsey, there was no arguing that, but she was at least fond of her lover. She understood him, and the comfort of that was immeasurable.
“You have to know something,” Darius said to the child now drowsing in his arms. “I’m going to be a papa to you in every way that counts, provided your mama will have me. When you are a grown fellow, we may have to explain a few oddments to you, about why you resemble me but inherited all manner of wealth and consequence from dear William. He loved you too, and he loved your mama. I’d stake my life on that.”
Darius fell silent, sending up a prayer that William was reunited with Muriel and their sons, and beaming down from some happy cloud.
“Your mother and I will muddle through those details as best we can at the time—if she’ll have me.”
The child fell asleep, and Darius lingered a long while, admiring his son—and gathering his courage.
* * *
A new mother got used to the prodding of instinct, even in the middle of the night—maybe especially in the middle of the night. Vivian rose from her nice warm bed, slipped into her mules and night robe, and headed for the nursery down the hall. A glance at the eight-day clock told her Will had nursed not two hours earlier, but some awareness tickling at the back of her mind had awakened her.
She opened the door to the nursery and was greeted by a current of cozy air. The fire was kept going here, lest Baby Baron take a chill.
Baby Baron had taken something worse than a chill, for the child was not in his bassinet. Panic sent Vivian’s heart hammering against her ribs in an instant—until she noticed a long, dark form sprawled on the daybed against a shadowed wall.
Darius Lindsey lay fully clothed but for his boots, fast asleep without so much as a blanket to cover him. His hand cradled a small bundle on his chest, one wrapped in a pale receiving blanket with an embroidered hem of peacock feathers.
Her menfolk, no doubt worn out from exchanging confidences. The sight of them in slumber, both with hair of the exact same dark shade, did something queer to her heart.
“You have been out carousing on your papa’s chest long enough,” she crooned to the baby. She would have lifted him into her arms, except the instant she touched the child, Darius’s eyes flew open, and his grip on the child became implacable.
Then, “Vivvie.” He bundled the infant up and passed him to her. “I was telling Will a story. He wore me out.”
The baby yawned, a mighty effort from such a wee lad, and subsided into sleep.
“You’re worn out from riding out from London by moonlight,” Vivian chided. She took the rocking chair, while Darius rolled to his side and propped his head on his fist.
“What woke you?”
“You.”
“Should I have sent another note, Vivvie?”
“I rather liked the note you did send, and I wish I could have seen Ainsworthy off on his travels myself. Five felonies has a nice, permanently inspiring ring to it.”
Darius rolled to his back, his gaze on the ceiling until he turned his head to spear her with a look. “A permanently intimidating ring to it, I hope. I put out his lights first, Vivvie. Rather decisively, and he won’t be scribbling any fiction for the foreseeable future.”
This recitation of violence was another one of Darius’s tests of her understanding. Vivian cuddled the baby closer before she answered. “I hope you landed a few blows for me and for Angela. I should have liked to kick Ainsworthy in a particular location when you already had him retching in the dirt.”
Darius’s brows twitched. “Would you really?”
“Hard, repeatedly.”
He shifted around on the bed, sat up, and visually located his boots but didn’t put them on. “Why, Vivvie? You are the one person who was able to dodge Thurgood’s schemes, to outwit him and to equip yourself with allies who could best him.”
Vivian wanted to cuddle the baby closer, and then realized she’d commit the mortal sin of Waking the Baby if she didn’t put the little fellow in his bassinet soon. “Will you tuck him in?”
Darius rose and prowled out of the shadows to regard Vivian in the rocker. “He looks very content where he is. One is loathe to disturb a fellow at his pleasures.”
“One had best do as the fellow’s mother asks,” Vivian replied, handing Darius the baby, “unless one wants to answer for the consequences.”
Darius accepted the bundle of baby and cuddled him close enough to run his nose over a sleeping-baby cheek. “He bears your scent, Vivvie. I am jealous of a mere scrap of a lad.”
The tenderness of Darius’s smile as he beheld that lad was enough to break Vivian’s heart all over again. She had never thought to behold such a thing, not in the middle of the night, Darius in his stocking feet and looking so tousled and dear she could weep with it.
“If you two fellows are going to be up until all hours, I am not going to be a part of your folly.” She struggled to her feet, only to find Darius’s hand under her elbow.
He stood there next to her, the baby cradled against his chest, his expression unfathomable. “Vivvie, will you marry me?”
She sat right back down.
“You ask me that now? Here?” It was all she could think to say in reply, though he’d spoken words she’d longed to hear.
“I had to ask the baron’s permission—and there was that business with Ainsworthy.” Darius did not put the child in the bassinet, but rather, took up residence with the infant on the footstool beside Vivian’s rocker. “Our situation is all backward, you see, and the child was the only one I could think to ask.”
“For my hand?”
“For permission to court you, yes. You and I were intimate, though I could not court you. I hope we became friends, then the baby arrived, and we are lovers—you said that—and it’s all muddled, but I have the sense if you’ll marry me and be patient with me, then I can get it turned right at last.”
He fell silent, kissed the baby’s forehead, and said again more softly, “I can get myself turned right at last.”
Vivian stroked a hand over his hair. There was a flaw in his reasoning, somewhere, somewhere… but not in his conclusion.
Insight struck, but she took a minute to gather her courage. “Tuck the baby in, Darius.”
Darius rose, gently laid the child in his bassinet, and tucked in the blankets. “Good night, little baron. Sweet dreams, and know your papa loves you.” Rather than resume his perch on Vivian’s stool, Darius picked up his boots with his left hand and winged his right arm. “I will see you tucked in too, my lady. The hour is late, and you should be abed.”
What did that mean? She took his arm. She did not intend to simply capitulate, though it was tempting. If they got to expressing themselves emphatically over this will-you-marry-me business, then they needed privacy.
The corridor was chilly, and Vivian’s room not much warmer. “Come to bed, Darius, and we will discuss your latest question.”
“My proposal?” He sat on the side of the bed to pull off his stockings. “When you invite a
fellow to bed to discuss his proposal, you do know he’s inclined to be encouraged?”
But cautious, too. The caution, the hesitation to presume, was there in his eyes.
“I cannot be held responsible for a new father’s queer starts.” Vivian took off both her night robe and her nightgown, and hopped onto the bed in a state of complete undress. In a moment, Darius joined her, equally unclad.
He made no move to take her in his arms. “Talk to me, Vivvie.”
Beneath the covers, Vivian reached across the cool expanse of the mattress and took his hand in hers. “I am the daughter of an earl. You are the son of an earl. A match between us would be seen as appropriate, if precipitous, given William’s recent death. I am a widow with a child to rear. You’re a spare. Nobody would raise an eyebrow at your becoming Will’s guardian, particularly not when Viscount Longstreet himself chose you for the child’s godfather.”
Darius’s fingers laced with hers. “You’re naked in bed with me, Vivvie, and spouting logic. I am not encouraged by that at all.”
“Hear me out, because you are inclined to spout logic, sir, to do the sensible, selfless thing when it makes no sense at all.”
She was getting ahead of herself. Vivian turned on her side to face him, keeping her hand in his. “You love your son. I have every conviction you loved the child before he was born, loved the idea of him and the possibility of him. Fiercely, without limit.”
A cautious nod, then Darius rolled to his side to face her too. “Go on.”
“If you are offering marriage to me because it ensures you become Will’s guardian, then be at peace, Darius, because Able will not contest your right to serve in his stead. He assured me of this before he and Portia took ship. If you are marrying me to keep me safe from Ainsworthy, then I think we need not fret he’ll trouble me from points unknown. If you are marrying me out of duty, as William did, then I can promise you, I have no interest in that sort of union, even with my lover.”
Darius traced her hairline with one finger. “I am not marrying you for any of those reasons, though they are sound enough, and I considered them. I hope you consider them too when you give me your answer.”
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