Lady Sumner’s digging fingers eased. “Does he mention my husband at all? Does he blame him for anything?”
Imogene’s throat tightened. Even though Nathaniel had alluded to it many times, it was not her place to say it. “I know nothing, my lady, for he does not wish to speak of it. All I know is that your son has suffered greatly.”
“My daughter believed he was alive up until the very last breath she took. She believed in a way I did not.” Lady Sumner released Imogene’s hand and sobbed. “What a wretched mother I am to have ceased believing in my own son.”
“Shhhh. No. Do not say such things. You have endured far too much to—”
“I betrayed him by not believing.” Lady Sumner leaned in, swaying the veil against her face. “Tell him to call on me in the morning. Tell him I must see him and hold him. Tell him.”
Imogene tried not to cry, sensing that this poor woman was almost too broken. It was so sad. “I will tell him.”
Lady Sumner reached out and blindly patted Imogene’s cheek with a gloved hand, those fingers skimming Imogene’s cheek on an angle. “You have such a pretty face,” she murmured. “I used to be pretty, too. When I was younger.” Lady Sumner grew quiet. “I have nothing now. Not the love of my husband and not even a face.”
The poor, poor woman. “You have the love of your son. And I promise he will come to you tomorrow morning.”
“Yes. Do. Tell him I will have crumpets and strawberry preserves waiting for him. They used to be his favorite.” Lady Sumner nodded. “My husband didn’t believe it was our son. But I will make him believe. You tell Nathaniel that.” Stepping back, the woman slowly turned away and drifted down the corridor without so much as bidding a farewell.
Tears blinded Imogene as she rubbed a hand against her belly in disbelief and stood in the silence of the receiving room. Lady Sumner seemed anything but grounded.
Whatever Nathaniel had endured, and whatever his father had done, was about to make itself known. Imogene only prayed it didn’t break him or her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
His pugilistic talents, perhaps, might have been forever obscured from the world, and himself content to drag on a life of rustic insipidity, had not the smiles of the fair sex awakened his brave heart and brought them to action.
—P. Egan, Boxiana (1823)
Covent Garden
IT WAS LIKE the man was made of iron.
A determined roar ripped from Nathaniel’s throat, which was instantly swallowed into the echo of the shouting crowds. Terry barely stumbled against the savage hit Nathaniel had squarely delivered to the side of the man’s head.
Jumping forward again, Nathaniel straight punched and felt his fist finally penetrate through those upheld hands. Smashing Terry’s nose with a masticating crunch he could feel against his knuckles and arm, Nathaniel felt blood spray across his chest and slather his hand.
He had him.
Nathaniel hit the man again and again, from jaw to temple, determined to finish him.
Terry staggered back, his gashed features distorted from the fight that had lasted well past sixty rounds. Terry suddenly collapsed onto the wooden boards, limp.
“To the line!” the umpire shouted at Nathaniel as the crowd boomed with riled shouts and cheers that muted the words. “Thirty seconds! And I count!”
Jogging over to the chalked box, Nathaniel waited with both fists still up as the umpire counted out the time. The pulsing of Nathaniel’s battered flesh seemed to swell against the afternoon sun, and though he felt his mind wanting to leave his body, he knew he had to stay focused.
Terry’s second jumped out from the corner post and yelled down at Terry to get up, shaking him repeatedly. “To the line, Terry! Terry! For blood’s sake, to the line! Don’t let the bastard take this from us!”
Rolling onto his back, Terry momentarily stared up into the afternoon sky, his chest pumping hard.
“Stay down,” Nathaniel chanted against his own fists that hovered before his face. “Stay down, you son of a bitch. I need this more than you do.”
“Thirty!” the umpire boomed as he pointed a finger at Nathaniel. “And this here ends the fight! I proclaim Atwood to be the lead for the next and last fight of Champion to be set by any contender!”
Nathaniel dropped his hands heavily to his sides and closed his eyes as cheers drummed against his head and his soul. He had done it. A part of him couldn’t believe it. He’d taken down a man who hadn’t gone down against anyone. And the title of Champion was next.
It was as though the world was finally kneeling to him.
Finally.
Reopening his eyes, he swung toward the crowd. Weston picked up a bucket of water from the corner post and tossed it at him with a celebratory whoop. “To the upcoming Champion of England! It’s yours! I damn well know it is!”
The cold water drenched Nathaniel’s face and body like the heavenly blessing that it was. The heat of his throbbing body flickered away into a soothing, cooling bliss. Swiping his face, he let out a laugh he couldn’t even hear and scanned the bobbing crowds of well over several hundred men.
It was astounding to know he had brought them here.
He paused at glimpsing the duke and Yardley both grinning up at him from the masses pressing in against the wooden posts that roped off the crowd from the fight.
They came. Like they always did.
Nathaniel grinned past the biting pain and held up a fist toward them, shaking it in the air in their honor.
Yardley and the duke held up their fists in turn and also shook them, sending out mutual support.
In that moment, as Nathaniel threw out both arms and walked about the wood stage, welcoming the attention of the crowd that chanted, “Atwood! Atwood! Atwood!” he believed anything was possible.
Though he had a long night ahead of him, including debriefing with Weston and Jackson and cavorting with the entire boxing company from Jackson’s club, he couldn’t wait to go home and announce his win to the woman who had made all of this possible. To the woman who made his life worth living and was his, all his.
Biting back an exasperated grin, he leaned over the side of the posts and shook countless hands that were repeatedly being thrust his way.
Life didn’t get any better than this.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
However painful it is to state, it becomes
our duty not to withhold the truth.
—P. Egan, Boxiana (1823)
2:34 a.m.
AFTER THE VALET had poured several more steaming basins of narcissus-infused water over his bruised shoulders and back, Nathaniel carefully arranged a wet towel on his head to soothe his now-scabbing face and settled in the copper tub. It was like lounging in paradise. “You can retire,” Nathaniel breathed out to the valet. “Thank you for staying up so late and tending to me.”
“But of course, my lord. ’Tis an honor. Congratulations again and good night.” The valet gathered everything, except for Nathaniel’s robe and a dry towel, which he left on a chair beside the tub, and dutifully departed, closing the bathing chamber door behind himself.
Nathaniel leaned farther back against the tub, wincing against soreness and welts, and closed his eyes, savoring the silence and the sensation of ultimate rest. It was the best part of the fight. That delicious sense of having conquered all and being able to glory in it in the privacy of his own bath and home.
He didn’t miss New York. Not one fucking bit.
The door creaked open. Slippered feet quietly entered the room and the door creaked closed again. “Nathaniel?”
A smile touched his lips at hearing Imogene’s soft voice. He didn’t even bother to open his eyes or remove the towel from his head. That beautiful voice was enough to glory in. “I should warn you, tea cake, I’m naked. The only thing covering me right now is the towel on my head.”
“I know.” Her voice was still soft.
He smirked but still didn’t open his eyes or move. “Try not to
take advantage of me. I’m feeling rather helpless right now. I wouldn’t be able to fight you off.”
Her steps drew closer. “Judging by your marvelously cheeky mood, you won.”
He sensed she now lingered beside the tub.
“I most certainly did,” he drawled up at her through the towel. He purposefully stretched out, letting her see whatever she wanted to. “Start thinking about what we’re going to do with all that money when I take the title in three weeks. I’m thinking of sending several thousand banknotes to Matthew out in New York. I haven’t heard a damn thing from the man, which probably means he needs money. After we take care of him, I say we do some traveling. I’d love to go to Spain for a few months. I hear men there challenge bulls in a public arena. That would be well worth seeing. What would you like to do? Where would you like to go? Any ideas?”
Oddly, she said nothing. Not a word.
He paused. It wasn’t like her. Usually when the woman crept into his bathing chamber to sit beside him as he soaked after a fight, he couldn’t get her to cease squealing and talking about the fight and money ahead.
Opening his eyes, he lifted the front of the towel from his head, draping it back, and glanced toward her.
Dressed in a simple white nightgown, with a long braid pushed back over a slim shoulder, she knelt beside the tub, her chin tucked against the copper rim, both hands holding her in place against it. She winced as her gaze drifted across all the scabs covering his temple, cheekbone and nose. “I never get used to seeing you hurt.”
He leaned toward her, lingering on how pretty she looked. It reminded him of the first time they had met. Her in a simple braid and a nightdress. “Ah, you know me. I heal quick.” He reached out and dabbed the softness of her cheek with a wet finger. “Are you all right? You seem a bit quiet.”
She half nodded and held his gaze, her hazel eyes glistening with tears. Her full lips trembled. A choked sob suddenly escaped her, tears now streaming down her face. “I…I waited all night f-f-for you.”
He sat up, astounded. His heart pounded, for he had never seen her cry. And she was stuttering. It had been so long since she had. “What is it?”
She swiped at her face with shaky fingers. “Your mother called on me t-t-today. While you were at-at-at…the fight.”
His lips parted. After months of silence, and missives left unanswered, his mother had finally emerged to acknowledge him. But what did that mean? And why now? “What did she say? And why are you crying? Was she disrespectful toward you?”
She shook her head and swiped more tears away. “No. But it was overwhelming.” Her features twisted as she captured his gaze. “She didn’t seem mentally sound, Nathaniel. What is more, she was asking me if your father was in any way to…to blame for your disappearance. It was as if she knew something.”
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the tub. It was all unraveling.
Imogene was quiet for a long moment. “What happened to you, Nathaniel? Don’t you think it time I know?”
Jesus Christ. He was not in the mood for this. Reopening his eyes, he stared at her. “I’m trying to recover from a fight here. I’m trying to rest.”
Her tear-streaked features morphed into a more stubborn gaze. “Your mother insists we call on her tomorrow morning, and in truth, the thought scares me. You intend to send me into a quagmire I know nothing of? Is that your intention?”
Annoyed, he pointed at her. “You aren’t coming with me. Let me be clear in that.”
“No. I have every intention of supporting you through whatever it is that is happening.”
“You are overstepping your goddamn bounds. You’ll stay here at the house where you belong.”
“I’m not—”
“When I tell you to do something, Imogene, you do it. You got that? You do it.”
Her startled face gave way to hurt. “Do not speak to me like that.”
Seeing her crumpled face was like slitting his own throat. But he also knew he couldn’t expose her to the darkest recesses of his life. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. ’Tis simply my quagmire to conquer, Imogene, not yours.”
Her hazel eyes flared. “’Tis not yours alone anymore when it causes me agony. Or don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand what I feel for you? Or are you so fully absorbed in your boxing that you haven’t noticed that I am well past adoring you?”
He swallowed, lowering his gaze. He had noticed. The way she looked at him was different. The way she physically submitted to him was different. And he was different because of it, too. “Are you in love with me?”
She said nothing.
He searched her flushed face, his chest tightening. “I know you are. And I want you to say it. Because I’m ready to say it, too. I’m in love with you. And I’ve known it for some time.”
She eyed him but said nothing in return.
His jaw tightened. “I just told you I’m in love with you.”
She stared.
He stared back, his pulse thundering. “You have nothing to say?”
She closed her eyes. “What am I to say to a man who claims to love me but refuses to trust me?”
“What the devil are you talking about? I do trust you. There isn’t a person I trust more.”
She shook her head and reopened her eyes. “No. You don’t. If you did, you would be able to confide in me what happened to you.”
He shifted toward her, sending the water rocking back and forth against the tub and around him. “If I reveal that part of myself to you, Imogene, it will change the way you look at me. And I don’t want that. I don’t need that. I have crawled my whole life to get to where I am. I am done crawling. I’m done.”
Her features softened. “I won’t let you crawl.” She set her chin against the rim of the tub again, tilting her head, and met his gaze. “I am here to uphold you in the same way you always uphold me. Love is not a moment, Nathaniel. It is every moment. Including the ones you fear.”
He held her gaze, his breath barely lodged in his throat. A part of him roared within from all the unspoken words he himself had yet to share. Like how beautiful she was in mind and in soul. How her smile made him smile every time. And how he would never hurt her in the way he had been hurt by so many throughout his pathetic life.
In thinking all of these things, he knew there was no disguising what had happened to him. This was well beyond mere love. This was true love.
Something he thought he’d never touch.
He looked away, drew in a ragged breath and let it out. If he didn’t tell her the truth, she would pull away from him. And if he told her the truth, she could still pull away from him. Either way, he was damned.
Leaning back against the tub, he draped the wet towel floating in the tub onto his head so he didn’t have to look at her and muttered, “Ask me whatever you want.”
She hesitated. “Do you mean that?”
“Since when do you know me to say something I don’t mean?”
Her fingers delicately grazed his shoulder, avoiding any welts. “My brother mentioned that it wasn’t a group of American Loyalists.”
He tried to keep his tone emotionless. “No. At the time when it happened, it was a seventeen-year-old Venetian aristocrat. He was barely seven years older than me.”
Her fingers stilled against his skin. “Who was he?”
“A close friend of my father’s. And though young, Casacalenda was an incredibly old soul. At fifteen, though he had tried to stop it, his sister was murdered by his own father, who went into a rage at discovering she was pregnant outside of wedlock by a servant. His father was hanged for it by the Venetian counsel, which in turn, made Casacalenda the wealthiest ward of the state with his father’s title to boot. Casacalenda sought to escape all the attention and the trauma by leaving Venice and went to New York, where he decided to stay until he came of age. He went wild trying to find himself.”
“Why did he take you? What did he do to you?”
&nbs
p; “It may be difficult for you to believe, but I was actually treated exceptionally well. He and I even became friends and were bonded by a shared disaster—my father.”
She shifted against the side of the tub, leaning closer toward him. “If you were bonded, why did he keep you in a cellar?”
Nathaniel rearranged the towel on his head in agitation, trying to disconnect himself from what he was about to say. “Casacalenda was afraid I’d leave. The man had no family and no friends. I became his hope and his confidant. Morbid though it was, I was all he had. So he kept me in a cellar for five years.”
A gasp escaped her. “For five years he kept you to himself and in a cellar? Why would he do such a thing? I don’t understand.”
Nathaniel was quiet for a long moment before saying in a low tone, “What I am about to say stays between us. Do you understand? No one, and especially not my mother, must ever know of this.”
“I won’t tell a soul. I vow and I swear.”
He sat up and shifted in the water, thankful he had the towel to keep him from looking at Imogene. “Casacalenda and my father randomly met at a high-end brothel when my father first arrived in New York. My father was drawn to forbidden lifestyles. Wherever there were disreputable women, there he always was. The two men became exceptionally good friends and soon took to sharing everything. Women, opium, gambling binges, everything. They were their own two-person version of the Hellfire Club.”
She was quiet.
Still in disbelief that he was actually telling her, he blurted, “Then one night, my father, having had too much opium, seized Casacalenda and commenced forcibly kissing him and stripping him. My father knew Casacalenda dabbled with men and gave in to what he had always wanted himself but had never been able to admit—his preference for men. It resulted in their coupling by the end of the night and turned into a very passionate relationship that lasted well beyond two months. My father, who had spent his entire life suppressing his true nature, given his name and status, panicked at realizing he was in love with a man. He therefore tried to leave New York and the relationship behind. Casacalenda refused to let him go and stood outside our house almost every night, waiting to be acknowledged. As a boy of ten, I only saw one side of the coin. Given my father was despondent, and my mother and sister were as equally disturbed as I was by seeing a man we didn’t know lingering outside our window, I decided on a scare tactic with a pistol to get the man to leave my family alone. It didn’t go as planned. I was ten and stupid. Casacalenda shoved me into a carriage when my pistol misfired and decided to use me as a bargaining chip to get my father to see him.”
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