Page 30 of Elizabeth’s Refuge (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #16)
A giant globe with a map of the earth painted on it that had cost more than ten pounds was beaten until its remains looked like a giant wooden cracked egg that had been painted blue and brown for Easter.
If one of his servants had entered the room at this moment, Lachglass would have tried to kick them to death.
And then, the cold wind blowing through his ruined windows, Lachglass curled up in a corner of the drawing room and cried.
Naked and exposed.
Everyone could see straight through to him. Humiliated, worthless, he’d shamed the family name. He was known by everyone as the man who was beaten up by a woman, and who then wanted to set the courts on her for his own crime.
He rocked back and forth unable to speak. Everything had fallen completely apart.
Tears flooded his cheeks, dripping in big puddles onto the ground on either side of Lord Lachglass.
His legs were too weak for him to stand, and he felt dizzy, as if the whole world spun around him, and he was going to fall off and choke on his own vomit, like a vagrant drunk given a guinea by an impecunious and foolish gentleman.
His ribs squeezed together.
Lachglass tried to vomit, but nothing but acid flooded up into his throat.
The door opened and Lachglass put his hands back on the ground, and like a cat in a corner he hissed at the intruder.
Mr. Blight stood in the door. The tears made it impossible for Lachglass to see clearly, but he thought that the back alley knifer who had become his man of business had a look of contempt upon his face.
He’d show Spitey Blighty. He’d show them all. He’d show every one of them.
He’d make them regret everything.
With a stumble Lachglass rose to his feet and said to Mr. Blight, “Call my boxing master. I need to beat someone.”
The attempt to resolve his emotions through fighting did little good for Lachglass. He realized almost instantly he did not want training.
He wanted to use his fists to pummel a man.
The training room had pastel painted walls, and it smelled of sweat. Lachglass held his hands out, and the servant wrapped heavy leather around the fists to protect them.
As soon as he was ready, in a thin linen shirt and flexible pants to fight, he swung an angry wild punch at the heavily muscled professional pugilist who he’d hired to train him.
But even though he hadn’t waited for the signal to start, the man had simply stepped out of the way of his fist, and with a cluck of his tongue he said, “Bad form, bad form.”
Lachglass angrily swung at him. Again and again.
No matter how furiously he punched, the pugilist always kept his hands interposed, or he ducked below the punch. Several times he punched back, though not hard enough to do more than wind Lachglass, but it knocked him back.
Lachglass became more and more frustrated. More and more hateful.
“Damn you, man. You work for me. Let me get a clear blow!”
“You’ll not learn anything that way. Aim for the torso, Milord, unsporting to hit a man in the head.”
“Damn you, man. I do not want to learn a damn thing.”
His face was flushed with raw anger, and his veins throbbed.
“You’re in no fit state today.” The boxing master stepped back. “In no fit state at all to benefit from a lesson today.”
Lachglass snapped five more punches towards the man, all of which were easily blocked, leaving his hand sore and tired despite the heavy gloves wrapped around them.
Lachglass motioned for the servant who watched them to wipe off his sweaty forehead with his fine towel. “My damned man. Let me beat you over the head with my fists, or I will dismiss you and tell everyone of my acquaintance to have nothing to do with your instruction.”
“Ha, you think your acquaintance any longer gives a pence for your opinion?” The boxer sneered at him.
“Is that what you want? A helpless opponent? That why you like raping little girls? But found one who knew how to fight better than you, and she beat in that misshapen nose of yours. Well I’m no woman.
But then it seems you can’t even beat a woman. ”
“I’ll have you killed for what you say to me. You know who I am! You know what my position is. I can—”
The pugilist screwed up his beefy face and spat on the wooden slats of the training floor.
He stripped off his bulging leather gloves with his teeth and threw them to the floor, like a bizarre modern version of an ancient knight tossing his gauntlet to the ground in challenge.
“I’ll not be insulted by a rapist. I’ll not teach a rapist either.
Real gentlemen don’t use force on women.
Real men don’t need force to get a woman’s favors.
I’d rather starve than train a helpless, pathetic tyrant who wants to beat a man over the head without earning the skill to do it. ”
“I’ll destroy you! I’ll destroy you! You’ll never be employed again! Never! You’ll starve, and all those muscles will waste away to nothing, and you’ll sit on the side of the road, begging, and no one will give you any money or food. And you’ll rue the day you disobeyed the Earl of Lachglass!”
Lord Lachglass ranted till he was red in the face.
He ranted until the pugilist was long gone.
And he stood there, abandoned in the training gym, alone except for Spitey Blighty watching him with his blank face and contemptuous eyes.
“Kill him!” Lachglass clenched his teeth so hard that one of them audibly cracked and part of the tooth that had been hurting on and off for a month broke away. “Kill that damned, insulting boxing master. Stab a needle in his back.”
There was the sneer again. Like Spitey Blighty was considering refusing the order. But he bowed and left the room.
Lachglass rang for his valet to help him dress and gave orders for the carriage to be prepared. He had no purpose for London.
“Also,” he ordered to the servant, “have the windows of the carriage blocked with black drapes, so no one can see within.”
Now that he was dressed, Lachglass stepped up to a mirror to properly tie and arrange his cravat. He looked into his own eyes, red from his unmanly tears. His eyes, they glittered, speaking to him.
They demanded revenge. His eyes demanded revenge on her .
Lachglass bared his teeth at the mirror, and he growled at his own image.