Page 23 of Grace in Glasgow (Seduced in Scotland #3)

J ames jabbed twice with his left hand, then hooked with his right as his gloved fist connected with his opponent’s jaw, sending the heavy man back a few steps.

“Gaw, Hall! You’ve a right wickedness about you today!” the burly man yelled.

“Did he hurt you, Perry?” The familiar masculine voice of Graham McKinnon called out from the bench seat, causing James to drop his guard.

“Graham?” he asked, before a meaty fist slammed into the corner of his jaw, causing him to fall back.

“Bad form, Perry!” Graham called out, though the sound of his voice was muffled as James rubbed his gloved hands over his head.

“You shouldn’t have distracted him!”

James rolled to his side, knees bent up in the fetal position before he rocked himself into a crawling situation. Graham, who had climbed through the ropes of the pugilist ring, was on all fours next to him. “Are you all right?”

James nodded, though he was far from all right. His head was pounding and his body was achy and sore from being in the ring for hours, but it was the only thing he could do that would distract him from obsessing about Grace and their last conversation.

It had been telling how much her perceived lack of faith had affected him, as she had apparently been listening in to his conversation with Dr. Cameron. What was worse, however, was the fact that she had stopped listening before he had said his peace.

“Perhaps there is no place for a woman in your school,” James had said as Dr. Cameron came around to pat him on the back.

“There you are,” his colleague had replied.

“But then it is at the loss of this school, these students and the doctors that teach them. Because Grace Sharpe is a brilliant mind and the world will be a better place when she becomes a practicing physician.”

The betrayed wonder that had shown on Dr. Cameron’s face wasn’t at all unlike the expression Grace had given James when she left the carriage.

His ego had been to blame when he reached for her, eager to tell her everything he had said, but a wee modest part of his heart told him to let her go.

If she wanted to believe that he was a man without conviction, what did he care?

Pushing himself up to his knees, he took a step up on one wobbly leg, then another. He intended to finish this round.

“Out of the way,” he said, waving his friend to the side.

“Are you mad?” Graham asked, standing in front of him. “You’ve just been rocked.”

“I don’t care.”

“Would you allow one of your patients to continue?”

“I’m not a bloody patient. Now move.”

Graham was hesitant as he finally sighed, shaking his head as he left the ring to watch from the floor. James signaled to his opponent and put his hands back up.

“Ye’re a bit muddled, ain’t ya, doctor?” Perry asked.

“Try it.”

Perry obliged.

“All right. It’s your funeral.”

The large man came bounding forward, but James was ready. He sidestepped his opponent’s charge and turned around, just as Perry did, only James was faster. With a jab to the jaw and a double shot to his ribs, James stepped back to allow the stunned Perry to sway.

“Bloody hell. Where’d that come from?”

But James didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped forward again, faked right before uppercutting from the left. Perry stumbled back, but James wouldn’t let up and charged, hitting him in the ribs repeatedly until Perry fell on the ropes and began waving his hands.

“All right! All right!” He spat, droplets of blood spraying James in the face, causing him to jump back. “What the bloody hell is wrong with you?”

James rolled out of the ring as Graham came forward to help remove the tightly laced leather gloves.

Although gloves were often used in sparring, Perry had once been a bareknuckle fighter.

He was talented too, but James himself had tended to Perry at the end of his career and convinced him to teach with gloves, as it was far safer than scarring his students.

Of course, James didn’t have to worry about that.

“Where did that come from?” Graham asked as James toweled himself dry from the sweat that glistened all over him.

“What?”

“That. You never attack to the end like that. You’ve always been, well, rather annoying when you fight, actually.

Always trying to teach your opponent what they did wrong, or where to try and strike.

But that,” Graham said, bobbing his head at the ring from where Perry was glaring. “That was brilliant.”

“It wasn’t brilliant,” James spat. “It was stupid and irresponsible.” He threw his towel to the bench and walked over. “I’m sorry, Perry. That wasn’t right of me.”

Perry made a face and shook his head before letting out a laugh.

“Aye, it wasn’t. But it’s fine,” he said with a laugh, showing that he wasn’t bothered. “You’re just full of fire and piss today, is all.”

“Yes,” James said before heading toward the corner of the room.

St. Mungo’s Pugilist Club was something of a social club for professional men that had been set up in an old stone building, across the street from the cathedral in the center of Glasgow.

It had once been a place where church members could go to discuss charity, particularly what to do about donations and where to allot certain monies.

Of course, several times arguments would erupt and the men would start physical altercations and soon it seemed that fighting with one another in a sequestered spot gave them a better attitude in their private lives, as well as a time and space to settle their disagreements.

Thus, the natural progression of things turned it into a pugilist club.

Graham had followed him to the area in the back of the room, where a wall of open, wooden cupboards had been fitted, where each individual section was fitted with a hook and a stool.

An employee known as Roger met James there with a bucket of clean water and a length of white cloth.

James was quick to dip the fabric in the water and wash his face, neck, and hair, before he ran it over his body.

He was shirtless, and fitted in a loose pair of pantaloons that had been specifically made for this sport.

Graham folded his arms across his chest as he watched James, seemingly searching for something.

“What?” James snapped finally, as he finished washing himself.

Graham shook his head.

“You seem out of sorts, Hall. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter, and I wish to God everyone would stop asking me what’s wrong.”

One of Graham’s brows lifted.

“Forgive me, but that’s the exact response someone who is in a foul mood would say and being as you’re, one, never in poor spirits, and two, always fairly even tempered even when you’re three sheets to the wind, you must excuse everyone for trying to learn why you’re in such a contrary way.”

“If it is my prerogative to be contrary, that I shall be,” he said, flinging the cloth into the bucket. “I’m damn tired of trying to please everyone around me.”

Graham nodded.

“Fair. But this wouldn’t have anything to do with Lady Belle, would it?”

James paused as his gaze snapped to Graham’s.

“What would make you say that?”

He shrugged.

“Belle’s always been a thorn in my side, and more recently to the people she’s convinced to do her bidding.”

“I’ve not consented to any bidding.”

“Oh no? Haven’t you allowed Grace to shadow you these past few weeks since she’s left Glencoe?

” Something must have shone on his face, or perhaps he took too long to respond, because as he pulled his shirtsleeves over his head, he saw a telling expression form on Graham’s face. “Ah. So, this has to do with Grace.”

James undid the ties of his pantaloons as he turned away. There would be no use denying it to someone like Graham, who had been a close personal friend and somewhat an enemy of Lady Belle and therefore knew all the Sharpe sisters fairly well, having married the eldest, Hope.

“First, Dr. Barkley asks that I let the woman shadow me,” James began as he took up the washcloth again and began wiping the sweat from his legs and buttocks.

As a physician, and someone who grew up swimming in the nude in the lochs of the Highlands, James hadn’t any reservations about his body.

“Which, I refuse, considering what it would look like to my colleagues. Then, Lady Belle requests that I allow it, as a personal favor. Again, I refuse, only to have my own aunt threaten to come to Glasgow and shadow me herself if I do not consent to Miss Sharpe’s apprenticeship.

So, I oblige them, all of them, and do you know what I found? ”

Graham shook his head as James dropped the cloth and grabbed his pants.

“No. What?”

“A capable, clever apprentice. She’s smart and hardworking. She doesn’t react to open wounds or broken bones in the way that so many believe women would. She’s determined.”

“She is that,” Graham said, having lived with her for a period. “She knows a great deal about the human body and the maladies that affect it. For as long as she lived in Lismore Hall, she had her head buried in a book.”

“Yes. And she knows she’s clever, which unfortunately is construed as arrogance, particularly to these men who don’t believe a woman can become a doctor.”

“That’s good, though, isn’t it? She’s a perfect demonstration of what women are capable of.”

James shook his head as he pulled on one pant leg, then the other.

“It wouldn’t matter if she was Asclepius himself. They don’t care if she’s capable; they only care that she is a woman. And thus, I’m in the very position I knew I was going to be in.”

“Which is?”

“Arguing with nearly everyone in my profession on her behalf, and not because she’s lacking, but the very opposite.

I did not want to be some sort of champion, Graham.

I have a practice, patients, not to mention these stints at university and the police with their ever-growing list of victims. They want to give every bloody person who dies in this city an autopsy. ”

“It sounds like you have a lot on your plate.”