Page 26 of The Passionate One (McClairen’s Isle #1)

Ladies and gentlemen clad in last night’s stained, rumpled silks, whey-faced and flabby-skinned in the unforgiving morning light, hung from the windows overlooking the stable courtyard and milled four deep around its border. A carnival mood infected them. By pitting an aristocrat against a commoner in a bareknuckle fight, Carr had orchestrated a delicious scandal. And not just any aristocrat but Carr’s own son, Merrick, and not a single fight but fisticuffs for three days running now.

They wouldn’t have missed being part of this no matter how much it cost—and it had cost them plenty. London hadn’t offered anything so infamous in a decade. And though they panted to be away to London to spread the tattle, they dare not leave lest something even more outrageous occur.

Their murmurs quieted as Baron Paughville’s groom entered the stable yard. He was stripped to the waist and oiled, his shorn head likewise greased to frustrate an opponent’s handhold. Rumor had it he’d wrestled on the Continent. More telling, he was Scottish. The chance to break English bone and pound English flesh would have been enticement enough without the fat purse Carr offered for winning.

Ash Merrick stood chatting with the crowd at the rail with all the appearance of amiability. Surreptitiously, he noted the groom’s long, thick arms and short, bowed legs and the forward tilt of his crouching gait. The Scot would be hard to get off his feet and onto the ground, where street brawls—and prison brawls—were won or lost.

Three days ago Ash would have been certain of his victory. If nothing else, he’d had the element of surprise to aid him. His opponents, all culled from the stables and fields hereabouts, were laborers. They did not imagine an aristocrat would deal violence so brutally or so expeditiously. Three days had taught them differently.

But it wasn’t surprise alone that gave him an advantage. He’d learned to fight not only unscrupulously but also fearlessly. He could block out every external distraction including pain, narrowing his focus down until only he and his adversary existed.

What set today apart was simply his body. He was no longer physically up to the task. Though his spirit had risen to do battle through sheer instinct, spirit alone could no longer compensate for three days of brutal pummeling. The preceding victories had come at a price.

He suspected one rib was cracked. For a certainty two fingers of his left hand had been broken. His left eye was swollen as a result of having become intimately acquainted yesterday with a combatant’s boot heel, and purple welts tattooed his torso. Today would be his last fight, no matter what his father “urged.”

The thought of Carr made Ash smile.

His father had lost a great deal of money betting against his son, while Ash had made a nice profit. His smile faded. Today, though … today Ash simply wanted to survive and have an end to it.

“What do we do now?” The Scots groom demanded of the crowd in general. He approached the cleared center of the stable yard and eyed Ash expectantly. “Is there anyone to make a beginning or end to it?”

Ash glanced about, looking for Donne. The elegant Scotsman had held Ash’s bets for the past days. Not finding him, Ash tapped a nearby exquisite on the arm. The startled young man backed up. Ash grinned.

“Don’t worry— Begad if it ain’t Hurley!” Ash exclaimed. “Hurley, m’dear, be a fellow and make me a small wager, will you? Fifty pounds says I win.” He seized Hurley’s gloved hand and pried open the stiff lavender-sheathed fingers, slapping a fat purse into his palm and curling the fingers back over it. “There’s a lad. And since you’ve been such an accommodating fellow, let me give you a tip. I wouldn’t follow suit. My bet is only by way of incentive, don’tcha know.”

“N-n-no,” Hurley stammered. “I mean … y-y-y-yes. I mean, I am sure you’ll win, Mr. Merrick.”

“I did warn you.” The small diversion palled and Ash dismissed Hurley without another thought. Best get on with it.

In a single motion he stripped off his jacket and then pulled the cambric shirt over his head. Whispers of female gratification sizzled beneath roars of masculine approval. Ash faced the Scotsman still standing awkward and self-conscious in the center of a ring of beautifully clad ladies and gentleman.

“No one starts and no one finishes it,” Ash explained, approaching the other man, “save we two. There are no rules. There is only one manner in which to win and that is to leave here upright.” He stopped just out of arm’s reach of the other man. “Exquisitely simple, n’est-ce pas?”

“I gets it,” the groom growled and launched himself forward.

Ash had been right; the man had experience. He came in low and aimed for the knees, seeking to take Ash to the ground rather than battering haphazardly—and ineffectually—at the head. Ash locked his fists together and swung down, chopping across the back of the groom’s oncoming neck.

Pain jolted through the broken fingers and thundered through his hand. The Scot tumbled and sprawled flat under the blow. Ash wheeled back, cursing and shaking his injured hand even as he felt arms grapple him about his calves. Damn the man, he was still conscious.

Ash kicked out and twisted sideways but the arms about his legs tightened relentlessly. With a thick grunt, the Scot heaved upward, pitching Ash into the air.

The ground slammed into Ash’s back like a smithy’s hammer. Pain drilled through his side with red-hot intensity, driving the air from his lungs, blackening the edges of his vision. He gasped, rolling to his side and curling up, protecting the injured ribs. The Scotsman recognized his agony and paused, his eye glinting with anticipation. It was only a second’s gloating, but it was a second too much.

Savagely, Ash kicked out, his heel smashing into the groom’s kneecap. A loud, sickening pop sounded above the shouts of bloodthirsty approval from the crowd. The Scot howled in agony, clasping his broken knee and stumbling backward.

Ash heaved himself to his hands and knees, shaking his head to clear the threatening mist from his vision, his ears roaring with the din of the crowd and the sobbed curses of his injured foe.

Stay focused. Stay with it. Two hundred pounds. Four-to-one odds. He needed to render the groom unconscious before the bastard did as much to him.

Ash found his feet and wheeled around, surprised to find the Scot, too, standing. The groom favored his injured leg, swaying from side to side. His mouth moved with a string of silent invective, flecks of red foam spraying from the corners of his broken lip.

The battered Scot charged again, coming at Ash with animal-like tenacity, seemingly impervious to the blows Ash rained on his battered face. Time and again the Scotsman came at him, what he lacked in skill more than made up for by his sheer ability to endure. Time and again, Ash managed to dance out of reach of the huge swinging paws and deliver a series of unanswered punches.

By now both men were gasping for breath, filthy with grease and sweat and stable dirt. The crowd roared with approval as Ash staggered back once more from a glancing blow to his jaw, each minute using up precious breath, expending energy he did not own. He jabbed out over and over again but try as he might he could not deliver enough power to end the fight. His blows only seemed to enrage the man.

He was going to lose.

The Scot fought from passion and Ash had thought he was fighting for money but now he suspected he fought for something marginally more interesting … his life. Without a doubt the Scot would kill him if he could.

“Shall we finish, mon ami?” Ash panted. “I have a lady waiting and I would like to—”

With a strangled sound of fury, the Scotsman launched himself once more at Ash. This time Ash was ready. He met the onrushing figure with knees bent, arms flexed. When the groom’s bull-like figure collided with him he did not try to stand up to the charge. He folded, letting his opponent propel him backward and adding his own weight to the impetus by digging in his heels and grasping the Scot’s thick arms. With a huge grunt, Ash jerked the Scot into him rather than thrusting him away.

Ash’s shoulders hit the ground and he heaved back, pulling the groom down as hard as he could. The groom’s face crashed into the unyielding ground. His thick body cartwheeled heel-over-head. The arms around Ash went slack and the heavy body completed its loose-limbed tumble, dropping into the dust with a powdery thud.

Clenching his teeth against the pain, Ash lay flat, waiting for the Scot to rise again like some bloody phoenix and kill him. He couldn’t have stopped him. Not an ounce of energy remained in his body. It was all he could do to breathe, his chest heaving up and down, his eyes staring in bewildered appreciation at the obscenely clear blue sky overhead, the dust settling like Pentecostal ash on his trembling limbs.

The Scot did not move.

For a long second there was absolute silence. The crowd began to murmur with delighted scorn. He heard a plunk beside his head and glanced over. A bitter smile curved his lips. They were tossing coins at him. Gold coins. God bless them.

The he heard the familiar voice.

“For God’s sake, get up, Merrick, or we shall be forced to declare a miscontest,” his father said, “and from the look of her, I doubt my dear ward would be able to stomach another bout.”

The pain in his side and hands and lungs evaporated before the wretchedness welling through him. He’d thought he understood his father’s game. He hadn’t even begun to understand.

Unable to help himself, he turned his head. His gaze found her figure with unerring accuracy. She stood between Carr and Thomas Donne. Carr held her arm, his long fingers stroking her hand comfortingly as he whispered in her ear.

She was not listening. Her head was erect, her posture poised for flight. Dark red-gold coils of hair gleamed in contrast to a face as pale as bleached linen. Absolute horror suffused every feature.

Ash’s lids drifted shut. Against the black tapestry of his lids he saw himself through her eyes, bloody and broken, covered with stinking dirt and rancid grease, a body he’d rendered unconscious—or worse—laying half across his legs along with that for which he’d beaten him. A few gold coins.

“Well, to give the lad his due, he fought ingeniously,” Carr said.

Rhiannon had been so transfixed by the hideous spectacle that she’d failed to note when Carr had taken her hand. She pulled it back.

No matter what depths she imagined Ash to have reached, he always managed to find a more profound debasement. The crowd was flinging coins at the two inert bodies. A redheaded wench dashed into the makeshift arena and knelt by the Scot. She grasped his upper body and tried to heave him upright, at the same time scraping the guineas and shillings into her skirts. The crowd roared with laughter.

“I have never seen anything so degrading,” Rhiannon said.

“I daresay Ash would agree,” Carr replied. “But everyone at Wanton’s Blush must pay for the privilege of being here, by whatever means they can.”

“You mean that you asked him to fight? You risked your own son’s life against that mountain of flesh?”

“Asked? I don’t ask, Miss Russell.” Carr said. He was not trying to charm her today. In fact, it seemed as though he was deliberately provocative, trying to alienate her. “I command. King George may rule in London, but I rule here. I may be exiled, but I still have my court.” He made a sweeping gesture around the crowd. “I don’t suppose I can let Merrick fight again tomorrow. Who would bet on him?” He scowled, displeased, but then his expression cleared. “But if he were by some miracle to win, think of the odds he’d have overcome! At least twenty to one—”

“You’re hateful.” As she spoke she saw Ash turn his head toward her and open his eyes. Something so raw passed between them that she had to look away. When she looked back, he’d lurched to his hands and knees, his head hanging low.

“Isn’t someone going to go to him?” Rhiannon swung on Carr.

He met her gaze disinterestedly. “Such concern. You have a soft heart, m’dear. But to answer your question, no. There are very few rules in this sort of thing but one of them does require the victor to leave the arena under his own power.”

“He needs attention,” she insisted.

“Does he? Well, I don’t know where he’ll find it. As far as I know there are no quacks in my castle.”

Rhiannon looked at her companions. Beside her Thomas Donne maintained his enigmatic composure. She glanced at Fia, expecting nothing from that quarter, and was surprised to find the girl looking greenish, her gaze flickering unwillingly toward the dirt in which her brother lay.

“I’ll go to him,” Fia murmured.

Carr’s head snapped around. “What?”

“I can clean him up. If you will just have some of the servants—”

“You will not!” Carr hissed before recovering his poise. “Absolutely not. Don’t forget, you are my hostess. Can’t have you coming to the table smelling of vomit and”—he glanced once more at Ash—“whatever other excrement Merrick has rolled in.”

He was all the monster Gunna had suggested and Fia had unintentionally substantiated. The charm Carr had exercised on their first meeting hid a soulless fiend. Even Fia looked startled by Carr’s venomous tone. And though Rhiannon was suspicious of why he would suddenly reveal himself to her, she was too concerned about Ash to pursue such thoughts.

A small cheer from the crowd drew Rhiannon’s attention. Ash had made it upright. He lurched toward the ring of spectators. They opened before him and swallowed his figure, closing behind. Now that a victor had been established, voices rose as wagers were claimed and satisfied.

“I’m going to him,” Rhiannon said. “You can’t stop me. You may rule here, Lord Carr, but you do not ride me.”

“Just as I feared.” Carr sighed. “As you will, Miss Russell. Come along, Lord Donne.”

He secured Donne’s arm and led him off through the crowd. “I believe you actually bet on my son? How perceptive of you—”

Rhiannon looked toward Fia. “Where can I find Gunna?” she asked.

“She’ll be in my rooms,” the girl murmured distractedly. “How odd—”

But Rhiannon did not stay to hear what Fia found odd.

Carr looked too well satisfied. Few others besides Fia would have realized it. Rhiannon had just challenged his edict. Her disobedience should have been like a spark to tinder but Carr had left calmly, a buoyancy to his stride that bespoke complacency.

It made no sense. For days now Carr’s temper had been building. She’d heard him pacing in his office several times. Once, when she’d cracked the door thinking to offer him her company, she’d discovered him scribbling on a piece of paper, stabbing it with his pen. He’d been so involved that he hadn’t even realized she’d entered—in itself a telling sign. Carr noted everything.

Finally he’d thrown the writing instrument down and balled the paper up in his hand, hurling it to the floor. “How? Under what excuse? Simply have a change of heart and send her back? No. Someone must take her back, or forward. Or any bloody where but here.”

Fia had been too long under Carr’s tutelage to ignore the import of such a rare outburst just as she was too wise to let Carr know she’d heard it. She’d closed the door as quietly as possible and run to her room.

Now, watching Rhiannon stride off in the opposite direction from Carr, for the first time in her life Fia felt the pull of divided loyalties.

The problem was Fia liked Rhiannon. Of all her acquaintances the Scotswoman alone—with the exception of Gunna—treated her in the manner Fia imagined other fifteen-year-old girls were treated. At least, Fia amended, Rhiannon didn’t treat her like the polished and precocious woman everyone else assumed Lord Carr’s daughter must be.

Since her twelfth year Fia had been presented not as a child but as an unnatural hybrid—part woman, part doll. She’d been bribed with toys she was too old for and offered experiences she was too young for.

Rhiannon Russell did not flatter or patronize her. True, Rhiannon also neither trusted nor particularly liked her, but even this Fia found refreshingly candid. She was as close to a friend as Fia had ever known.

She didn’t want Rhiannon hurt.

She was being silly she supposed. She knew Carr had a reputation as a diabolical fiend. It had always amused her. Carr was no monster. He was a genius who chose not to be governed by the irrational emotions or the asinine laws made by lesser men for lesser people. It made perfect sense.

Or, Fia thought, her young face troubled, it always had before.