The Passionate One (32 page)

“Carr specifically
asked for her,” Fia said calmly. “And many other ladies will be present,
have
been present all this week. It’s not as abhorrent as you make out, Lord Donne.
I doubt Miss Russell is so much more sensitive than the rest of us.”

“Other ladies will
be present?” Rhiannon asked doubtfully. She had no desire to see two men beat
each other but if it provided the chance to press Carr about leaving here and,
perhaps, discovering more about Ash and Raine, she would take that opportunity.

“Other
women
will be there,” Donne allowed flatly. “But I would not place Miss Russell
amongst their ilk. Refuse, Miss Russell,” Donne urged. “Your attendance can
only cause you distress. It’s scandalous even for Carr. Even for this crowd.”

“You’ve become a
prude, Lord Donne,” Fia said haughtily. “ ’Tis nothing more than an interesting
demonstration. Personally, I agree with you that the thing should be called
off, but only because it makes him so unprepossessing to face over the dining
table. But why should Miss Russell care? If she really was kidnapped, as ’tis
rumored, she might even enjoy seeing him receive a good thrashing.”

Donne swung on Fia,
his mouth smiling politely but his eyes flat with scorn. “Don’t measure
another’s capacity for decency by what little you... see in others. Whatever
Miss Russell has suffered at your family’s hands, I cannot think she wishes to
witness Merrick’s crippling.”

“Merrick?” Rhiannon
echoed in unwilling alarm. “How is that?”

Donne stared at
her. “But... didn’t Fia or Carr tell you?”

“What?” Rhiannon
asked.

“Ash Merrick is one of the combatants.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

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.”