“I will take the challenge!” a smug voice shouted from the crowd.
The writhing mass of drunken gentlemen parted for the combatant, cheering and applauding his approach to the boxing ring. Through sweat-soaked locks of hair that flopped across his face, Nathaniel looked toward his opponent, but the light in the tent was dim, only the ring itself properly illuminated by flickering footlights.
Nathaniel squinted, his thundering heart transforming into a block of ice as the figure bent and climbed through the ropes into the ring.
Of course, you would be foolish enough…Nathaniel wanted to shake his head and urge the fellow to turn around and go home before his pretty wife scolded him for returning to her with a swollen face. But as he watched Arnold go to the man and begin to talk him through the expectations of the match, Nathaniel felt the fog in his mind begin to thin, ever so slightly. The remedy was working again; it had merely required the right ingredients.
Namely, Jonathan.
“This will be my last bout of the night,” Nathaniel told Bill.
Bill arched a worried eyebrow. “You know him, don’t you?”
“Distantly.” Nathaniel smiled, getting to his feet. “Do not fret, Bill. My head is almost clear again.”
But Billwasfretting; Nathaniel could feel the vibrations of his friend’s concern as he walked to the center of the ring, smiling at the way Jonathan turned and lapped up the crowd’s eagerness, raising his fists high in the air, striding back and forth in front of the ropes with a naïve swagger.
I am going to make you wish you had never hurt her,Nathaniel promised while a different, gentler voice in the back of his mind whispered,But if he had never jilted her, you would never have met her.
CHAPTERNINETEEN
“Your reputation precedes you,” Jonathan said mockingly as he shed his tailcoat and waistcoat though he foolishly retained his shirt.
Nathaniel, his own chest smeared with black streaks, smirked. “I’m surprised you’ve heard of me,” he replied in a voice that imitated Bill’s —rough and ordinary, not the clipped accent of a nobleman. “Not too many of your sort like to get their hands dirty. You always get someone else to do it for you.”
“I am in the mood for some old-fashioned combat to conclude this rather exemplary evening.” Jonathan allowed Arnold to wrap bandages around his hands. “I do not imagine that you have been permitted beyond these… I suppose you cannot call them walls. This tent, then. Outside is only for those of good breeding, and you seem to be just a level above the pigs.”
Nathaniel chuckled. “You ought to get all your insults out now, ‘cause you’ll not be able to speak much when I’m finished with you.”
“I am not like those paltry competitors you have fought this evening,” Jonathan insisted, puffing his chest. “I have experience.”
Nathaniel could not help it. “Let me guess, from your Eton days? Did you learn how to box from the lads who stole your money and ruffled your hair and whipped your ankles with hockey sticks and sewed up your blankets?”
“Pardon?” Jonathan blanched.
“You look like an Eton boy,” Nathaniel taunted. “Or are you a Harrowite?”
Jonathan took a half step back as if Nathaniel had already punched him. “How do you know about those boys?”
“A guess, m'lord,” Nathaniel replied with a mischievous wink. “Now, this isn’t like your schoolyard squabbles. You’ve got to fight clean, else Arnold here will yank you out of the ring faster than a scoundrel can get his name in the scandal sheets.”
Jonathan frowned. “Do I know you?”
“I thought we’d established that with my reputation precedin’ me an’ all?”
Jonathan cleared his throat. “Well, let us not keep the masses waiting. They have been promised a fight, and we must give them one.”
“You can change your mind if you’re scared, or you think you won’t get what you want out of this,” Nathaniel said coolly. “All you have to do is say, or you could just sneak out and not tell anyone—let me tell everyone that you’ve decided against it. I hear you’re used to doin’ that. Or is there another reason you’re standin’ here, willin’ to fight me? You desperate for some money or somethin’? If so, I hope you bet against yourself.”
Jonathan’s eyes widened, not with recognition but with outrage. “Who has been talking to you? Who has been whispering things?” He glared at Arnold and then at Bill. “Who is spreading rumors about me?”
That surprised Nathaniel. He had only mentioned the money because that was the primary reason people attended such matches—to make or lose decent chunks of wealth. It was where fortunes could be made from a couple of coins, for Arnold Merryweather had amassed enough fame and wealth of his own to have high stakes wagers in place. It was more of a business, in truth, and one that had made Nathaniel’s father filthy rich when he was alive.
Perhaps, he is not the business virtuoso he would have everyone believe he is, Nathaniel realized, knowing he had struck a sensitive chord.
“I don’t know nothin’ about you,” Nathaniel insisted as the crowd around them grew rowdier. “But looks like I’m not far off the truth. Seen it a thousand times before with your sort, comin’ to these matches, riskin’ their last coin on a wager that might change their lives and dig ‘em out of all kinds of trouble. Tell me, m'lord, what manner of trouble are you in?”
Jonathan flexed his hands. “I am in no trouble, but you are about to be.”
