To her surprise, he did so almost immediately, stepping back and giving her room. She took the opportunity to flee, thankful for the darkness concealing her, and thankful still more that no one had stood witness to what had happened.
“Lady Annabelle,” the man called when she reached the doorway. “When my brother courts you, as we both know he will, you will look at him and see me. Do you think you could marry such a man?”
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place and Annabelle’s jaw dropped. She blinked. Dread replaced her anger. This man was no stranger: he was a rake so vile she had been warned against him. A deflowerer of virtuous ladies.
He was the Devil of St James—and she was his latest victim.
* * *
Cheers erupted around Jacob as he paced the boxing ring, sizing up his opponent. This was his favourite place to come when he needed a break from the vapidness of Society. A place where beer sloshed over tankards and no one gave a damn whether you were a lord or a knight or a butcher. In the ring, you were equal.
Few gentlemen truly fought, the sport being dangerous at the best of times. But Jacob had been told all his life he was not a gentleman, and what better way to prove it than in the most violent of sports? There was not a time when he felt more alive. After all, he was no stranger to pain. Pain merely proved a man still lived; pain was the measure by which he tracked his existence.
His opponent was a smaller man, but that merely meant he would be faster. Daniel Mendoza, famous boxer from the past century, beaten only by Gentleman John Jackson, had been small, and he was fast and vicious with it.
Jacob’s blood hummed with the anticipation of the attack.
It happened almost before he could blink. His opponent lunged, and had Jacob not been ready with his fists, he might have been taken down by the sheer force and speed. As it was, he struck like a tiger. Five blows in quick succession, aiming for his ribs, his jaw, the delicate bones he knew a man could break.
Again.
You can’t taint me with the sins of our father.
Again.
The whole of London knows your affairs.
Again.
Anger rippled through him—a dark thing that indulgence and dissipation alone could not temper. He needed this rawness, the feeling of his knuckles splitting against another man’s bone. His mind cleared as his fists worked, his muscles burned, and the cold February sun gazed down at the scars on his bare back. The only time he ever removed his shirt was here, when no one knew, or cared, who he was.
You are a coward. And you are unworthy of the name of Barrington.
The hurt had gone from that statement; it was a reminder of who he was and who he had vowed to be ever since his father had beaten him in front of that roaring fire.
His opponent fell, looking briefly like Cecil, briefly like his father, and the end of the round was called. Jacob walked in a tight circle between the ropes staked into the hard ground, steam rising from his skin. His knee-man took a knee in case he wanted to sit, but he waved him away. The only thing he wanted was water. An orange. To go again until every thought in his brain smoothed into emptiness. The feeling of nothing—that was what he craved.
Lady Annabelle’s face flashed in his mind. The way her lips had felt against his own; the horror in her eyes when she finally understood who it was who had kissed her.
Irritated, he brushed the thought aside as the whistle blew and he walked again up to the scratch. His opponent’s brows were lowered, his fists rising a little, and Jacob felt the mad, wild thrill of a challenge.
“May the best man win,” he said, and they set to it again.
* * *
Jacob did not return home until late, drinking in the tavern until he could forget the way seeing Cecil made him feel: as though he was and always would be inadequate. A disappointment.
He had crafted his entire life into a disappointment to his staid, surface-respectable family, and still he felt the burden of their disapproval in those quiet moments when his mind refused to sleep.
That was the reason he had kissed Lady Annabelle, knowing Cecil wanted her. But it had been a mistake: he did not kiss virginal young ladies, and especially not ones who looked at him as though he had committed a cardinal sin (not a reaction he was accustomed to). If he had one rule, one moral guideline around which his life revolved, it was that.
He would not approach her again. If Cecil wanted her, he could have her—and good luck to him. Jacob did not make the same mistake twice.
When he finally stumbled back to his lodgings, he found his brother waiting in his drawing room, and more of that coldness descended on him. Ice in his veins.
Cecil, as usual, was glaring at him. Jacob, as usual, was roaring drunk and with none of his usual patience.
“So you found me,” he said, sinking into his favourite armchair and looking up into Cecil’s familiar face with a sneer.
