“Yes. I’m not having you keel over in my tavern. You sit the next round out, or you can go home right now and find yourself barred from coming back for a week. Take your pick.”
Nathaniel flexed his sore hands, jaw working against the swelling rage. But he dipped his head in a nod and ducked under the rope to head to the bar.
He sat at the end, in a shadowed corner. No one came near him. Without asking, Rufus slid him a glass of whiskey and a shirt for him to shrug into. Nathaniel took both with equal disinterest.
The whiskey went down like water. Conversation ebbed and flowed around him, punctuated by shouts and cheers as the next fight got underway. Nathaniel tilted his head, good ear listening for the thud of fists on flesh, trying to judge the progress of the bout by the sound.
So caught up was he in wondering if this hit or the next would be the last, releasing him from his unwilling rest to get back in the ring himself, he almost didn’t notice the frisson of excitement running through the crowd.
“Did you see him? He’s not even wearing a mask,” a lady three seats down from Nathaniel tittered, touching her own elaborately embroidered green velvet mask self-consciously. “I thought that was the rule here!”
“Don’t be silly,” her companion sniffed, ringlets bouncing as she sipped gingerly at a tankard of ale. “The Duke of Thornecliff cares nothing for rules.”
Thornecliff. That whoreson bastard who’d accosted Lucy on the Thames riverbank. He was here—and unmasked, as usual, the absolute wanker.
Nathaniel raised his head slowly, attention caught.
The lady in the green mask sighed. “He’s so handsome. Do you think he’ll fight? I’d hate to see anyone mar his beautiful face—but I wouldn’t mind the bit where he takes his shirt off.”
The two women giggled tipsily into each other’s shoulders. Nathaniel glanced up and caught Rufus’s eye, behind the bar. Rufus wandered in his direction with the bottle of scotch.
“Thornecliff again?” Nathaniel asked, clipped.
Rufus shrugged and poured out another finger or two of whiskey. “With his assorted lackeys and hangers-on.”
He rolled his eyes and Nathaniel grimaced. “Surprised Leda puts up with him going unmasked.”
“He says it’s a crime to cover up one of God’s masterpieces.” Shrugging, Rufus capped the bottle. “My lady says he can do as he likes. I don’t know. He drops a lot of gold in here, when he comes. Maybe that’s why. Or maybe she agrees his face is too pretty to hide. Likes a pretty face, does my lady.”
He waggled his piratical brows, a cheerful leer creasing his weather-beaten cheeks, and went to pull another pint for a gentleman further down the bar.
Nathaniel heaved his aching body around and leaned his elbows back on the bar to survey the room. It wasn’t difficult to pick Thornecliff out of the dim, smoky haze. The duke was at the center of a knot of admirers on the other side of the tavern, near the ring.
Sprawled in a high-backed leather armchair he’d procured from God knew where, Thornecliff languidly surveyed the scene, cynical detachment glittering in his demon-black eyes. With his shiny hair and fawn-colored suit of richly embroidered superfine wool, he looked like some pagan idol of old, cast in false gold and luring sinners to damnation.
Nathaniel felt his lip curl in distaste. Turning his back, he dismissed Thornecliff from his mind as unimportant.
Until he heard the two ladies near him cease speculating about the length and width of Thorne’s “attributes”—were all ladies so lascivious when they thought no gentlemen were around to hear them?—and start discussing the latest bit of tittle-tattle they attributed to the scandalous duke.
In addition to his reputation for debauching innocents, throwing lavish parties attended by everyone from the Prince Regent to the demimonde, and swanning about town dressed in the first stare of fashion, the Duke of Thornecliff was known to be an incorrigible gossip.
“Well, I heard Thorne say he knew for a fact—an indisputable fact, mind you!—that she ran away from home. And no one knew where she was for fully a day and night.”
Nathaniel stilled with his drink halfway to his lips.
“Oh! My dear. That is not even the worst of it.” The lady in the green mask leaned closer to her friend. “Gerald had it from Lady Rosalie herself, Thorne’s sister, you know, that she spent at least a portion of that time in the company of…the Gentle Rogue!”
A gasp of shock and delight. “Well! What more can be expected from a girl with a mother like that? And her sister was always no better than she should be, though quite good fun at a house party, I must say.”
“Mm. Though it sounds as if young Lucy is well on her way to claiming her sister’s title as London’s Liveliest Lady!”
The ladies erupted into high-pitched giggles that cut off suddenly when Nathaniel stood and carefully placed his glass on the bar. His shadow fell across the ladies, who turned to stare up at him, eyes wide behind their masks.
He only looked at them for a long, silent moment, but both women flushed then went pale in quick succession. Nathaniel turned and left them to their drinks and their hypocrisy. His quarrel was not with them, but with the instigator of the rumors.
Nathaniel had promised his stepmother he would keep any repercussions of Lucy’s wild night from touching her future. He knew very well he couldn’t fight every lady whispering behind her fan. But he could damn well stem the flow of gossip at its source.
He stalked through the crowd, grimly satisfied when people took one look at him, quailed, and skittered aside.
