More monster than man, once more. Or maybe that had never changed.
Maybe that was why Bess wouldn’t marry him.
Nathaniel had forgotten, for a while, that he wasn’t built for forever.
No one stayed. Nothing lasted. So nothing mattered.
Nothing but this. The honor of his family—and not in the way Bess had once accused him of, protecting the family name over the actual people in his family.
This was for his sister. For Henrietta, the woman who had loved him as a child and loved his father, and would even love Nathaniel now, if he would let her.
He wouldn’t. Nathaniel had lived without love most of his life. He didn’t need love.
He only needed this.
Wading through the sea of Thornecliff’s sycophants and admirers, Nathaniel walked right up to the ridiculously throne-like chair and loomed.
It didn’t take long before Thornecliff noticed that the crowd around him had gone quiet. He turned his golden head lazily and looked Nathaniel up and down.
“Damn me,” Thornecliff drawled. Though he was seated and had to tilt his head back to meet Nathaniel’s eyes, he somehow gave the impression of looking down his aristocratic nose. “The Berserker, in the flesh. Who let you off your leash?”
Nathaniel felt the pure clarity of anger slice through the seething mess of emotion in his head. He welcomed it. “You have been telling tales all over town, about a sweet lady who is so far above a blackguard like you, her name should turn to ashes in your mouth. You will stop. Now.”
Something flickered across Thornecliff’s too-handsome face. Nathaniel would’ve liked to believe it was fear, but it looked much more like intrigue. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll make you.”
Thornecliff’s black gaze flared. He settled deeper into his chair, resting his elbows on the arms and steepling his fingers thoughtfully. “And who are you, to issue insults and challenges on behalf of the young lady in question? Her protector?”
The silky, insinuating tone of the question made a red mist cloud Nathaniel’s vision.
Without hesitating, staring directly at Thornecliff’s brazenly bare face, Nathaniel reached up and ripped off his own mask. A ripple of shock passed through the crowd.
“Her brother.”
Something like satisfaction curled the edges of Thornecliff’s dagger-thin smile before it dropped from his face. He examined the nails of his right hand. “Boring. Be gone, Ashbourn. You’re spoiling my view of the ring.”
“You must have misunderstood,” Nathaniel grated out. “I’m issuing a formal challenge. You owe my family a debt of honor. It will be repaid. In blood.”
“How dramatic.” Thornecliff regarded him coolly. “But I’m afraid I shall have to decline.”
“You can’t decline a formal challenge.”
“On the contrary. If I agreed to meet every cuckolded husband and irate elder brother who wishes to duel me, I should have no time for anything else. And I’m afraid my time is far too precious for me to wish to spend it on some dirty field at the crack of dawn, getting shot at.”
Nathaniel felt something ugly crawl up the back of his throat. “Coward.”
A narrowing of those impenetrable coal-black eyes. Thornecliff stood, slow and deliberate, a move that put him toe to toe with Nathaniel.
They were of a height, Nathaniel noted distantly, though Thornecliff was leaner. More of a blade than a bludgeon.
“Tell me the time and place, and I’ll be there. With the weapon of your choice,” Thornecliff said, still silky but with a steely intention behind the words that surprised Nathaniel a bit.
He smiled. From the uneasy shifting and murmuring of the shocked, silent crowd watching, it wasn’t a nice smile.
“I choose fists,” he said softly. “Right here. Right now.”
Thornecliff’s eyes flicked toward the ring.
