Everything he did, every move he made, must serve that single purpose. Even his one indulgence, the fights…they honed his senses and sped his reaction times, draining his baser impulses and forging the iron control he needed to accomplish his goals.
The fact that degenerate scum like the Duke of Thornecliff and Lord Phillip Dewbury thought it permissible to offer insult to the Ashbourn name burned in his chest like a live coal.
Though it stung somewhat less than his half-sister’s brazen assertion that Nathaniel himself bore some responsibility for the other gentlemen’s behavior.
Nathaniel clenched his jaw. He knew whose carelessness was to blame for all their family’s woes.
His father. And Lucy’s. Their father had squandered more than money—the previous duke had freely spent the coin of his family’s honor, and his own son’s future, to buy the fleeting happiness of a marriage that he couldn’t force the Ton to accept.
Well, Nathaniel would win back the honor of his family, whatever the cost.
He had no other purpose. And nothing could be allowed to stand in his way.
Not his own resentment of his stepmother or the outlandish behavior of his ill-bred half-sisters.
Not the memory of Bess Pickford’s smile.
So he kept his silence, devoting his attention to navigating the crowd and helping Mrs. Pickford up the steep embankment. Judging by the cheers and general mayhem erupting around them, the mock sea battle was drawing to a triumphant close.
They reached the carriage just in time, as the wave of humanity behind them began to break apart and flow in from the riverbanks back towards the streets of London. Lucy was already installed upon the squabs, a solicitous hand upon the clammy forehead of the young, injured sailor. She appeared to have lost her gloves somewhere.
Nathaniel suppressed the urge to frown as he handed Mrs. Pickford up into the carriage.
He could maintain his equanimity for as long as it took to deliver an injured man to his surgeon, and to set these provoking ladies down wherever it was they were staying in London. There was no need to involve himself further than that.
“How is he?” Mrs. Pickford inquired, settling herself opposite Lucy with a grimace at the mud streaking her skirts and transferring itself to the maroon velvet of the seats.
“I think he lost consciousness after the grooms set him down. I hope the driver will be quick. Oh, Bess, I cannot believe I was so excited to come here today and see that, that—barbaric display! How can all those lords and ladies, even the king! How can they all laugh and applaud at the violence, the pain caused to their fellow man?”
“Perhaps they didn’t understand that any part of it was real. You yourself thought, this morning, that it would all be nothing more than a show,” Mrs. Pickford said gently.
“But it only took a moment of actually observing it to see that real people were being really hurt,” Lucy argued, her cheeks flushed with the force of her emotions.
Nathaniel observed her with begrudging interest, this half-sister he had barely ever spoken to. She was so full of life. It seemed impossible that they shared any blood, any connection whatsoever.
Except this disdain for the audiences who came to observe the shedding of others’ blood. Nathaniel didn’t fight to entertain, and he felt nothing but contempt for those who came to his fights for entertainment.
But he had no choice. The boxing salons other gentlemen frequented, with their staid rules and careful civility, did not assuage his need. Only the anonymous violence of The Nemesis would serve.
“People like the Duke of Thornecliff—we ought to pity them,” Mrs. Pickford said. “It’s sad that they have so little purpose to their lives, so little to do that is of use to anyone else, that they must seek constantly to feel any small spark of pleasure. To make them feel alive.”
Her words struck a place deep inside Nathaniel, like the clear ringing of a bell that reverberated all through him. The years before his father had died and passed on the title, the years and years of waiting for his life to begin—Nathaniel knew that barren wasteland of purposelessness. He knew what he’d done to feel alive, in those years.
Though it wasn’t pleasure he’d sought, but pain.
Lucy, less convinced, gave an inelegant snort. “Well, I don’t pity Thornecliff one jot. No one forced him to become a wastrel. He has every road open to him and he chooses to be an ass.” She looked directly at Nathaniel, a challenge clear on her elfin face. “A common theme among the dukes of my acquaintance.”
Nathaniel did not allow himself a smile, but he was conscious of the urge. She looked as if her palm itched to make contact with his face.
If he wasn’t careful, he might start to like this wild half-sister, more than ten years his junior. Fortunately, there wouldn’t be time for that.
The horses pulled to a stop and the ladies burst into a flurry of motion, arranging the fallen sailor to their liking, and getting in the way of the footmen attempting to lift the young man out of the carriage and up the steps of Dr. Perry’s surgery, where Mrs. Perry awaited them with calmly folded hands and a palpable air of competence.
“I’m going in with him,” Lucy announced, already halfway out of the carriage. “To see him settled and make sure they know to keep us informed of how he gets on. I’ll only be a minute. Bess, will you come?”
Nathaniel looked at the chaperone, who looked back at him consideringly for a moment before replying, “No. I’ll wait for you here.”
Lucy absconded without a backwards glance, leaving Nathaniel staring across the dim interior of the carriage at his sister’s companion. The look Mrs. Pickford gave him back, unafraid and unimpressed, seemed to brush against his skin like a touch.
