He had a cocky grin and a shock of hair the color of roasted carrots. He wore nothing but patched breeches and a flamboyantly embroidered red mask that sat oddly on a nose that had been broken so many times, it looked like a squashed turnip.
The man raised his arms in a V as though he’d already won, bouncing on his toes and accepting the slaps to his back and shoulders as his due. He ducked into the ring and proceeded to throw punches at nothing, warming himself up for the fight to come.
“Is he one of your best fighters?” Bess asked, her heart sinking strangely within her. If this man won, he would have the right to claim any onlooker as his prize.
Of course, despite all her silly imaginings, there wasn’t much chance anyone would choose her out of this wild, worldly, glittering company.
Country rustic Bess Pickford in her plain, serviceable gown of dark blue cotton muslin and unadorned white linen fichu tucked into her modest bodice? When there was a woman over there in a gown cut so low, the rouged tops of her nipples appeared every time she took a deep breath?
No. No one was going to choose Bess.
And if this ginger-haired man did, would she refuse? Or would she go with him? She bit her lip.
But Madame Leda was shaking her head, a gleam of excitement brightening her eyes behind the cream mask. “Not that one.”
Bess looked away from the man puffing his chest out like a bantam rooster to the other side of the room, which had fallen silent. The throng of masked onlookers parted as if they were a set of curtains drawn back by slow, steady hands.
“That one,” purred the voice in her ear as Bess’s stare fell on the man who was making his way toward the ring.
Tall and powerfully built, the man had brown, wavy hair that fell carelessly over a plain leather mask. The mask covered the top half of a face of such hard angles and sharply cut lines, he appeared to have been carved from stone by a very uncompromising sculptor.
From the glimpses she caught through the crowd, his muscles, gleaming with oil in the low light, looked hard too. He didn’t have the breadth of Red Jack, who’d stopped to watch the man’s approach, but there was a quality to his movement, a barely leashed ferocity, that reminded Bess suddenly of the wolf that had prowled the winter forests near Little Kissington when she was a girl.
The last of his pack, the lone survivor of a dying breed, wild and cagey and vicious.
This man was like that. He had a lean, hungry look that raised the short hairs at the back of Bess’s neck, sending a bolt of instinctive alarm through her. She shivered, her nipples tightening into hard little knots under her chemise. Her thighs shifted restlessly.
“Who is that?” she breathed, unable to tear her eyes from the silent predator stalking forward through the crowd.
“They call him The Berserker, because…well. You’ll see. Oh, but have no fear, little lamb,” Madame Leda said, patting Bess’s arm. “They’re all here to watch The Berserker, and they’re all hoping to be the one he chooses at the end of the fight—but they’ll all be disappointed.”
“Why? Will he lose?” Despite the other fighter, Red Jack, being bigger and more obviously aggressive, Bess somehow couldn’t imagine it.
“The Berserker wins every fight. But he never chooses anyone.” Madame Leda gathered her skirts. “Now if you’ll excuse me, luv, I see my man over there needs my help with something. Enjoy your night!”
Before Bess could even thank her for the kind welcome, Madame Leda had disappeared into the mob trailing a cloud of night-blooming jasmine in her wake, and there was nothing left to distract Bess from The Berserker.
It was ridiculous, how hard she found it to look away from him. She couldn’t even see him clearly—there were too many people in the way, and the room was too dark and smoky and loud and chaotic—yet somehow, it felt as though he was the only thing she could see. As though an invisible cord connected them, pulling tighter and tighter and making her breath come in short little bursts.
She wanted him. And there was no way he would even notice her among the crowd, because everyone wanted him. She looked around and saw every single face turned to him, drawn to him, foolish, reckless moths aching to hurl themselves into a living flame.
For the first time in years, Bess wished she were someone else, someone more alluring. Like Gemma, with her saucy smiles and curves as luxurious as a cream-filled bun, or even Lucy, the little hoyden, bright and sharp as a lemon tart.
Bess…was more like good, plain bread. Warm and nourishing, serviceable, but hardly what anyone would call alluring.
Except that the man known as The Berserker stepped into the ring and looked across the space and through the masses of people…directly at Bess.
The line she’d felt between them before went taut and vibrating, jerking her forward, her eyes held by his, shadowed and enigmatic behind the mask. She couldn’t look away from them, even as Madame Leda reappeared inside the ring, effortlessly commanding the room with a charming smile and a voice that lilted over the clamor to introduce the fighters and explain the rules.
Bess heard none of it; the noise of the tavern faded as though she’d ducked her head under the water at the swimming hole near the bend of Westcote Brook back home.
She stared into The Berserker’s shadowed eyes, the color impossible to discern across the dimly lit distance, and he stared back.
The moment was suspended in stillness, as though they knew each other. As though they’d known each other forever.
Vaguely, at the periphery of her vision, she saw the other fighter, the ginger one they called Red Jack, move closer to The Berserker to say something in his ear. Something taunting, going by the cresting delight of the onlookers, who seemed to scent blood.
The Berserker didn’t appear to pay him any mind, giving no reaction at all, until Red Jack turned and gestured. And Bess could see…he was looking right at her, too.
