Which Jack Fuller, known as Red Jack, clearly was quick enough to notice.
Leaning in until his ginger hair tickled the side of Nathaniel’s face, he gloated, “I see someone in the crowd has finally caught The Berserker’s eye. You’re no better’n the rest of us, after all. She’s a pretty enough piece, I grant you—when I win, I’ll be sure to give her your regards while I’m tupping her into the mattress. After all, that’s what she’s here for, innit? She wants it bad. And any man who wins in the ring can ’ave her.”
The taunt peeled the very skin back from Nathaniel’s bones—the skin he wore about town, to balls and to Parliament, to fool the world that he was a civilized gentleman.
Whatever it was inside him that needed to fight, to claw and scratch and scream its rage into the void, came surging up the back of his throat.
He turned to look at his opponent, who went white and pinched around the mouth that dropped open for a moment in shock at whatever he saw in the depths of Nathaniel’s furious eyes.
And the fight was on.
Nathaniel heard nothing but the eerie whistle of wind past his ears as time slowed to a crawl for everyone else. Everyone but him.
The first thing he did was bloody the foul mouth that had dared to spew its filth about Bess. But he didn’t stop there. He couldn’t.
Nathaniel’s fists weighed a thousand pounds each and they moved with the swift precision of a striking snake. He could see every feint, every block, every attempt his opponent made to come back from the pounding he was taking.
Nathaniel only faltered once, when it suddenly occurred to him that she was there—she was seeing this, seeing him like this, seeing the monster that lived under his bones snarling its way to the surface—but she didn’t know it was him.
He was masked. She couldn’t recognize him.
The relief of that thought staggered him for an instant only, but it was long enough for Jack to sneak a sly punch to the still-healing wound low on Nathaniel’s side.
Pain flashed through him. Nathaniel made some sort of noise dredged up straight from the monster and beat Jack back with a barrage of blows no man could withstand.
He fell. Nathaniel stood over him, sweat pouring off him and his lungs working like a bellows.
Any man who wins in the ring can have her.
When Nathaniel won, he always went home alone. He didn’t choose anyone to take upstairs. He never even glanced over the crowd, didn’t want to see the mingled hope and fear and excitement in their avid eyes. That was the way it went, before.
But.
Any man who wins in the ring can have her.
Was his the only fight tonight?
Nathaniel didn’t know, and he couldn’t take the risk. For all that she was a widow and a woman grown, Bess was an innocent. She’d lived a sheltered life in the country; she could have no conception of what it would mean to be chosen to go upstairs with a man still flushed with victory in the ring, a man with his blood up and ready to fuck.
No. Everything in him revolted.
He turned and found her in the crowd. Both of her hands—those hands that had touched him so gently—were pressed to her lovely mouth in shock or horror, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter.
Nathaniel pointed straight at her, pausing long enough to be sure everyone had seen his claim. Then he turned and walked out of the ring, back through the door behind the bar, and up the narrow set of rickety stairs he’d never climbed before.
It was done. She was safe.
He would let them bring her to him, let the word spread through The Nemesis that she was his…and then he’d let her go.
Even if that was the last thing he wanted to do.
Chapter Thirteen
Hushed whispers rustled around her, a hum of excited conversation Bess couldn’t parse and didn’t care about. She blinked, and suddenly the proprietress of The Nemesis stood in front of her once more.
Madame Leda regarded her curiously, her regal head tipped slightly to one side. “So, you’re the one.”
Bess startled as though waking from a dream. Or was it a nightmare? She hardly knew. Gasping in a breath that felt like the first real breath she’d taken since the start of the fight, Bess wavered on her feet for a moment.
