The woman who owned The Nemesis, Bess remembered, who had been so kind to her that night a week ago when Bess had come here for the first time. With no idea of what she was doing or what would happen to her.
“Madame Leda is your…?”
The man smiled, and it changed his rather quirky, foxy face into something extremely charming. “My lady, my employer, my captain, the light of my world! And not one to share, so have no fears on that score, miss.”
He glanced meaningfully over her shoulder, raising his deep voice slightly. “Not that I’d be fool enough to accost you in any case, when you’re his and everyone knows it.”
His.
Bess forgot about the young man in the fancy gold mask and shivered, though the air in the tavern was hot and close. She didn’t have to ask who Madame Leda’s partner meant, not when the name was suddenly on the lips of every person in earshot.
The Berserker.
“Is he here tonight?” she murmured, clutching at Rufus’s sinewy arm. She had to know.
“Aye, that he is,” he assured her, patting her hand. “In a filthy mood, too. Though maybe the sight ’a you’ll cheer him. Shall I tell him you’re awaitin’ on him?”
Bess felt herself flush hotter than the surface of her cooktop back home. “He doesn’t know my name.”
A salt and pepper brow arched high enough to be seen over the top of Rufus’s mask. “No fear, miss. He’ll know who I mean.”
Because The Berserker—Nathaniel—had never claimed a woman as his prize. Until Bess.
The thought still had the power to turn her knees wobbly.
She didn’t have time to dither over whether to give Nathaniel warning of her presence, however, because Madame Leda was strolling into the ring and raising her slim, brown arms in a graceful gesture that commanded attention from everyone present.
“The fight’s about to start,” Rufus whispered, tucking Bess’s hand into his elbow and steering her toward the ring. “Here, let’s find you a good view.”
He escorted her directly through the crowd, straight to the side of the ring at the corner farthest from the bar and therefore slightly quieter. A little darker, too, Bess noted as the challenger strode into the ring.
Bess had missed his introduction, but the man was huge—as broad through the shoulders as Nathaniel, but with a stocky build that made him look like a rectangular mountain of pure muscle.
Unlike Red Jack, this man gave the crowd nothing but a terse nod before he went back to standing stock still and waiting for the fight to begin.
Sickness swirled in Bess’s stomach, bile burning at the back of her throat. She hadn’t forgotten that she would have to watch another fight, exactly, but she hadn’t really dwelt on it. She’d been much more focused on what would—or wouldn’t—happen afterward.
Now that the moment had arrived, she wondered how she would be able to stand it. How would she be able to stand here and watch this giant of a man pummel Nathaniel’s beautiful body?
Feeling unsteady on her feet, Bess reached out and grabbed hold of the corner of the ring. Rufus eyed her warily. “You look a might peaky, miss. I’ll bring you something to drink that’ll buck you up.”
He melted into the crowd just as it sent up a ferocious roar, surging forward. Bess gasped, suddenly pressed against the ropes by the crush of bodies behind her.
She looked up, lungs aching and heart galloping. The Berserker had entered the ring.
Bess ate him up with her eyes. It was as if she hadn’t seen him in a week, though of course she had seen the duke going into his study at Ashbourn House or across a ballroom or leaving for a session of Parliament.
But she hadn’t seen this man. The man who had held her and touched her and made her sob with pleasure. The man who had seemed as if he needed her every bit as much as she needed him.
And there he was, his absolutely massive shoulders and chest bare and gleaming in the candlelight. He wore the same plain brown leather mask and carried that same aura of barely contained violence as he walked forward. Like a bank of gathering storm clouds, ominous and inevitable.
Just as inevitable, his head came up when he hit the center of the ring, as though Bess had rung a bell that only he could hear.
He turned and looked directly at her. Bess clutched at the ring’s corner post and tried to breathe. Tried to smile.
Oh Lord, he’s coming over to me!
His long legs covered the ground between them in three strides. “What are you doing here?”
