Cowden’s servant had succeeded in landing a meaty fist on his jaw before Logan had felled him. It was now swollen to twice its size, and it had turned a disturbing shade of mottled red.
As for the blood…
Mo Dhia. How was he still standing?
The first swipe of the blade had caught him in the upper arm, and his entire shirt sleeve from the shoulder to the wrist was soaked in blood. His chest was a mess as well, the stark white linen smeared with streaks of red gore. And on the side of his head, was that a…?
Damn. How had he not noticed until now that the blackguard had tried to slice his ear off? He hadn’t succeeded, thankfully, but not from lack of trying. There was enough dried blood on Logan’s temple and in his hair for him to see it had been a near thing.
Ah, well. Wagering was an ugly business, and here was the proof of it.
Cowden had welcomed Logan into his home the evening before with the same apparent pleasure he always did, and he was as solicitous of Logan’s comfort as he ever was. Nothing but the best port and the most comfortable chair nearest the fire would do for Mr. Blair. Cowden couldn’t have been more charming if Logan had been Prinny himself.
Right up until the moment Cowden began to lose money, that is.
Lord Cowden was skilled at cards, and careful with his wagers. He didn’t drink while he played, his attention never wandered, and he didn’t let his nerves affect his strategy.
Again, not until he began to lose. When Logan took several hundred pounds off him in one game, Cowden’s charming smile had dimmed. When the hundreds turned to thousands, his forehead had beaded with sweat. That was when his lordship’s icy control began to desert him.
Just as Logan had predicted it would.
He’d been watching Cowden over the past few days, carefully assessing his strengths and weaknesses. There weren’t many chinks in Cowden’s armor, but he had the one failing common to those addicted to wagering.
As so often happened with gamers, a big loss led to panic. Panic led to recklessness, and recklessness led to even greater losses. When Logan offered Cowden a chance to win back the thousands he’d lost with a single high-stakes game of piquet, Cowden hadn’t hesitated.
He’d wagered, and he’d lost.
As it turned out, Lord Cowden wasn’t a gracious loser.
He hadn’t wielded the blade himself. Knife fights weren’t gentlemanly, and they tended to be messy, what with all the blood. No, Cowden had sent a manservant after Logan instead. He was a big, hulking fellow, the sort who was handy in a brawl.
Not as handy with a knife, though. Much too slow. Likely as not the man rarely had to resort to the blade, given the size of his fists. He was skilled enough to have drawn Logan’s blood, but if Cowden had sent the fellow after him to retrieve the paper he’d been obliged to hand over to Logan at the end of the evening, his man had not, alas, been skilled enough to accomplish it.
The slip of paper with Cowden’s vowels remained safely tucked away in Logan’s coat pocket. He’d had to reduce Cowden’s manservant to a bleeding pulp to keep it there, but brawls and bloodshed aside, Logan was several thousand pounds closer to getting what he wanted. For that reason, he was inclined to call the evening a success.
He doubted Juliana would see it that way, however.
He studied his reflection in the mirror with a grimace. Even he was shocked at his appearance, and God knew this wasn’t his first brawl, or even his first knife wound. The thought of his tenderhearted wife seeing him in such a state made him sick to his stomach.
Where was that damn servant? He yanked on the bell again, then went back to the mirror. The cravat he’d tied around his upper arm was stained with blood. He didn’t dare remove it for fear it would start oozing again, but he’d been smart enough to tie it under his shirt sleeve instead of over it.
Right. He’d just have to remove his shirt himself.
He got the hem free easily enough, but he couldn’t stifle a soft hiss of pain when he tried to pull the shirt over his head. Lifting his injured arm was agony. To make matters worse, the linen was stuck to his lacerated skin with dried blood, and nothing short of a hard tug would loosen it.
By the time he’d gotten free of his shirt he was shaking. He gripped the edge of the table with one hand, waiting for the dizziness to pass, but the room was still spinning when the bedchamber door opened behind him.
Logan looked up, hoping to see the servant he’d summoned.
It wasn’t a servant.
“Logan?” Juliana’s voice was a strangled whisper, and she was staring at him with her hand over her mouth.
It was his wife.
She looked so horrified Logan’s head snapped toward the mirror again, and he let out a silent groan as he saw himself the way she must be seeing him.
It couldn’t have been worse. If he’d spent the entire ride from Cowden’s to Graystone Court trying to come up with the best way to terrify her, he couldn’t have succeeded any more brilliantly than he was right now.
