“So you are not going to take to my bed any longer? We are not going to have a family of our own?”
“You have Sophia—”
“I love Sophia,” she interrupted. “I do. But in ten years, she will be looking for her own husband. What then? Am I to endure the rest of my life under the roof of a man who can scarcely look at me?”
In ten years, who knew if his resolution to avoid her would hold out?
“We can discuss any new development as it comes,” he said stiffly.
“I see. And that is all I am to be afforded?”
“It’s all I can give, Isadora.”
She swallowed, the gesture so slow, it made him think of all sorts of obscene things—or at least it would have done if she had not been looking at him with such stark devastation on her face.
“If that were true,” she said quietly, “then we would not be here. In reality, youcangive more, if you were to choose so. But you don’t. If anything, you choose not to. Andthatis where the problem lies.”
Nicholas watched her go, a stone in his chest, dragging him down, down, down, to a place he was not sure he would ever surface from.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The cellar beneath the tavern reeked of sweat, cigars, and blood. Nicholas dragged a rough cloth across his forehead as the crowd surged and bellowed for more, and turned back to his opponent.
The man was built along the lines of a bull—all shoulders and bulging muscle, and every punch of his hurt. Nicholas ordinarily kept his face clear of damage for Sophia’s sake, but a bruise was already swelling under his left eye, and his split lip opened afresh whenever he moved his mouth, sharp and coppery.
It ought to have satisfied him. Here was violence without consequence, somewhere to spend the bitterness where no one who mattered would know.
Well, no one but Oliver, who today was courting Nicholas’s sister rather than bleeding out in a cellar. Oliver, who had a chance to marry for love and trust the woman he chose.
Nicholas envied him that. He wanted the same, and knew that but for his own stubbornness he might have it.
The bell tolled him back, and he pushed to the middle of the ring.
The crowd hooted as both men faced each other. The roar felt as though it sank into Nicholas’s soul. The skin on his knuckles cracked as he curled his fingers into fists.
His opponent grinned, blood on his teeth. “Come on, then. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Nicholas dived forward. His world narrowed to his fists, his feet, the pain of breathing. The man caught him across the shoulder, then the ribs. Agony flared.
You can give more, if you choose to. But you don’t. If anything, you choose not to. And that is where the problem lies. Isadora’s voice sang in his head.
“I’m giving everything I can,” he panted, but he knew it was not the truth—not with her, and not in this ring.
His opponent frowned in confusion, then spat a bloody wad of saliva at the ground. “Cry home to ya mam,” he jeered.
Nicholas gritted his teeth, but just before he could pull himself together to return to the fight as he should, giving it his all, his opponent’s fist collided with his jaw. He reeled. His teeth snapped together.
I ought to go home.
The thought flashed in his head, so loud he could barely hear the roar of the crowd over it. “Will, Will, Will,” they chanted, but he was going to lose this fight. Hewantedto lose this fight.I want to go home,he thought as he staggered back.No, I want Isadora.
What a fool he’d been for not realizing it until now. He fell to his knees.
“Get up!” a rotund fellow from the crowd yelled at him. “Get up and fight like a man!”
Nicholas turned his face up to his opponent, no longer caring how the fight ended. “Finish it,” he said calmly.
For a second, the other man hesitated. But Nicholas was done fighting—he would take his punishment and go.
