Guilty Series (46 page)

He felt the viscount's hands beneath his armpits to pull him back and end the fight. “Sod off!” he cried and tore himself away from the other man's grip. He got up and faced his opponent again, oblivious to the pleas of his friends.

On and on it went, and Dylan had never before realized just how long twenty-one minutes and five seconds could be. Until three weeks ago, it had been his custom to engage in swordplay and weights at Angleo's six days a week, and these were the moments that served to remind him why. He vowed that symphony or no, he would make time for that daily practice again.

Despite the excellent shape he was in, he could feel his body beginning to wear down against his massive opponent's continual onslaught and superior boxing skill. He ducked when he could, parried when he could, and took the blows when all else failed. Every time he was knocked down, he got up. It got harder and harder each time.

The sound of blows and the shouts of the crowd faded away, until the only thing he could hear was the whine in his head, and it enraged him that even now, when he was getting his organs pounded into mush, that damned noise wouldn't go away.

He took out his fury on the face in front of him. Moving his arm in an arc, using his entire body for momentum, he hit Sir George right on the jaw. Plowright's head whipped sideways, and in the halo of a streetlamp behind the mews, Dylan saw drops of blood and sweat scatter in an iridescent ring around the other man's head. He got in a second blow, to send Sir George's skull jerking the other way, but before he could strike a third time, something slammed into his solar plexus, a shattering pain hit him beneath his jaw, and he felt himself moving backward through the air, slowly, as if he were floating.

He hit the ground, and his back slammed into the hard-packed dirt. Every bone in his body shivered with pain.

Dylan blinked, but he couldn't see anything except stars flickering in a sea of black. Odd, he thought, for coal soot and gas streetlamps made seeing stars in town impossible. He blinked again, but this time, even the stars disappeared into blackness. He felt hands dragging him out of the marked fighting square. He closed his eyes and let them. He didn't know how much time had gone by since the fight began, but he'd better have gone twenty-one minutes and five seconds.

After a moment, the hands stopped dragging him. He willed himself to get up, but he could not seem to move. He could not open his eyes. Striving to concentrate, he slowly clenched his hands into fists, then relaxed them. They hurt, but he could tell from the feel of them that they were not broken.

Damned lucky, he thought, and almost wanted to laugh. Somehow, no matter what happened, no matter what outrageous thing he did, no matter how much he abused his body or his mind, he always managed to come out all right. Laudanum never addicted him, wicked ways never ruined him, stupid stunts never maimed him.

Even the hated whine had now receded enough that he could hear the crowd again. He discerned voices right above him. He opened his eyes, and it felt as if he were prying live oysters apart, but this time, he could see.

Two familiar faces were bent over him. He greeted the man of higher rank first as both men knelt down, one on each side of him. “Tremore,” he croaked, ignoring the pain that shot through his jaw. “Back from the country estates for the season, I see. How are you, old friend?”

“Better than you at present, I think.”

Dylan glanced at the man to his right. Hammond. He once again looked at the duke, and seeing both men together was so damned amusing that this time he did laugh, a low chuckle that hurt his ribs. “Now here we have a wager for the betting books. How long will the Duke of Tremore and Lord Hammond be able to linger here and not kill one another?”

Neither of them answered, but he could feel them examining him for broken bones and other injuries. He knew his hands were all right. Any other injuries he didn't care about. He'd probably care tomorrow, but now, there was only one thing he wanted to know. “Did I break the record?” he asked Hammond, frowning as the other man's face began to blur, then sharpen, then blur again.

“You did.”

“How long?”

“I don't know. After the time was up, I kept shouting to you that you were done, but it was as if you couldn't hear me.”

Dylan licked his lips and tasted blood. “I want the time.”

“We'll find out later.”

He tried to shake his head. “I want to know now.”

“Even if you didn't break the record,” Tremore interjected, pressing a handkerchief to the side of his face, “you put on a fine show for all of us. They'll be talking about it for years.”

Dylan blinked two or three times, then narrowed his eyes on Hammond's face, trying to keep him in focus. “I want the goddamned time.”

“Deuce take it, Dylan,” another voice entered the conversation, one he had not heard for quite a long while, one that sounded decidedly irritated. “What difference does it make right now?”

“I want the time written in the betting book,” he told the viscount, ignoring that other voice. “And I'll have Plowright recant his accusation in front of witnesses.”

“I'll see to it.” Hammond straightened and vanished from view. Another man took Hammond's place at once, and the sight of the disapproving face above him made Dylan wish it weren't too late to pretend he was unconscious.

“Ian,” he greeted. “Aren't you supposed to be in Venice?”

“I docked at Dover this morning.” His brother shook his head with a heavy sigh. “I have business in Devonshire, and I had intended to go straight on, but then I changed my mind, thinking to stay the night in London and pay a call on you. I can't think why, since even after six months away, I find that nothing has changed.”

Dylan tried to grin, but his face felt stiff, as if glue had been spread over it and left to dry. “Reassuring for you, what?”

Ian did not answer but instead knelt beside him. “Of all the stupid, reckless, foolhardy things you have ever done,” his brother said, beginning to help Tremore examine him, “this tops the lot.”

“I have a reputation to maintain.”

Ian did not reply. He glanced at the man opposite him. “Your Grace.”

“Excellency,” Tremore answered. “Congratulations on your successful negotiations in Venetia.”

“Thank you.”

“Well, Moore,” the duke said after a few moments, “I do not believe you've broken any bones. Still, I believe a physician should examine you.”

Before Dylan could answer, Hammond's face once again appeared in his line of vision, upside down this time. Dylan lifted his chin to have a better look at the man standing behind him. “Well?” he demanded. “How far did I get?”

“Twenty-two minutes and seventeen seconds, you amazing bastard.” Hammond shook his head, laughing with him. “Not only did you set a new record, but the members forced Plowright to recant his accusation of cowardice.”

“Cowardice?” Tremore and Ian asked at once.

“He called me a coward,” Dylan confirmed, his voice sounding as cracked as he felt. “Because I don't box.”

Ian groaned. “And because you are the most pigheaded, exasperating, contrary man in England, you just had to prove him wrong.”

“He did it with a vengeance,” Hammond said. “As we speak, Sir George is being trussed by his friends as if he's a Christmas goose. A cracked rib, they think.”

“Bloody hell,” Dylan choked, laughing in spite of how much it hurt. “That'll be in the society papers, I warrant.” He took a deep breath. “Gentlemen, help me up.”

“I believe you should be carried,” Ian advised.

“I won't be carried anywhere until it's shoulder high.” Before Ian could argue, he sat up. Pain shimmered through his body, and he sucked in air through his teeth. He counted to three and hauled himself to his feet, then wrapped one arm around Tremore's shoulders and the other around Ian's. He grinned at his brother. “Another escapade for my scandalous, someday-to-be-published memoirs.”

“Memoirs?” Ian muttered as they began walking to an elegant carriage marked with the Tremore insignia. “Over my dead body.”

 

There were twenty-four rosebuds embroidered on the edge of her counterpane. Grace knew that because she had counted them three times, recognizing each one in the darkness of her bedroom by its feel against her fingertips. There were also eighteen full-blown roses and thirty-six leaves.

She gave a frustrated sigh and folded back the counterpane, wondering if perhaps she should light a lamp and read for a bit. She had lain here in the dark for what seemed like hours, counting rosebuds and leaves and even sheep, but none of it had made any difference. She still could not fall asleep.

It was all Moore's fault. The wretched man and his kisses. Her body still burned everywhere he had touched her.

I have a weakness for virtuous women.

Grace bit her lip. She wasn't virtuous. Not at all.

There had been a time when she had thought herself to be. She had taken such pride in being the good girl—the dependable older sister who had loved watching over six younger siblings, the good friend who had kept confidences and remembered birthdays, the pupil who had always done her assignments, the serious-minded daughter who had never given her parents a moment of worry. A sweet, steady girl, people in Stillmouth had always said, their approval appealing to her vanity in a way no comments about her looks ever could. She had sung in the church choir. She had done good works for the poor. She had said her prayers every night. And she'd done it all so smugly, too, with the firm conviction that she was good and virtuous, when her goodness and her virtue had never been tested.

Then a wild French painter with eyes like the sky had come to Cornwall. Of all the places in the world to paint, Etienne Cheval had chosen Stillmouth, the tiny village on the cliffs of Land's End where strangers never came, nothing ever happened, and it was easy to be good.

On a hillside when she was seventeen, she had met the great Cheval, and in that instant, her whole world had changed. Ten years her senior, Etienne had known all about life and even more about love. Seventeen years of being responsible and serious had vanished the first time he'd made her laugh. Virtue had been given the first time he'd kissed her. A week later, Grace Anne Lawrence, the sweet, steady, sensible girl so admired by everyone, had eloped with a French painter of no fortune and dubious reputation and changed her life forever.

Her first two years with Etienne had been the happiest time she had ever known, two years of sweet, piercing love and wild, crazy lovemaking. Then, it had all gone wrong somehow. In the bleak, dark moods when he had not been able to paint, he had blamed her. Day by day, he had grown darker, she had stopped laughing, and the love had died.

Grace wrapped her arms around her pillow. How did one hang on to love and happiness? For those first two years of joy, she had paid a high, high price. During her years away from England, no member of her family had answered any of her letters. When she had returned to Stillmouth last autumn, she had discovered that her parents had died and her brother had inherited the estate and the burden of her scandal. The woman James had loved had broken their engagement, and he had wed a woman well beneath his position in life. Her sisters had never married. All five were spinsters because she had ruined the family name.

Eight years had passed since that day on a Cornish hillside. Her girlish notions of virtue were gone, her reputation was shredded beyond amendment, and her family was disgraced to this very day. She had seen the world beyond Land's End and had found it wasn't nearly as wonderful as she had thought it would be.

She wanted to go home. That wasn't possible in a literal sense, but if she could stay here for a year, just one year, she could have a home of her own and the sort of life that ought to suit an ordinary English woman. A stable, proper, mundane life.

Let me love you.

Love. The man didn't have the foggiest notion. Perhaps he had been in love with that vicar's daughter as a boy growing up, but he wasn't capable of it now. Artists loved their art. Everything and everyone else was a distant second.

Dylan Moore was not a boy in love with a girl and dreaming to marry her. He was a man, and Grace knew precisely what he wanted from her. She'd known it the moment she had seen him in that alley. He wanted her, yes. For an amour. That wasn't love. Not even close.

She wasn't cut out of the cloth to be a man's mistress, for sweet words about love and money put in an account for bedroom services rendered. She wasn't hard enough for that life, and she didn't want to be. After Etienne—and even while she had been with him—there had been no shortage of men trying to beguile her with money and talk of love. A pretty woman always got offers of that sort.

This was the first time she had ever been tempted to accept. Despite Moore's reputation and what she knew about men like him, she still yearned for him to touch her again. His every kiss drew her closer. She pressed her fingers to her lips and hugged her pillow tight.

It had been so long, so long, and she was so lonely. Grace couldn't love with her body alone, but there were times, like right now, when she wished she could.

I
t looked worse than it really was, Dylan supposed, staring at his reflection in the mirror on the wall of his bedchamber. Torn trousers, a nasty cut over his eye, bruises forming on his face and chest, but the doctor had cleaned away the blood, and there was no concussion or other serious damage to his body. He would be sore for perhaps a week, he'd been told, but after that, he would be well. The bruises would take a bit longer to disappear, perhaps a month or so.

“Damned lucky,” Ian muttered.

“Yes, indeed,” the doctor agreed and glanced at Phelps. “I recommend treating the sorest muscles with the application of ice or a soak in icy water,” he told the valet. “Twenty minutes or so, several times a day, especially the hands. After a day or two, the soreness should ease, and he may use his hands again.”