The Sinner Who Seduced Me (19 page)

“They fight until one or the other falls,” he yelled into her ear, his warm lips brushing her lobe.

“Or one dies,” she answered distractedly, turning her attention back to the ring in order to stop the sudden tingling of her skin.

Percy led with a swift right hit to the man’s jaw, much to the approval of the crowd, who yelled with glee. His opponent teetered for a moment as though he would fall, then gathered his strength and lifted his fists. The crowd turned on him even more aggressively, one man next to the rope suggesting that he give in and die. Clarissa looked closely at the man. He was attired in expensive clothing and held a brass eagle–topped walking stick in his hand, which he enthusiastically raised high each time Percy landed a blow. He was clearly a member of the aristocracy, though his behavior hardly alluded to such.

Clarissa continued on, noting with rather unpleasant interest just how many of the ton’s males were present.
She didn’t recognize anyone, per se, but their clothing and demeanor set them apart. James had been correct in his assumption that Percy would draw a larger number of the ton. Clearly the chance to witness complete and utter annihilation was more than these men could refuse.

“Marlowe!”

The sound of James’s name, barely audible above the din of the crowd, made Clarissa look back to where a man held his arm aloft in salutation. He shouted again then began to make his way from the back of the crowd to where they stood.

“Look away now,” James whispered urgently. “Appear as though you know nothing of this ‘Marlowe.’ ”

Clarissa did as James had asked and turned her attention back to the ring.

Percy slammed a savage blow to his opponent’s chest, sending the fighter buckling to his knees.

The man with the walking stick bellowed at him anew as the crowd pressed against the rope barrier.

James caught Clarissa’s arm in an iron grip and strengthened his hold on Iris. But it was too late. The crush of spectators knocked her down. James physically threw men off of the girl in his attempt to lift her from the now muddy field.

Iris recovered her smashed hat and quickly returned it to her head before taking James’s offered hand and rising.

And then she planted a none-too-delicate punch directly on the nose of the man who’d brought her down. “For your trouble,” she said caustically, then cradled her fist against her heart.

The man, as short as Iris but four times her width, brought his fingers to his nose and examined it gingerly. “You broke my nose, boy,” he muttered, wiping the blood on his coat sleeve. “And that’ll not do at all.”

James released Clarissa’s arm and pushed her to her knees. “Stay low to the ground. Go directly to the horses and wait.”

“What on earth—”

But Clarissa didn’t have the chance to finish her sentence. A large man with a ruddy complexion yelled out something about a fight and then all hell broke loose. James grabbed Iris and threw her to the ground next to Clarissa. Then he began to punch whomever came into his line of sight.

“Follow me,” Clarissa yelled to Iris, pointing toward the ring.

The crowd surged forward, apparently anxious to participate in the brawl. Clarissa looked once more to where James stood, his head down and his arms swinging as he worked his way in the opposite direction from where the man who’d uttered his name had last been seen. There was no point in thinking on just who the man may have been—at least not now.

She looked at Iris then pointed toward the ring, crawling as fast as she could for the rope. Iris quickly caught up and matched Clarissa’s speed.

“Where are we going?” she urgently asked, barely avoiding a man as he fell to the ground just in front of her. She screamed and scrambled toward Clarissa, knocking the two off course.

Clarissa righted herself and pushed Iris back into a crawling position. “To the horses. Keep low to the ground and you’ll be safe.
Comprenez-vous
?”

“Low to the ground,” Iris repeated to herself, then repeated it again.

Suddenly her backside rose up in a most unnatural position. She let out a second scream and flailed her arms.

Clarissa wheeled about and discovered a man had grabbed Iris’s breeches and pulled, picking her up off the
ground. In order to do what, Clarissa could hardly imagine.

She beat at the man’s feet with her fists and he only laughed, clearly amused with Clarissa’s lack of strength.

Iris continued to flail, adding her legs to the mix and nearly knocking Clarissa unconscious with her foot.

She’d had enough. Clarissa reached for one of the stakes that had held the rope around the ring. It had been stepped on in the fray and loosened from the ground. She wrapped her arms and legs around it and pulled with all her might, falling backward when it came free.

She took the stake in hand and stood, the crazed crowd about her nearly jostling her down again. It took a moment to find the two, the man having made fairly good progress by employing Iris as a sort of battering ram. Though the girl’s limbs were slim, she was quick and her flailing almost timed perfectly.

Clarissa waded toward the middle of the ring, ducking to miss a punch intended for another before reaching her intended target. She tapped the man on the back and waited for him to turn, then she swung with all her might, hitting him squarely across the cheek with the wooden stake. His head snapped to one side and he faltered, his grip on Iris loosening.

Suddenly a fist flew from out of nowhere, the sound of bones crunching reaching Clarissa’s ears as the man staggered back from the force of the blow. He listed first to the right, and then to the left, before falling backward, taking Iris with him.

Iris rolled off the man onto all fours and began to crawl furiously toward the edge of the ring where, just beyond the torches and down a grassy hill, the horses waited.

Clarissa turned to thank the owner of the fist, only to be pushed down to the ground once again.

“I told you to stay down.” It was a familiar voice that delivered the rebuke and Clarissa hazarded a glance up the length of his body to find an incredibly unhappy James looking down on her. “Go!” he demanded, then quickly bobbed to elude a new opponent.

Clarissa dropped to her hands and knees and resumed her desperate attempt to escape. She scrabbled toward the edge of the ring, weaving as best she could on all fours as men dropped around her.

Finally reaching the rope, she pushed herself under it then stood to run toward the darkness, stopping only when she sensed she was far enough away from the battling crowd to be safe. She looked about frantically for Iris, finding her not far off from where she stood.

“Iris,” she called, running toward the girl. “Come, quickly. We must fetch the horses.”

Iris simply stood stock-still, her eyes focused on the crowd. “He’s amazing.”

Clarissa looked back to the ring. James was moving ever closer, plowing through men as if they weighed nothing at all. She paused for a moment, understanding what had captured Iris’s awe. The moment passed as quickly as it had come.

She jerked Iris by the arm and set off toward the horses. “Amazing or not, it will be the end of us if he discovers we’re waiting here in the dark. Now,
dépêchez-vous, idiote!
”

“Such an early start after a rather late evening?”

Pettibone’s appearance in the studio did not frighten Clarissa this time. Pharaoh had alerted her to the man’s approach, the cat’s willingness to leave his comfortable station atop the chair her first clue. His low growl of displeasure was the second and had told her it was the Frenchman.

Clarissa eyed the man with cool acknowledgment. “Are you all knowing, then, monsieur?”

“In a way,” he confirmed, coming around to stand directly behind her left shoulder before holding out a letter. “My, you’ve been busy,” he commented as he looked at the canvas.

The boxing match had upset Clarissa. So much so that sleep had proven elusive. She’d tossed and turned for more than two hours before dressing and traversing the silent wing to the studio.

“Yes, well, inspiration seems to have struck,” she replied, taking her mother’s letter and swallowing her irritation with Pettibone as he continued to watch over her shoulder.

She couldn’t really say what one thing about last night she’d found so distressing. The match itself, with the blood and jeering crowd had made her stomach turn. Iris’s surprise punch and general lack of maturity had been irritating at best, worrisome at worst. And then
there was James. Clarissa understood that she and Iris were no more than commodities to him. But as she’d watched him bring down man after man to ensure that they made it safely to the horses, well, she’d been impressed. And a tad curious. She felt sure there had been fear in his eyes when he’d bested the man who’d taken Iris. Not over the task—no, his methodical dismembering of all who strayed across his path had proven him more than capable of the fight. No, it had been a different fear altogether, as though Iris’s safety had meant more than just a means to an end.

“How much longer will it take?”

Pettibone’s question pulled Clarissa from her thoughts and she focused on the canvas once again. “Three weeks?” she ventured to guess. She’d completed the preliminary work and was now moving toward the multiple applications of color for shading and effect.

“And your third outing with Miss Bennett?”

“Oh, there will be no third outing, on that you can depend,” Clarissa answered quickly, turning to face Pettibone with a resolute stare. “The boxing match was absolute chaos. Even Iris could not have found it enjoyable. I’m sure the girl will see the sense in forgoing her final ‘adventure,’ though I can’t imagine what she could have found adventurous about last night.”

Pettibone nodded, though he looked skeptical as he walked to where Pharaoh was sunning himself near the windows. “Miss Bennett is quite headstrong, and desperate for excitement. What you found to be chaos—well, one has to wonder whether she didn’t find it that much more thrilling. Do you think she’ll agree to let loose of the last?”

“With all due respect, Pettibone—or whatever your true name may be,” Clarissa began, walking around the easel to address him, “if not for Marlowe, we would
have been pummeled into the ground, and very likely still stuck in that field right now. As far as I’m concerned, it’s for the sake of Miss Bennett’s own safety that we must put an end to the outings. I would think you would agree.”

Pettibone reached down to pet Pharaoh, eliciting a low hiss from the cat. “Yes, of course.”

“After all, without Miss Bennett, there is no money. And without the money …” She paused, looking at him knowingly. “Well, I would think that your superiors would be quite displeased.”

Pharaoh swiped at Pettibone’s hand, his needlelike claws slashing into the skin. The man examined the wound then grasped Pharaoh by the scruff of the neck and tossed him to the floor. “And you would be right in your assumption.”

Clarissa hurried to where Pharaoh sat, dazed by Pettibone’s casually cruel move. She gently picked him up and held him in her arms, stroking her hand slowly across his bristling back.

She didn’t like Pettibone—she never had. Nor did she trust him. But there was something else, something far more sinister about the man than she’d first realized. She turned back to the easel and slowly walked toward it. What was it, exactly? He was, after all, a criminal, which implied a certain level of natural debasement. She narrowed her eyes and thought back on all that she knew of the man. What did she find so troublesome? What was pricking at her mind even now as she attempted to puzzle out Pettibone’s secret?

“You’ve done an admirable job, by the way. Most in your situation would not have been able to perform so well.”

Clarissa’s skin crawled at the compliment. Was that it, then? His attempts at flattery? There was simply no way
that the man actually cared for her. She saw it in his eyes. In his superior air. Felt it in the tension that sang between them every time they spoke.

Even James had done her the courtesy of resisting such an approach to motivate her to work faster.

James? Clarissa continued to stroke Pharaoh, the act seeming to help her think. Pettibone’s revelation that James had insisted on her mother being held had been excruciatingly painful. His proposal that James was perhaps not trustworthy, that had seemed odd, but not beyond the bounds of sense.

Pharaoh let out a low growl and Clarissa realized she’d begun to stroke him too hard. She offered a kiss between his ears as amends, then bit her tongue. Pettibone had played her, and played her well. She felt sure that the man was not privy to her past relationship with James, but clearly he’d deduced enough to realize that she felt some sort of attachment to him.

She mentally pictured Pettibone buried up to his chin in freshly dug dirt, while she pounced upon his head over and over. And over again.

Clarissa did not know precisely what was going on, but she was going to find out.

“Am I interrupting?” James closed the door behind him, carefully keeping his expression blank.

Pettibone stood by the windows, looking as though he was awaiting a response from Clarissa. For her part, Clarissa appeared unaware that she’d been addressed. Her back was to Pettibone and she held Pharaoh in her arms, a look of concentration on her face.