Chapter 1
Chapter One
WATCH A BOXING MATCH
“Icannot believe,” Laura whispered, her voice barely audible above the low, smoky rumble of the tavern, “that I let you talk me into this.”
“You weren’t talked into anything,” Caroline murmured back, tugging the brim of her cap lower over her brow. “You volunteered. Rather enthusiastically, if I recall.”
“I said perhaps, and that is not volunteering.”
“In my experience, a ‘perhaps’ from you means yes. Now stop fidgeting. You’ll draw attention,” Caroline chastised, and with that, her friend’s hands stilled against her thighs.
Across the narrow passage that served as an entrance to the tavern’s backroom, two men were shouting at each other about a wager, their voices thick with ale and conviction.
The room beyond smelled of tallow, sawdust, and sweat; nothing at all like the powder-and-hothouse-flower scent of every assembly room Caroline had ever been ushered into.
She breathed it in.
It was magnificent.
The backroom of the Black Boar was not large, but it was crammed with bodies: working men, merchants, and a few gentlemen in plain coats who had shed their titles at the door.
Around the perimeter of a roped-off ring, benches were packed three-deep.
Above the noise of conversation, the clank of tankards, and the occasional roar of laughter, Caroline could hear the measured thud of fists against leather mitts, then a roar of triumph as one of the two fighters was declared the winner.
Thankfully, there would be more than one match tonight.
Caroline felt the tightness in her chest loosen. It was a tautness she had been holding inside her ribcage for months.
“Two ales,” she said to the barman, deepening her voice with what she hoped sounded like authority and tossing the coins across the bar before he could look at her too closely.
The man swept the money up without interest, and a moment later, two dented pewter tankards were slid in Caroline and Laura’s direction.
Laura regarded hers the way one might regard a small, unpleasant animal. “You know your brother will have us both transported if he finds out.”
“Lewis won’t find out,” Caroline assured Laura as she handed her the drink and steered her toward a gap on the nearest bench, settling in as naturally as she could manage.
At least, she hoped her elder brother would never find out, because he would most definitely be incensed by her audacity.
Caroline’s borrowed coat was a little long in the sleeve and smelled of horse and starch, but it fit well enough in the shoulders.
Her maid, Jane, who was either the most loyal woman in England or the most reckless, had sourced them both from a footman’s spare wardrobe and asked no questions whatsoever.
“Besides, he is at his club tonight. His dear wife Esther thinks we’ve retired early with headaches,” Caroline added.
“We’ll have genuine headaches by the time this is over,” Laura mumbled.
“Laura.” Caroline looked at her friend; beneath the cap, Laura’s dark eyes were wide and roving, cataloging the room with an alertness that she was trying very hard to disguise as unease, but Caroline knew her better. “Don’t tell me you’re not the least bit curious about the spectacle before us.”
A beat. Laura pressed her lips together. “Only marginally.”
Caroline smiled and lifted her ale.
She had been imagining a boxing match since she was sixteen years old and had found a tattered sporting pamphlet tucked into the back of her uncle’s library—the same library from which she had been explicitly barred.
The pamphlet had described a bout in terms so vivid, so thrillingly physical, that she had read it three times before returning it to its hiding place, heart hammering.
She had thought about it often, in the years since. In drawing rooms and at tea tables and during the interminable lessons on posture that Lady Hayward, her aunt from her mother’s side, had inflicted on her across half the continent while they were traveling together. She had thought: someday.
That someday was tonight.
And once the next pair of fighters stepped to the center of the ring, her heart fluttered with excitement.
“He’s been worse this week,” Caroline said, not taking her eyes off the ring.
The taller of the two fighters, wiry, quick, with the economical movements of someone who had learned his craft through genuine necessity, had just landed a neat jab that sent the crowd around them lurching forward.
“What?” Laura whispered.
“My brother,” Caroline clarified. “He invited Lord Ashby to call on me Tuesday, Lord Pemberton on Thursday, and some cousin of Lord Pemberton’s whose name I couldn’t retain because he said nothing of interest for an entire hour and a half, on Friday.”
“An hour and a half.” Laura winced. “What did he talk about?”
“His horses. His estate in Hertfordshire. His horses again.” Caroline took a long sip of ale and found it bitter, flat, and completely wonderful. “He also mentioned that he hoped I enjoyed quiet evenings at home, at which point I smiled and thought about running directly into the Thames.”
Laura chuckled. “None of them were to your taste at all?”
“They were perfectly decent men.” Caroline watched the wiry fighter circle his opponent, patient, waiting.
“That’s the problem. They’re all perfectly decent, perfectly dull, perfectly prepared to marry a woman who will smile at their dinner parties, produce their heirs, and not ask a single inconvenient question for the rest of her natural life.
” She felt the familiar tightness return to her chest and pushed it back.
“My brother means well… I know he does. He only wants me settled and safe.”
“But…” Laura urged her to continue.
Of course, her best friend would hear the hesitation underneath her voice.
“But I’ve spent three years being molded into someone I’m not, and now I’m supposed to choose my prison and be grateful for the bars.” The words came out quieter than she intended; she cleared her throat swiftly. “Hence the list.”
Laura’s expression shifted, emotions between exasperation and affection. “The list,” she repeated, as though reminding herself of her own complicity.
It had begun, as most things between them did, over too many biscuits and a poorly supervised afternoon in her brother’s library.
They had been talking, as they often did, about all the things that appeared in books but never in their actual lives, and at some point, Caroline had picked up a pen and begun writing them down.
Six items. The kind of items that would have sent Lady Hayward directly to her fainting couch.
She had shown the list to Laura, who had read it twice, then asked: “When do we start?”
That was especially why Caroline loved her.
A roar went up from the crowd as the stockier fighter caught the wiry one across the cheekbone.
“Whoa,” Laura blurted, “that looks quite painful.”
The blow spun him sideways, the crowd erupting in a chorus of groans and triumphant oaths, but he recovered fast, shaking it off with a roll of his neck.
“Perhaps not that painful for him,” Caroline whispered to her friend.
The fighter came back with a combination of punches that had the men around Caroline surging to their feet and shouting. She leapt with them, hat nearly flying from her head, and had to remind herself not to shriek.
It was extraordinary. Not the violence of it; she had no particular love of that, but the energy, the wildness, and the nakedness of it all.
This was no performance, no artifice. It was just two men and whatever they were made of, stripped to the bare fact of it.
This, she thought. This is what society has kept from me and other women.
Eventually, the match ended with the wiry fighter down on one knee, his second hauling him upright, and the crowd howling its opinion on the outcome.
Caroline clapped with the rest of them, genuinely delighted.
But then she became aware of Laura’s hand on her arm.
“People are staring,” Laura muttered.
Caroline glanced along the bench. Two men at the end had turned their heads, their expressions not hostile, but watchful.
Drat.
She had been too loud, a little too enthusiastic, and she was certain that she was all too readable. That meant trouble.
“Right,” she said. “Out we go.”
They rose together, and in the shuffling press of men shifting and rising around them, Laura stepped sideways to avoid a man’s elbow—
And bump into a different man altogether. He was sitting at the end of their bench, broad in the shoulder and listing slightly, and the nudge sent what remained of his ale sloshing over his sleeve.
“Beg pardon,” Laura said quickly, already backing away.
The man turned. His eyes were red-rimmed and unfocused, and the expression that crossed his face was not the mildly irritated look of a man who had spilled his drink. It was something uglier.
“Watch where you’re bloody going,” he growled.
“He apologized,” Caroline said, stepping forward before she could think better of it and keeping her voice low and as even as she could manage. “It was an accident.”
“Didn’t ask you, did I?” He turned the ugliness on her instead, and she felt the hair rise on the back of her neck beneath her cap. He was bigger than she had registered. Much bigger. “Think you’re clever, do you, lad?”
“I think you’ve had a great deal to drink,” Caroline said. “And that we’re leaving now, so—”
He came off the bench at her.
She had time only to brace and hear Laura’s horrified gasp behind her—
But instead, the man was yanked backward by the collar as though plucked from the scene by some intervening force of nature.
A voice cut through the noise around them like a blade through linen. “That will do.”
The voice was not loud, but it really did not need to be. Caroline could not resist looking up either way.
And froze.