Chapter Ten #2
“You have met Mr. Madgwick, I think, Donald?” Julia said as pleasantly as she could.
She had hoped…well, she was not entirely sure what she had hoped. A nod of recognition between the two men, perhaps. A handshake. Perhaps even a conversation.
Whatever she had hoped for, she did not receive. Donald barely glanced at the poorer man as though he did not exist, and instead grabbed Julia’s sleeve and started pulling her away.
“You really shouldn’t—”
“Donald, I know what I’m—”
“Lord, Dryden, is that your sister? What’s she doing in a place like this?”
Donald closed his eyes in despair as he released Julia’s sleeve, shaking his head before turning with a grin to his friends. “You know Julia, always looking for adventure!”
Heat seared Julia’s cheeks—not because she was ashamed to have been found at the Almonry Den, but because it had caused such obvious pain to her brother.
She had embarrassed him.
Worse, he had attended the place with Mr. Rivers, the son of the haberdasher…and Mr. Lister. Two men of worse repute one could not find.
Not within the ranks of gentlemen, anyway.
“Ah, Miss Dryden,” Mr. Lister said, his top lip sneering and revealing uneven teeth. “My word.”
“Good on you, Miss, I don’t see why the ladies cannot…I mean…yes,” stumbled Mr. Rivers, evidently realizing—eventually—his words were not appropriate.
Julia sighed and tried to plaster a smile across her face.
A lady. A member of the ton.
Yes, it was all very well, but only since making Lawrence’s acquaintance had she realized…well. How imprisoned she had become by her class. Her station in life.
Oh, to be like Lawrence! To be free to go where he wanted, do what he wanted, engage in sports and laugh and explore the city, no place too poor for him to wander. To be unrestricted by the rules of a Society that had no interest in a lady’s pleasure. To lose himself in—
“Come on, Julia! Aren’t you coming?”
Julia blinked. Donald was offering his arm, evidently cowed into accepting her presence by his friends, staring at her as though she had lost her wits.
She accepted his arm wordlessly, hardly able to cope with this ricochet of her brother’s opinions, and allowed herself to be gently guided to a seat on the benches.
“And not a word of this to Mother,” Donald hissed under his breath as the four of them sat down, his two friends arguing amiably about who they thought would win this next bout, Lawrence or Tom. “If she heard you were here—”
“I won’t be the one to tell her, never fear,” hissed back Julia, almost laughing at the ridiculous nature of his request. Her, tell their mother that she had been at the Almonry Den? “But your friends might—”
“I know, but it’s your own damned fault for being found here, you know,” said her brother as he nodded at a few men in the crowd. “What do you think you’re doing here?”
Julia swallowed, her gaze drifting over the crowd—all of them men, naturally—until it settled on the boxing ring.
The boxing ring where Lawrence now stood. His expression was unreadable at this distance, but she could sense the tension in him. Something in the way he held himself, the rigidity of his shoulders.
What was she doing here?
She could not continue on this path with Lawrence, could she? Not without knowing…well. Where it was going.
Heat flushed her cheeks as both Lawrence and Tom stepped into the ring, to cheers and laughter as the latter almost tripped over the rope.
Lawrence was so evidently the favorite: taller, broader, stronger.
“Strength and size are not necessarily congruous.”
Julia shivered, the memory of his words causing a ripple of delight across her chest. If they had been born from the same class, raised in the same circles…
why, they could have been wed by now. Her mother would have had a polite yet discreet conversation, and it would have all been arranged with very little effort.
Married. To Lawrence. A shiver rushed through her.
But as it was…
“Go on, you big’un!” yelled Mr. Lister, a bright wildness in his eyes as he clung onto a scrap of paper. “I’ve got a guinea on him, you know.”
“A guinea!” Mr. Rivers looked outraged. “On a single bout?”
A small smile crept across Julia’s lips. She would have bet more than a guinea on him. After watching sufficient bouts, seeing Lawrence in the boxing ring with numerous opponents, she had a surer understanding of the thing now.
Tom would not stand a chance.
“How do you know the man, Miss Dryden?”
Julia glanced at Donald as Mr. Rivers asked what in any other situation would have been a simple question, and saw the panic in her brother’s eyes.
She sighed. Lying was not a habit she had particularly wished to pick up, but it did not appear she had any choice. “I…I don’t.”
“I should think not,” said Mr. Lister darkly. “A man like that, you can tell just to look at him that he’s a rough sort.”
The crush of his lips on hers, the way his soft hands became demanding as they pulled her closer…
Julia smiled, hugging the truth of the matter inside herself, the knowledge of Lawrence that no one else had. “I am sure he is.”
The bell rang before any of them could utter another word, and the cacophony of the roaring crowd made it impossible to hear anything else.
Julia’s heart raced with excitement as she watched Lawrence step neatly around Tom’s first lunging attack, and knew just why so many people came here to watch such exciting entertainment.
The thrill of the chase, the tactics, the strength, the brutality, they all called to something within her she had never expected to find.
Or was it just that she so admired watching Lawrence’s strong body dominate in the boxing ring, knowing its strength and power when it touched her own?
“A knockout would be my preference,” Mr. Lister was saying. “But that Madgwick looks as mad as a dog…”
Julia glanced back to Lawrence and gasped as he took a terrible blow to the shoulder.
And that was when she knew. The knowledge was sudden, yes, but it was as though it had been there already, out of sight, hidden in the depths of her heart, waiting to be found…
She cared for him.
Julia’s hands gripped together tightly in her lap as Mr. Lister roared and others booed, irritated their favorite had been the first to receive a blow. Their bets undoubtedly depended on it.
Yet the sensations roaring through Julia were far more than the hope of winning a little silver.
Lawrence was hurt. And that hurt her, a physical ache in her stomach that exploded in her chest and could not be contained.
She had to help him—save him, keep him safe, though what she could do—
Somehow Julia was standing on her feet. “Come on, Lawrence!”
Heads turned, as she knew they would, but she did not pay them any heed. Her full attention was affixed on Lawrence, her breathing tight in her chest, her hands still gripped together, as she shouted again.
“Go on, Lawrence!”
Just for a fraction of a second, he looked at her. She was sure their eyes met, and a sort of blazing determination shot from her to him.
Julia hardly took in the next three minutes. That it was three minutes she was informed later by Donald, irritated that he had bet the match would last a full ten, but at the time she could barely register a single second passing.
Lawrence won, of course. And when he rose triumphant, lifting his hands to accept the applause of the crowd, there was only one person he looked at.
Julia shivered with the intensity of his look, shared as it was in a room with hundreds.
It was for her.
The excitement filling her bones was nothing to do with the fight, at least not the one in the boxing ring. Julia had discovered how she felt about him, about this man who defied all conventions and would certainly be decried in her social circle…
And the battle against those feelings had been short indeed.