Chapter 4
L eander loved to fight.
Some men boxed. It was generally what men of his class did. They found themselves former boxing champions of Queensbury Rules to show them what was needed to prance about on two feet and clobber another man with their fists.
Leander had no interest in boxing with its ring and rules.
Leander loved brawling .
So, he and his brothers, Hector, Ajax, and Zephyr, headed into Southwark, that area of London which was particularly ripe with all kinds of humanity. Once, this had been Shakespeare’s haven, where plays and bear baiting took place.
And it had been a den of the houses of ladies of the night.
It was still a rough place where few from his walk of life dared to tread.
Wild people lived out their passions in back corners and alleys.
Truly, it was where one could go to see the most vital part of London life, and of course, pay to have a proper fight.
He wasn’t interested in being popped in the face by an upper cut. No, he was interested in being knocked out, or doing the knocking out, and getting to the ground and doing the proper scramble. Of actually having to test one’s self against another fellow.
And the only fellow he’d found who was willing to show a man of his rank such a thing was his infamous aunt’s long-standing bodyguard.
Hartigan Mulvaney was an Irishman.
He had fought for the king, taken the shilling, and had then come back to London and made a name for himself in secret circles where men liked to bet on two fellows going at each other nearly to the death. No rules, no roundhouses, no jabs, just good old-fashioned fighting.
It wasn’t exactly gentlemanly, it wasn’t exactly seemly, but Leander had learned at a very young age that he was a fellow who needed things to be a bit, well, more . He needed to feel fists and teeth and kicks, to see sweat, and to feel the blows, lest he lose control in his life.
His mind rattled about at a pace that most people couldn’t comprehend. His body did the same thing. And if he wasn’t constantly challenging himself, it all went wrong.
Terribly, terribly wrong.
And since the death of his best friend Peter, and then late his father, he needed to keep a good hold of himself, lest the darkness come in and he find himself in pits of despair, isolated, secluded, and not talking to people again.
It did happen every now and then.
It was part of his life. But the fighting helped, as did his brothers. They didn’t go to boxing clubs with other gentlemen, and they did not include other gentlemen in this dangerous sport.
No, this was strictly a family affair.
Mulvaney knew what he was doing, and there was the added fact that Leander’s aunt had vouched for him.
So they headed into the upper apartments of a building that was likely older than Shakespeare himself, one that Shakespeare had quite possibly been in. It was near the cathedral and not far from the long-gone bear baiting pits and The Globe, where Shakespeare himself had put on plays.
Leander drew in a breath, readying himself.
“You really made a muck of it, didn’t you?” Hector said, unable to hide his grin.
“Cease your addle-pated prattling,” Leander drawled. “I did not make a muck of it. Juliet is going to happily marry Tobias. That is a triumph that we brought about.”
His brother Ajax, bigger than him and gruffer, nodded even as his lips twitched. “Yes, that was a triumph. We did very well with Tobias and Juliet. The family overcame any adversity there, and we got the two of them together just as we knew we would. But, old boy, you are throwing all our good work away!”
“Whatever are you doing?” Zephyr demanded, his youthful zeal on full display. “You first asked Miss Miller to marry you in the middle of a family fight.”
Leander shrugged, recalling the events that had led to Juliet and Tobias finally admitting they loved each other. And it was true. He had proposed in the middle of utter chaos while they were trying to convince Tobias to realize his mistakes and go after Juliet.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“At the time?” Zephyr demanded, his eyes popping wide. “You barely know her. We barely know her.”
“She’s Tobias’s sister. How terrible can she be?” he pointed out.
“She’s an American,” Ajax stated, cracking his knuckles as they strode into the hall with its splintered floor.
“That’s true,” Leander agreed, “but Tobias is an American, and he’s rather tolerable. Don’t you think?”
Zephyr snorted. “You’re never going to convince that one to marry you. She’s like a little walking Puritan.”
“She is not like a walking Puritan,” he bit out with surprising indignation. “There’s no white hat, no silly costume, and she’s not reading sermons or preaching all hours of the day.”
Ajax rolled his eyes, as if he was delighting in testing his brother. “Perhaps not, but she seems rather austere. Very serious. The last thing that the Briarwoods want.”
“Perhaps that’s exactly what I need,” Leander gritted. “And you know I can’t have just any usual English lady.”
As he shouldered his way through the door leading into the arranged room, Leander divested himself of his long duster coat and threw it on a rickety chair.
Mulvaney stood waiting. The Irishman clapped his hands together. He could not have been more than five foot six. He was a veritable bull of a fellow. His russet hair was wild about his hard face, but he was smiling like a man who was about to get himself a pile of gold or a very handsome woman. “Good evening, gents. Ready to test your mettle?”
“Indeed, Hartigan,” the duke said as he began to unwind his cravat. “You are exactly what is required.”
He had learned during one of their first meetings that leaving a cravat on meant strangulation. And he did not fancy having that happen again. As a matter of fact, anything that could be used as a weapon pretty much went. So he went down to his breeches and his shoes and stockings. The shirt went, the coat went, the waistcoat went, and all jewels went.
Occasionally, they would grab for other objects like canes or pieces of wood, but he rather fancied his skull not getting cracked.
So, most of the time they kept it hand to hand.
Zephyr, Hector, and Ajax all stood along the wall, knowing that eventually they’d have their turn, but he always went first. He needed the most energetic Hartigan he could get, and Hartigan knew it.
Hartigan stretched his neck and beckoned for the duke to join him. “Had a rough day, have you, Your Grace?”
“I asked a young woman to marry me, and she said no,” he said. “Can you imagine it?”
Hartigan tsked with mock sympathy as he rolled his mammoth, tattooed shoulders. “How terrible for you, Your Grace, that she did not immediately recognize your worth and collapse at your feet in a heap of gratitude.”
He ignored the man’s sarcasm, flexed his own hands, and returned, “Exactly, Hartigan. I’m glad you understand my frustration. Stubborn young woman. But I do love a bit of stubbornness.”
“And what will you do about it, Your Grace?” Hartigan challenged, eying him over. “This isn’t the time of knights and soldiers. You can’t drag her off to your castle.”
“Oh, I could,” Leander returned with a wolfish smile. “People think that we’re not allowed to do such things, but someone like me can do just about anything they want. But I will tell you, I have no interest in doing such a thing because I’m going to win her over.”
“You are?” Zephyr blurted.
“I am,” Leander replied. “I’ve already started. I think that Miss Miller needs a good time, and I am very good at showing people a good time. I keep our entire family happy, don’t I?”
Hector let out a noise that sounded a little bit like he was strangling himself. “I don’t know if that’s the way I’d put it, but you do manage to keep us all in line. I think most of us are just happy by nature.”
Leander let out a laugh at that. “Happy by nature?”
“All of us work at it. Mama did a very good job raising us, as did Papa,” Hector pointed out. “And I don’t know if you can make a wife happy.”
His beloved brother Hector was an admirable man who loved a good time. He was a veritable rake. He had slept with half the women in London.
Well, perhaps not half the women in London, but half the wives of the ton. But he never did so with intent to harm.
“Hector,” Leander began. “I don’t think that you should be telling me anything about marriage.”
Hector let out a laugh. “Of course I should. Rakes always make the best husbands. This is what we are told.”
“You’re not marrying,” Ajax reminded.
“I will,” Hector said indignantly. “One day… One day a very, very long time from now.”
“I’m the one that’s marrying,” drawled Leander.
“You’re not yet,” countered Ajax. “She hasn’t said yes, and—”
“I already asked her. It’s done.”
“You asked her as a distraction,” said Zephyr, who folded his arms over his broad chest.
“No, I didn’t,” Leander replied, appalled that his brother would say such a thing.
“Yes, you did.” Hector said. “Even Mama thinks that you must have been out of your wits.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Leander said quite seriously. “Mama thinks I’m absolutely serious, and I am. I don’t want a silly English girl of the ton. I want Mercy Miller because she’s the only one who’s going to be willing to stand up to me, tell me what she thinks, and make me grow as a man. And that is the sort of wife that I want.”
“Right, all this is very interesting for an on dit writer, but are we here to chat or fight?” Mulvaney demanded.
And with that, Leander closed his mouth, turned, and launched himself at Mulvaney.
Mulvaney let out a quick grunt, but then grabbed Leander about the middle and threw him over his shoulder.
He landed with a hard thud, his back crackling against the floor. He saw stars for an instant, and all the air whooshed out of his lungs.
Mulvaney bent over and grinned at him.
“How do you do that?” Leander demanded as soon as he could draw a breath. The entire room shook with the force of his body landing.
Mulvaney made no reply. Instead, he waggled his thick brows, then threw himself on top of Leander.
Leander’s eyes went wild as he braced himself and twisted.
One of the things that Leander had learned quite quickly was that real fights went to the floor fast. Boxing meant dancing about in a small ring, hitting each other over and over and over until one gave up.
Fighting, real fighting, meant being knocked to the ground almost immediately. And then, well, nearly being murdered quite quickly if one was not careful.
Mulvaney had been teaching him the tricks and trades of it now for some time.
He loved the thrill of it.
Loved the moment when he wasn’t certain if he would actually make it, if Mulvaney might have some sort of fit of bloodlust and Leander would die. But so far he had simply learned skills from Mulvaney. He’d learned how to let out the frustrations and anger of being a duke in a society that had no wish to do better when all he wanted was for the world to do better.
Mulvaney had also taught him how to control the rage and the pain inside him. The rage that had taken root after his best friend Peter’s death.
It was quite ironic that Mulvaney had been the one to teach him control, given that he was a tough, rough man from Ireland who had spent much of his life at war.
Well, wasn’t that the best kind of man? One who could practice severe violence but never ever use it without control?
Yes.
Leander was going to show Miss Miller that he was a man who could be in total control, who could give her happiness, while getting exactly what he wanted.
And what he wanted was an American.