Marriages of Convenience (Dragonblade Publishing Boxed Sets)

Chapter One

Lawrence knew he would have to hit the man eventually, but it would be so much easier if he could just stay still.

“That was a close one!”

“Come on, Lawrence!”

“Get him!”

The cheers and shouts round the boxing ring rose in a rush of heat and noise, clouding Lawrence’s judgment and making it almost impossible to think—at least, it would have done.

If he were a lesser man. If it was not vitally important he—

Lawrence lurched to the side, just missing an errant fist flying in his direction. His opponent grinned, blood oozing from his nose.

The ring was splattered with blood, but as far as Lawrence could make out, most was not his. Not that he’d managed to land many hits, his damned mind otherwise occupied.

He had to find him.

Lawrence circled slowly around the ring. Ring. One would hardly call it a ring if any of the men clamoring in the stands had seen where he had learned to box Oxford.

But here in the backstreets of London, the Almonry, any old square would do as long as there was sufficient rope around it, Lawrence thought darkly. No one required more, nor required names when a man stepped into the ring.

They certainly did not check name given was true…

“Careful!”

A shout from the crowd made him turn and just miss a thrust to his chest, which would have been most injurious to his overall health—and his purpose.

For Lawrence Madgwick had not come to the Almonry Den Boxing Ring to win a little coin, though it would be most useful.

He was not even Lawrence Madgwick at all.

“Ready to give up?” he taunted his opponent, wiping sweat from his eyes in an attempt to ensure he could see the damned man clearly.

He had watched the brute time and time again, could predict the careless way he moved, but for some reason it was far more difficult in the ring.

The man leered. “Tired, old man?”

Now that was most irregular, thought Lawrence. He was barely just thirty.

Though, of course, in the streets of London where anything could happen, perhaps it was an achievement to reach such an old age.

“Never,” Lawrence said, twisting as he lunged, a fist aiming for the man’s head.

He missed.

It did not matter. The crowd cheered, a hundred or so people gathered to see the match, utterly captivated by the bout.

Heart pounding, Lawrence attempted to remember that he had, after all, volunteered for this. He had known how difficult the work would be, how taxing on a man’s body.

But he had never expected his bones to ache this badly, or for his chest to cry out that there must be a better way to find the blighter.

“Come on, Lawrence!”

Lawrence glanced round. The face he had been searching for was not there, he was certain. Prolonging the fight, pretending he had nothing better to do than accept the brute’s punches, was wearisome but necessary.

And now he was sure the blaggard was not in the crowd. That meant it was time to end this particular fight.

Tensing his shoulders and moving to the balls of his feet for better balance, Lawrence suddenly charged toward his opponent.

A complex set of punches layered with a twist of his chest to prevent retaliatory strikes from landing, Lawrence felt no pleasure, only frustration, as his opponent fell to the ground, clutching at his jaw.

The crowd erupted. Rising to their feet, cheering and stamping, the crowd gave adulation that Lawrence, if he had truly been a boxer, would have adored.

But he was not.

Hand lifted into the air by the referee, a wrinkled old man called Fred, Lawrence bowed his head graciously to accept the praise.

“Outstanding bout!”

“Good on you, man!”

“—never saw such a spectacular fall—”

Lawrence ignored the cries as he stepped out the ring and approached the man who had, for the last six months, pretended to be his boxing coach.

“Still no sign of him?” muttered Alan.

Lawrence shook his head, accepting the cloth offered and wiping his brow. “I would have thought by now the blaggard would have returned.”

“Anything can keep a man in France if there is enough coin to it,” said Alan heavily, glancing round the place. “You know that.”

Lawrence sighed. He did indeed.

Nothing he experienced at Oxford could have prepared him for the work he had slipped into once leaving its halls. Nothing could have helped understand the sacrifices he would make.

Six months in London, in the worst part of town, far from his home and the comforts it offered…

After all, the Duke of Penshaw had a rather sizeable fortune.

“Time to go.”

Lawrence looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

Alan shrugged, his dark though graying hair thinning at the front, which became all the more obvious as he pushed it back. “He’s not here. We’ll come back tomorrow, hope—”

“The evening is still young,” said Lawrence urgently, heart still pounding as panic rose in his chest.

They could not give up, they must continue searching—had they not dedicated enough time on this important task?

“He’s not here,” Alan repeated under his breath as Fred approached. “You need to rest, regain your strength if you are to fight tomorrow—”

“Fight tomorrow? Why not fight now?” asked Fred with a cheerful grin, slapping Lawrence on the back. “You’re not done for, are you?”

Lawrence hesitated. It was true, he could probably fight another bout, though his legs were crying out for relief. Just five minutes to sit down and gather sufficient thoughts to decide—

“And there’s another half a crown in it for you, m’boy,” added Fred as though half a crown would make any difference to a duke.

Lawrence swallowed. Not that anyone here save Alan knew he was a duke, that was—and it had to stay that way.

It was imperative, if they were ever to track down the blighter who had absconded with government secrets, that no one suspected one of the prize fighters in the Almonry Den had been born to nobler things.

Yet what was nobler than serving one’s country?

“I think the boy’s had enough,” Alan was saying.

Bitter irritation rose in Lawrence’s throat. Six months, he had done what he was told. Six months they had spent in this awful place, slowly earning his way up through the boxing backstreets.

Six months waiting for the man they knew frequented this place to return.

He was not going to return home like a fool just because he was tired. Why, the blasted man was likely to turn up at any moment. What if they missed him merely because he retried for the night?

“No.”

Both older men turned to him.

“No?” repeated Alan, a frown on his face.

Lawrence swallowed. He had no wish to upset the man—goodness knows, he had done more than enough in teaching Lawrence to blend with the rabble when his ducal upbringing may have revealed them in a moment—but that did not mean he could order him around.

He was the one who had volunteered for this, he was the one getting his face crushed with each passing day. He was the one whose brother…

“One more bout,” he said to Fred, grasping Alan’s arm to prevent the man from protesting. “Then home.”

A wide smile cracked the face of the referee. “That’s m’boy! I’ve got a special opponent for you, you won’t be disappointed—and neither will they.”

His hand stretched out at the crowd, clearly eagerly anticipating another fight.

Alan sighed heavily as Fred left them. “You’ll wear yourself out.”

“I know what I am doing.”

“I did not say you did not,” he said quietly. “But you’ll never replace him, you know. Finding the blaggard who—”

“I said one more bout, Alan, and then home,” Lawrence interrupted him, heart skipping a beat painfully.

He would not hear his brother spoken of, however obliquely.

“I am here for one purpose and one purpose alone, and that is to bring that man to justice. Nothing else. Nothing will distract me, I promise you. We are close. I can feel it.”

He held the older man’s gaze for a moment, certain they were doing the right thing. Could he not see?

His cover as Lawrence Madgwick would only last so long. Eventually someone from the ton would come here, scandalous as that would be, and the Duke of Penshaw, who everyone believed was on the Continent, would be recognized.

And that would be the end of it. Their chance to find him.

Alan sighed heavily. “I just hope you don’t regret it. I’m going home, my old bones can’t take much more of this.”

Lawrence nodded silently as he watched the old man push past the crowd to the door.

It had been almost impossible these last few days to think of any reason why he should suffer much more punishment. He longed for his return to Society; even a conversation with Lady Romeril would be preferable to the rabble here, and that was saying something.

He smiled wryly to himself. Lord, if he was missing Lady Romeril’s company, he truly was in trouble.

One more bout, then. For tonight.

By the time Lawrence reached the ring, there was already someone inside it. Someone huge.

Lawrence swallowed. The man must be half a head taller than him and almost twice as wide. His shoulders twisted with knotted muscles, and a grin revealed the man had lost several teeth.

“Ready?”

Fred was grinning at the side of the ring. A special opponent, that’s what the referee had called him.

Damn, the man was almost a mountain! How was anyone supposed to—

“Ready,” grunted his new opponent.

Trying to keep his jaw tight, he nodded. Well, it was his own fault. He should have listened to Alan, should have realized that there would be nothing good happening this late in the evening. Why, it must be almost midnight.

But he had made his bed, and now he had to lie in it.

And, he thought dryly, he was most likely to end up lying on his back at the end of this bout. No man alive, surely, could defeat such a man!

“Ready,” Lawrence said.

A cheer went up around the place as Fred stepped out of the ring toward the bell.

Lawrence tried as best he could through exhausted eyes to look along the benches of spectators. The men there—there would be nothing so scandalous as a lady present—were grinning, all eager to see more blood spilled.

Like a gladiatorial ring, Lawrence could not help thinking with a wry smile. Damnation, to think he spent all that time at university studying the classics, yet here he was, getting closer to Roman culture with his fists than he ever had through a book.

Many of the spectators were clutching scraps of paper. Lawrence had to hope they had not bet on him.

The bell rang. The man lunged.

“Come on, Bill!”

Lawrence quickly sidestepped the man, who could more accurately be described as a raging bull, and tried to think. The man was big, heavy, yes? So he should—

A heavy punch hit the side of his face, and Lawrence moaned, staggering in an attempt to keep his balance. Oh, this was a disaster, this was—

Another punch landed on his stomach, threatening to return his luncheon, not that he’d been able to afford much.

To think, when he lived as a duke, there was nothing he could not have on his table.

Now he lived off scraps he could barely afford from the pittance he earned here.

It was a wonder anyone managed to survive.

His cover would be blown at any moment, Lawrence knew that. It would not be long before someone spotted him, connected the tall, dark man with the duke who had been so eagerly anticipated at the beginning of the Season.

And once his cover was gone—

“The side, hit him in the side!”

He would much rather the brute did not hit him in the side, but it appeared he had little choice. Lawrence attempted to shift his feet, unwilling to move so rapidly, and there was nothing he could do to prevent—

“Ahh!”

Lawrence had not intended to cry out, but the man was immense. Stars erupted in his vision as the place swam, people merging and colliding. When it finally resolved—

A face.

Lawrence blinked, trying to see clearly, trying to think through the cheering, jeering, shouts of encouragement and boos from those who had bet against him. His head was spinning and his heart was only slightly sure of what he had seen.

He blinked again, and the crowd came back into focus. One face in that crowd stood out from all the rest.

A woman.

He must be dreaming. Perhaps the knock to the head had caused more damage than he had thought, for it was unbelievable that a woman—

But she was certainly a woman. There was no mistaking the cut of a gown, the delicate bonnet, eyes wide and mouth moving in words Lawrence could not hear.

She was…beautiful.

She was a distraction, Lawrence tried to tell himself as he staggered around the ring in his attempt to avoid the thrusting punches of his opponent.

Not just a distraction from this damned fight he most certainly should not have accepted—Alan had been right, but when was he ever wrong?—but a distraction from his purpose.

He was here to find John Mortimer.

Lawrence blinked. The woman was looking at him, still shouting something he could not hear amongst the chaotic clamors. Her eyes were bright, her face full of concern.

Concern for him.

A most strange yet not unpleasant lurch twisted his stomach. What was she doing here? A boxing ring in the Almonry Den was no place for a lady.

But it was no place for a duke either, and here he was, ostensibly fighting for his life if this swine had his way with him.

Oh, if only they had met elsewhere. If only he had walked past her while promenading on Rotten Row, across a ballroom, at one of Lady Romeril’s dratted card parties.

Then he would have been able to introduce himself with his real name, his title. He could have charmed her so utterly, she would have been crying out for his touch by the end of the evening.

His gaze caught hers, and a rush of desire, the like he had never known, overwhelmed him. To think, all he had to do was wait until the end of the fight and—

Pain. Lights, bright lights. Darkness.

Lawrence was in a great amount of pain, which was strange, because he surely had no body. That he did have one, and every inch hurt, suddenly rushed into his understanding as he shifted from unconsciousness.

“Hell’s bells!”

He had breathed the words; there had been little enough breath in his chest to say much more.

He was lying on the floor of the ring. He could feel the sawdust. There appeared to be a horse stamping on his head.

Lawrence blinked. No horse, but the pain was real. There was little noise, as though the crowd had gone and left him to his own misery. Where was Alan?

A face appeared above his own, one full of concern.

“Alan,” Lawrence breathed.

But not Alan. When he blinked again, trying to concentrate on what was above him, he realized Alan was not that young. Nor that pretty.

Lawrence’s stomach lurched, and the beautiful woman who had been such a delicious distraction came into focus.

“Sorry,” said the woman with a repressed laugh, a mischievous grin across her face that only enhanced the beauty that had been his downfall. “Did I distract you?”