Chapter 1
LONDON, ENGLAND
Nine Years Later
His opponent had a painfully hard head. West’s knuckles throbbed with each strike against it.
Delighted cheers swirled with insensible jeers as West shook out his hand, flinging away the echoing throb of the lad’s sharp jaw. Unfortunately, Trevor kept his feet and struck back with a hook to the flank. West sidestepped at the last second, the hit only glancing.
Again, Trevor rounded and countered. The punch landed with a dull thud to West’s pectoral. Air burst free from his lungs, then gushed back in with his agonizing gasp.
“Come on! Finish it!” Benedcit Sinclair shouted from West’s corner.
West barely restrained an eye roll. Eamon, “The Hammer,” Trevor hit like his namesake—it wasn’t as though West were toying with the boy for his own amusement.
His chest and jaw throbbed in time with each heartbeat, his joints protesting every move.
Trevor was young and new to the circuit. West had only met him once before—and had barely understood him behind the thick Derry accent. In the ring, he cut a more imposing figure. The boy absorbed hits almost as well as Ben and struck twice as hard. With a bit of training, he’d be unstoppable.
Fortunately for West, the lad hadn’t received it yet.
West held the line and landed a hit to his sternum. He followed it with an uppercut to the nose. The bone gave way with a familiar, sickening crack.
Blood poured in a vile river from the man’s nostrils. West used his distraction to catch the lad around the waist and throw him to the ground with a sickly thud.
That round finished, West left him there as the lad’s cornerman scrambled into the ring to rouse him.
West slumped into his chair and Benedict handed him the nearby jug of water and a towel. “‘Finish it?’ Thank you so much for that helpful bit of advice. How ever would I have managed without you?”
Ben shrugged. “Marriage has made me soft.” West’s oldest friend and former employer wore an irritating, self-satisfied grin.
Glad as West was that his friend had found happiness, he was, perhaps, too happy. West certainly should have chosen a less besotted cornerman.
A copper tang perfumed the air, overwhelming the scents of sweat and stale ale. Trevor’s own cornerman still struggled to rouse his bleeding fighter.
West dragged an exhausted hand over his face, wiping away the sweat. Every inch of him ached after twenty-seven rounds. He hoped desperately the lad would stay down.
“Are you fit for another?” Ben asked, barely audible over the drunken jeers behind them.
“I’m always fit for another.” West shook out his shoulder, turning his wrist in a slow, agonizing circle. He wasn’t lying. His body would certainly withstand more. But, though he would never admit it to his friend, West worried about his spirit.
For more than a year, he’d drifted along from ring to ring on passionless instinct—no longer a lively and determined force. One day, his disinterest would cost him, but it wasn’t likely to be today.
The crowd grew restless and deafening, bloodlust eternally unsatisfied, as seconds ticked away. Trevor’s cornerman had yet to rouse him. Vale was new to the ring too—hadn’t learned to drag his fighter upright as soon as the round finished.
“Time!”
Relief washed over West, his muscles loosening for the first time since he had stepped into the ring.
The crowd was less pleased—shouting obscenities as West stood and helped Vale prop his man upright.
They always wanted more—more sweat, more violence, more bloodshed.
The spectators were ravenous, a never satisfied, all-consuming, amorphous creature—and they called him “The Beast.”
“Weston wins!” the referee called. Benedict shook the man’s hand while West helped Vale drag the still-bleeding, half-conscious Trevor into a chair across the ring. That was the trouble with noses—too much blood.
“You well, lad?” West handed him another towel to trade for the soaked one he had pressed to his face.
“Aye—but I’ll need a doc now in a minute.”
“I’d say so. You fought well. I’ll not want to face you in a year.”
“Maybe two.” The boxer’s grin was crooked, boyish, and too bright for the pain that awaited him after two years in the ring.
Vale finished checking him for other, more severe injuries. “You available for training?” he asked.
“Me? No, I’ve not the temperament for teaching.”
“Don’t need a trainer,” Trevor interjected, accent thick and difficult to parse. “I’m thinking I need a priest. When she sees the state of me, my sister will have my head.”
“I’ll be no help with that,” West said with a laugh.
Across the ring, Ben caught his gaze and tipped his head toward the door.
West sighed and straightened, offered condolences for the loss, then jogged over to join his friend. His joints protested the effort, tightening again.
“Tomorrow’ll hurt something fierce,” he mused aloud as Ben handed him a shirt. He dragged it over his damp shoulders before holding his hand aloft. Ben rolled his eyes before handing over the canvas bag of coins.
“Should charge a finder’s fee. What was it you said? Ten percent?” Ben muttered.
“Five. And you know I’ve never taken it from your purse. Also, I am by far the superior cornerman.”
“I’ve no argument against that. When is your next fight?” Ben held the door for him as they stepped out into the September night. The London air washed over him. Far from refreshing, the pungent scent of manure and refuse made him long for Trevor’s position—unable to smell anything at all.
“Don’t rightly know.” Together, they turned toward West’s rented rooms.
“So you have some time?”
“There’s always training.”
“Have you considered a break?” Ben asked.
Flames danced from the rusting gas lamps in patchy bursts along the pavement as the men continued their stroll.
“What?”
“You’ve been fighting for nearly a decade.
Rest. Come home. The repairs are coming along and the house is finally in a fit state for visitors—you can stay with us.
Eliza is planning some sort of autumn festival—I cannot recall all the details, but it should be diverting.
And you know your parents always miss you. ”
Sincerity was a foreign expression on Benedict, but West detected no false note in his voice. “I shouldn’t—training.”
“I can provide assistance there. Eliza has declared an end to my days in the ring. You’d be doing me a favor—keep me from getting soft.”
“Softer,” West corrected. He had to admit that Ben’s offer presented a temptation. A few months away from the indifferent masses, foul stench, and caustic air was an appealing notion.
“Softer,” Ben agreed. “So?”
“What about—” He didn’t want to say her name.
At the thought of her, his heart gave a little jolt.
It always did. With dark, molten eyes and hair like burnished bronze, Lady Arabella Sinclair haunted his dreams. Each night he studied the golden freckles dotting the bridge of her nose, private constellations just for him, though he never found the same number twice. His memory was too imperfect.
“My sister still lives there, yes,” Ben quipped. It wasn’t surprising that he undertook West’s meaning, but it was irritating.
West shot his friend an unimpressed look. “This offer— Does she know you’re making it?”
“I thought you two had reached a truce.”
West sighed. He had relived the events of last summer, of that horrific night, in his worst nightmares for weeks afterward. And once a fortnight thereafter. The sickening sensation of Bella’s limp hand in his refused to abate—neither time, nor drink, nor violence had washed it away.
“When mortal peril was involved, yes.”
“And now?”
“Now… Ask your sister.”
“Bella will be fine. She survived a fortnight in your presence with nary a complaint.”
“Oh, there was a great deal of complaining.”
Ben’s lip quirked upward. “Think about it. You’re always welcome. Eliza would love to host you. And you know your mother worries about you.”
At last, they reached West’s apartments. The narrow brick building, tucked against the commotion and filth of the docks, wore decades of soot like paint.
Ben stared at the formerly red door before turning back to West. “Are you certain you do not wish to stay with us at Dalton Place?”
“This is my home.”
“Is it?”
West grumbled, only half in jest, “Go. See to your wife.”
A foolish grin overtook Ben’s face, and he left West with a cheerful wave—already distracted by thoughts of the warm, sweet woman waiting for him all the way in Grosvenor’s Square.
West’s door required a delicate touch. While twisting and lifting the knob, he kicked it on the hinged corner. It opened with minimal complaint.
Mucky, fishy-smelling boots lined the hall in disorderly pairs in front of each door. The staircase creaked in greeting as West started up. His knees twinged—though less than the rest of him—as he navigated the three floors to his scarred oak door.
Inside, he toed off his boots before flopping onto the bed. The ancient iron frame groaned under his weight. Dull light flickered along the stark walls; the lamps outside hardly dared penetrate his dingy window, casting half-hearted shadows.
West flexed his stiff fingers, already swelling from the day’s work.
With a dramatic grunt that no one save the rat that lived in the wall could appreciate, West sat upright and reached for the chest he kept beside the bed.
He set the unlit candle that lived atop it onto the floor before tipping the lid up.
He shuffled past his meager clothing for the arnica salve his mam sent religiously.
Once he located the box of tinctures, with its amber grain and brass hardware, he opened it to find his meager treasures. The jar of salve he set on the bed, distracted by the other contents.
He’d nearly worn the nape off the russet velvet ribbon from running it between his thumb and forefinger.
For years, he naively thought he’d rid himself of the habit.
For years, the fabric had lived untouched, gathering dust inside this box.
But then Bella had crashed back into his life sixteen months ago.
And once again his fingers felt empty without the worn silk and its scant piling.
The last item was newer. A morbid remnant of the wretched hours when he’d held her slack, cool hand against his cheek and prayed to the god he believed in and several he didn’t for good measure.
Inky black at the shaft before it twisted into a fiery orange and finally a blazing yellow—her feather from the masquerade ball.
That night, Bella had been reborn as a phoenix. Blazing plumes fluttered along her graceful frame. With every breath, she shimmered and smoldered, flames licking along her graceful curves.
West had yet to decide which was the worst night of his life: the one where he stole his ribbon, or the one where she dropped his feather.
He made a living of violence. At least six times a year, he dragged his body through round after round of bone-shattering brutality. But when it really counted, when Bella needed him, he’d failed her.
Twice.
And he was about to fail her again. Because the temptation Ben presented was too great.
It was a truth fundamental to his being—Miles Weston had never been able to stay away from Arabella Sinclair. No matter how hard he tried.