Chapter Twenty-Seven
The days after Eleanor learned of the fight passed agonizingly slowly, but according to Robert, anticipation was steadily building. It was not often that impromptu matches occurred between London’s champion and one of Edinburgh’s own. Bets were placed. Ballads were composed. The city was tense and poised, waiting.
Eleanor felt like the city—restless, waiting. She barely slept the night before the fight.
And then the morning dawned, cold and gray. Snowflakes drifted as gently as goose down. They caught in Eleanor’s hair and eyelashes before she drew her hood around her face.
Robert muttered something about locking them in their rooms for the next twenty years. Robert, fortunately for his sisters, was too softhearted to ever really contemplate such a thing, no matter how many inappropriate things they did, or how much he grumbled about them.
The fight was in a secluded place, as most prizefights were. They took a carriage to the outskirts of town, and then walked toward a small clearing near a wooded lot. A large crowd had already gathered around a makeshift ring—two ropes stretched along wooden posts—trampling the frosted grass under uncaring boots.
The three siblings worked their way through the throng, and Eleanor’s heart squeezed when she saw James standing by the corner of the ring, his breath fogging with each measured one that he released.
As though he could sense her gaze, he looked up, and then, though everything in her wanted to barrel toward him, she paced across the grass with even, measured clips, because she was not a barrel-er.
Different emotions flitted across his face—longing, worry, desire—none of them winning out completely, and then he was striding toward her, too.
“Eleanor,” he said, when they met halfway. They stopped just short of touching.
“James.” She hadn’t seen him since the day he’d walked away from her, and she suddenly realized that a lack of desire to marry Sarah didn’t necessarily mean he wanted to jump into marriage with Eleanor straightaway. Her throat constricted.
“You came.” He sounded in awe of the fact.
“You asked me to,” she said, more breathlessly than she’d intended. She ruthlessly smoothed her voice. “You didn’t ask Sarah to marry you, then.”
“No.”
“But it was everything you’ve been working toward. You’ve centered your life around the desire to win the hand of Lady Sarah. Or not Lady Sarah, specifically, but a woman who epitomizes what she represents.”
He smiled slightly. “You make me sound like a cur.”
“Well, you are, in a way.”
He laughed, but when he responded, he sounded as serious as she’d ever heard him. “It didn’t seem important.” At her heavy stare, he elaborated. “I was at the ball and I was ready to ask her and I was so sure it was what I wanted, and suddenly, I was thinking of you, and it didn’t seem that important anymore.
“My whole life,” he continued, “my whole life I’ve spent looking ahead. Thinking about how to get ahead. Planning how to achieve my goals, because if I didn’t have plans, what did I have? And then you come along, with your cabinets of insects and your pert tongue, and I thought I would use you. I saw how you would fit into my plans. And then you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Fit,” he exclaimed. “You simply came along and blew everything to pieces without even meaning to. You are gunpowder, Eleanor Townsend.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “It’s not a very romantic metaphor, is it?” She was pleased with it, all the same.
“I’m not very good with romance,” he admitted. “But it’s the truth.” Finally, he touched her, his hands wrapping softly around her elbows. “And this is true, too…Eleanor, I—”
Her heart raced. “Stop.”
He huffed and stared down at her. “Why?”
Because she wanted James to have something extra to strive for. Because she’d seen the Duke of Sheffield in the crowd, and she hoped James could wipe the smirk from his face. She had never been a violent sort of person, but she very much wanted James to beat Thomas Clark into the ground.
“Whatever you’re going to say, tell me after. After you’ve beat him. After you’ve won.”
“Stubborn woman,” he said, but he didn’t press.
Just then, she caught sight of a man who was about the same breadth as James, but an inch or two taller. He smiled at them, a razor-edged, glinting, war cry of a smile, and she saw that two of his teeth were missing. “Is that him?”
“That’s him,” James said.
“He’s…” Terrifying. Intimidating. “Large.”
“Aye. I am, too.”
He rested his chin on the top of her head. She could feel the tautness in him, though he tried to hide it.
“I’ve been reading accounts of other fights.” She’d been trying to prepare herself, though she wasn’t certain that anything could really prepare her, especially when she’d read the accounts of fights that went on for rounds and rounds, hours and hours. Fights where men died.
“I think there should be a limited number of rounds,” she suddenly said. “It seems ludicrous to not have a limit.”
He laughed. “What if no one gave up and both men remained standing? There would be no victor.”
“Judges could decide,” she said.
“Too subjective.”
“It would be safer, though.”
“I’ve done this before,” he said softly. “I know my limits.”
“Are you frightened?” she asked quietly.
“Not for myself. It’s just…no other fight has meant this much. You make things…clearer, but sharper, too.”
She hoped no one was watching, but it didn’t matter if they were. She lunged forward and pressed a hard kiss to his mouth. She savored that kiss, though it was all too brief and a little awkward.
And then she blurted it out anyway, even though she’d been planning to wait. It was like a box filled too full. It simply spilled out, uncontainable.
“I love you,” she said as she backed away quickly.
The feeling was as natural as breathing and saying it was, too. She loved him. She loved his arrogance, and his strength, and the fears he buried deep, and his humor, and his gaudy waistcoats—though she would never, ever admit that last part. He would be too smug about it.
James looked dazed, and happy, and then annoyed. He glared at her. “You said—”
“I know what I said.”
She ducked into the crowd before he could respond.