“What?”
“I’ve been drugged,” he muttered. “I’m going to kill him.”
“You can’t fight, then. Damnation, you can barely stand.”
Then he saw Mellie move. Or perhaps that washimmoving and her standing still. He couldn’t tell. She tossed off that ugly cloak—good—and shook out her hair. It was tied back in a simple braid, but that was all that was simple about her.
Her hair shown like auburn fire in the morning light, a perfect complement to the rich green of her gown. Her skin was dewy fresh, and her eyes— Sweet God, her eyes were bright with the sheen of tears. He was sure of it. There was anger in every abrupt slash of her gaze, fury in the way she pushed aside an offered hand before she stepped on her own over the rope to cross to the center of the square. But there were tears in her eyes. A well of sadness that reached to him through his drugged haze.
She hated this. He could see her disdain for the mockery her life had become, and he wanted to take her in his arms and carry her away. He would give her a laboratory filled with all the chemicals she wanted. He would build her a house and furnish it however she liked. And he would give her children. A thousand children if she wanted.
“You better sit down,” said the voice beside him.
“What?”
“You’re giggling.”
“What?” Though it might have come out as a wha—?
“Jesus, what was in that tea?”
Good question. But it didn’t matter. “I’m going to fight.”
“You can’t.”
“For her. I fight. Just…get me to the ring.”
He felt the duke’s supporting arm. Felt the grip of his fingers and the push as he half guided, half carried Trevor to his corner. Then there was the awkwardness of trying to get over or under the rope.
There was a strange roaring in his ears. The wave of an ocean punctuated with bawdy suggestions. It took him a moment to realize that he was hearing the crowd jeering him. He had in mind to give them a rude gesture back, but he needed all his concentration to crawl under the rope without getting sick.
Bloody hell. Maybe he should get sick. That might get the damned poison out of him.
Sadly, there wasn’t time. Things looked like they were getting ready. His love was saying something. She had turned away, and his heart lurched in his chest. This is just what it had felt like when she gave him the cut direct.
His insides had hollowed out, and there was just a yawning emptiness where she had been. An aching hole that expanded and grew with every day that passed without her. He swallowed, feeling the tears threaten to choke him.
“Mellie!” he cried as the darkness threatened to overwhelm him.
She turned at his cry, and he dropped to one knee before her. Then to his horror, he watched as her lip curled in disdain. He looked down at himself, seeing the mud on his pants. He tried to brush it away, but that only smeared it into a disaster.
Never mind. He had to speak. He had to tell her his heart. Whereas words and images flowed through his brain he couldn’t quite form them into words. All he managed was, “Cricket. Beaut. Beuuu. Tt.” Damnation, he couldn’t even say the full word. His mouth wouldn’t form they.
He watched her eyes narrow. The sheen of tears was gone, and now she was a towering goddess of fury.
“Beauuuuttt,” he garbled.
And then he went down. Toppled like a tree. He landed face-first in the mud.
He clutched his staff, trying to use it to lever himself upright. But what before was a too-short stick was now a towering tree of unwieldy wood. All he managed was to roll onto his side so that he could see the fight.
Apparently, his collapse signaled the beginning of the fray. While he was trying to use arms that had gone numb to push himself upright, Ronnie had lifted his own massive stave up to the sky with a roar.
Backlit as he was by the sun and the crowd, the man looked impressive. Like a giant of old with a really big stick. But off in the other corner, the ladies were busy as well. They opened the turkey’s cage door. The bird would likely have just sat there, content in his cage. Turkeys—or even dodos—were not contentious beasts. But Ronnie’s bellow had startled it.
It leaped forward, gobbling and flapping its wings. Eleanor reached for the thing, but she missed, as did the duchess who flung herself forward, succeeding in startling the poor creature even more.
That’s a really big bird, he thought as he lay on the ground watching. Big enough to hurt a man if he were, for example, helpless on the ground.