SUE LONDON
For all the ones who have to fight. Remember that some things are worth fighting for. And against.
THE ENCHANTED CAVE
CHAPTER ONE
London, 1811
If there was one thing Baron Galen Mornay prided himself on, it was not inserting himself in the affairs of his friends. If they chose to be idiots, which they often did, then it was no business of his. Unless, of course, one of them managed to do great harm to himself, in which case Galen always came to their rescue. It was, considering his dour demeanor, disinclination for frivolity, and general roughness, probably the only reason he had any friends whatsoever. He often did such rescues without his friends having any idea where he had gained the information that they needed help, be it bailing them out, sending them funds, or simply arriving with a fine bottle, sympathetic ear, and characteristic practical advice. Because of his mysterious knowledge, they had taken to teasing him that the fairies whispered in his ears at night. Well, if Cyprians were fairies, then that was precisely the truth. He had a way with the ladybirds, and they seemed more than happy to keep him informed about the goings on of his wayward cadre.
The friends had all met in school, of course. Collectively, they had been known as the Mad Clan, and they had been a source of trouble since they were in short pants. Finn, their undoubted leader, had the sort of joie de vive and golden looks that made you think God Himself had touched the boy on the brow to give him all the blessings of this life. In short, precisely the sort of man that Galen would hate if he didn't love Finn so much. If Finn were all that was light and hopeful in this world, Galen was all that was dark and sour. But like the sun and moon they seemed destined forever to circle life together in an odd but predictable rhythm. Their other friends were the foul-mouthed but always entertaining Conan, poetic and lively Oscar, and quiet, loyal Bran.
Now, however, it seemed the four fools had taken up with some women at the Enchanted Cave, the latest establishment catering to the craven interest in lady boxing. Galen never had a taste for violence in general, much less the idea women going at fisticuffs. What was the point in having them mar their sweet little faces? A man might have need to know how to fight, but never a lady. It was in no way a sport, and was therefore a ludicrous display. Be that as it may, on this fine summer evening he strolled into the den his friends had been frequenting to find out precisely what they were about. The front room was better appointed than he expected, if rife with the typical false richness of whores. One of the ladybirds strolled over to him, intrigued, no doubt, by this new and apparently rich mark. He smiled at her, even though her flame colored hair and rouged cheeks weren’t to his taste.
“I’ve heard that the Irish Sisters are fighting tonight,” he said companionably, winking at her for good measure.
“Have you heard that, now?” she asked in a teasing tone, her Irish lilt unmistakable. He wouldn’t bet so much as a quid on the accent being authentic. If there was one thing that women in her profession excelled at, it was reinventing themselves to take advantage of a man’s interests. But there was nothing wrong with a little reinvention from time to time.
“I have heard it. What else can you tell me?”
“Oh, lovey, I have all sorts of things to tell you.” She smiled at him seductively.
* * * *
Maeve O'Malley knew two things in this life. First, there was very little worth crying over. Second, the only thing that did matter were the people who cared enough about you that they risked for you, and you risked for them. That second was why she was looking out for her ‘sisters’ here at the Enchanted Cave. She might be the youngest, but she also knew she was the strongest. Not only in body, but in spirit. It was a blessed thing, this strength, because right this moment Bridget’s caterwauling was testing the very limits of it.
“There, there,” Maeve said soothingly, patting her friend on the shoulder. “He didn’t mean a bit of it.”
Some of the girls were fortunate enough to have the sort of coloring to make their crying a pretty thing, but Bridget was much like Maeve herself. Pale enough that even a few minutes led to red eyes and splotchy skin. “He s-said I was u-ugly.”
“He’s just trying to get your goat, you ninny. If he thought such a thing he wouldn’t have been carrying on with you these last few weeks, now would he?” Maeve tried not to be judgmental about the girls who chose to fatten their pockets even more by plying the world’s oldest trade. As a good girl she sent up extra prayers for them, because the Lord had to love everyone, even those with the weakest of moral fortitude. And truly, she must be grateful to them. Her youth and plucky resolve made them coddle her like the little sister they never had, and that meant they protected her from men she wished to avoid. Which meant, well, all of them. And she knew that if it weren’t for her sisters, and the chance to fight in the ring, Maeve might have been reduced to selling her body for food. She’d like to think she would rather starve, but she had seen starvation. It wasn’t something that one wanted to face if there were an alternative. Any alternative. Tonight she would say an extra prayer over her rosary thanking the Good Lord and the Virgin Mary that she had never been forced to make such a choice.
Bridget’s sniffs of misery brought Maeve’s attention back to the present. It wouldn’t do to tell the woman that Conan Morland was a good for nothing lordling who would never do right by her anyway. Maeve had spent enough time here to see that any such advice only led to the ladybird defending her current beau. Not that any of their admirers deserved one scrap of sympathy, much less defense. Men who would dally among those they saw inferior to themselves, who would take advantage of a woman's precarious fortunes, would never have any sympathy from Maeve O'Malley. Not an ounce of it.
THE ENCHANTED CAVE
CHAPTER TWO
His curvaceous escort took Galen to an open courtyard where gentlemen and ladybirds strolled and lounged. The center of the space was being prepared for the evening's entertainment and Galen surveyed the scene, quickly finding what he sought. With the red-haired flirt on his arm, he ambled over to where three gentlemen had secured plum seating in the corner before the event began. Oscar was the first to spot him and poked Conan, who was lounging by himself. The dark scoundrel was glowering, but his countenance lightened a bit upon seeing Galen.
“Where have you been keeping yourself, you whoreson?”
Typical Conan. For him that was tantamount to admitting he missed you. “Hiding from your ugly face, obviously,” Galen responded dryly.
“You two need to stop sending each other love letters,” Oscar quipped. Bran simply stood to shake Galen's hand.
There was a delightful familiarity in spending time with men one knew so well. Galen couldn't predict precisely what they would do or say, but he knew what pattern the interaction would follow. The five friends had known each other so long that they were like a Swiss watch piece.
“Where's Finn?” he asked.
Conan tossed his head to indicate the upper floor of the house. “Mooning over that O'Malley girl, no doubt.” His gaze settled on the girl still draped on Galen's arm. “He'd be better off availing himself of a more accommodating gel.”
“Where is your accommodating gel?” Galen asked.
While Conan curled his lip, Oscar answered for him. “Not being so accommodating.”
“Finally got a good look at you, did she?”
Conan scowled. “A fine comment from a man who looks like his face saw the backside of a boot.”
“Or perhaps his face looks more like the backside of a boot,” Oscar suggested helpfully.
Galen laughed and looked at the ladybird on his arm. “Could you cheer my sourpuss of a friend for a bit? Certainly your charms could make him see the world in a more charitable way.”
As it was hardly trading down to accompany his handsome, richly dressed friend, she sauntered over to curl herself into Conan's lap. Seeing that his friends were well entertained as the courtyard began filling with even
more people, Galen nodded to them and set out to find Finn.
* * * *
Maeve slipped out to let Bridget pull herself together before her turn in the ring, and ran straight into the last person she wanted to see. The rich, overconfident, golden-haired Lord Cole leaned a shoulder on the wall and gave her that smile that most probably found charming, but it made her grate her teeth. He was tall, easily half a head over her own statuesque height.
“I was afraid I'd missed you,” he said.
He'd taken to seeking her out before the fights, ostensibly to give her boxing advice that, she would grudgingly admit, was quite good. But she knew he hoped to be her lover, and the more she resisted the more determined he became. Typically, her sisters lured such men away, but this lordling's coterie of fellow noblemen had proven an effective distraction. Each of the sisters was hesitant to release the attention of the one they had snagged, especially as Cole had seemed immune to their attempts at flirting. Margie had once even gone so far as to tell Maeve that it wouldn't be so bad to have a lover and protector from the ton, a suggestion that Maeve had scolded, offering to say extra prayers for Margie's soul. In desperation Maeve had even offered up prayers on Lord Cole's account, in the hopes that the good Lord Himself would turn the man's attention away from low thoughts. No such luck as yet, it would seem.
“Bridget isn't feeling well,” she finally said tightly.
He reached out to smooth a curl of hair back from her cheek and it took some effort on her part not to bat his hand away and scrub at her skin. He wasn't, in her experience of men, a bad man. Not at all. But she didn't want his attentions. Didn't want him focused on her with such interest and intensity. It was irritating and, she could admit it, a bit frightening. He was the sort of man that had the power to take what he wanted. She had yet to outright rebuke him because she felt quite certain that the proprietors of the Enchanted Cave, William and Louella Cage, wouldn't want to run afoul of him. As their prize attraction Maeve had some leeway, but not enough to offend a member of the nobility, she was sure.
Maeve heard a creak on the floorboards behind her but thought the greatest danger was Lord Cole standing too close and was loathe to take her eyes off of him. Something she regretted when she was drawn into a side embrace by another tall man as Lord Cole's eyes lit with mirth.
“Galen, you cagey bastard, when did you get here?” Cole's tone was filled with the same genial humor he showed with his other friends, but Maeve had certainly not heard the name Galen before. Cole clapped the man's shoulder companionably as Maeve turned her head to look up at him.
Craggy was the first word that came to mind for her. His face could have been made from the shale cliffs back home in Ireland, all angles and planes that somehow formed together in a way more handsome than they ought. The smile he returned to Cole looked more a smirk. His dark hair was tidy, not in style with fashion, but a single lock curled on his forehead like it had escaped his notice. “Just a bit ago,” he responded. “I take it this is our main attraction?”
He spoke about her without looking at her. That irritated her no end and she bit out, “For Lord Cole, certainly.”
Her venom surprised a laugh from Cole and finally garnered the attention, and raised eyebrows, of his friend.
“Don't bait her,” Cole said with a chuckle. “She might give you a black eye.”
“At least she could reach my eye, I'll give her that.” He took a half-step away, inspecting her form and holding her hand up to examine.
“I'm not a horse for sale!”
“Obviously not,” he returned coolly, addressing her for the first time. “But as my friends have had such luck here, I thought it a good place to start in searching for my mistress.”
“Oh-ho!” Cole said. “You plan to settle down enough to focus on just one ladybird, do you? Have you considered marriage? It might be, on the whole, less expensive.”
“Marriage is not something to be entered into lightly,” his friend responded, with a tone that made Maeve suspect that he meant more than he said.
“Well, if you think to make time with me, marriage it will be,” she announced. Picking up her skirts she beat a hasty retreat. Giving the set down to the lord's outrageous friend seemed safer than giving it to the lord himself, but now her requirements had been clearly stated. Not that she expected a lordling to lower himself to marry an Irish commoner. But that suited her just fine.
THE ENCHANTED CAVE
CHAPTER THREE
Galen watched the focus of Finn's attention sweep away in righteous indignation.
“Charming as ever, I see,” Finn jibed.
“I don't know what you see in her,” Galen lied. The girl was pretty, with golden curls that resisted the pins keeping it in a modest chignon, and possessed of a fiery spirit. Were he truly in the market for a mistress she was precisely the sort he would choose. Someone with enough independence of spirit to keep things interesting. Finn had always loved a challenge, in fact hated things that came too easily, which was almost everything for him, so it made sense that the girl had attracted, and kept, his attention. That meant, however, it would be even harder to distract his friend from this challenge before he did something mad like marry the girl. Galen's tactic to lure the women away with promises of wealth and security had, as yet, not worked as well as he expected.
Before he could say anything else another girl popped out of a nearby room. She squeaked as though she hadn't expected to find them, and then fluttered her lashes at Finn. “Oh, Lord Cole,” she purred with a mild Irish lilt, “I didn't know you were here.”
Galen would bet every strawberry blond lock on that girl's head that she knew precisely who she would encounter in the hallway. Finn merely nodded at her politely, “Bridget.”
Judging her chances with Finn to be slim, she shifted her attention to Galen. “Who is your friend?”
Finn finally pushed away from the wall. “You don't recognize Lord Mornay? Well, that's probably because Galen hardly leaves his house anymore. But now he says he's in the market for a mistress.”
Galen glowered at his friend. Putting together a title and secure position in the same breath for the girl was tantamount to tying a side of beef to him before tossing him into a pack of hounds. “I wish to meet the fighting Irish Sisters who have brought fame to this place.”
“Oh,” Bridget cooed, “I'm one of them, lovey.”
As she laced her arm through Galen's to lead him downstairs Finn said, “Careful, now. She's been Conan's favorite.”
“They had a disagreement earlier, I believe.” He smiled down at the simpering girl. “And I don't blame her one bit.”
She leaned her head on his arm as though he were her conquering hero. Women. So predictable. If he didn't have them turning on each other and more importantly the rest of the Mad Clan within a fortnight, he would be shocked. Her hand squeezed his arm to test his muscles. Make that less than a fortnight.
* * * *
Maeve tried not to let the day interrupt her usual preparations. She used her washbasin to clean her face and arms, and then knelt to pray. She had been raised Catholic. Her religion was not really accepted here, and she stayed as quiet about it as she could, but she could never desert it as the other Irish girls at the Cave had done. Two of her 'sisters' in the ring were, in fact, Irish. The others made claim to some heritage, but who could know? It didn't matter to them; it was all an act for money. To Maeve it mattered terribly much. Her heritage, her religion—they defined her. Without them she would be nothing, care about nothing. For her, everything else was a means to an end. She'd had to leave Ireland to seek the promise of work. She sent her pence home as she was able, to help sustain her mum and da. She had yet to figure quite how she could ever go home. But she would not give up hope. She repeated 1 Corinthians 13:13 to herself again, as she often did. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. She loved her family and she would find a way to return to them, and better yet to help
them.
The face of Lord Cole's friend rose unbidden in her mind. He was annoying, that one. She reassured herself that it was just how he reminded her of the cliffs back home that she thought of him. Not the warmth of his side when he so outrageously grabbed her before they had even met. Not that they had met, as such. She knew his name was Galen because Lord Cole had called him that. When she had first come to London she would have been mortified to be grabbed in such an unseemly way. She was a good girl and not used to untoward displays.
Her time at the Cave had changed her a bit. She no longer blushed furiously when men made overtures, or when she happened upon a couple kissing. She avoided those things to the extent that she could, but it was simply part of her landscape now. She'd had a limited set of skills and had been lucky that brawling was one of them, and that she'd happened upon the Cave shortly after it had opened. Willy Cage had sparred with her himself that first day, to find out what she was about. She had laid him out in under a minute. For a moment she had been terrified that she'd ruined her prospects, then he had popped up off the floor with the widest grin and a split lip. Truly, she'd never seen a man so happy to be pummeled. After demonstrating against his house girls that her prowess had not just been luck, he'd signed her on. They'd taught her how to fight more for display than competition, making sure to keep too many injuries from pretty faces. Her dominance in the ring, and popularity outside of it, meant that she was able to insist on terms. She was not required to entertain the men who came to the club. She was not required to strip to the waist for the fights. Willy and Louella, clever business people that they were, let go any girls who complained about Maeve's vaunted position and retained those who were happy riding her coattails. Thus why they had created the 'sisters' and played to a packed house every week. Now Willy Cage was obsessed with the idea of Maeve learning the sword, just like Lady Bare-Knuckles herself, Elizabeth Stokes. It had been nigh on a hundred years since Stokes had dazzled London with her fighting prowess, but Willy talked about it like it had been yesterday. Although Maeve studied diligently, it would be some time before she was comfortable using a sword in the ring.
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