Nathaniel shook his head, bitterness biting into him. “He delivered a missive to my father days later, saying he would only return me in exchange for one of two things—admitting to the world that he was in love with a man or leaving his wife so they could be together. I’d never seen someone so absorbed with wanting another person to the point of delusion. Casacalenda demanded my father’s decision even be delivered in person. So I sat with my hands bound beside Casacalenda in a carriage off Broadway, waiting for my father to show and fighting the terror of being kept by a man whose final moves I couldn’t predict. I knew my father would give in to whatever Casacalenda wanted. I was his heir. His pride. His only son.”
Nathaniel swallowed and threw back his head, sending the towel swaying against his shoulders. “But my father never showed,” he choked out. “It was as equally crushing to Casacalenda as it was for me. I couldn’t believe it. And neither could Casacalenda. My father abandoned us both to protect his name and didn’t even inform the authorities of the missive lest it be discovered he was a sodomite. Casacalenda was so overwhelmed and distraught, he locked me in a cellar and told me he needed time to think about what would happen next. That time turned into five fucking years because he knew I was all he would ever have of my father. He also knew that if he let me go back, my father could hurt me, given what I knew about them and their relationship. So in the end, a complete stranger cared more for me than my own father. In the end—” Tears overwhelmed him. He squeezed his eyes shut and couldn’t say anything more, lest his voice crack.
One foot then another splashed into the water outside each of his naked thighs in the tub, startling him into opening his eyes as Imogene climbed in and lifted the front of the towel from his face, forcing him to look up at her. She lowered herself into the water, her nightdress floating up to her waist as if nothing mattered in that moment but him. She gently cradled his face with soft hands, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. “Why did you not return to your family?” she whispered brokenly. “Even after you were grown and able to protect yourself?”
“If I had returned,” he whispered back, “I would have cast a shadow on everyone and everything. Sodomy is a hanging offence and society would have brutally ostracized my sister and my mother if so much as a whisper of it touched the ears of anyone. I also genuinely feared I would kill my father, given all the anger I had toward him. I had it in me to do it. Which is why I…stayed away. I thought it best.”
She searched his face, still cradling his face in her hands. “I love you. I love you even more knowing that you put your family before yourself. You give me strength and pride to be your wife. Do you know that?”
Nathaniel’s breath burned in his throat as he grabbed her face and tugged her down against his nakedness, biting past the pain throbbing in his bruised body. He savagely held her against himself, feeling as if the greatest weight had been lifted not from his shoulders but his life. “Say it again,” he whispered. “I need you to say that you love me again.”
She pressed her cheek against his chest. “I love you. Endlessly. Hopelessly. And I will say it every moment of my life in any way I can.”
Unable to restrain all the pent-up emotions within him, and feeling as though he would burst if he didn’t show her just how savagely in love with her he was, he lifted her head and kissed her hard on the mouth. Parting her lips with his own, he made love to her mouth with his tongue, giving in to everything she was. His cock grew heavy and thick as it pressed against her wet thighs and nightdress.
She slid a hand between them and, shifting his length toward herself, she slid down firmly to the hilt of his cock. He gasped against her mouth in disbelief as she rode him hard, sending the warm water around them swaying.
All he could do was take it.
She was in complete control.
She broke away from their kiss and held on to the sides of the tub, working against him faster, her nightdress soaked and sheer. “You trust me now. My hands will remain unbound from this moment on. Do you understand?”
Gone was the shy soul he had first met.
Imogene, his Imogene, was all woman now.
And she was his.
“I understand. Completely.” He did, and he was astounded as to how little her unbound hands affected him. Grabbing her waist, he let her ride his length, the pleasure surpassing whatever pain his tortured body had endured during the fight. Gritting his teeth, he focused on not letting go of his pleasure until she had found hers.
Between ragged breaths and hip thrusts, he urged her on, sensations heightening and coiling within him as she moved against him faster. Water lifted and sprayed out of the tub, leaving less and less water around them.
She threw back her head and cried out, trying to keep herself upright as she clamped down against him.
His seed spurted inside her warmth as he spiraled into oblivion. It was so blindingly intense he couldn’t even groan past the pulsing of his pleasure that erased every last bruise, scrape, gash and welt on his body. He sank down into the water, letting it dip against his chin, and closed his eyes, reveling in the ultimate bliss of knowing she loved him.
She slowly bent down toward him. Her wet lips kissed his forehead several times.
He smiled but didn’t move or open his eyes. Everything was perfect in that moment. Nothing existed but her and him and perfection.
“Nathaniel?” she said in between soft kisses.
“Mmm?” He still didn’t move or open his eyes.
“You are going to be a father.”
His eyes flew open and his heart popped right along with the rest of him. He scrambled to sit up, sending more water splashing everywhere, and winced at overextending his muscles. He grabbed her waist to balance her and frantically searched her flushed face and bright hazel eyes. “Me? A father?”
She bit her lip and nodded. “I have known a small while.”
An astounded half laugh escaped him, knowing he was going to have a family of his own. “Jesus Christ. I don’t know what to say. I—” He grabbed her face and kissed her not once, not twice, but five times. He released her and lifted her nightdress, setting a hand to her bare stomach, which barely showed there was a babe nestling within. He glanced up at her, still holding his hand against her belly. “You should be resting. No more walking. No more sex. No more anything for you. You will damn well stay in bed until the baby comes.”
She rolled her eyes and stood, letting her soaked nightdress flop to her thighs. “Let us not overreact.” She carefully climbed out of the tub, casually stripped her nightdress from her body and wrapped a towel around herself. “We need to sleep and call on your mother in the morning. ’Tis fairly obvious she needs to see you.”
Nathaniel watched as she pattered toward the door, opened it and disappeared into the adjoining bedchamber.
Staring after her, a shaky breath escaped him. He was going to be a father. A man who was going to hold a child he helped create and guide through every breath and life. Regardless of what tomorrow brought, nothing was ever going to take this moment away from him. He would ensure he became everything to that babe. And everything to Imogene, his sweet Imogene who carried their child.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Earl, from his great propensity to larking, kicked up innumerable rows (among which, the coffin scene will long be remembered).
—P. Egan, Boxiana (1823)
Sumner House
Late morning
“ARE YOU CERTAIN she wanted us to call?” Nathaniel insisted.
Imogene glanced toward him, adjusting her reticule from one gloved hand to the other. “Yes.”
“How odd.” After twisting the calling bell for the fifth time and lingering beside Imogene outside the entrance, the door suddenly swung open with a frantic shout, startling them both.
Wilkinson stumbled toward them, his livery and aged face smeared with copious amounts of blood.
Nathaniel’s eyes widened as he sucked in a breath and jumped before I
mogene, trying to shield her from seeing any of it. “Holy fuck!” he roared. “What in God’s name is—”
“Lady Sumner!” Wilkinson choked out, his gaze darting back toward the stairwell, where a group of panicked servants lingered. “She sliced his lordship’s throat whilst he was still sleeping this morning. The authorities are coming and none of us are able to get her to leave the room or the body.”
Dearest God. Nathaniel shoved past Wilkinson and darted into the house. “Where is she?” he yelled.
“Up the stairs to the right!” Wilkinson yelled back. “The last door!”
Nathaniel sprinted up the stairs. Jumping onto the landing, he dashed in a blurring pump of limbs until he skidded to a halt before the last door.
“Nathaniel!” Imogene shouted after him, surprisingly already on the landing, hurrying after him.
The door leading into his father’s bedchamber was half-open. A woman wailed from within, though no other sound came.
His mother was in there.
With his dead father.
“Nathaniel!” Imogene called out, running toward him.
He snapped out a hand. “Stay there! Don’t you dare come any closer!”
She jerked to a halt and froze, her eyes wide.
Nathaniel pushed the door farther open and almost staggered as the heavy, acrid smell of blood filled his nostrils.
His limbs grew numb as his eyes darted to the four-poster bed. His father lay sprawled against the twisted, blood-soaked linens, staring lifelessly up at the ceiling, the flesh of his throat jaggedly hanging wide-open.
A bloodied razor was still in his mother’s hand as she lay in a crumpled heap beside the bed with her face pressed against the wooden floor. She wailed, rocking against the floor.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Rushing toward her, Nathaniel’s booted feet slid. He caught himself and looked down, his heart thundering within his ears as he stared at the floor around him in disbelief. Thick, dark pools of blood smeared parts of the wooden floor.
Nausea gripped him and the room momentarily blurred and swayed. He scrambled down to the floor toward his mother and loosened the razor from her shaky fingers. Flinging it across the room, he gripped her shoulders and lifted her slowly toward himself and off the floor.
“It is you,” she wailed, her ruined face, which Imogene had warned him about, twisting in agony. “I knew it was you.” Her blood-smeared hands jumped and touched his face, tugging him close. “He told me last night. Knowing you were coming, and that I meant to embrace you, he…he told me. He told me how he never truly loved me and only ever loved that…that…man! How he—” She sobbed and shook Nathaniel roughly. “Say that he deserved to die for all that he did. Say it!” she screamed.
His breath froze in his throat and his chest tightened. He savagely held his mother against himself, burying his face into her grey hair. Hair that had been completely blond when he had last seen it. His poor, poor mother. “Shhhhhh. Shhhhhh.” It was all he could manage.
How could he blame her? He’d wanted to do it himself so many goddamn times. He would have done it, too, had it not been for his nephew, who had made him see that it wouldn’t change anything. He only prayed she didn’t hang for this. God, how he prayed. For he’d already lost Auggie and wasn’t about to lose his mother.
* * *
LADY SUMNER HAD succumbed to a form of apoplexy and quietly passed long before the King’s Bench could even announce a verdict pertaining to the murder of Lord Sumner.
No one, not even Nathaniel, had expected Lady Sumner to live due to her frail physical state and her equally frail mind. And though it was not the ending Nathaniel had hoped for, he felt genuinely blessed that he had been able to spend every last moment, up until her last breath was taken, at his mother’s side.
Nathaniel and Imogene set aside training for the championship, which was beginning to loom, and silently rode out to the church to visit the family crypt, where his mother, his father and his sister had all been buried with generations of Sumners past.
Having to bury his entire family all at once was more than Nathaniel was ready to swallow. It was also the first time he had come face-to-face with his sister’s crypt.
Below her full name were words that had been scribed by the duke himself, who’d had them carefully etched into the smooth stone. It read:
This lovely bud so beautiful, so fair, called hence by unjust doom, came to show how sweet a flower in paradise could bloom.
Setting both hands against the name of his sister, Nathaniel stumbled down to his knees and choked on the tears he could no longer hide or hold. “Auggie,” he choked out. “Ensure Mother is loved in the way she never was by our father. Ensure it.”
A gloved hand gently smoothed his head. Imogene tilted him lovingly toward herself, cradling him against her corseted waist.
Nathaniel embraced Imogene by the waist, whilst still kneeling on the stone slab of the church. Knowing he was free to be himself, and that it was only him and Imogene and their babe that she carried within her womb, he cried. He cried for the years he had lost with his sister. He cried for the years he had lost with his mother. He cried at not having the chance to have shared in their lives the way he would have wanted to. But most of all, he cried knowing he would never be able to be with either of them again. They were gone. Forever.
Whilst Imogene rocked him against herself in the silence of the church, where candles flickered in glass sconces against marble walls, a renewed sense of hope seized him. He couldn’t ever get Auggie or his mother back, but he could make them proud. He could create the family they had never had.
Releasing Imogene, Nathaniel swiped at his face with trembling hands and staggered up to booted feet. He stared at his sister’s name. “I will read everything you wrote,” he choked out. “You will be remembered. Always.”
A bird interrupted his words, startling him as it landed perfectly atop the crypt within the church. It peered down at him, shifting its grey head from side to side.
He stared up at it, astounded that a bird had found its way into the confines of the church whose doors had all been closed. He felt as if that bird had been sent by Auggie herself.
“It’s her,” Imogene whispered, as if sensing it, too. Imogene gently slipped her fingers into his hand.
He swallowed, tightening his hold on her hand.
The bird lingered, chirping softly down at him. With the quick spread of its grey-feathered wings it darted past and swooped up toward the vast arches of the church where the stained glass filtered in the afternoon sun.
A shaky breath escaped him as he watched it fly off.
Imogene lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it gently, her tears smearing against his hand.
He’d never felt so loved.
* * *
EVERY WEEK THEREAFTER, in between training sessions that brought him closer to the set date of the championship fight, Nathaniel and Imogene would linger before his mother’s and his sister’s crypt. He would pull out his sister’s diary and read from it aloud, determined to unveil the sister he had never had the honor of knowing the way he had wanted to.
He found himself surprisingly stronger after all that had come to pass and was actually able to read his sister’s words aloud without breaking down. With a voice he was able to keep steady and calm, he read endless passages dedicated to him and life and love, whilst Imogene reassuringly held his hand and lingered beside him in silence before the crypt. There were times he felt as if Augustine were there with him, holding his other hand.
His sister had been a person of wit, humor, compassion and intelligence. Though there were touches of bitterness that sliced their way through her perfection.
It was like being able to listen to his sister speak when he read passages. By far, his favorite of Augustine’s words were the ones Imogene had squeezed his hand upon first hearing. “There are no guarantees. Only…possibilities. And that, I will admit, is more than enough for me.”
It was a mott
o he vowed to live by in honor of his sister and in honor of his Imogene, who now carried his child. His Imogene, who had tenderly held him and his hand through the best of times and the worst of times, whilst proving to him that love, sweet love, was not a mere moment but…every moment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
No men are subject more to the caprice or changes of fortune than the pugilists; victory brings them fame, riches and patrons; their bruises are not heeded in the smiles of success; and, basking in the sunshine of prosperity, their lives pass on pleasantly.
—P. Egan, Boxiana (1823)
The Championship
Friday, 7:45 p.m.
A WOMAN HAD to do what a woman had to do. Be she pregnant or not. Besides, the evening coat Imogene wore perfectly hid everything. In fact, she rather liked male clothing. It was surprisingly comfortable.
Yardley, the duke and her brother, Henry, all dubiously stared her down from the other side of the darkened carriage where they sat shoulder to shoulder.
“The man is going to kill us,” Henry insisted as the carriage pulled up alongside the torch-lit courtyard leading to the crowded male masses beyond.
“It’s dark enough to mask my face. He won’t see me in the crowds.” Imogene gestured toward her evening coat, waistcoat and the trousers she’d had specifically tailored for her well before the event. “I’ll also have you know, I look incredibly convincing. I paid the tailor well beyond what he usually gets paid.”
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