Page 14 of The Lost Lord
Her words stabbed through him.
“Legally, you are Arthur’s family, as is your child.” Richard winced as one blow landed on his solar plexus. He caught Lizzie’s fist in his as an icy calm descended over him. The past few days had been clarifying. He could see now the depths of Lizzie’s ambition and lack of remorse for the damage she left in her wake. Yet, Lizzie was the woman he deserved. Every single step he’d taken in his life had led Richard to this moment—blackmailed into seducing an unsuspecting woman so he could help himself to her fortune.
Lizzie wrenched free of his hold, bringing him back to the present. Richard let her go. She reared back and decked him so hard and so abruptly that Richard bit his tongue. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Richard touched the spot and found red glistening on his fingertips.
He spat.
She stood there fuming and shaking her hand. “Ow.”
Richard grinned as red streaked down his chin and dripped onto his shirt.
“I like Miriam. I do believe I might woo her in earnest,” he declared. Miriam Walsh was a million times more appealing than the past paramour he couldn’t rid himself of. “She seems like a woman worth falling in love with.”
Richard stared hard at Lizzie until she backed up a step, one eye wide, the other swelling shut. “You’re cracked,” Lizzie declared, still rubbing her knuckles. “Miriam would never be stupid enough to fall in love with a penniless fraud like yourself. Not for real. She’s brilliant. She invests in the stock market under an assumed name. She has thousands of dollars of her own, as if being her father’s sole heir weren’t good fortune enough. I doubt she’d care if you passed me a sizable amount to pay for the baby we share.”
She blinked like a basilisk, a sure sign she was lying about something. But which part of her statement, Richard wondered?
“I pray you’re right, Elizabeth Van Buren. Because if Miriam is foolish enough to let me into her heart, I intend to marry her. Should a wedding come to pass, I’ll support you and our bastard. I know exactly what you’re capable of, Lizzie. Don’t force me to take the child from you.”
As though Richard knew what to do with an infant, beyond hiring a nursemaid.
“You wouldn’t take the baby from his mother,” she whispered.
“Yes, I would. If your husband succeeds in winning his annulment, of course I would. You cannot support the child alone.”
Richard felt no compunction about putting Lizzie on notice. It had necessitated his reaching the bottom of the sea of despair, but now that Richard had kicked off the bottom, he had nowhere to go but upward. Toward light. Seeking air. For the little creature he’d sired, he was determined to do the right thing starting now.
Lizzie wheeled and slammed out the door of his shabby little cabin.
“Goodbye, Lizzie,” Richard called after her, mocking.
He was free at last. Blessedly free of bad coffee, whining manipulations, and the miasma of scandal that followed Lizzie wherever she went. Richard slept more soundly that night than he had in years.
His peace was not to last. Shortly after dawn Richard awoke to pounding on his cabin door.
“Open up, Lord Abuser of Women!”Bang, bang, bang. “Open this door and fight a man your own size!”
Groggily, Richard stuck his legs into his trousers. Had he been drinking, he might not have responded but because he was not hungover for once, Richard felt perfectly awake within moments. He rubbed his face and found a flake of dried blood from Lizzie’s direct hit the evening before.
“Come out here you coward!” a young man yelled.
Richard unlatched the flimsy door and stepped into the wan morning light barefoot and shirtless. A lad with slightly oversized ears and the prominent Adam’s apple of youth staggered back several paces.
Below the stairs stood five or six onlookers. One of these was Lizzie. She appeared hungover and miserable. The faint bruise at her eye had turned a shocking combination of violet and green. A lump at her hairline was an ugly, mottled mass. Lizzie’s undamaged eye was bloodshot, whether from tears or from wine or both.
The tall boy jabbed a finger at Richard. “You did this to her.”
He turned and jabbed his finger jabbed in Lizzie’s direction. She did not meet her would-be protector’s gaze but stood defiantly a few feet away, daring him to contradict the accusation. Richard absorbed this for a moment. Was it possible that Lizzie felt any shred of shame for her outright lie?
Richard began to laugh. He chuckled, warming up. Then he guffawed. As the laughter overpowered him, the boy swung a large fist at Richard’s face.
Richard was ready for him. He lifted one leg, shot his foot square into the boy’s chest and sent him sprawling down the steps into the duff.
“Spence!” Lizzie shouted. Another girl held her back.
“You gave Lizzie that goose egg and the shiner to match when you tumbled her off the porch at yesterday evening.” Richard stepped warily down from the porch as Spencer regained his feet.
Spencer swung again and missed. Richard had never been a brawler, but he was trained in boxing. He was also a veteran of more than his share of pub fights. He’d learned from painful experience that Americans did not fight fair. They fought to win. That hard-won knowledge had brought him to Howard, after all.
