The sweet science of advice.
Acuff to his right eye left him reeling.
“Come along, Your Grace, concentrate.”
Casper managed to block the next pounding blow but redness swirled in his vision – Evelyn’s flamed hair unfettered and tumbling free.
Another clout to his cheek shattered the image and his head smacked back.
“Let’s call it quits for today, Your Grace.”
“No.” He focused on his sparring partner, all three of them. “All is well. Continue.”
“You’re bleeding like an undercooked beefsteak…Your Grace.”
Ah, so that red wasn’t his fervid imagination then, and he put forearm to cheekbone, felt a distinct swelling.
“Are you permitted to hit me so hard, Hawkins, considering the amount I pay?” He let Horatio tug off his boxing gloves before grabbing a towel and swiping away sweat…and blood.
The proprietor of this club grinned, his bared chest hardly heaving despite the past hour’s exertion. “If you will excuse the informality, Your Grace, but you came at me like a caged tiger released but then your concentration lapsed to that of a carp – which is why you got walloped.”
Casper grunted. “I have matters on my mind.”
“A woman?”
“I’m a duke. All manner of matters could be on my mind.”
Hawkins’ tanned brow pulled taut as he yanked off his gloves and unwrapped the cotton strips from his fists. “You’re the Duke of Rothwell. Able to concentrate and focus like no other. The world could be upending and you would still have the technical acuity – that I have taught you, of course – to defeat the Great Mendoza.”
Damn the pugilist, but maybe he had a point. Since Evelyn’s departure from his study last night, Casper had lacked even a smidgeon of concentration and sleep had utterly eluded him. Her appreciation of his toil over the years had all but brought him to his knees.
Yet this weekly dawn visit to his boxing club ought to have aided his focus.
Not a bit of it.
“You’re scowling,” Hawkins pursued. “I’m correct, aren’t I? It’s a woman.”
Glaring at the great brute who beamed in silent satisfaction, Casper crossed to the barrel of cold water and thrust his arms in, sluicing his chest and shoulders whilst Horatio scarpered to crouch in the furthest corner as though the water might leap out and wash him.
This establishment overlooking Green Park was as elite as Almack’s, and despite the early hour, more than a few lords and monied men feigned and jabbed, parried and dived. One chap practised stance whilst another wobbled on an uneven board to learn balance.
The walls were decorated with masculine buff-coloured paper, whilst manly brown curtains draped the oblong windows. A generous bathing room was also located in the basement with a new-fangled steam area but plenty of barrels stood in the main room for a quick wash and brush up.
“I could box elsewhere, you realise, Hawkins.”
“Where?” The chap gripped a wooden tub and dunked his entire short-haired noggin in the freezing cold. He reared and shook like a whippet.
“Gentleman Jack’s. Byron goes there.”
“Exactly.”
“The Daffy Club in Holborn.”
“Absurd name. And to join, you’re obliged to drink gin.”
“Offley’s?”
“Good beefsteak. Bad technique.”
