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To Lizzie’s astonishment, however, she noticed several flurries of activities in the crowd as men started stripped off their jackets and started rolling their sleeves, making for the roped off area. Her jaw dropped in surprise to see at least three burly types approaching Frank who was clapping them on the shoulder, congratulating them on their courage and determining their experience.

When she glanced back toward Benedict, she suffered another shock, for instead of watching his competition, his hazel eyes were fixed now on her. Lizzie gasped and ducked her head. He surely could not have noticed her, she thought, clutching her hands into fists and wondering why her heart was beating so fast.

And why had she come over so bashful all of a sudden? He had told her that she would see how the boxing operated on the morrow, so it wasn’t like she was doing anything she ought not by coming here. When she had steeled herself to raise her eyes again, Frank was conferring with him and he was nodding in agreement over whatever was being said.

She breathed a sigh of relief and was then jolted again when the crowd started up as the first of the contenders stepped forward. “Give him a hiding, Dan!” yelled out a booming voice and several others joined it, raised in encouragement for the blond-haired chap who nodded and raised a large hand in acknowledgement of the crowd’s support.

Benedict still had his arms folded as Frank led the newcomer into the center and pointed to something on the floor which Lizzie could not see. He seemingly positioned himself against it with his fists upraised, and Frank turned beaming to the audience.

“Gentlemen, if you will please show your appreciation for Mr. Daniel Smith of the parish of Spitalfields in this here great City of London.”

A cheer went up, Lizzie supposed from those fellow inhabitants of that borough, or perhaps anyone who associated themselves with either the East End or London itself. To her surprise, Benedict did not immediately join his opponent in the center of the ring, and a good deal of the spectators seemed to surge toward another corner of the tent where she now noticed Jack Toomes was set up on the top of a packing case. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask the man next to her what was occurring when the fog lifted. They were gambling on the outcome, she realized, watching Jack draw a notebook out from his waistcoat and start making notes as he took bets from the men milling around him, holding their money aloft as they called their wagers.

Hearing Frank’s voice raised above the babble, she realized he was extolling Mr. Daniel Smith’s various qualifications as a fighter. Apparently, he was the owner of a meat cart and used to hefting about great carcasses over his shoulders as part of his daily toil. That accounted for the strength of his build, Lizzie supposed.

Frank drew the audience’s attention to Smith’s great fists and the musculature about his neck, which was, Lizzie noticed, rather over developed. It made him look like he did not have much of a neck in her opinion. A babble of heated discussion rose up to the roof of the tent as the crowd debated his points.

“I like the look of the fellow!” a man on the other side of her yelled in his companion’s ear. “Looks a steady chap. Great, mighty thews on him. Don’t like to tell you your own business, Nat, but maybe he’ll give Toomes a run for his money. What do you say?”

Glancing over, Lizzie saw his friend was wearing an improbably colored yellow tailcoat teamed with a waistcoat of blue and silver decorated all over in the pattern of seashells. He looked amused by his friend’s opinion. “Care to make a wager on the outcome, old boy?” he suggested.

The first man turned cagey at this, fingering his chin. “Dash it, Nat, I promised Maud I wouldn’t speculate,” he grumbled. “But I suppose, if it’s just between the two of us …”

Bit by bit, the buzz died down, and the press of the crowd returned as all bets were laid. Lizzie noticed Jack’s broad grin as he nodded in reply to Frank’s look of enquiry.

Finally, Benedict lowered his crossed arms and deigned to join his opponent in the center of the tent. He, too, seemed to line himself up with what Lizzie could only guess was some mark she could not make out from her vantage point.

To her mind, his body was a good deal better proportioned than the other man’s and put her rather forcibly in mind of some ancient Greek statues she had once viewed in a museum before her aunt’s muffled shriek had alerted her to the fact that particular exhibition was not intended for a lady’s eyes. She had been hastily redirected to a textile display upstairs instead.

Still, she had filed it away in her memory and called it forth now to compare the body of Benedict Toomes to those highly idealized depictions of masculinity carved in white marble. She did not think he suffered by the comparison in any way, she reflected as her eyes traveled over his broad shoulders and well-muscled arms.

Unbidden, she remembered just how it had felt to be pressed up against that warm, tanned flesh when she awoke that morning and felt her face grow hot. Oh dear, she thought, when had she started noticing such things? Before the shocking event at Sitwell Place that fateful night, she had thought the Reverend Milson was the height of manly perfection and that had been based purely on his moral superiority and supposed piety.

If anyone had told her she would be ogling Benedict Toomes’ bare chest a mere week later, she would have laughed such an idea to scorn.

When he assumed the stance, hunching over and raising his fists, it seemed to Lizzie he held them a good deal closer to his head than his opponent. To Lizzie’s surprise, it was Mr. Smith who threw the first punch, wielding his meaty fist like a sledgehammer.

“That’s it, man!” her neighbor bellowed, making Lizzie jump and turn her head. “Let him have it!”

Benedict neatly ducked, avoiding the blow, his left fist snaking out with a counterpunch to the other’s ribs that Smith absorbed with a grunt.

Lizzie watched as Benedict sidestepped and bobbed, avoiding his opponent’s heavy roundhouse swings as he moved around him, jabbing him far neater blows to the jaw that made Smith’s head snap back but did not seem to inflict any great damage to the other man’s great slab-like face.

“Damned fellow’s as slippery as an eel!” her neighbor objected bitterly as his friend in the flowered waistcoat chuckled, striking a match to light his cigar.

“I believe Toomes is an exponent of Mendoza’s scientific method,” he said, puffing elegantly on a slim cheroot.

“Aye, but if Smith were only to land one good solid haymaker, that’s the thing,” the first one said plaintively.

Lizzie could not help but agree. Every punch the meat-carter threw looked to be enough to knock a man clean off his feet, whereas Benedict’s looked more like to sting, than render a man wholly insensible.

“Just you wait,” the second man predicted, blowing out a plume of smoke, and indeed after several minutes of this, it seemed even to Lizzie’s untutored eye that Benedict’s actions were becoming quicker and more decisive as his opponent’s efforts grew clumsier and started to lack conviction as he ran out of steam. The crowd grew louder in its shouts of both encouragement and derision.

“Damn me, but that brute’s as slow as a carthorse!” complained Lizzie’s neighbor. “I was sadly misled by his bulk and sinew!”

“Don’t mistake the fact, Toomes has a commanding left,” his companion corrected him. “And is defensively very sound. In a regular mill, your carter would be lethal. Against a professional however…” he shook his head. “He’s entirely out of his depth.”

Lizzie could only be grateful that she had happened to stand next to someone who knew what he was talking about. Otherwise, she surely would have been as ill-informed as the first gentleman and thought the eventual outcome determined by a lucky punch.