Chapter Fifteen

Jack rounded his hands, cracking his knuckles as he watched the fight continue below him as he stood on a bench in the center of the room behind the Canterbury club. He'd been shouting for the last half hour through a crowd of spectators, all bellowing and cheering on their champions. He had been in the club for days, trying to focus and fight his way through his own thoughts and feelings.

It was all he could do to distract himself from Meredith.

Jack knew he had missed some romantic gesture, some important thing when he had refused to wait. If he were a gentleman, he might have made such a promise. He might have gone on poetically, promised to wait for her for a hundred years, like one of those peers who wrote poetry for a living, but the reality of it was that he couldn't bring himself to wait, not even another week. Not when he had already waited his entire life.

It had dawned on Jack when he returned to Burnwall, that he had been waiting his whole life to find someone like Meredith. Someone with whom he could create the type of life he had barely been brave enough to dream about.

The way she looked at him, the way she spoke. Everything about her fascinated him and he had the unmistakable need to be in her company at all times. The desire to be close to her, to touch her consumed him and he couldn't help but feel like a jackass for realizing she didn't feel the same way.

A year. Or more. What a ridiculous thing to imply. If she was able to wait a year, it was evident that his own feelings far surpassed hers. He needed to focus on something else, anything else. He felt it deep in his bones, wanted her beyond all reason, and it infuriated him that she should ignore it.

That's why he had thrown himself into the boxing match, which unfortunately, Fredrick was losing.

"Step back!" he shouted, his voice lost in the crowd.

The other boxer, a bloke named Meacham, side stepped Fredrick's attack and gave him a double shot in the ribs. The crowd cheered loudly as Jack scowled, sucking in a breath through his teeth. He knew the pain of that particular shot.

"Move you bloody feet!" he yelled as Fredrick swooped forward and to the left, narrowly avoiding a right hook from Meacham.

"Jack Archer?" A voice shouted through the crowd. Believing he was hearing things, he ignored it. Only for it to sound again, this time closer. "Jack Archer!"

Turning around, Jack saw a young, vaguely familiar woman, waving to get his attention. She wore a hooded cloak and was trying to squeeze between a crowd of men to get to him. A dangerous position for a woman of substance, he noted, guessing instantly that she wasn't one of LaMont's working girls. Luckily for her, those around her seemed more preoccupied with the fight. Still, Jack knew men needed little, if any push to shift their attentions to a pretty young woman, unintentionally rubbing up against them as she tried to make her way through the crowd.

Bloody idiot. He jumped down off the bench. Pushing and shoving his way through the cheering bodies, he reached the young woman within moments, wrapping his hand around her wrist as he pulled her towards the back of the room, where less people were. He dragged her towards the wall and sidestepped a drunk man, who was swinging his arms about like a lunatic. Pushing her slightly against the wall, he bent down and yelled in her ear.

"Who are you?"

"Miss Beatrice Taylor!" she said loudly. "Are you Mr. Jack Archer?"

He glared at her.

"Yes," he answered, confused as to why Meredith's sister should be in the back of a gentleman's club. "What do you want?"

"I was hoping to speak to you." She glanced around. "In private."

"This is as private as it's going to get," he yelled, just as the crowd collectively made an ‘ooo' sound. Damn it. "What do you want, Miss Taylor?"

"To give you this," she said, pulling out a note from her reticle. "This morning my sister was behaving most strangely. She was moving about as if she didn't want to be seen. I only saw her by accident as I had woken up rather early and had only come down from my rooms to read a bit when I saw her leaving the house before breakfast had been served. I tried to follow her to ask where she was going, but she was gone by the time I reached the stables." She handed him the note. "I found this letter on the ground near her horse's stable."

"Did you?" he asked, inquisitively.

She nodded.

"I asked Mr. Archer, your brother, where the Swan on Stoke's tavern was. He said it wasn't far from the Archer and Archer building, but that his club Canterbury, was squarely between the two places. When he asked me why I wished to know, I thought to tell him about Meredith's note when Sarah interrupted and mentioned that you were here today due to some fight. I thought I would come here to find you instead, considering what you mean to Meredith."

That caught Jack's attention.

"What do I mean to her?" he asked loudly, now completely unaware of who was winning the fight.

She frowned.

"Don't you know?"

"No."

"Oh," she said, confused. "Well, perhaps we should go and ask her?"

Jack wrapped his fingers around her upper arm and, turning swiftly around, he opened a door and pulled her down a long, dark hallway that led to another door. Opening it he hauled her into an alley. It was quieter here, but hardly peaceful.

"You're going home."

He waved at a stable hand.

"Home? Oh, no, we can't! We have to go to this Swan place."

"I'll go, but… Damn," he said, knowing it wasn't particularly wise to let a lady ride alone, especially an innocent like Beatrice. He would need to see to her safety and decided to ride to the offices first, before going after Meredith. "You'll stay at the offices, while I go and get your sister."

"I could go with you," she said earnestly as he lifted her to the back of the horse. "I'm quite good at sneaking around."

"Yes, about that. How did you get into the club, anyway? They don't let well-bred ladies in," he asked. "In fact, how did you get into town all the way from Simon's house? You didn't come alone, did you?"

She shrugged as her ears turned bright pink.

"I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Because if I did, you might tell Meredith and then my only secret will be exposed." She sighed. "As for how I got into the club, I just changed my accent."

He squinted up at her questionably.

"Taylors and their bloody secrets," he muttered, not forgetting that Sarah had been a gossip columnist for several years, using the pseudonym Paula Pry. "Your entire lot are nothing but a bunch of troublemaking wenches."

Oddly enough, that earned him a satisfied grin from Beatrice.

"I've never been called a wench before, Mr. Archer," she said as he climbed up behind her. "I've also never ridden two to a horse."

Rolling his eyes, Jack kicked Drachma's side and he took off in a blink of an eye, startling Beatrice.