“You did,” Darius said, “except he alluded to a familial connection with Vivian Longstreet, with whom it has not yet been my privilege to form a legal union. Unfortunately for Thoroughgoing Arsewipe here, he was married when he took his vows with Vivian and Angela’s widowed mother. This makes his marriage to the countess invalid, his use of her funds fraudulent, his contracting marriage on Angela’s behalf equally fraudulent, and the farthest thing from a display of family loyalty.”

“Unfortunate,” Trent mused. “You know, the magistrate might have caught wind of this. I understand he’s signing warrants for the arrest of one… what were all those names you said? I happened to glance at the documents when information was laid, and there were at least five names on them.”

“Who is this?” Ainsworthy’s tone was dismissive, but his eyes betrayed the first hint of uncertainty.

“Wilton.” Trent bowed graciously. “Earl of, at your service, whoever you are. Are you going to call him out, Dare?”

Darius cocked his head. “He’s got literary aspirations. I might accidentally blow off his fingers and damage his writing hand rather than put a ball through his black heart.”

Ainsworthy rose. “There’s no need for violence. This is all a simple misunderstanding, probably the work of some jilted wife who married a man with a name like mine. Or several wives, getting up to nonsense because they aren’t properly supervised.”

“Is that so?” Nicholas Haddonfield emerged from the hallway. “Several wives, acting in concert, all with husbands who have names like yours?”

“Right.” Ainsworthy swallowed audibly at the sight of Nick, who topped Trent by a couple of inches of height and at least two stone of brawn. “If you get descriptions, you’ll see the error of your conclusions.”

“Nicholas, Earl of Bellefonte.” Nick grinned menacingly. “Perhaps the man has a point, Darius. You can’t be calling a fellow out on mere whim and speculation.”

“Heaven forefend,” Trent added, “that any brother of mine react so cavalierly when a man’s good name, much less the arrangement of his face, his ability to walk, and possibly his ability to sire children hang in the balance.”

“Well, then.” Darius lifted a document from the sideboard. “Nick, perhaps you’d assist the man out of his breeches? We can clear this up easily enough.”

“Out of my breeches?”

“Rhymes with screeches,” Nick said, approaching Ainsworthy. “Interestingly enough. We’ll settle this right now, and I’m sure Mr. Lindsey will offer apologies all around if he’s wrong.”

Trent grimaced, taking Ainsworthy’s other arm. “One does wonder how a man would acquire such a scar.”

“His wife says”—Darius peered at the document—“his current wife and two previous wives, anyway, say he has a scar on the tip of his cock in the shape of the letter L, running from… what?” He looked over at Ainsworthy, who’d blanched white as ghost.

“Who said I have such a scar?”

“Your present wife, for starters,” Darius said slowly, as if the man were simple. “Bellefonte chatted her up with an officer of the court on hand to take her statement. Sweet woman, if a little too trusting, though Bellefonte’s charm is legendary. She described your scars, the exact shape of various intimate attributes, and a few other details only a wife would know. And by sheerest coincidence, two other women describe their husbands having precisely the same characteristics. Moreover, we went to the trouble of bringing witnesses to those marriages up to Town, Ainsworthy, and they each identified you by sight as the errant husband.

“Now the strangest coincidence of all.” Darius paused, and his tone became flat. “Each woman was well set up until she married you. Her fortune, or as much as she turned over to your keeping, disappeared with you.”

“And correct me if I’m wrong,” Trent said, “but didn’t those women have children to support?”

Nick gave Ainsworthy’s arm a nasty little shake. “And wasn’t one of them expecting when her dear spouse accompanied the entire harvest of wool into London, never to be seen again?”

“All right!” Ainsworthy glanced nervously from one man to another. “I’ve been unlucky in love. It’s not a crime to leave your wife.”

“It isn’t,” Darius agreed, “though whether you leave or not, she’s still your wife, and it is a crime to marry again while the first wife is extant. Moreover, you owe your deserted wife support at all times during the marriage, and you surely owe your own child the same.”

“You cannot expect me to sit here and listen to this nonsense,” Ainsworthy sputtered.

“You can read the sworn statements,” Darius said, “but you won’t convince us we’re in error without dropping your breeches. You can let him go, gentlemen, though I’d guard the exits.”

Nick took one doorway, Trent the other.

Ainsworthy rose, tugging down his waistcoat with a righteous jerk. “Name your seconds, Lindsey. I am at your service.”

“Present company. Yours?”

Ainsworthy’s chin came up. “That will take some time. Honorable challenges must be handled delicately.”

“Well, then, the choice of weapons is mine, I believe. But then, perhaps you’d know more about this than I would?”

“I know about it,” Nick said cheerfully. “Choice of weapons goes to the challenged. Time and date at the mutual convenience of the parties, location generally chosen by the seconds for discretion. I’m feeling very discreet right here and now.”

“This is a premeditated assault, nothing more,” Ainsworthy spat. “Three against one, and the two of you titled and immune from prosecution.”

“We’re not immune, are we?” Nick looked adorably confused to ponder such a thing.

“Why, no,” Trent replied. “We’re prosecuted in the Lords, if we’re caught, except I’m not sure what our crime would be, since we’re not touching the man, are we?”

“I’m not.” Nick shrugged massive shoulders. “Darius, what’s your pleasure?”

“Either wave the goods before witnesses, Ainsworthy, or name your seconds. Makes no difference to me.”

It took another hour, but two men eventually posted from the nearest club, and the matter was taken out to the mews.

“Rules of engagement?” one of Ainsworthy’s reluctant seconds asked.

“I won’t kill him,” Darius said. “Trent, you’ll make sure I don’t?”

Trent’s expression became considering. “You might regret letting him live,” he said quietly. “He preys on women and children.”

“Don’t let me kill him,” Darius said, his gaze going from Nick to Trent and back. “Vivvie deserves better than a man who kills with his bare hands, whatever other crimes I’ve committed.”

“All right,” Ainsworthy’s man said. “You fight until one man is done in, by agreement of the seconds. I have to say, I can’t like this.”

“You think I’d give him a chance to tamper with my guns?” Darius asked as he began to strip from the waist up. “Or disappear with his present wife’s remaining funds? She has a child, by the way, much like her predecessors, though the boy isn’t Ainsworthy’s get.”

“One hopes it wouldn’t come to that,” the man replied.

“And one hopes it needn’t be said,” Darius added, “but this is a bare-knuckle fight, no weapons. Not knives, not cravats used to strangle, not rings used to cut.”

“A clean fight.” The fellow hustled over to Ainsworthy and gestured for Darius’s opponent to remove his several rings.

The circle was drawn in the cold dirt, and as will happen, the stable boys from the nearby mews soon gathered, then some other men coming to fetch their horses, until the circle was ringed with male spectators. Oddly enough, no one was willing to bet against Darius, and the crowd became strangely silent as Nick and one of Ainsworthy’s seconds gave the signal to come out swinging.

Darius toyed with his opponent silently, letting Ainsworthy start with a glancing blow to Darius’s ribs. The pain was a trifling thing, not enough to make a man intent on his objective blink.

A series of blows in rapid succession all over Ainsworthy’s lily-white midsection conveyed Darius’s initial sentiments.

“Damn, he’s quick.”

“Accurate too.”

“Blighter’s mad,” another man said. “Look at them eyes. Barkin’ bloody mad.”

Nick and Trent exchanged a look at that comment. Darius’s response was to land a single blow to the jaw that left Ainsworthy staggering. Darius backed away, despite all instinct screaming to the contrary, until the man was righted by the spectators and turned back into the circle.

When Ainsworthy was pawing the air with his fists again, Darius started in once more. For Vivvie, for the baron, for Angela, for the wives, their children, for William… Blow after blow fell, the sound and feel of each reverberating through Darius’s soul like a tocsin.

“Relentless as a mill wheel, that one.”

“A damned maniac.”

“Look at his eyes, lad. He’ll kill the idiot, see if he don’t.”

“Poor bastard shouldn’t have crossed that mad bugger.”

Another single hard right, only this time Ainsworthy went down. Darius didn’t back away immediately but hovered, until Nick and Trent marched him backward, while the rest of the crowd tried to jeer Ainsworthy to his feet.

“Have some damned pride, man!”

“On your feet, boyo. You’ve yet to land a decent shot.”

“Stay down, unless ye want him to finish ye for certain.”

The seconds conferred while Ainsworthy hung on all fours, lungs heaving. When he managed to get to his feet, he spat in Darius’s direction.

“Bad form!”

“Make him pay for that. This is me own mews he spat on!”

“Fetch the parson. The skinny bastard’s done for now.”

Darius waited, letting Ainsworthy weave closer, then closer still. With exaggerated care, Ainsworthy pulled back an arm, and while he was choosing his moment—a scientific fighter, clearly—Darius hit him with a right jab that sent him into the dirt again, unable to rise.

“Show’s over,” Nick said meaningfully. “Back to work, lads, before the King’s man reads us the Riot Act.”

Somebody tossed a cold bucket of water on Ainsworthy, while Trent threw his greatcoat over Darius’s naked shoulders.

“Trent?”

Trent put an arm around his brother and bent close. “I’m here.”

“Get me away from this place,” Darius said, chest working like a bellows. “I want to kill him. I want to put my hands around his miserable throat and choke the life from him. I want to kill them all.”

Trent started walking Darius toward the townhouse. “Kill who-all?”

“The damned skulking, bastard predators,” Darius panted. “Ainsworthy, Wilton, even the women.”

“I know.” Trent hugged his brother closer. “But you didn’t, Dare. You wouldn’t let yourself.”

“Trent?”

“Love?”

“It felt good to beat the shit out of him. It felt wonderful. I want to do it all over again. I’m going to be sick.”

* * *

Trent hovered, despite having obligations out at Crossbridge, and Darius let him hover for two days.

On the third day, they rose and went to the docks to watch as Ainsworthy scurried onto a ship bound for Boston.

“How many warrants did you say were drawn up against him?” Trent posed the question as the gangplank was raised and the ship drifted out toward the current in midchannel.

“Five felonies at last count, and at least three angry women are out for his blood. Ariadne seemed mostly relieved, but her fortune was still largely intact.”

Darius stood beside his brother, the bracing wind off the river slapping ropes against hulls and making unfurled sails luff madly. For a few minutes, they watched the ship slip farther from the dock.

“Does it help, to know you’ve hounded him out of the country?”

“It helps.”

To see the ship depart helped a great deal, like weight taken from Darius’s chest, like somebody had turned up the lamps and opened a window. Beating the stuffing out of Ainsworthy had helped too, as had having Trent and Nick’s unquestioning support. It all helped—but not enough.

“You’re for Longchamps?” Trent asked.

Darius nodded as Ainsworthy’s vessel caught the current and began to turn downriver.

“You have a special license?”

Another nod.

“Then what the bloody hell are you waiting for?”

* * *

“It’s like this.” Darius addressed the small bundle in his arms—though perhaps not quite as small as even a few weeks ago. “I can’t very well ask permission of anybody else, but I feel the need to ask permission of somebody, and you’re the only fellow on hand.”