A Bride for the Prizefighter: A Victorian Romance

at Mina before taking Lord Faris’s coin.
“What’ll her have, your lordship?” she asked, nodding at Mina.
“Alas, my companion is teetotal,” he answered with a sorrowful click of his tongue.  Mina could have sworn she heard the disapproval in the room around her.
“I’ll take a large gin,” she said loudly over his shoulder.
“Good for you, gal!” cackled the villainous-looking old woman she had spotted earlier.  Lord Faris cast a startled look her way.
“And I thought you were temperance,” he muttered reproachfully.
“Did you?” Mina asked him pointedly.  The barmaid plunked a glass down before her and Mina tugged at the wrist he still held.  With a lift of his eyebrows, he let her go and Mina reached boldly for the glass.  “Assumptions are dangerous things to make, Lord Faris,” she said looking him dead in the eye.  Then she lifted the glass and knocked back the noxious fluid.
A cheer went up in the barroom and Mina gulped it down, swallowing down the instinctive cough and blinking rapidly to dispel her watery eyes.  Well, gin was disgusting, she thought as she slammed the glass back down and dragged a black lace mitten across her mouth.
Lord Faris smiled at her a moment, before pushing away from the bar and turning slowly in a full circle, meeting all eyes which turned his way with a challenging gleam in his own.  “William Nye!” he shouted challengingly.  “I have something for you!”
Once again, an uncanny hush fell over the room.
A whiskered gentleman sat up to the bar, removed the pipe from his mouth.  “He be out back, milord,” he said in a slow drawling voice.  “Cleaning up after the fight, I’ll warrant.”  His manner was pleasant and ponderous and for an instant, Mina could have sworn he winked at her.  Mind you, her head was swimming from the gin, so she could not be sure.
As if on cue, a door from behind the bar swung open and a large, dark, bare-chested man with a towel slung over his head and shoulders prowled through.  “Who’s calling my name?” he demanded in a nasty, confrontational tone, gazing around the bar with narrowed eyes.  Mina felt a trill of alarm when his gaze flickered over her and seemed to dwell a moment before settling with an expression of extreme loathing on Faris.
“I did!” Lord Faris answered in what Mina felt to be a needlessly theatrical manner.  “I’ve come to settle a matter of unfinished business between us, Nye.”
William Nye’s lip curled.  “Have you?” he asked contemptuously and reaching for a bottle of liquor, poured himself a liberal slug and knocked it back, before shaking his wet hair like a dog out of his eyes.  With a start, Mina noticed his knuckles were raw and bleeding.  She watched as he caught the edge of the towel and dragged it back over his head, rubbing at his dark hair as if for all the world he was in the privacy of his own room, instead of a public house.  Slowly, as though taking its cue from him, conversation started back up around them and the fiddler retrieved his bow and started picking out a tune.
Glancing at Lord Faris, Mina thought he looked rather deflated for a moment before he recovered himself and swaggered back toward the bar.  “Perhaps we should take it into a private parlor, Nye,” he suggested.
Without even a word, Nye turned on his heel and marched across the taproom heading for a side door.  Lord Faris turned toward her and showily offered his arm.  Ignoring it, Mina stalked past him, trying not to stare at the almost indecently masculine display in front of her.  William Nye possessed the broadest shoulders she had ever seen, and a muscular tanned back, she found almost shocking to behold.
Certainly, her papa had possessed no such body, the heavy muscle mass speaking of the almost animalistic strength of an ox or a bullock, she thought.  He seemed more like a beast than a man.  His fawn trousers were damp and clinging over muscular thighs and buttocks in a fashion that made her blush.  She could only assume that he had stood under a pump or partially submerged himself in a water trough to get so thoroughly soaked through.
Her cheeks burned with indignation as the door swung shut behind him and she had to make a grab for the latch to drag it open for herself.  He was no gentleman!  Showing a rudeness that her mother would likely have swooned at, she in turn let it close in Lord Faris’s face, as she hurried down a dark passage after William Nye’s heavy tread.
One solitary oil lamp burned in the corridor, casting its sickly yellow light over the garish wallpaper.  For a moment, Mina paused, unsure which of the paneled wooden doors Nye had passed through.  Hearing a step behind her, she plunged into the first on her right and almost barreled into Nye’s massive bare chest.
“Oh!”  She took a hurried step back but was prevented from retreating by Lord Faris’s coming in behind her.  The private parlor was wood-paneled and sparsely furnished with a large covered screen, a scarred table, and two benches.  Mina glanced disparagingly at the dusty benches and fancied the table surface would be sticky.
“Take a seat, Mina,” Lord Faris requested, sidling past her to sit at the bench.  “Nye.”  To Mina’s disapproval, she saw he had caught up a dusty bottle from the bar and held three glasses which he set down before him with great ceremony before filling them a third way full with a dark, purplish-red drink.  “To our bargain,” he said, raising one of the glasses and draining it.  Neither Mina nor Nye reached for the other glasses.
Covertly she watched as William Nye folded his massive arms across his chest in an attitude of utter intractability.  “Bargain?” he bit out.  “What bargain?”
Lord Faris smacked his lips.