A Bride for the Prizefighter - Alice Coldbreath Page 0,7
joke. Given little other choice, she was forced to clamber down from the carriage unaided as Lord Faris did not have a free hand to offer her. She landed in a puddle that splashed up her skirts and made her mood even worse. She gazed back coldly at her half-brother. “Am I to understand we are to put up here for the night?”
This dissolved both Lord Faris and Ivy into fresh mirth. “See?” he gasped, squeezing the blonde’s waist. “Did I not say she was a regular gorgon? I vow, she can turn a man to stone with one look from those eyes.”
“I wish that were so, my lord,” Mina answered cutting across Ivy’s giggles. “For I would have found a statue a far pleasanter travelling companion, I assure you.”
“Oho! Would you indeed?” he cried, releasing Ivy and grabbing Mina’s upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip. “Well, I fancy I have a new companion for you. Though whether you will find him pleasant, is another matter altogether. Is that not so, Ivy my sweet?”
“If her does, she’ll be the first,” Ivy replied doubtfully with a thick west country accent.
Mina found herself propelled in the direction of the inn. Surely, he could not mean that the man he intended her to marry was putting up at this den of iniquity.
“Wait!” she cried, struggling to turn back. “My things!”
“Juggins will bring your bags.” Lord Faris tightened his hold on her arm.
“You’re hurting me, my lord!”
“Then stop struggling, my dear.” To his credit, he did loosen his grip on her arm to seize her wrist instead. Once they reached the courtyard, Mina was surprised by the number of lanterns and torches illuminating the place. Straggling groups of villainous-looking people were strewn around, smoking and drinking and speaking in low voices. Their murmurs fell off to silent stares as Lord Faris marched her across the cobbles and—horror of horrors—into a common taproom.
If Papa could see her now, she thought, her cheeks flaming as her eyes adjusted to the murky light within. Someone was playing a fiddle and there was a good deal of laughter and jocularity. She could even see other women, she thought as an old toothless crone cackled loudly, slapping her thigh.
Hanging above the bar was the most indecent wooden carved figurehead she had ever seen. It was in the semblance of a voluptuous woman flaunting her bared breasts for all to see. It must once have graced a ship’s prow, she supposed, but was now suspended from the beams in this gruesome establishment.
Lord Faris towed her in the direction of the bar and all at once the noise seemed to stop and an eerie hush fell over the room. A horrible prickling sensation travelled up Mina’s spine as she realized all eyes were now turned on her.
“Take off your bonnet,” Lord Faris said softly as he held up a coin between two of his fingers for the barmaid to take.
“I will not!” Mina hissed back at him furiously and he chuckled, shaking his head. The barmaid, by contrast to the wooden effigy hanging above her, was plain and angular. She cast a look of undisguised curiosity 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