Folly's Reward by Jean R. Ewing

landed square in his belly, forcing the air from his lungs in a sickening rush.
    He began to fight for his life.
    * * *
    Prudence hated it. She hated the sense of stupid, animal ferocity, and the dark bruises blossoming like evil flowers on the men’s bodies. She hated the rapacious faces of the crowd, wagering their money on other men’s pain.
    Yet against her will she was enthralled. Fascinated by the grace of Hal’s movements, and his cavalier, laughing disregard for the fact that sooner or later the big man would beat him down and destroy him. Fascinated by the strange beauty of his body, dancing in the torchlight. Fascinated by his wide, hard-ridged shoulders and strong, slim waist, flexing and twisting in deadly combat.
    Her heart sang at the sheer loveliness of a fit young man, as her soul yearned for his courage in the face of such overwhelming odds.
    Before she could quite fathom that it was over, Jamie began to fall.
    Hal spun out of his way as the man dropped to his knees. Jamie swung his head back and forth for a moment, like a bull blinded by dust, then thudded to the ground.
    The onlookers surged forward, but the giant lay staring vacantly up at the sky.
    Hal’s voice floated up to her above the roar of the crowd, ragged with his disordered breathing, but still clear and deadly.
    “Alas!” he said. “What sport is this? ‘“She is won! We are gone! Over bank, bush, and scaur; / They’ll have fleet steeds that follow,” quoth young Lochinvar.’”
    Still laughing, and glazed with exhaustion, Hal allowed the gentleman with the beaked nose to wrap his shirt around his shoulders and press something into his hand.
    Prudence pulled Bobby from the window and sat with him on the bed for several long minutes as she stared out at the night sky.
    She felt like weeping and yet she was very angry. Damnation to the beautiful, mysterious Hal!
    “You see,” Bobby said. “I said Hal was the stronger. And now will he drive us to Carlisle?”
    “With pleasure,” a voice said from the doorway. “The road will soon be cleared. Our nags are rested. We can still arrive in Carlisle before tomorrow.”
    “Are you mad?” Prudence whirled around. “What on earth was that about?”
    “No, no, angel,” Hal replied, coming into the room. “I have taken enough blows already. Pray do not add to them!”
    He had obviously sluiced himself with water. The black hair was damp, and ruffled as if rapidly dried in a towel. A great rent marked one seam of his jacket. He looked like a gypsy—wild and untamed.
    Bobby ran up to him. Without visibly wincing, Hal swung the child up into his arms.
    “Bed for you, sir!” Hal carried the boy into a small adjoining bedroom and tucked him between the covers.
    When he returned, Prudence stood and faced him. She was shaking.
    “You must be a wastrel. Or a lunatic. Or a scoundrel.”
    “I have wondered as much,” Hal said seriously. A bruise was beginning to color his cheek. “I have no idea, of course. I might be just a man-about-town, who fills his idle hours with pugilism.”
    “Is that what you wished to find out?”
    He looked straight into her eyes. Prudence saw how carefully his emotions were guarded, emotions that he covered with flippancy and with sarcasm.
    “And earlier it seemed as if I must be a rake, didn’t it? Of course, boxing and flirtation are both pursuits of the idle Corinthian as much as of the rogue. So I still might be just a respectable man with a competence.”
    “No respectable man would take up a challenge to indulge in drunken fisticuffs. It would go against every instinct.”
    “Then I am a disreputable fellow, after all. For of course no respectable man would treat a lady as I have treated you, stealing kisses as if they were his due. Do you think I’m a Don Juan and a profligate?”
    “I think it very likely,” Prudence snapped.
    Hal dropped to a chair and leaned his head back.
    “A challenge?” he asked with a grin. “It seems to me that