PROLOGUE
The cries of “Foul! Foul!” now resounded.
—P. Egan, Boxiana (1823)
27th of September, 1800
Somewhere in New York City
A LARGE, WARM hand pressed itself against the closed lids of Nathaniel’s eyes, drawing him out of a deep sleep. The lingering, tangy sweetness of a cigar clung to his nostrils as the linen sleeve of a male shirt brushed his cheek.
It was him. Nathaniel didn’t dare move.
The hand slowly drew away. “Are you awake?” someone whispered in a heavy accent from beside him on the bed.
Nathaniel swallowed and opened his eyes, candlelight fingering its way through the shadows of the dank cellar. He couldn’t breathe. Nausea seized him. “I want to go home,” Nathaniel choked out, rocking against the ropes binding his hands to his waist. He didn’t care that he sounded pathetic or scared anymore. Being ten, he had every right to be pathetic and scared, didn’t he?
The golden glow of a lone candle revealed a young man with sun-tinted hair sitting on the narrow bed beside him. It was the same man who had lingered outside his family’s window all those nights in the shadows.
Amber eyes met Nathaniel’s for a somber moment. The man held up a wooden soldier whose military uniform had been painted red. He angled it toward Nathaniel. “For you.”
“I don’t want it.”
“If I untie you, and give this to you, do you promise not to hit me? Do you promise to be good?”
Nathaniel fisted his hands and tried to swing his arms up at that face, but his movement was cut short and burned against the tight ropes that bound each arm against his waist. “Why are you doing this?” he choked out.
“You are his son. Are you not?”
Tears blinded Nathaniel, realizing the man wasn’t about to let him go. “Perhaps my father misunderstood. Send him another missive. Please.”
The man lowered his gaze to the wooden soldier he held. “He understood. He chose to ignore it.”
A sob escaped Nathaniel. “No. He wouldn’t. I know he wouldn’t!”
“We think we know someone until they betray us. That is…how do you English say?…the lesson.”
Nathaniel shook his head and rasped, “Send a missive to my sister. Augustine. She…she will come for me. I know she will. Or my mother. Ask them for whatever you want and they will ensure you get it. I know they will!”
“No.” The man fingered the wooden soldier but didn’t meet his gaze. “To involve anyone but your father would only see us all hanged.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
Nathaniel swallowed. “Are you going to kill me?”
The man’s mouth quirked. “I am a good many things, but I am not a murderer, little friend. In Venezia, even when we are angry, we do things with…honor. Nothing like you British.”
Nathaniel swallowed again. What had his father done to this man? He dared not fathom.
Holding out the wooden soldier, the man propped it on Nathaniel’s chest. “I bought him for you.”
Nathaniel tilted his body just enough to get that soldier off his chest. It thudded onto the mattress between them. “I prefer to go home to my sister and my mother. My father may not love me, but I know they do. They will want me back. I know they will.”
“They are no longer your family. I am.” Hovering, the man drew in close. So close, Nathaniel could make out the stubble on that youthful face, and the glint of a ruby pin tucked into that meticulously knotted cravat. Sharp, amber eyes intently searched Nathaniel’s face as if deciding on something.
Nathaniel pressed himself hard against the linens, digging his entire body into the mattress. Though the man hadn’t touched him or hurt him in any way, except to bind him with ropes after Nathaniel repeatedly swung at him, something chanted that, if provoked, this Venetian was capable of more.
The stinging smell of cognac mingling with cigars penetrated Nathaniel’s nostrils as the man breathed out, “I have many books in English. What would you like to read?”
Nathaniel stared up at him, inwardly quaking. It was like the man was trying to befriend him. “I’m not telling you anything.”
The man tapped Nathaniel hard on the forehead with a scarred finger, then leaned back and rose to his full height of almost six feet. He bent his head to prevent hitting the low timbered ceiling. “Food will be delivered in the morning. Eat.”
Head still bent, the man veered out the narrow door with heavy steps that eerily echoed in the small space. The door slammed shut and a loud clink of the key being turned in the rusty lock broke through the silence, signaling Nathaniel had been sentenced to solitude again for not cooperating with the man’s request they be friends.
Nathaniel choked out an anguished sob that burned his throat. He tried to sit up, to use his body or his head to move, but couldn’t budge in any particular direction. He sobbed again, forced to stare at those dank, shadowed walls that felt inhabited by evil entities about to reach out clawed hands and strangle him.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe knowing there wasn’t even a window in the small cellar to tell him the hour. He glanced frantically toward the lone candle set on the small side table set against the wall. It flickered hauntingly, the dripping wax well below its stub.
“Let me fall asleep first,” he whispered to it, not wanting to be left alone in the darkness.
The candle wavered. It then stilled and flicked into a mere glowing dot as the flame dissipated into a stream of curling smoke, leaving him in pulsing darkness and silence.
He squeezed his eyes shut, wailing helplessly until he felt like his body was swaying on a vast ocean set to drown him. His sobs and the darkness eventually lulled not only his body but his mind.
No one was coming for him.
Not his father.
Not his mother.
Not his sister.
No one.
CHAPTER ONE
To those, Sir…who would not mind Pugilism,
if Boxing was not so shockingly vulgar—the
following work can have no interest whatever.
—P. Egan, Boxiana (1823)
New York City—Gardner’s wharf
13th of June 1830, afternoon
OVER THE COURSE of a rough life filled to the brim with gambling, drinking, swearing and boxing, Edward Coleman had taken residence in eleven different parts of the city in an effort to avoid three things: the creditors, his wife and his mother-in-law, who were all determined to bleed him dry.
Not having heard from any of them in too many years to count made him wonder if perhaps he’d mastered the art of the moonlight flit a bit more than he’d wanted. But then again, fate had never liked him all that much. He didn’t even know why he was astounded at glimpsing his mother-in-law pushing through the dust-ridden male masses just beyond the milling fence at the match.
The woman had aged considerably since he’d last seen her, but that bundled coif and pert little nose remained the same. A gaggle of young men in grey wool caps, coats and trousers, whom he knew to be Jane’s brothers—and my, how they’d grown—strategically wove through the packed boxing crowd behind her.
Mrs. Walsh had only ever sought him out when she needed one of two things: money or money. The United