Edith Layton (24 page)

A
nnabelle stretched, reached out an arm—and found only empty space. He was gone. She sat bolt upright and stared into the darkness. She’d feared this. She’d known this. But she hadn’t wanted to believe it.

They’d made love last night as they had the night before, all through the night with nothing withheld and nothing left to be desired, until exhaustion had finally let them sleep. Now, this night—this dawn, she realized by the narrow streaks of gray light showing at the margins of the bedroom windows—he was gone.

She knew where, and thought her heart would break. But Annabelle was prepared. She threw back the coverlets and leaped from the bed. With shaking hands, she hurriedly dressed in the
clothing she’d laid out in her dressing room the night before. She hadn’t wanted her maid to know. No one must know. She was about to break a cardinal rule.

It was not done. She was an ornament of society, knew its every rule and every nuance, and lived by its code. Those rules had governed her life since she could toddle. From nurse to nanny, from governess to her own mama’s lips, Annabelle had been drilled in the Right Thing To Do. She knew no other way to behave. Beyond the polite world, she’d been taught, lay only barbarism, disgrace, and exile. In short, it wasn’t worth living.

So she knew better than anyone that ladies did not witness duels. They were forbidden. They looked the other way as the gentlemen went out to their killing fields. Then they waited, behind closed curtains, for news of life or death.

But she was Lady Annabelle, she kept telling herself. Nothing had changed that, though something was now trying to. Lady Annabelle had found the love of her life, and nothing would prevent her from being with him. Because what did society matter, after all? Life in his company was the only life she wanted. Any existence without him would be exile and not worth living.

She flung on the cloak she’d left at hand, pulled up the hood, and slipped out into the darkened corridor.

“What kept you?” Camille hissed.

Annabelle staggered. “What are you doing here?” she managed to ask in a harsh whisper.

“The same as you. I heard him leave. Did you think me so poor-spirited? He needs me, but I felt sure you’d be going too. Look,” she said excitedly, fumbling in the folds of her own evening cape. She withdrew a long-nosed pistol. “I’m ready!”

“Camille,” Annabelle said softly, pushing the pistol until it pointed down. “No. I’d bring an army if I thought I could end it that way. But we can’t even try. Not because we shouldn’t, but because he’d never forgive us if we got in his way. He can survive the duel, and I pray he will. But he’d never tolerate the disgrace of hiding behind a woman’s skirts. Men aren’t as reasonable as we are,” she said when she made out Camille’s sulky expression. “They live or die by their honor. So we’ll go. But we can’t interfere. Unless there’s cheating,” she added, gripping the smooth wooden haft of her own pistol in her deep pocket. “Then it’s war.”

They went down the stair, and tiptoed through the hall. The servants were still sleeping—the fires in every hearth were out, and the kitchen maid hadn’t begun to set up a clatter. They sidled out the front door. When they quietly shut it behind them, Annabelle let out her breath and peered into the dim light. She’d hired a carriage; it stood as ordered, waiting halfway down the darkened
street. They hurried to wake the coachman and stepped inside.

Annabelle gave him their direction. There was only one place gentlemen dueled these days, on a patch of open land outside the city, on a heath. She’d made sure of it. Footmen were men and presumed to have the same codes of honor as their masters. But maids were loyal to their mistresses and could be reasoned into listening at doors.

“Now,” Annabelle told Camille as the coach jolted and started down the street, “when we arrive, do nothing. Don’t let yourself be seen. Just watch. But if you must, do everything. And fast.”

Miles gazed at the dawn sky. It would rain later today, he judged, but not until noon. The wind was freshening but the sun struggled through the disappearing night’s mists. It would soon be light enough to see clearly. He allowed himself a fanciful notion as he waited for his opponent to arrive: Would the duel have been postponed if it had been teeming rain?

“No,” his friend the Earl of Drummond commented, as if he’d read Miles’s mind as he looked up at the racing clouds. “I’ve been at these events before. You face each other even if it rains fire. Bow Street, you see, may have been informed, and it’s important to get the deed done before they arrive. And I hope they have been,” he murmured.

Miles looked at him sharply.

The earl threw up his hands. “Not I,” he said. “I dislike this but understand the necessity. But again, be wary of him, Miles. He’s got a trick up his sleeve. I feel it in my bones.”

“That’s all that will be left of him if he does,” Rafe Dalton muttered, pausing in the stalking he’d been doing, waiting for the other party to arrive.

“Here comes a carriage,” an elderly, sober-faced gentleman said, peering into the lifting mists. “He arrives late in order to increase the tension. Don’t let him, Miles. You were the coolest hand when you were in my command.”

Miles took off his jacket, handed it to Rafe, and flexed his shoulders. “I know it, my lord. I won’t let my anger get into my eyes or my hand.”

“Tricks can’t sway him, Lord Talwin,” the Earl of Drummond assured the elderly man. “He’s played too many himself.”

Miles grinned at his friend. “And Eric?” he asked softly.

“Where he should be,” Rafe reported. “Sinclair’s taken the other end of the field. Unless she creeps through the forest to the north or slogs through the stream to the south, she’ll be discovered and detained—if she comes.”

Miles laughed. “Do you doubt it? You’ve met her. Nothing but—no, nothing will keep my sister
away. So Eric and Sinclair have their work cut out for them.”

The men smiled, until they saw the arriving carriage slow to a stop nearby.

Peter Proctor stepped from the coach, followed by two hard-faced strangers. He handed his cloak to one of them, and strolled over to the earl, never once looking in Miles’s direction. “Has an apology been issued?” he asked the earl calmly.

“No,” Drum said. “Have you changed your mind?”

“Hardly, my lord,” Proctor said. “I’ve been maligned, and I shall be satisfied. Either by apology or this event.”

They waited as Proctor took off his jacket. He was a tall man, heavyset but not obese, fit enough looking, but years older than his opponent. Still, they weren’t going to be fencing or having at each other with sabers. Pistols erased the years between men; a level head and hand and a steady eye were all that was needed.

“Would you care to inspect the pistols?” one of the men who had come with Proctor asked Drum, opening the flat mahogany case he carried.

“Of course!” Drum said with astonishment. “Rafe! Lord Talwin! Come and have a look with me, if you please.”

Proctor laughed. “Come, my lord, do you think I don’t know your reputation, as well as that of
your fellows? Lord Talwin’s widely known as a man of influence in the War Office, and you and your friend Rafe had somewhat shadowy, though formidable reputations in the late conflict. You may believe me to be a villain, but surely you don’t think I’d be stupid enough to tinker with the weight of either pistol or set either bore off balance? If you do, well then, sir, when I’m done with your friend, I’d be happy to meet you too.”

The elegant earl’s long nose lifted. He stared down it at the other man. “I don’t expect you’ll be able to do that, Proctor. Otherwise, I’d be happy to oblige you.”

The pistols were inspected. The seconds nodded to the men they represented. The duelists moved to the center of the level grassy patch, and when they got there, turned and stood back to back. Miles faced north and Proctor south, so neither would face the glare of the rising sun. The surgeon had finished laying out his tools. Drum and Rafe Dalton stepped to Miles’s side of the grassy patch. Proctor’s two companions moved to his side.

The duelists stood in their shirtsleeves surrounded by their friends, who wore the sober tones of formally dressed gentlemen. The morning was rising dull; thick, dark green underbrush framed the scene. The white of the two opponents’ shirts stood out, the only brightness to be
seen. Lord Talwin stood beside them, and then backed away. “Fifteen paces,” he said. “Ready?”

Both men nodded.

“One,” Lord Talwin said.

The duelists began pacing away from each other, as Lord Talwin counted on.

Annabelle, crouched in a thicket on a rise by the killing field, caught her breath in a sob. It wasn’t only because she was still breathless from her secret rushed passage through the bracken, it was because she could too easily envision a blotch of crimson staining the white shirt she watched so closely.

“Hold here,” she whispered low to Camille as she brushed back another branch and peered out. “We can’t go further. Can you see?”

“All too well,” a deep voice murmured.

Annabelle shot up to her full height.

“Now, this one I expected,” Eric Ford said softly and sadly, shaking a furious Camille by the wrist he held tight in one big hand. “But you, my lady? You surprise me. She had a pistol. What have you got in your pocket? A cannon? Please, if you will, hand it over.”

But Annabelle’s gaze had already gone back to the clearing. It had grown suddenly quiet. The men had stopped moving and stood still, holding their pistols down by their sides. They looked at Lord Talwin, who had stepped to the side. He
withdrew a large white handkerchief from his jacket.

Eric forgot his request and stood as still as the two women, as they waited for the duel to begin.

A bird called. Annabelle heard nothing else but the blood pounding in her ears. She held her breath.

The men raised their arms and their pistols, and looked toward Lord Talwin.

Lord Talwin raised his white handkerchief.

Then everything happened too fast for anyone to see it all—except for those on a thicket on a rise above the killing field.

A man burst out of the thick underbrush at the side of the clearing, raised a long-nosed pistol, and pointed it at Miles. A stray beam from the rising sun sparked on the metal lock of the dark cased pistol. Miles swung his head to the side to see it. His raised arm followed the direction of his gaze, and he fired. A blast, a puff of blue smoke. Another shot fired. The stranger in the underbrush dropped his gun, gripped his chest, and crumpled to the ground. Yet another shot rang out. Another man had appeared to the side of the clearing, his pistol smoking.

Miles swung his head back and saw the back of his opponent disappearing into the thick blue smoke of gunfire as Proctor ran toward a waiting horse. But he didn’t reach it. He staggered, stum
bled, and fell. He raised his head and tried to crawl. A blooming bloodstain on the back of his shirt showed why he couldn’t. He said something that sounded like gargling. And then his head fell and he was still.

The glade was quiet again, for one appalled moment.

Then Annabelle picked up her skirts and scrambled down the rise, shouting, “Miles! Miles!” all the way.

He was kneeling at Proctor’s side and looked up to see her racing toward him like a mad thing. He rose and caught her in his arms. She wrapped her arms around him and clung, sobbing.

“Hush, it’s all right,” he told her. When she steadied, he looked over her shoulder.

“Well done, sir,” he said, his eyes grave.

Annabelle lifted her head and turned to see who he’d spoken to. Her father stood there, gray-faced, breathing heavily, dangling a pistol that still bled a thin blue stream of smoke.

“I saw the opportunity and I took it,” Earl Wylde told his son-in-law. “He fired at you—as you shot at his accomplice. I suspected he’d try something like that from my investigations.” He paused for breath and went on: “I heard his challenge in the park, you see, and took precautions. I’m a very cautious man. I came here in the last of the night, before anyone arrived, to watch, in se
cret if I had to, and it seemed I did. And I came prepared. If it had been a fair fight, you’d never have known I was here. As it was, I don’t say he could have killed you with a direct hit to the heart, since you were turned to the side when you shot at his cohort. But even so, he might have grievously wounded you.

“That would have suited him. Then he could spread more lies or demand payment to stop. You couldn’t kill him without even more scandal. Slaying a stepfather, even an evil one, would have been a difficult thing to live down,” the earl went on. “Nor could your seconds do it for you. There’d have been a trial and even more vicious gossip if he didn’t get his way. He’d have made sure of it. But I could do it, and I had to. I owed my daughter that, at least.”

“Yours is a formidable family, my lord,” Miles said.

“It’s yours now as well,” the earl said. “I’m very glad of it. Well done on your part too, lad. You faced the enemy head on, and won. And you won my daughter completely. I believe that was the harder task.” Without a glance at his daughter, he went on, shaking his head. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My Lady Annabelle behaving in such a harum-scarum way? Risking her reputation for a man, even her husband? Very well done, my boy. Now then,” he said, looking at Miles’s
friends. “We have some cleaning up to do, gentlemen, don’t we?”

“The man is dead by misadventure,” Lord Talwin said dryly, “shot and killed by his own hired man, who killed himself in turn. We all saw that.”

“Of course,” Drum said blandly, “That’s precisely what happened, isn’t it, my friends?”

There was a murmur of agreement.

“Dr. Selfridge?” Lord Talwin asked.

The surgeon at Peter Proctor’s side looked up, surprised, then shrugged before he too nodded. “All I have to say is that this fellow is dead, and he certainly deserved to be.”

“Mr. Proctor’s other hired scoundrel will testify to it too,” Lord Talwin added, looking hard at the man Eric Ford held by his side, “before he goes to the Antipodes for life—if he wants to keep that life in order to do so, that is.”