Fires of Delight (49 page)

Royce said nothing. Selena stood disconsolately beside her horse as the seconds conferred. Sussex unsheathed his long sword and slashed the air with it.

“This is death, Campbell,” he grinned. “Have a look at it.”

Selena turned away and looked out over the gorgeous, flower-filled field. She was overcome by the beauty of new day, and by the contradictory presence of strife and death.

Sean Bloodwell unstrapped the case from behind his mount’s saddle.

“According to the rituals of dueling,” he said softly, as the others watched him swing open the leather lid of the case, “the man who is challenged has choice of weapons.”

Everyone looked. The cast contained two long-barreled blunderbusses. The duke’s jaw fell. Royce grinned.

Too late, Sussex realized the error that his haste had caused him to make.

“This is unfair!” he protested weakly.

“Sir,” said Royce, “you know that it is not. I give you the right to refuse this duel, and go your way. I shall think no less of you.”

“I could
not
think less of you,” he added mirthlessly.

Selena’s heart jumped for joy. She had seen Royce shoot down a sparrow on the wing with a musket. The day turned even brighter than it was.

“Permit me to inspect the weapons,” said the duke’s second, a youngish man who seemed quite nervous, and more so now than he had been a moment ago.

Sean Bloodwell stepped away to allow the inspection. “I have powder and shot with me,” he said. “You may, according to the rules, load your champion’s weapon, or he may do so himself.”

“Guns are uncivilized,” cried Sussex. “Have you no honor?”

“As much as you, I think, sir. I offer again. Withdraw. Forfeit. And apologize to Selena for what you called her at the palace yesterday, of course.”

The duke stiffened. “I shall not.”

“Then load your weapon, sir,” ordered Royce, his eyes cool slits of restrained fury.

Selena noted that Sussex’s hands trembled as he measured out the gunpowder. Sean prepared Royce’s weapon.

Royce came over to Selena and put his hands on her shoulders. “I hoped it would not come to this,” he said, “but it has. I deliberately remained in the antechamber when you addressed the lords, so that sight of me would not provoke the duke. But he had his heart set on some form of showdown, it seems.”

“Still, darling, be careful.”

“You need not advise me about that.”

Then the weapons were ready. Sean and the other second carried them out onto the green field. Royce and Sussex followed. Royce wore a black, simple suit, and stood bareheaded on the grass. The duke was garbed flamboyantly in pink breeches and a ruffled shirt of powder-blue silk.

“The combatants will stand back to back,” Sean commanded. “I will call out twenty paces. On the count of twenty, turn and
fire. In the event that both shots miss, the contest is a draw. The challenger, Duke of Sussex, has then the right to demand a second chance. Wounding or death, however, will satisfy the requirements of this contest.”

Royce and Sussex took up their positions. The seconds withdrew to one side. Selena remained beneath the oak.

“One!” cried Sean. The combatants began to walk, pacing as the count mounted, inexorable as death. “…eighteen, nineteen,
twenty!”

Selena’s eyes were on Royce. She saw him turn quickly and raise the musket to his shoulder. She saw a look of amazement on his face, and turned toward the duke. Against all protocol, he had dropped to the grass and lay flat against the earth, taking aim.

“Unfair!” shouted Sean angrily.

Too late. Sussex’s weapon jumped in his hands. A bellowing explosion rolled across the field. Royce seemed to shudder a little, but remained on his feet.

The lead ball had missed him.

Sussex lay helpless on the ground.

“Do you wish to stand like a man?” Royce asked. “It is against my principles to shoot a snake in the grass, much as I would like to.”

Cowering, glowering impotently, the duke rose shakily to his feet, holding the musket as if he hoped it were a shield.

“In return for an apology and a vote in Selena’s favor,” said Royce, taking aim, “I offer you your life.”

“No,” replied Sussex, aware that his last shred of honor was at stake.

“Don’t be a fool, man. Feel the sun. Smell the fragrant air. Imagine the taste of the brandy there in the bottle beneath the tree. That is yours, today and tomorrow and thereafter, just for an apology and a vote.”

“No,” said the duke.

“So be it,” shrugged Royce, his finger on the trigger. Sussex braced for his doom, closing his eyes.

Explosion. Fire. Billowing smoke.

The duke opened his eyes.

Royce had fired deliberately into the air. “Let us end this foolishness now,” he said, lowering his weapon.

But an expression of joy and resolve came over Sussex’s face. He believed that Royce’s shot had accidentally missed.

“Second chance! Second chance!” he crowed.

“Please reconsider, My Lord,” pleaded his anxious second.

“God damn it, man, make haste and bring more powder and shot. I mean to win the day.”

As the second hastened to comply, Royce motioned wearily to Sean Bloodwell, asking that he, too, bring a second charge of shot.

While Sean reloaded the weapon, Selena walked over to her lover. “Please get it over with this time,” she said.

His expression was grim. “It seems I have no choice, doesn’t it?”

Sussex’s man was carefully measuring powder, but the duke, certain now that he would triumph and eager to get on with it, seized the materials and commenced his own reloading. “I note, Campbell, that you chose the wrong weapon. Fatal for you, I fear.”

Royce did not reply.

Sussex used a thin ramrod to jam in the quantity of powder, then added the lead ball and tamped that in too, the movement of his arm jerky and pistonlike. He was in position for the second shot before Royce had readied his weapon.

Once more, Sean Bloodwell counted out the paces.

“One…seven…thirteen…eighteen…
twenty!”

Sussex, delirious with anticipation, whirled on Royce with preternatural speed.

He took quick, sure aim.

Royce had only begun to lift the weapon to his shoulder.

Sussex fired.

The explosion of his blunderbuss was much louder than before, its force sweeping over the field, frightening the horses, shivering leaves on the trees.

A brief, pitiful howl of surprised agony followed the blast, then there was stillness.

Sussex lay dead on the ground, one arm blown away, his face ripped apart. He had loaded too hastily, with excessive gunpowder. His weapon had exploded in his hands. Forty paces from his opponent, Royce Campbell stood unharmed. He hadn’t even fired.

“Coldstream awaits you, Selena,” Sean Bloodwell said.

It was not quite that simple, however. Sean informed Royce and Selena, as they rode together back to London, that he would immediately begin to canvass the lords, which would require at least a day. He advised them to remain at their hotel, so he would be able to notify them as soon as he had word. Prospects for a favorable vote were excellent, though, since the Duke of Sussex had been Selena’s primary—if not only—committed adversary.

“Few tears will be shed over his demise,” Sean said.

And so Royce and Selena spent the day together, breaking the tension with long periods of lovemaking. When darkness fell, with yet no word from Sean, they hurried out to a pub for a rushed dinner of meat pies and ale. Selena forced herself to eat, for her appetite was scant.

When they returned to the hotel, a messenger awaited them, one of the young waifs of London who made a ha’pence here and a ha’pence there carrying letters and doing errands.

“My lord, my lady,” he bleated shyly, “I bear you tidings from Lord Bloodwell of St. John’s Wood. He requests the company of Sir Royce Campbell at his lodgings at once.”

Royce and Selena exchanged glances. “Me only?” Royce asked the boy.

The youth nodded and withdrew.

“That is bad news,” said Selena. “The vote has been against me, and Sean wishes to spare me the agony of having to hear the news directly from him.”

“Do not give up hope yet,” Royce said, squeezing her hand. “It may be another matter entirely. Perhaps there has been some new trouble in the wake of my duel with Sussex. Go to our room and wait for me. I shall return as soon as I can.”

He hired a hack and departed for St. John’s Wood. Selena went upstairs to the hotel room and sat there dispiritedly on the bed,
trying to contain her tension. It did not seem fair, it did not seem right, after all she had endured, to suffer the loss of her great prize now. She poured herself a glass of brandy, thinking that it would make her feel better, but the effect was just the opposite. She began to brood.

“Steel yourself for bad news,” she exhorted herself, many times. But strength did not come.

At last she heard slow, heavy footsteps on the stairs—not the tread of a man bearing glad tidings—and a gentle, almost hesitant rap on the door.

“Come in,” said Selena, who was seated on a chair near the window, next to a small table on which an oil lamp burned dimly.

The door swung slowly open.

Light from the lamp was sufficient to glisten on Colonel Clay Oakley’s hideous bald pate.

“Selena, my dear,” he hissed, in all of his frightening, single-minded malevolence. “How beautiful you look, as always.”

He held a dagger in his hand, as if it were a paint brush, prepared to alter her features according to his tastes.

She sprang to her feet, but he blocked the way to the door. The window was too high off the street; she could not jump without killing herself. Still, that was a better alternative than the blade. “How did you—” she began.

“Escape from the Tower? It was not easy. It took a bit of time. But even a man like me has friends, after all the good I have done for England.”

Selena fought to collect her wits. There was a murderous light in Oakley’s eyes, as if he had passed far beyond the pale of faintest sanity. He meant to even things with her now, and she knew it.

“You have chosen an inopportune time to call on me, I’m afraid,” she said, as calmly as possible. “Royce Campbell will be here momentarily.”

Oakley’s mustache lifted as he offered his eerie grin. “No, my dear. He won’t. He has gone to St. John’s Wood.”

“How do you—”

“Because I sent him the message to go thither.”

“You mean Lord Bloodwell didn’t summon him?”

“No, my dear. I wanted to have these special, final moments with you alone, don’t you see?” He took several heavy steps toward her, she took as many steps away from him.

Her back was to the window now. The blade of the dagger glinted in his huge hand.

Then he reached into a waistcoat pocket and withdrew something supple and glittering.

“Here’s a message for you, though,” he chortled spitefully, and threw the object on the floor at her feet.

It was Erasmus Ward’s cross. Hastily, and confused, she picked it up and looked at him.

“What is the meaning of this? How did you—”

“Your friends seem to have the unfortunate habit of dying,” he wheezed. In growing excitement now that his moment of revenge was so near, Oakley was forced to take out his scented handkerchief and inhale deeply. “That cross was intercepted at Dover today, when a mail pouch was inspected there.”

Selena stared at the little cross in her hand, which she had carried through time, across a vast distance.

“Pierre Sorbante was beheaded today in Paris,” Oakley smiled.

“When I have no more need of this cross,”
Sorbante had told Selena, “
I shall find a way to return it to you.”

“Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette were guillotined as well,” said the colonel. “Maximilien Robespierre is in total control of the revolution…or will be until the beast he has created turns upon him. Which it will. Such is the tide of all revolutions, don’t you agree?”

He took a few more paces toward her, and lifted the dagger. She felt the heat of his body; thick waves of his cologne spread out in the air.

He lunged.

His own great strength was his undoing. Had the movement of his arm been quick and deft, the dagger stroke would have been true. But he put too much power behind the stroke, losing his aim just enough for Selena to dart sideways and head for the door.

Safe!
she thought ecstatically, rushing from the room and flying down the stairs, two at a time. She would race through the lobby and run out into the street. It was still relatively early, perhaps nine o’clock; there would be people…

A thuggish creature, obviously a man still loyal to the deposed colonel, stood sentry at the bottom of the stairs. His hand moved toward the pistol at his belt. Selena heard Oakley panting and lumbering along behind her. The way to the street was blocked.

She vaulted over the railing and landed on her feet in a dim passageway that led to the rear of the hotel. Gathering her strength and nerve, she raced into the darkness.

“Don’t fire!” she heard the colonel gasp. “I want her for myself.”

Two choices
. Either the exit door, which opened into a narrow, twisting back street, or a door that led to some sort of cellar.
I’ll be trapped down there
, she thought, reasoning with the perfervid instinct of a hunted animal.

She stepped out into a chilly, fog-shrouded alley.

Which way? Left or right? Where was the main street?
It was impossible to tell.

She turned left and made her way along the building. She heard the door open and close.

“Selena, darling,” Oakley gasped, “do not try to get away. It will not work. You and I were meant for one another. We must complete the circle of which we have been a part since first we met.”

Even as slowly and carefully as she was moving, Selena’s foot struck something, which overturned with a metallic clang and went rolling over the stones.

“Ah!” exclaimed the colonel in satisfaction. “Fate gives you away…”

They both moved forward then, almost as in an exquisite, extemporaneous dance. She would feel her way a few more paces into the darkness; he would follow. The process went on for a long time, it seemed, and finally, with her heart pounding, Selena thought she saw the glow of dull light in the fog up ahead. Her hands found the corner of a building, and she turned into a wider street. Light came from a window far ahead. Pray let it be a pub or some gathering place, she hoped, remembering how, in America, she’d found refuge from him in the Nest of Feathers tavern.