The Second Shot (The Dueling Pistols) (35 page)

Felicity scanned the room. She saw two of the Lungren sisters and Diana, who seemed to be practically supporting the oldest. The other sister had her back to Felicity, and she couldn't tell if it was the middle sister or the youngest. She didn't see the black dress of the remaining sister, nor could she pick out the bright scarlet dress uniforms of Tony and his Lieutenant Randleton. She tried to count heads in the shifting cacophony of babbling, bawling, and blustering guests. She thought, but she wasn't sure, that everyone else was present.

She approached the duchess. "Lady Penelope looks quite distressed, your grace. Should I have your carriage brought round first so you might comfort her at home? I'm so sorry that things have turned out so dreadfully."

"He pushed me," sobbed Lady Penelope.

"Yes, my pet, never should have happened. Quite rude, but we can hardly hold Mrs. Merriwether accountable for the boorish behavior of her guests. Yes, Mrs. Merriwether, our carriage, please. We quite enjoyed the dinner."

Felicity summoned her butler and gave instructions for the carriages to be brought to the front door. That was when she heard a clatter in the green drawing room, as if someone had knocked over the stand of brass fire irons in there.

Across the room, the two Lungren sisters had heard the sound, and the oldest was marching across the room to the connecting door. Her sister—Felicity could see it was the youngest sister, Carolyn—followed behind, tugging on her older sister's arm, trying to hold her back but without much success.

"Mother, I need your help," said Felicity sharply.

Lady Greyston stirred from her fake swoon and jumped up from the couch.

Felicity grabbed her mother's arm and told her to get people out to their carriages as quickly as she could. She beckoned Diana over to help, too. They would do a bad job of it, but they would likely get it done.

Just then, Tony and Lieutenant Randleton burst into the room. Felicity pointed toward the green drawing room, and the two exchanged a look. The major headed back out in the hall, she presumed, to enter the room from the passageway, and Randleton cut through the room, beating Miss Lungren to the connecting door.

"Do something," Felicity hissed to Mr. Bedford as she watched half the guests turn toward the green drawing room.

He stood and with a loud moan of pain, fell to the floor in a much less graceful fake swoon. Diana looked at Felicity and down at Mr. Bedford and, after a second's hesitation, let out a loud shriek and then ran to kneel by Mr. Bedford. "Oh, my stars." She clapped her hands to her chest. "He's dying."

Her niece was quite the little actress, thought Felicity as she watched Diana quite handsomely direct the men in the room to place Mr. Bedford on a couch and to go fetch the physician from downstairs, because surely a gunshot was a much more demanding wound than a broken leg. With a flirtatious flicker of her eyelashes, she made promises that had half the men falling all over themselves to assist her.

Felicity flew out the door and to the hallway entrance to the green drawing room. She entered just behind Tony as the group coming in from the rose drawing room slid back the pocket door.

In the center of the room stood the middle Lungren sister, her hands and arms full as she appeared to be trying to repack a pistol with the fireplace poker. Her large beaded reticule lay on the floor at her feet.

"Miss Jocelyn, what are you doing?" asked Tony.

She shrieked, whirled around, and dropped the pistol she held in her hand. A small pouch fell to the floor, spilling black powder on the mint-and-emerald carpet. As she spun she must have hit her reticule, and a half-dozen round balls spun out, rolling across the carpet.

Felicity heard the swish of a sword unsheathing and looked to see Rosalyn pulling Lieutenant Randleton's sword free of his scabbard. He reached to grab it back, but the other sister, the youngest, wrapped her arms around his upper arms. Not that he couldn't have broken free, but he seemed caught off guard.

"I say, Miss Lungren, that is a real sword," said Tony. "Not a toy."

"Good," said Rosalyn as she pointed it outward and advanced on her sister, Jocelyn.

Jocelyn backed away.

After she let go of the lieutenant, the youngest Miss Lungren had the presence of mind to shut the door leading back into the rose drawing room. Felicity shut the door behind her.

"Are you poisoning me?" asked Rosalyn, advancing menacingly on her sister. Her foot caught in her sister's reticule, and she fell down to her knees, but she held the sword forward.

"What makes you think that?" Jocelyn fished behind her for a weapon to defend herself with as she backed away.

"Why were you planting castor beans?" asked Lieutenant Randleton.

Jocelyn took a frantic glance at the lieutenant and backed up until she encountered the chaise longue with the snapping crocodile legs and could retreat no farther. She looked more and more like a crazed animal with nowhere to go.

Felicity tried to step forward, but Tony barred her way with an arm, his other hand on the hilt of his sword.

From her knees, with the sword outstretched like some avenging angel or Joan of Arc emulator, Rosalyn cried out. "Why? Why would you kill all of us? Why Papa?"

"What are you talking about?"

Tony bent and picked up one of the bullets from the carpet. He rolled it between his fingers. The dark metal almost looked obscene against his white gloves. "Has the same imperfection as the shot fired the other night at Mr. Bedford's lodging."

He tossed it to Randleton, who caught it and examined it. "Same indentation, molded like the other. You may as well confess. We know you killed the captain as well as your other brothers."

"Mr. Bedford saw you before you shot him tonight." Tony took a step forward, closing in on the murderess.

"Or rather, as you shot him," said Randleton, also moving forward.

"I want to know why, why you would do such a thing," demanded Rosalyn. Tears were streaming down her face, but her eyes glittered with a focused rage. "Why me? Why poison me?"

The other Lungren sister, Carolyn, sobbed and clutched at Lieutenant Randleton's arm.

Jocelyn refused to answer her gaze darting from one person to another as if looking for a way out.

"You'll hang for them all, I'm sure," said Randleton.

There was no point in her refusing to admit her guilt, yet she remained silent.

Rosalyn inched forward on her knees, her other hand outstretched as if looking for some object to hold so she could rise without lowering the sword.

Finally Jocelyn's features twisted, and she looked at her sister. "You might as well put that down, Ros. You don't have the courage to run me through."

Rosalyn started to shudder. "I do! I will! You've killed me. What is there to stop me?"

"Oh, not yet. You need more doses." Jocelyn swung around the chaise longue putting it between herself and her sister.

"Just tell me why, and I'll spare you."

Jocelyn looked around with a gleam coming to her eye, as if she'd formulated a plan. "All right, I'll tell you why. Because I shall own the estate after you're gone. Had to be done before you gave away more to that Lord Carlton."

Was she talking now to stall for time? Felicity tried to follow the line of her vision and saw the fireplace poker in the line of Jocelyn's sight. Felicity looked at Tony, who was slowly, without a whisper of sound, withdrawing his sword from his scabbard.

"But the estate is worthless," said Randleton.

Jocelyn laughed. "On, no, there is plenty of money in the house. Papa made a fortune smuggling French wines during the war."

"He did what?" said Rosalyn in a cross between a whisper and a cry of anguish.

Jocelyn took another look at the poker, and Felicity was sure she was going to lunge for it at any second.

"I couldn't let him do that, what with Jonathon over there fighting. Papa was likely to get him killed."

"But you killed Jonathon."

Jocelyn blinked, as if she couldn't quite reconcile the gaps in her logic, and then shrugged.

Felicity flew to Tony's side. "She's going to go for the poker," she whispered, with a cupped hand to his ear—or as near to it as she could reach.

"I know," he said. "Get back."

Felicity stepped back.

Rosalyn rose to her feet with renewed vigor and, with the sword held in front of her like an avenging angel, said in a sputter, "You let me go to that man and ask for help after what he did to me, and there was money all along?"

"Bad money. We couldn't spend it." Her eyes gleamed bizarrely, "Lots of money. He hid it in the walls."

Carolyn stepped forward, her face drained of color. "Why Jonathon?"

"Why Mr. Bedford?" asked Tony.

Rosalyn advanced with the sword outstretched. "Why our brothers. Why would you kill Norman and Aaron? Why?"

"Norman thought I should marry. Aaron did, too." She stared straight at her sister Rosalyn.

"So, Mama was right when she attacked you," whispered Carolyn. "And we thought
she
was insane."

"You think I would marry any man after I saw what Lord Carlton did to you? After I helped wash away the blood and..." She looked at the sword her sister held, her mouth twisted in a sneer that would do Lord Algany proud. "Do it, if you're going to. Kill me."

Rosalyn was still shaking, but she made no further advance. She simply held the sword out as if she no longer knew what to do with it.

Tony made a signal to Randleton, and they moved forward. Jocelyn, with the desperation of a cornered animal, leaped forward and grabbed the poker. Tony and Randleton were on both sides of her as she rose with the brass-handled poker in her hand. Randleton grabbed the poker before she could swing it.

She struggled with Randleton, no match for his superior strength. When she realized she wouldn't be able to wrest control of the fireplace tool from him, she shoved it toward him and spun around to flee. Tony started to lower his sword. He wouldn't need it to overpower an unarmed woman.

Jocelyn took two steps toward the door and Tony. Felicity stepped in front of the door, but Jocelyn, in a feint to maneuver around Tony, must have stepped on one of the bullets littering the carpet. Her feet went out from under her and crashed into Tony's bad leg.

Jocelyn went down.

Tony and the sword he was lowering fell. He tried to twist, to react, but it was too late. It all happened as both of them were falling, and in spite of his letting loose the weapon before either of them hit the floor, it was obvious it was far too late.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Tony was horrified as he realized he had impaled Miss Jocelyn with his sword. She lay on the floor, his sword extending from her abdomen, as he fell hard to his hands and knees. Pain ricocheted up and down his bad leg, and for a moment he couldn't move. He knelt on all fours, trapped beside his victim as she breathed in a surprised pant.

He'd loosened his grip on the sword as he fell, but to no avail. He'd felt it sink deep in the soft flesh of her midsection, and he knew the razor-sharp blade had run her completely through.

She stared at him, wide-eyed, the soul-deep fear of a wounded animal replacing the madness and insanity that was in her eyes a moment earlier.

He winced as he realized that the wound was mortal but the death would be agonizing and slow. Several days at best. He'd seen it dozens of times, whether it was a stab wound or a bullet wound to the gut. Twice he'd spent time in hospital watching young soldiers brought in with wounds like this one. Watching as their misery turned to agony, as the fevers came on and the stench grew. Sometimes there had been opium to dull their pain, most often not.

It was the leaking of their innards and the infection that came on that ultimately would bring on death, a young physician had explained to him as he begged him to help one of his men, who had taken a bayonet in the stomach. There was nothing they could do. Nothing to stop the inevitable gruesome death.

After six months in the hospital, and in six years of war he had watched a lot of men die—some mercifully fast, most not. He lurched to his feet. Gripping the sword with both hands, he heard the ladies gasp.

Jocelyn stared at him as he jerked the sword up through her body, making her death quick, certain, over. She twitched slightly and closed her eyes. Her breathing rattled to a stop, and then there was silence.

With a weary grief he pulled his sword free of the body and dropped it to the mint-and-emerald carpet. He'd known from the minute he'd entered the room that he didn't like the overgrown-jungle motif.

He turned to look at Felicity, and she stared at him as if he were some kind of monster, an evil woman-killer. He looked down at the body of Jocelyn. He should have felt some relief that the killer of his captain was dead. Justice was served.

He felt empty, as if the only thing he could do was kill.

He'd spent six years killing. He couldn't even rescue his son from a roof, but he could kill. No wonder Felicity wanted nothing to do with him. He had nothing but his skill at death.

One of the remaining Lungren sisters sobbed. Tony didn't know which one, didn't care which one. The only thing he cared about was the horrified look Felicity had turned in his direction. She didn't look at the body, didn't look at the others, didn't look anywhere but at him.

He could want her for the rest of time, and she would never forget this moment when she'd seen him exposed as the man he'd become, an efficient killer.

He knew then that it was over.

* * *

Felicity had managed to draw upon reserves she didn't know she had and regain her composure—well enough to see all her guests to their carriages. She thanked them for coming and apologized for the disruptions, knowing that most of them had no idea what had happened in the green drawing room. She even commiserated about how it was such horrible happenstance that Algany had broken his leg, and pushed them out the door when they started to question her about Mr. Bedford's "accident."