Sea of Secrets: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense

by DeWees, Amanda

  Then the ugly idea came to me that Charles might inherit his cousin’s estate, if Herron did not marry. That would be reason enough to kill Herron and to court me—to keep me from marrying Herron and inheriting Ellsmere. And, hateful as it was, this theory even explained two earlier incidents. The block that had fallen upon me from the tower might have been meant to kill me, to remove the threat I posed as Herron’s potential bride. And Herron’s fall from Caesar could have been easily engineered. Felicity’s careful checks of our mounts’ saddles had shown me how small a thing could cause an accident: a burr under the saddle, a loosening of the girth… someone may have meant for Herron to receive a far more serious injury than a sprained wrist.

  I flung out of my chair and walked to the window. I could see nothing, but I could sit still no longer under the needling agony of my own thoughts. This was all the wildest conjecture, I told myself firmly. I had no way of knowing who Herron’s heir was. And in any case, his mother had said that the estate was still in trust; that was why she still had the power to bar him from the house if she chose. So Herron’s murderer would gain nothing unless he waited for his birthday, when he came into his inheritance. Relieved at this recollection, I returned to my chair. Charles could not be after the estate; the idea was laughable even without the logical flaws in such a theory.

  But why, came the thought circling back, inevitable and persistent, why challenge Herron?

  Hours later, the duchess stirred and stretched. “It’s time we were going,” she said. “We still have to saddle the horses, and we must be on our way before the others reach the stables.”

  “How will we find our way?” I asked as I pulled on my cloak.

  “I know the place; I can take us there. Come, it’s nearly dawn.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  We reached the stables without encountering anyone. The duchess instructed me in saddling my mount—something I had never had to do for myself—as she performed the same office for her own. After a brief check to satisfy herself that I had done an adequate job, she led the way out into the night.

  The landscape lightened as we rode through the woods; nothing as definite as sunlight met us, but the shapes of the trees gradually grew more distinct, and all at once I realized that color had come into the world. We rode in silence, listening for the men so that we might not blunder across their path. The duchess’s unquestioning acceptance of the duel forced me to realize that it was something that we could not forestall. If we tried to interfere, the men would only change the time and venue of their meeting; no matter what we said or did, they would carry it out regardless.

  And still I did not know which man I more feared for.

  “We must leave the horses here,” said the duchess presently. “We are coming close now, and the horses will be seen. We must walk, and carefully.” Tethering our mounts to branches, we made our way on foot through the thinning woods. When we reached the fringes of the forest, she gestured for me to stoop down; the scattered trees provided less concealment now, and we might be seen. At the edge of the woods we crouched down behind some straggling bushes that provided a screen, and waited.

  In the growing light I was able to discern the scene before us. We had an excellent view of the field, which was not a large one: longer than it was wide, its uncropped grass grew knee-high. Across from us, another band of trees marked the boundary. I could no longer hear the sea, and I imagined that this place must be well removed from any dwellings; even I knew that dueling was illegal, and must be carried out in privacy.

  My mouth went dry as the sound of horses’ hooves came to my ears. The men had arrived.

  Charles and his father rode abreast; was Lord Claude acting as second to his son, I wondered, or was he there as a concerned bystander, like the two of us crouched in the shrubbery? Behind him came a man I did not know; he was elderly, dressed in sober unfashionable garments, and held a black bag before him on the saddle. “The doctor,” the duchess mouthed at me.

  Herron came last. He was the only one who had not changed his clothes; he still wore his evening dress, and the elegance of the stiff shirt and white tie was startlingly incongruous in this deserted field at dawn. His jaw was set, and he stared straight before him. The breeze tossed a lock of dark hair into his eyes, and he brushed it away absently with the back of one hand. He looked spent, and very young.

  I glanced at the duchess; how could she bear this without speaking, without moving to stop them? Her face wore a frozen calm, and was perfectly still. Only her hands moved; they plucked absently at the dead grass we sat on, pulling up blade after stiff blanched blade. I looked into her eyes once and did not look again. Her whole soul was poised there.

  The doctor seemed to be in charge of the proceedings, perhaps because he was the only truly disinterested party. He was inspecting the pistols with an efficiency that suggested he had performed this duty before, and as we watched he gave one to each of the duelists. Herron had brought no second to check his gun, and glanced at it only perfunctorily before loading it, but Charles took a few minutes to perform a more thorough inspection of his weapon. His expression was serious and intent as he handled the gun, and his hands were steady; he was not going to collapse from sheer exhaustion, as his opponent might. I wondered how he could be so calm when preparing to fire a pistol at a blood relative.

  “I’m ready,” I heard him say. The sun was rising. There was no brilliant glow in the sky, simply a lightening from grey to white; it promised to be an overcast day. The doctor looked inquiringly at Herron, who gave a curt nod.

  “Very well, then, gentlemen. As we have discussed.” The doctor’s voice was deep and faintly resigned, as if he had attended at many of these affairs of honor and had grown almost accustomed to watching young men blow holes in each other. Perhaps he had. “Take ten paces by my count and turn. When I drop my handkerchief, fire one shot each. If neither strikes home, Reginald as the offended party decides whether to continue. One—”

  “Charles, wait.” Lord Claude burst out suddenly as they stepped out from each other. “I cannot let you do this. It isn’t your quarrel—”

  “I have made it mine. Please let me pass, Father.”

  Charles moved inexorably on, taking the proper number of paces. His father trailed after him, his hand still reaching out in appeal, before drifting to a stop several yards away from where the doctor stood.

  Charles and Herron stopped and turned to face each other. It was very quiet; not even the birds were singing. I could hear the duchess’s breathing, quick and shallow. Very distantly, I thought I could hear sheep bells.

  The lack of ceremony was jarring; how could everyone be so matter-of-fact, so perfunctory? This was no way to die, without time to prepare, without even glory, just a bullet fired across an abandoned strip of weeds.

  Someone must stop this, I thought. I could not believe this stupidity had progressed so far. I made a panicked movement, and the duchess’s hand closed around my wrist in a grip like stone.

  Charles and Herron raised their pistols to point squarely at each other. For a few moments they stood like that, unmoving, awaiting the doctor’s signal. Men of honor, observing the courtesies as each stood poised to send a deadly ball of lead tearing into the other. What is the doctor waiting for? I thought feverishly.

  Then several things happened almost too quickly to see. The handkerchief dropped from the doctor’s hand. Herron suddenly jerked his pistol to the side, away from Charles, and a gun’s report came with deafening force into the silence. There was smoke, and shouting, and then I saw that someone was down. Not Charles, but Herron. It was not his gun that had fired.

  A thin shriek burst from me, but it was the duchess who was on her feet and running, fast as a hare, for the place where her son had fallen. The gathered men drew aside for her as she flung herself down next to him.

  “He can’t be dead,” I gasped, as I caught up to her. The duchess was stroking her son’s forehead, and his face was so white, so still, tha
t the breath choked in my throat. I knelt down beside them, groping for his hand. His eyes were closed.

  “He isn’t,” said the doctor shortly; “not yet. Make room, child. We need to stop the bleeding.”

  “Here,” said Charles: he had taken off his coat and folded it into a bundle, and the doctor took it without question and placed it under Herron’s head. I noticed the blood now, what seemed a terribly great amount of it, so much that I could not tell where Herron had been hit.

  “How bad is he?” asked Lord Claude, from behind me.

  The doctor did not reply at once; he was cutting away Herron’s blood-soaked shirt to reach the wound. “The bullet went straight through the shoulder, very clean,” he said presently. “But he’s losing blood, and there’s always a chance of complications. I presume honor is satisfied?” he asked dryly of Charles, who nodded briefly.

  “We must get him home at once, then, where the wound can be cleaned and where he can rest.” The duchess was in command again. “Claude, our horses are three hundred yards into the woods. Fetch them, and get the blankets from my saddlebags. Doctor, can he ride?”

  “Pillion, I think. Best let him go with Mr. Reginald; he is the strongest.”

  I watched in disbelief as the duchess assented. As a compress was hastily bound against Herron’s wound for the journey, I plucked at her sleeve. “How can you let him ride with Charles?” I hissed at her. “For the love of heaven, he just tried to kill Herron.”

  She barely glanced at me. “Charles will take good care of him. The important thing is to get him home.”

  I stared at her open-mouthed. I could not believe she would entrust her own son to the care of the man who had shot him. Lord Claude had returned with the horses now, and after Charles mounted, Herron was lifted up to sit crosswise on the saddle before him, held securely in Charles’s arm. No one else seemed concerned about the wisdom of this arrangement.

  “Have you got his gun?” Charles called to his father, who held it up in answer. All the others were readying themselves for the ride back to Ellsmere. I tightened my lips and mounted, wondering what everyone else seemed to understand that I did not.

  It was a silent, tense ride. The others rode at a jog-trot that seemed maddeningly slow, but the doctor warned against a faster pace that might jar Herron’s wound and set it bleeding more freely. Once I managed to maneuver my horse next to Charles. The duchess had ridden ahead to Ellsmere to make things ready, and the other two men had fallen back out of earshot.

  “Is he conscious yet?” I asked shortly.

  “No. Better for him; he’d be in considerable pain.” The ghost of a smile flickered over his face. “And distinctly unhappy at his escort.”

  “You’ve given him good reason to be so,” I retorted. “How could you do such a thing?”

  He looked at me over the top of Herron’s head. The brilliant eyes were dimmed with what might have been sadness or simple physical weariness. “I had to,” he said quietly. “He was aiming at Father, he was going to kill him. It was the only way to stop him.”

  “You didn’t have to shoot him.”

  “There was no time for anything else, Oriel, even had he not been past listening to argument. It wasn’t exactly easy, either, shooting to incapacitate him but no more. Do you think I wasn’t frightened that I would kill him?”

  I gnawed at my lip as I struggled with disbelief. I could not dismiss the horror of the sight that had faced me as I ran across the field: Charles holding a smoking pistol, standing over the man he had shot down. “You did not have to duel with him at all.”

  “Perhaps not. At the time it seemed the only solution.” He sighed, and the movement of his chest brought a faint groan from Herron. “We’ll talk later, Oriel. After Herron is safe. Just tell me one thing. Why does your father want Herron dead?”

  * * *

  It was many hours later before we spoke again. Herron was put to bed in the room next to his mother’s, which teemed with bustling, frantic activity: an army of servants hurried to provide everything the doctor and the duchess thought he needed, and my father shoved his way into the room to pelt us with questions as to his condition. We all crowded around as the doctor worked over him. At length the doctor professed himself satisfied enough with his patient’s condition to leave him.

  “He’s very lucky the wound was not worse,” he said, and I thought of Charles’s words. Had it really been design, rather than luck? “Dueling is a dangerous business, Your Grace, and it could easily have cost him his life.”

  The duchess was almost as pale as her son, but she was the most composed of all of us. “Thank you for your care of him, Doctor. I assure you that this will not happen again.”

  The doctor looked skeptical. “I should hope not,” he said sternly. “I trust I do not need to remind Your Grace of the laws against dueling. Next time perhaps the young men can find a less dangerous way to settle their quarrel.” But he let himself be shown out of the room.

  No one said a word until the door shut behind him. Then the duchess whirled, not on Charles, but on my father.

  “This is your doing, Hugo,” she accused.

  My father’s hand flew to his heart in a show of shock and injured feelings. “My doing! My dear Gwendolyn, it cannot have escaped you that it was your nephew who put the bullet in your son. How can you possibly blame me for that hotheaded young man’s doings?”

  “You were the one to introduce the idea of a duel; if not for you, there might have been some fisticuffs, but nothing more serious. It was you who goaded the others on and did everything in your power to ensure that someone would be killed. Don’t trouble to deny it; I heard everything. I don’t know why you would be so malicious, Hugo, but you will not subject my family to your vicious sense of humor any longer. You will leave this house today, and you will not return.”

  Lord Claude’s face had gone ashen. “Gwendolyn, do you not think you are being harsh?” he began, but my father smiled gently and bowed his head.

  “Very well, madam. I am sorry to have caused you inconvenience. I will not darken your door again. I wonder, though, if I might have a few more hours’ grace in which to prepare for my departure? You will not deny me that scant favor, I hope, since it will be the last.”

  His graceful capitulation was unexpected and, I think to all of us, a distinct relief. I was not surprised when the duchess said grudgingly, “Until tomorrow noon then.”

  “Thank you.” He bowed himself out of the room with his usual touch of insolent exaggeration. The rest of us gazed at each other with surprise, but a lightening of the heart. Perhaps now we would have a chance to mend what had passed.

  Finally there came a moment when the room had emptied of people and I was alone at Herron’s bedside. The duchess had ordered the room cleared so that he could rest, and had herself gone to oversee the preparation of a hot drink for him. He was asleep or unconscious, pale and small in the vast expanse of white linens, the bedclothes turned back to reveal the taut fragile lines of his throat. His eyelashes lay on his cheeks in two startlingly black crescents. I touched his forehead, smoothed his hair back; there was no fever, at least. Not yet. I let my hand linger, feeling the sweet familiarity of the shape of his brow under my palm. He looked younger and more defenseless than I had ever seen him. I could not help but recall the night he had first come to me for comfort, how his vulnerability had wrung at my heart, making me want to protect and soothe him.

  “Here now, don’t cry,” came a voice, and I half turned to find Charles behind me, watching Herron too. “He should be all right; you heard the doctor.”

  “But he also said he’s very weak.” I fumbled for my handkerchief and wiped my eyes. “He hasn’t been eating or sleeping enough. What if he doesn’t recover?”

  His hands closed around my arms and lifted me from my place by the bed. “Come and get some air,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do for him just now, and you aren’t doing yourself any good, hovering over him.”

 
; Still sniffling faintly, I let him shepherd me into the morning room and ring for tea. “I don’t want any,” I told him, but when the tray came, the fragrance of hot buttered toast and muffins reminded me that I had not eaten since the night before, and I fell to without shame.

  “Aren’t you eating?” I asked. Charles had taken a cup of tea, but nothing else; he sat back in his chair regarding me as he drank.

  “I had something earlier. I don’t believe in dueling on an empty stomach.”

  I felt better after I had eaten: stronger, more calm. At last I sat back with a sigh, my fingers curled around the comforting warmth of a full teacup, and looked at him. In the bustle over Herron, no one had thought of Charles; he looked as if he would have been the better for a hot posset and a long rest himself. He had not even taken time to find another coat to replace the one he had given up to Herron; he was still in his shirt sleeves. I was glad the fire had been lit in the morning room.

  “Well,” he said finally, “you haven’t fled my presence yet. Does that mean you have decided to trust me?”

  I looked into my teacup and considered this. “I think so,” I said. “I suppose you had to challenge Herron to prevent my father from calling him out. But I still believe Herron would have refused to meet him.”

  “Possibly. But he was certainly ready to kill someone, and it seemed very likely that it would be Father. If I hadn’t goaded Herron into a duel, he wouldn’t have rested until he had the chance to point a gun at my father’s head. As indeed he proved this morning.”

  “Did you know he would do that?”

  “I thought he might. That was why I had to be the one facing him; Father would never have shot Herron, even to save his own life.”

  “But once Herron recovers he will try again to kill Lord Claude.” I put aside my tea and propped my chin on my fist, gazing out the windows at the bleak grey day that was so exactly a mirror of my mood.