by Mary Balogh
She sighed as his mouth found hers.
“Relax,” he said against it. “No participation is required. This is purely from me to you.”
Ah, he knew that too. That she needed the gift of his body and his strength.
23
HE had always hated the day before a battle—though no battles had been fought by appointment, it was usually obvious to a seasoned soldier when one was imminent. He had always hated it because, busy with preparations as one had always been, there had been too much time for thought, too much time for fear. He had always scorned those soldiers who professed to feel no fear—on the assumption that it was unmanly to be afraid. On the day before a battle he had always been dry-mouthed and weak-kneed with fear. His stomach had always been queasy.
He felt fear on the day following the Mindell ball—the day before the duel with Copley that he himself had deliberately provoked. He had, of course, rejected Nat’s offer to do it for him.
“After all, Rex,” Nat had said with a careless shrug, “I have no one dependent upon me. And I always did enjoy a good scrap, especially against a bastard like Copley.”
No, he was not sorry he had done it. He would do it all over again if necessary. And it was certainly not something he would allow someone else to do for him, even one of his dearest friends.
But he was afraid. Afraid, of course, of dying—only a fool would pretend not to fear death. But afraid too of failing to avenge the terrible wrong that had been done to Catherine and the anguish she had suffered over the conception and death of a child. But fear, as on the day before a battle, gave him energy and clarity of thought. It made him attentive to duty and to detail.
A morning call on Eden confirmed the fact that the challenge had been taken up. Copley’s second had already called and all the details had been worked out. Nat and Ken were there too. Lord Rawleigh discussed his new will with them, talking quite openly and calmly about the possibility of his death. His will provided more than adequately for Catherine’s future. Her father and her brother would probably give her the emotional support she would need. His friends undertook to provide any further protection that might be necessary.
They went with him to take his will to his man of business. Then they spent an hour with him at pistol practice—he had not fired a pistol since selling out of the cavalry.
During the afternoon he paid calls with Catherine on the ladies with whom he had left his card in the days before the ball and on a few others who were known to be at home to visitors. And at the fashionable hour they drove in Hyde Park in his curricle. If he was to die tomorrow, he would do all in his power today to ensure her acceptance back into the ton. They were rejected nowhere. And a few invitations had arrived this morning.
All the men knew, of course. There was a certain look in their eyes that assured Lord Rawleigh of that fact, though nothing was said in the presence of the ladies. None of the ladies knew.
In the evening his friends came to dinner and the four of them talked unabashedly about their friendship, about some of their experiences together in the Peninsula and Waterloo. They talked because Catherine insisted upon it and because she was very obviously interested. She did not retire alone to the drawing room at the end of the meal in order to leave them to their port. They all sat on together and then adjourned together to the drawing room for another hour or so.
If he could have chosen how to spend what might well be his final evening, the viscount thought, he could not have done better than this—to spend it in company with his closest friends and his wife. He felt a pang of longing for Claude. Could his brother feel his uneasiness? Would he sense . . . But he would not indulge in such thoughts now any more than he had ever done during the war.
His friends did not stay late. They all planned to be up very early in the morning, they explained, having dared one another to watch the sunrise from horseback. They made a great show of persuading him to rise with the lark and ride out with them, begging Catherine’s pardon, assuring her that they would not drag him out so early ever again. All three of them were shamelessly charming. She, of course, realized it and laughed at them all. But she did not understand what was really going on.
He made love to her when they went to bed. Holding her afterward—he was thankful that she was not inclined to talk, as she had been the night before—he wanted to say the words to her that would complete what he had just said with his body. But he would not burden her with them. Not when tomorrow she might have great enough burdens to bear without that.
He held her close until she was asleep and then set himself to endure the hours of dozing and dreaming and waking that always preceded battle.
• • •
“TOBY,” she said, cupping his head with her hands, “I am a neglected wife. He took himself off even before dawn to ride with his friends and has doubtless gone somewhere to breakfast with them and will just as doubtlessly go on to White’s with them afterward. We will be fortunate if he sees fit to return for luncheon.”
Toby cocked his ears, puffed eagerly into her face, and wagged his tail.
“But I am not offended,” she said. “You must not think that. It is right that he lead his own life and that I lead mine—provided we also spend time together, of course. But the trouble is, Toby, that I have had no life of my own to lead since I married him. That fact is irksome, is it not, after all those years of independence?”
Toby whined eagerly.
“Yes,” she said, “you are quite right, of course. It is time you and I ventured out together for a walk.”
Standing still with his head being held was too restricting for Toby. He pulled away and began a circular tear about the morning room, pausing hopefully at the door with each revolution.
Catherine laughed at him. “If you do not wish to accompany me, Toby,” she said, “all you have to do is say so, you know.”
They walked out together a short while later, Catherine’s maid with them. Toby, on a leash, was indignantly trying to pull Catherine’s arm from its socket. When he was finally released in Hyde Park, he raced about so exuberantly that the maid laughed and Catherine joined her.
They met very few people and none whom Catherine knew. It felt so wonderful to be out walking again. Hyde Park at this time of day was like a piece of the country. One could forget that it was surrounded by the largest, busiest city in the world. It was a beautiful, sunny day. Catherine was sorry that she had not suggested getting up to ride with the men. But perhaps not, she thought. She must respect her husband’s male friendships as she would expect him to respect her female ones—with Elsie, for example. She must not always be hanging on his sleeve.
She did not want to go home immediately. But where else could she go? Elsie’s? Elsie lived too far away. She would have to go home and have the carriage called out. Daphne lived within walking distance of the park. Catherine brightened. She would go and call on Daphne.
When she and her maid and Toby arrived at the house, though, it seemed for a while that they had come in vain. Sir Clayton Baird’s butler was not at all sure that Lady Baird was at home. But he came back with the invitation to go up to her ladyship’s private sitting room. Toby, looking indignant again, was led off to the kitchen by the maid.
Daphne, red-eyed and distraught, threw herself into Catherine’s arms before the door could even close behind the latter.
“Have you heard anything?” she cried. “What has happened? Is he dead?”
“Daphne?” Catherine looked at her in amazement. “What is the matter?”
Daphne looked wildly at her. “Rex?” she said. “Is he dead? Clay went out ages and ages ago to find out for me, but he has not come back.”
Catherine could feel a buzzing in her head. The air of the room felt icy in her nostrils. “Rex?” she asked faintly.
And then Daphne’s look became one of horror as she helped Catherine to the nearest
chair and lowered her into it. “You did not know?” she said. “Oh, what have I done? He is fighting a duel with Sir Howard Copley, Catherine. Early this morning. With p-pistols,” she wailed.
• • •
CATHERINE was alone at the cold, dark end of a long tunnel. Someone was coaxing her to the other end, chafing her hands, calling to her—leaving her. And then there were voices and something was being pressed against her teeth and fire was coming down the tunnel and forcing her, coughing and sputtering, up to the warm, bright end.
“She is coming around, ma’am,” a male voice said.
“Yes,” Daphne said. “Thank you. The brandy was just the thing. Leave the glass in case she needs more.”
Sir Clayton Baird’s butler left the room after assuring his mistress that he would be just outside the door should she have further need of him.
“But Sir Howard is not even in town,” Catherine said foolishly as if the conversation had not just been interrupted by her fainting dead away. “And why would he want to challenge Rex?”
“He was at the ball,” Daphne said. “Did you not see him? And of course it was Rex who challenged him. I found out only this morning. Clay went out for news but he has not returned yet. Oh, where are you going?”
Catherine was on her feet, swaying, light-headed. She did not know where she was going. She had to find him. She had to stop him. She had to . . . “I have to tell him that I love him,” she heard herself say. What foolish words! She set a shaking fist to her mouth.
“Oh, Catherine.” They were in each other’s arms then, sobbing on each other’s shoulders.
It was too late to go looking for him. It was too late to stop him. It might forever be too late to tell him that she loved him. Duels were always fought at dawn, were they not? He had left home well before dawn.
“I have to go home,” she said. And suddenly there was a dreadful panic on her to be home. “I have to go.”
“I will come with you,” Daphne said.
It did not occur to either of them to wait for a carriage. Waiting was something neither could do. They hurried along the streets together, heads down. Catherine did not even remember that she had left a maid and a dog in Sir Clayton’s kitchen.
• • •
NOW that the time had come, fear had given place to an icy calm. He had known it would. It had always been thus. He had not been afraid of unsteady legs or shaking hand.
Copley had brought one second with him. Nat and Eden and Ken were all there, all grim and white-faced. This must be worse for them, Lord Rawleigh thought with a flash of insight, than it was for him. They were not accustomed to inaction on the morning of battle. They were not accustomed to watching one of their friends fight alone. There was also a surgeon in attendance.
Viscount Rawleigh did not look at Copley as he removed his cloak and stripped off his coat and waistcoat. He looked him in the eye as Eden and Copley’s second made the token gesture of attempting a peaceful reconciliation. He refused and Copley sneered. They were to stand back-to-back, take twelve paces each, turn, and fire after the signal.
“Tell Catherine,” he said to Eden at the last possible moment—she should know after all, he decided, exactly why he fought for her. He drew a deep breath. “Tell her that I love her.”
“You can tell her yourself later,” his friend said crisply. But he nodded.
A few moments later Lord Rawleigh was walking off his twelve paces, his pistol at the ready, steadying his mind on his decision to take careful and sure aim and not to follow the impulse to fire quickly and wildly before he could be fired at. He would have the chance for only one shot.
Copley, though, had made quite a different decision. As they turned, he leveled his pistol, and well before the signal to fire could be given, he fired.
It was amazing what a valuable thing experience could be, Lord Rawleigh thought. Experience enabled him to know that the pain was too severe for the wound to be serious. If it had been, he would have felt no pain for at least a few seconds. Shock would have cushioned him for that long. His right arm hurt like the devil. He was aware of redness on his white shirtsleeve, though he did not look down. It was only a flesh wound. He doubted that the bullet had even lodged in his arm.
He was aware too, though he did not look, of Nat with a gun in his hand.
“You are a dead man, Copley,” he called in a voice Viscount Rawleigh had only ever heard on the battlefield. But he held his fire.
Lord Rawleigh was taking careful aim, ignoring the pain. He had a lengthy acquaintance with it and knew that pain alone did not kill. Copley had no choice but to stand and wait. He stood sideways to make as small a target as possible.
Time moved at one fraction of its normal speed. Space became a tunnel, almost a telescope. He was aware as he leveled his pistol of Copley’s white and contemptuous face. In a matter of seconds a whole world of thoughts had found its way into his mind for consideration. He was tired of killing. He had always found himself vomiting for hours on end after a battle, knowing that he had killed men who had deserved death no more than he would have if they had killed him. He had killed to avoid being killed and to protect his friends and his men from death. He was not now in danger of death. Neither were his friends.
But Copley was a rapist. He had raped Catherine and very probably Horatia too. Possibly other women as well. If he lived, even if the events of this morning could persuade him to take himself into perpetual exile from Britain, he would be alive to do it again. To make other women suffer as Catherine and Horatia had suffered.
Up to the very moment he fired, Lord Rawleigh was not sure whether he would raise his arm into the air at the last moment and show his contempt for the worm that was Sir Howard Copley by wasting his bullet on the air, or whether he would hold his arm steady and kill him.
He kept his arm steady.
And then he strode toward his friends and his clothes and dressed himself with unshaking hands, not even looking at what the surgeon and Copley’s second were doing over the dead body of Sir Howard Copley. But he did have to take several hasty steps away after a few moments in order to vomit onto the grass. He was dizzy with the knowledge that he had killed. But for perhaps the first time he felt no remorse.
Catherine had been avenged. And all other women were safe from the bastard who had caused her suffering.
“Breakfast,” he said resolutely to his friends, turning back to them. He felt as much like eating as he felt like jumping into a fire. “At White’s?”
“At White’s.” Nat clapped a comforting hand on his left shoulder. “He would not have lived anyway, Rex. I would have done it if you had not.”
“Perhaps my house instead of White’s,” Eden suggested. “A little more privacy and all that.”
“I will have to leave immediately,” Ken said. “I have to return to Dunbarton.”
The other three looked at him in some surprise. Lord Rawleigh noticed that the look of tension and the ashen color had not left his face as they had Nat’s and Eden’s.
“To Dunbarton?” he said. “Now, Ken? This morning? Even before breakfast? I thought you were here for the rest of the Season.”
His friend’s face looked ghastly. “There was a letter waiting for me when I arrived home last evening,” he said. He tried to smile and failed. “It appears that I am to be a father in six months’ time.”
The duel was forgotten for the moment. His three friends stared at him.
“Who?” Eden asked at last. “Anyone we met when we were there, Ken? A lady?”
“No one you met,” Ken said grimly. “A lady, yes. I have to go home to marry her.”
“Dare I comment on the fact that you do not appear thrilled?” Nat said, frowning.
“Her family and mine have been enemies for as long as I can remember,” Ken said. “I do not believe I have ever disliked a woman more than I dis
like her. And she is with child by me. I must marry her. Wish me joy.”
He did smile then, and Lord Rawleigh found himself feeling pity for the unknown bride-to-be.
“Ken,” he said, frowning, “what are we missing?”
“Nothing that I care to divulge,” his friend said. “I have to be going. I am glad things turned out as they did this morning, Rex. Have that arm seen to before you leave here. I am glad you did not reprieve him. I feared you would. Rapists do not deserve to live.”
And without another word he strode away in the direction of his horse. He did not look back. None of them called after him.
“Poor Ken,” Nat murmured.
“Poor lady,” Lord Rawleigh said.
“We had better have that arm looked at, Rex, before you bleed to death,” Eden said, turning from their departing friend, his voice brisk. “The surgeon is free again, I see.”
Yes, Lord Rawleigh thought, looking down at his arm. His sleeve was soaked with blood from shoulder to elbow.
Catherine, he thought then. He had lived to see her again. To tell her himself that he loved her.
• • •
THEY both heard the outer door being opened and the sound of voices from the hall, even though they sat upstairs in the drawing room. But there was no hearing whose voices they were.
She sat stiff and upright on her chair. She could not get to her feet as she wished to do to run onto the landing and peer down the stairs or call down. Her legs felt alternately like lead and jelly. She guessed that Daphne was feeling the same way. They did not exchange any words—they were both listening too hard.
Who would come? she wondered. Who would be elected to break the news to her? Papa? Harry? Lord Pelham or one of his other friends? A stranger?
And then the door opened quite quietly and he stepped inside. For a moment her brain would not even accept the knowledge of who it was standing there. He was looking quite pale. The right sleeve of his coat was empty. His arm was in a very white sling. He was wearing what looked like someone else’s shirt.
