She struck at him but he fended off the blow and nearly yanked the cane from her hand before she wrenched it free. Grunting, he hauled himself up hand over hand on her skirts, drawing her toward him at the same time. She feinted with the cane but he was ready for her, reaching for it.
Behind him there was a movement. Emile was awake, raising himself with difficulty to one elbow. He shook his head as if to clear it, focusing on Anya.
He was weak, too weak to help her. Anya brought the cane down on Red’s hand that was wrapped in her skirts. He did not seem to feel it. She jabbed at him with the ferrule and he laughed, grabbing for it. His fingers closed on the metal end for a long moment, but using both hands, she wrestled it from his one-handed grasp.
“I’ll git it. I’ll git it, I’ll use it to beat your pretty—”
Anya ignored the rest of the threat. On the bed behind Red, Emile was reaching out, his fingers spread and trembling. His eyes were clear and in their depths there was a plea. What was it he wanted? The cane? But what could he do with it in his condition?
Red caught her wrist, wrenching it. In another second he would have the cane. She would have only one more chance to use it. One more.
To use it or give it up to its owner. To take her last chance, or let Emile have it. The decision must be made quickly.
Anya reached for the cane with her left hand. As Red let go of her skirts to grab for that arm, she threw the slender stick, arching, toward the bed. She saw Emile reach for it; then her view was blotted out as she went slowly to her knees, compelled by the grinding pain as her wrists were slowly twisted behind her. Through a red haze, she heard a click.
Red gave a hoarse, whistling grunt and went stiff. His grip slackened, his arms flopped down, then slowly he keeled to the side to strike the floor with a solid thud. There was a small slit in his neck. It was hardly bleeding at all.
Anya looked toward the cane in Emile’s hand. From it there protruded a six-inch blade. She met his eyes and he gave her a gallant smile. He said, “Forgive me. On this cane there is a button.”
19
WHETHER BECAUSE MURRAY HAD been confident of the ability of the leader of the thugs to deal with a woman and one unconscious man alone, or because it was Red himself who had been so sanguine, there was no guard outside the door, no one in the entire bordello who made the slightest effort to stop them as they left it. The sight of a woman helping along a man somewhat incapacitated was too common to draw attention beyond an ironic lift of a brow because they were going out instead of coming in.
The difficulty, Anya found, was in finding transportation. There were no cabriolets in this part of the city, and no one wanted to stop for what was apparently a woman of the streets and her drunken customer. Anya could have walked, but Emile was not in so good a case. At last she was able to beg a ride for them on the tail of the cart of a butcher who had been delivering sausages to what passed for restaurants on Gallatin Street. His cart was caked with grease and smelled like something long dead, but he took them to the door of the town-house.
Madame Rosa was aghast at the sight of them. She did not waste time exclaiming, however, but rang for the servants and soon had Emile in bed in a spare bedchamber. A doctor was sent for, who, on his arrival, declared with the greatest possible firmness that M’sieur Girod was not capable of appearing on the field of honor at dawn. The affair must be canceled. There could be no other choice.
Anya waited only long enough after that for Emile to pen a note of regrets and apologies. She had changed her torn gown and ordered the carriage brought out. Leaving Emile in Madame Rosa’s capable hands, taking his note with her, she left the townhouse once more. Ravel must be warned, and though she could have explained how matters stood in a message of her own, her restless fears would not allow it.
In the courtyard she found not only the landau, but Marcel on the box beside the coachman, with a musket propped against the seat beside him. He would not permit that she go alone. If she had so little concern for her own safety as to set out so foolishly as she had earlier, then someone must take care of her.
Anya felt the press of time too much to argue; moreover, she was glad of the gesture of protection. Giving the coachman the order he seemed fully to expect, she climbed into the carriage and sat back on the seat.
There were yellow gleams of light showing through the shutters on the lower floor of the Duralde house. It was a relief to see them; Anya had not liked the idea of waking the entire house in order to speak to Ravel. She would have done it, but she preferred a quieter entrance.
Marcel went with her to the door and lifted the knocker for her. When the door swung open, Anya half expected to see a butler or some older housekeeper, but it was Ravel himself who stood there. The light was behind him, so she could not see his face, but she thought from the sudden stillness of his form that she was the last person he had expected. He wore no coat and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled to the elbows. His hair was tousled, as if he had been running his fingers through it, and in his right hand he held a pen with the nib still wet with ink.
He had been writing his will, or perhaps some last instructions concerning his affairs for his mother or his man of business. It was an obvious precaution under the circumstances; still it gave Anya a suffocating feeling in her chest.
“I will wait for you in the carriage, mam’zelle,” Marcel said, and melted away into the darkness behind her.
“What are you doing here?”
Ravel thought he had relegated Anya to a corner of his mind so as to concentrate without distraction on the matter at hand. The sight of her on his doorstep showed him what a fool he was to think such a thing possible.
Anya’s answer was as stark as Ravel’s question had been. “There are a number of things I must tell you. May I come in?
He stepped aside with the stiffness of reluctance.
Setting the soft curves of her mouth in firm lines, Anya swept past him. The light was coming from a sitting room to the right. It was fitted out as a study with not only a grouping of chairs and small tables, but also a set of glass-fronted bookshelves and a desk with a top of tooled and gilded Spanish leather. Anya moved toward it. Ravel entered the room behind her and closed the door. Moving to the desk, he sat down on the corner as she took a chair to one side.
His voice dry, he said, “I am at your service.”
The mask was gone. The man who sat watching her was the same one she had known so briefly at Beau Refuge. For that much she was thankful, even if there was little warmth or welcome in his expression.
“Emile will not be able to meet with you in the morning,” she began, and took the note entrusted to her from her string purse to hand it over. Keeping her voice even with an effort, she told him of how Emile had followed Murray and been struck down, was taken prisoner then escaped, though the tale was somewhat incomplete. Her own part in the events she omitted. It had no bearing on the duel, and she had a distinct aversion to speaking of her near assault by the man called Red, or of hearing yet again that she was in need of a keeper.
Ravel listened in silence. The lamplight gleaming on her hair and shimmering in the intense blue of her eyes was a distraction, and he transferred his gaze to the toe of his boot. His frown deepened, becoming grim and thoughtful by turns.
Finally Anya said, “Emile has no grudge against you, no ill will whatever. He accepts that his brother’s death was an accident. His challenge this evening was made because he thought to forestall Murray. He had been watching him and asking questions about him. It had begun to look as if Murray meant to use the duello in some way as an excuse to kill you. Before he could speak to you about it, he saw Murray lying in wait for you at the ball. Because of the friendship Jean felt for you, and because of lessons you gave him once with a sword when he was a younger brother tagging after you and Jean, he stepped in as a delaying tactic, meaning to apologize and explain later.”
She came to an end, her gaze upon Ravel’s face. She waited for so
me comment. When it was not forthcoming she said, “You aren’t surprised.”
He looked up briefly. “No.”
“Not even that the duel with Murray will be fixed in some way to his advantage?”
“Given the rest, it seems a logical step for him to take.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Do? I will meet him.”
“You can’t! It would be like walking into a trap. You don’t know how he is going to arrange the thing.”
He gave her his full and exasperated attention. “What would you have me do? Fail to put in an appearance? I can’t do that, not again.”
“Death with honor, is that it? You would rather die than face the whispers and sniggers?”
Darkness rose in his eyes. He took a deep breath, trying for patience. He had insulted Anya on the dance floor at the Comus ball in the hope of giving her such a disgust for him that a scene like this could be avoided, a scene he had guessed would come as soon as he had seen Murray waiting for him to return Anya to her seat. He might have saved himself the trouble.
“You don’t understand,” he said, his voice low. “It has nothing to do with what people will say; I am bound by my given word to uphold a certain level of conduct. To fail would be to fail myself. Call it pride, call it stupidity, and most men will agree it’s both those things. But it is also a code to live by.”
It was a code that required courage and integrity, one that defied the mean grasping after life at any cost. Without it, would men remain gentlemen? Or would it be the same: some men would adhere to the principles by natural tendency, while others would use them for their own ends and discard them when they ceased to be profitable?
“There must be something that can be done!”
“What do you suggest?”
That was of course the question. The police could not be called in, for they were ranged with the Know-Nothing party Murray was being used to protect. To go to Murray and confront him would be useless; he would only deny everything and possibly hint that it was cowardice that caused the accusations. There was really only one thing that Ravel could do, if he would not avoid the meeting.
“Your seconds—” she began.
“They will check the field thoroughly, you can be sure of that. In the end, Murray will have to face me, alone. It will be just the two of us.”
“Is that supposed to be a comfort? I saw him perfecting his prowess with a sword in Exchange Alley. I also saw him shoot a man once, in the dark; the ball went through the heart.”
Murray had shot the thug that night when their carriage had been held up. “My God.” The man’s confederate, a man very like Red, had bawled, and it had not been because of the smoking pistol in Murray’s hand. It had been because he had been appalled at their unlucky choice of vehicle, because he had recognized Murray and knew the dead man had been shot to keep him from showing that he had done the same.
“I didn’t know,” Ravel said softly, “that you needed comforting.”
There was nothing in his face to show that it mattered to him one way or the other. She got to her feet, turning away. “I — I feel responsible. If I had not interfered—”
“If you had not interfered, I might be dead. If this meeting is to be rigged now, the first would have been rigged.”
She sent him a quick glance from under her lashes. “A strange meeting,” she said, her tone laced with bitterness. “Madame Rosa wanted you to show up Murray, but he wouldn’t back down because it was such a good opportunity to be rid of you. There you were, both apparently fighting over the attentions paid me, when in reality I had nothing to do with the motives of either one of you.”
“That isn’t precisely so,” he answered, his tone measured. “I agreed to Madame Rosa’s request primarily because it gave me an excuse for doing something I had wanted to do for a long time.”
“Meaning?”
“I approached you because I was tired of avoiding you, tired of watching you avoid me.”
“But you were masked,” she said.
“It was easier that way.”
Had it been easier to let fall his figurative social mask while wearing a real one? Had it seemed less dangerous to break their pact of mutual avoidance in secret? If it had not been for Murray’s interference, would she ever have known who the man in the mask of a knight had been?
When she made no answer, he went on. “But you must not blame Madame Rosa for what happened. There was more to it, even, than that. It was in the interest of the Vigilance Committee to be rid of Murray Nicholls, either through forcing him to back down in public so that he was ruined in New Orleans, or by facing him with sword or pistol. He was in far too deep with Lillie, and was too close to attaining a foothold in the Creole community through your half-sister, to be allowed to remain. I was not an unwilling accomplice.”
For a brief time he had thought Anya might be involved with Murray and Lillie; the way she had abducted him had been so convenient for their purpose. The idea held a certain humor now, though once it had been less than amusing.
Anya turned toward him, caught the faint flicker of his smile. It was chilling, coupled with what he had said. “And if I had not stopped the meeting, what then? Would you have been a willing assassin?”
Assassin. Murderer. Heartless killer. He had heard the accusation before, long ago. A white line appeared around his mouth, and when he spoke there was a raw edge to the words. “I have never been privileged to see Nicholls wield a sword or shoot a man, but I have made it my business to know something of him, including his skill with weapons. My purpose was and is to encourage him to leave the city for the sake of his health. In exchange, he would have had, and still will have, a chance to kill me.”
An excellent chance, one Murray intended to better. “Yes,” she agreed, her gaze steady, “but does that make it right?”
“To use a rite with ties to ancient chivalry in a base manner for a worthy cause? No, but it is sometimes the only way.”
“That’s what you’re still doing, isn’t it? You’re still doing the work of your Vigilance Committee, not simply upholding your honor.”
“Few things are simple.”
She watched him for long moments, letting her gaze touch the strong bronze planes of his face, the width of his shoulders, the masculine beauty of his hard hands. Inside her rose an impulse, growing, burgeoning until abruptly she could contain it no longer. She moved toward him with a soft rustle of her skirts. “Here is one thing that is very simple. Come away with me now. By dawn we could be well along on the road to Mississippi, or to Texas if you prefer. From either place we could take a ship to Paris, or Venice or Rome. You offered once to marry me; I will be your wife if you will come with me now.”
It was a temptation such as he had never known. The need to snatch her up and drive away with her before she could change her mind or marshal some damnably intellectual excuse was like claws tearing him apart inside. Nothing he had ever done, not facing screaming hordes of Nicaraguans nor being led into the torture chamber of a Spanish dungeon, required the self-command it took to look her in the eyes and appear indifferent.
“Such a sacrifice,” he drawled. “You must love your little half-sister very much, or is it Nicholls himself?”
“Or you.”
He flinched from the words as from a blow to the heart. “Don’t! You may pledge your immortal soul and it will not stop this meeting. Nothing will stop it this time.”
He had no use for her love; he did not want it. The tears rising behind her eyes made them luminous. “Very well then! Go to your senseless duel! Face Murray and attempt to kill him if you must. But when you find yourself lying on the wet grass with a bullet in your chest, remember I warned you!”
She whirled from him and ran to the door, pulling it open so recklessly that it banged against the wall. She was through it and across the entrance hall in an instant.
Ravel stared after her with an arrested expression on his face. He leap
ed up. “Anya!”
The only answer was the slamming of the front door. By the time he reached it and flung it open, the carriage was drawing away. On the point of racing after her, he stopped.
Desolation settled in a hard, hot knot inside him. It rose into his eyes, clouding their dark surface. A soft sound left him and his shoulders sagged. Perhaps it was better this way. He went back inside and closed the door.
Anya sat upright on the carriage seat with her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes burning as she stared into the dimness. Her thoughts raced inside her brain, and they were not pleasant. The vehicle had not gone two blocks before she reached up to knock with her knuckles on the roof. The panel connected to the coachman’s seat slid open.
“Yes, mam’zelle?” Marcel asked.
“Take me to Elijah and Samson’s house,” she said.
“But mam’zelle!” he protested with sudden anxiety in his tones.
“Now, please,” she said softly.
The panel slid shut.
They sat their horses in a dense thicket of scrub brush and vines. They needed its concealment, for the sky in the east was turning a lighter gray with each passing minute. The four of them, Anya and Marcel, Samson and Elijah, did not talk. They watched the road in front of them that, covered with white sea shells crushed by countless wheels, lay like a long pale arrow pointing back toward the city, and they listened for the sound of a carriage. Three had gone by already. The first had held an upright older man who might have been a surgeon, the one after that had contained Murray and his friends who would act for him as seconds, and the last had been occupied by men who must have been Ravel’s seconds.
Anya had dressed for this outing in the leather skirt and mannish frock coat that were her riding habit, and had put her hair up in a coronet of braids. She did not expect what would take place shortly to be a rough-and-tumble affair; still she meant to be prepared, especially after having her clothes half torn off of her earlier.
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