There was absolutely no chance he could be interested in poetry again that night, nor any other book. Neither would he sleep. So he dressed and went downstairs to look for company. Furthering his acquaintance with Lord Warnford wouldn’t be a bad idea. If he couldn’t spend the night in Rosanne’s arms, he could amuse himself by searching her father’s face for a resemblance. The lack of music from the ballroom and the procession of guests–mostly female–up the main staircase told him that the evening was over for most.
He was heading out of the billiards room, which contained a crowd of men, but not Warnford, when James Blair, the duke’s cousin, hailed him. “Bruton! Just the fellow we need to make a fourth at whist. The ladies are all taking to their beds and the night is but a pup.”
Why not? He enjoyed an occasional game and was in a mellow enough mood to put up with almost anything. He followed Blair to a small antechamber set up for cards. The other two players turned out to be the two people in the world he least wanted to see at this moment: Frank and Lord Willoughby. Not that he had any reason to resent the latter now. But he was not so magnanimous as to welcome the company of any man who had the temerity to flirt with Rosanne. He hoped he’d draw Blair as his partner.
“Look whom I’ve found,” Blair announced. “You know Bruton better than I, Newnham. Is he a player you can trust not to trump his partner’s ace?”
Frank appeared a little the worse for wear, with his scarlet jacket unbuttoned, his hair awry, and his face flushed. The reason for this unsoldierly disorder was apparent as he poured a full glass of wine down his throat and reached for the decanter. Finding it almost empty, he scowled at the mouthful that remained and sloshed it into his glass. Though Frank usually drank in a spirit of happy conviviality, the belligerent glare he aimed at his cousin made Christian’s neck prickle.
“You don’t want to bet against Bruton,” he said, not sounding as intoxicated as he looked. “He always has an ace up his sleeve.”
Blair and Willoughby exchanged uneasy glances. Was this a jest?
Christian hastened to lighten the awkward moment. “And you, Frank, my boy, have a glass too many in your belly. Careful these gentlemen don’t misunderstand you.”
Blair forced out a laugh and Willoughby flashed his accursedly brilliant smile. “We’re all friends here. Come and cut the cards. I fancy our chances against Blair and Bruton, even if they are clever fellows.”
Frank brushed off a well-intentioned effort to get him into a chair. “Very clever, is Captain Lord Bruton. You need to watch him carefully, or he’ll rob you blind.” Christian hadn’t known that Frank could curl his lip—that was more his own style—but he curled it now. Fixing Christian with a gaze filled with pain and betrayal, he enunciated his words carefully. “Let me be very clear. Lord Bruton doesn’t play with the officers of our regiment because he’s a damn cheat.”
This was arrant nonsense, and both men looking on in appalled silence knew it. However slight their acquaintance with Christian, the reputation of the Horse Guards endorsed him. The famous regiment would never tolerate a card cheat in its ranks.
Frank knew.
Outwardly composed to disguise his sinking heart, Christian walked forward and stopped a couple of feet from Frank, who had taken up an aggressive fighter’s stance. “Gentlemen, I think it would be better if you left us alone to settle our differences.”
“Don’t go,” Frank said. “Your services will be needed.” And he tossed the remains of his wine into Christian’s face. “That will improve your hideous scar, Lord Cicatrix.”
Never in all their years of friendship had Frank used the hated nickname. “You’re drunk. Let us go somewhere and talk.”
“You’re a damn coward, Bruton, and I demand satisfaction.”
“I think that’s up to Bruton,” Willoughby interjected. “He’s the one who’s been insulted. I know he doesn’t hold with dueling, but I don’t see what else he can do, do you James?”
“I think there’s a good deal too much senseless quarreling at this gathering,” Blair replied. “Newnham should apologize. He’s drunk as a lord.”
“I shall never apologize, but I’ll be happy to let Lord Bruton defend his honor the way a gentleman does.”
The last thing Christian wanted was to break his vow against dueling to fight Frank, of all people. Yet he couldn’t explain to two near-strangers that Frank must have walked into their bedchamber and discovered Christian with the woman Frank loved, a young lady of spotless reputation. Damn and blast! Why had he given in to his own weakness? He should have sent Rosanne scurrying back to her room and waited to quench his endless desire for her until they were lawfully wed. He should have been strong. He’d behaved with dishonor and ended up in disaster.
There was only one thing to do.
He bowed crisply. “Choose your weapons, Lieutenant Newnham.”
He did it to protect Rosanne, and also because he owed it to Frank. The accusation of cheating was a mere pretext, and Christian couldn’t find it in his heart to blame him for the subterfuge. Under the circumstances, he’d have done the same. He owed Frank the chance to beat the Devil out of him.
o0o
“Wake up, Rosanne!”
Pulled unwillingly from a delicious dream, she opened her eyes to a flickering candle flame in an ocean of darkness. “Christian?” she murmured. Unlike in her dream there was no warm body beside her, but perhaps that could be remedied. Her hand emerged from the covers and found an arm. Not the sinewy masculine limb lightly sprinkled with hair that she yearned for but a smooth, slender one, capped by a puffed sleeve. Kate. Rosanne sank back into the nest of blankets and tried to resume the interesting events of her sleeping state.
It was not to be. “Hah!” Kate said, far too loudly as she grasped her sister’s shoulders. “Now I understand. Wake up immediately. Frank and Lord Bruton are fighting a duel.”
Where shouting and shaking failed, this news had her fully awake. “What?” She sat bolt upright. “When? How?”
“At dawn.”
She leaped out of bed and ran to draw the heavy curtains. “It’s still dark. Do you know where they are meeting?” she demanded, making a mare’s nest of the wardrobe as she rustled through clothing in the feeble light.
“In the meadow on the other side of the lake. Lord Willoughby says it’s out of sight of the house.”
“Willoughby? What does he have to do with it? How do you know, anyway?”
“Bridget told us.” By “us” Kate meant the duke’s sisters and other young girls. Dazed with happiness, Rosanne hadn’t paid much attention to the fact that Kate hadn’t come to bed, merely been grateful that she wasn’t there when she returned from Christian’s room.
“Do up my stays, will you?” she asked. “Have you been downstairs all this time?”
“We were having a midnight feast in the day nursery. Alexandra managed to hide a bottle of wine and some sweetmeats under her shawl and we were safe up there because the head nurse sleeps like a log. We could hear her snoring all the way down the passage.”
“Christian and Frank were in the nursery?” Rosanne asked, quite confused.
“Of course not. Bridget stole downstairs when everyone was dancing and hid behind the tapestry in one of the card rooms because she wanted to find out if Mr. Blair was meeting Miss Grey.”
“You cannot be serious? Never mind that now. Then what?”
“She came up to tell us what she heard. Keep still.” Rosanne almost screamed with impatience as Kate fumbled the lacing. “Frank accused Lord Bruton of cheating at cards.”
She swiveled round, almost knocking her sister to the floor. “Christian would never cheat!”
“Christian again. I’d like to know when Lord Bruton became Christian. A couple of days ago you were madly kissing Frank in the grotto.”
Rosanne snatched up a gown at random. “I have no time to explain now,” she said, mumbling through the muslin. “Button me up and keep telling me about the duel.”
/> “Mr. Blair is to be Lord Bruton’s second and Willoughby will be Frank’s.” Kate tugged at the apron front of the gown. “This must be mine. It’s too small for your bosom.”
Rosanne swallowed a scream of frustration just in time to prevent awakening the whole floor. The next garment she laid hands on was a silk evening gown, but she didn’t care. “Since they’re both soldiers, do you suppose they’ll fight each other to a standstill? I know they both practice fencing a lot.”
“It’s pistols.”
“Oh, heavens! One of them will be killed and it’s all my fault. We have to stop it.” She grabbed a shawl to cover the gaping back of her gown and thrust her bare feet into a pair of slippers. “There’s no time to lose. I’m going.”
“I’m coming too.”
The long descent through the silent mansion put an end to further conversation. They tiptoed through the great hall, where a dozing footman remained on duty all night, and wasted precious minutes that felt like hours looking for a door they could unlock on the garden front. By the time they found one, Kate’s candle had burned to the socket and Rosanne made an appalling discovery. “The blasted rosy fingers of dawn,” she said with a groan. “It was dark when we left our room.”
“Our room faces west.”
“You could have pointed that out before,” she said and took off at a run through the endless levels of garden. Why did the Duke of Wessex have to live in such a ridiculously large place?
What did “at dawn” mean, she wondered as she panted step by endless step in the growing light. Would the duel start at dawn, or was that when the combatants arrived at the meeting place? There wasn’t a soul to be seen as she reached the treeless lawn descending to the lake.
“How are you going to stop them?” Kate yelled at her elbow.
She wished she knew. How they had been discovered she had no idea, but the accusation of cheating was a pretext. And Christian, already feeling guilty about betraying Frank, wouldn’t turn down the challenge. They had to be stopped.
Damn, stupid men. And stupid her, too. By going to Christian’s room, she’d played with his elevated sense of honor. The notion of him being badly injured or killed was too appalling to even contemplate. And supposing he won? She wasn’t familiar with the laws of dueling, but she was fairly certain that if you killed an opponent you had to flee the country. And she didn’t want Frank to be hurt either.
With her heart pumping from fear and exertion, she felt hot tears on cheeks cooled by the early morning chill. She tripped, almost fell headlong into the damp grass, and had to stop to adjust the unfastened gown that was slipping off her shoulders. Deciding this wasn’t a moment for modesty, she hitched the silken skirts above her bare knees and increased her pace, ignoring Kate’s cries of “Wait for me!”
Ahead of her, the arched stone bridge spanning the lake emerged from the mist. Dawn had definitely broken. She must be on time. She must. Gathering air into her burning lungs and summoning a final surge of strength, she streaked across the lake and into the copse that screened the meadow. Through the trees, she glimpsed the swath of green tinged by pale sunlight and heard male voices. With the rising sun in her eyes, she saw a fair man in a red coat raise a pistol and take aim.
“Stop!” she cried and prayed she was on time.
o0o
When Frank had demanded “Pistols at fifteen paces,” Christian knew he was serious. Christian was the better swordsman, and Frank held a bare edge in the boxing ring. They’d fought each other many times, always in friendly bouts. But as a marksman Frank was a nonpareil. If he intended to hit a man at fifteen paces, he could do it easily, and it was by no means certain that Christian could hit him back. If Frank wanted to kill him, he could.
When Christian contemplated joining a regiment fighting the war in the Peninsula, he’d known death was a possibility and it hadn’t troubled him. Now, he had something he desperately wanted to live for. To lose his future with Rosanne by Frank’s hand held a certain poetic justice, but for once he wasn’t in the mood for poetry.
Frank had disappeared with Willoughby, his second, without another word, giving Christian no chance to argue him back to sense. For his own part, Christian had spurned the offer of wine and company from Blair. While grateful to the man for agreeing to act for him, he had no wish to spend what might be his last night on earth making conversation with a virtual stranger. He’d retreated to the library to brood and wish he could be in Rosanne’s bed, in her arms. The best night of his life had turned into a nightmare.
Apparently Frank hadn’t returned to their room last night, either. Like Christian, he still wore his dress uniform, the scarlet cloth a shocking splash of color amid the muted greens of the park at dawn. Blair and Willoughby checked the pistols while Frank avoided Christian’s eye. His cousin’s expression was a new one: grave, still, intent. Like a man about to go into battle, Christian thought, and wondered if he looked the same.
“It is our duty as seconds,” Willoughby said in a solemn voice but exchanging a look with Blair that said he couldn’t believe he was doing this, “to attempt to effect a reconciliation.” He turned to Frank. “Mr. Newnham, will you apologize to Lord Bruton?”
Frank’s features remained cold and steadfast. Under other circumstances—if it were indeed the onset of battle—Christian would have been proud of him. “I will not,” he said.
“Lord Bruton.” Blair took his turn. “Will you withdraw your challenge?”
At any sign of softening, Christian would back down. For a second, Frank’s eyes displayed a flicker of emotion, but his face remained stony.
“I cannot,” Christian said. “I demand satisfaction.”
It wasn’t his own satisfaction he sought, but Frank’s. If shooting at him would make Frank feel better about losing Rosanne, he was ready to give him the chance. Though the seconds didn’t know it, he was the offending party in this duel, guilty of stealing the affections of his cousin’s beloved, and he didn’t regret it a bit. There was no way short of death that he would ever give her up. He trusted it wouldn’t come to that.
“Stay here,” Blair said. “Jack and I will select a suitable piece of ground and pace out the distance. There are a devil of a lot of molehills and we wouldn’t want you to trip.”
Through the copse of elms, mist arose from the lake, droplets of water glistening in the rising sun. It was as lovely a morning as one ever saw in England and should have been Christian’s happiest. His opponent stood at attention beside him, watching the seconds work.
“Frank,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”
“You were kissing her. On the bed.” At least things hadn’t progressed too far when Frank made his unnoticed appearance. “You ruined her.”
“I’m going to marry her. I love her and she loves me. We planned to tell you.”
Frank gulped. “I trusted you,” was all he said. He was never good at expressing himself, which was what had got them into this damnable mess in the first place. Another thing Christian should, but did not, regret.
“I didn’t intend it to happen. It just did. Does it have to come to this foolishness?”
Frank turned his back on him.
The ground selected, the seconds returned and gravely handed them their pistols. Mantons, which meant their aim should be true, though shooting an unfamiliar gun was always risky. As Wessex’s secretary, Blair would have had access to the best contents of the duke’s gun room, and the chasing on the barrel was particularly fine. Not that it mattered, but time had slowed to a trickle and every little thing, however irrelevant, took on massive significance. Each blade of grass in his path, each clinging drop of dew looked painted by the hand of a master. A handkerchief, stark white against the greensward, marked the place where Christian would turn and aim a deadly bullet at his oldest friend. His dearest friend, who would aim back at him. His favorite cousin, who was far more likely to do damage at this distance than he was.
“Cock your pistols. March.”
It was time. Time to consider what he would do, a decision he’d avoided throughout his sleepless night. His instinct was to fire in the air, but deloping in a duel could mean one of two things: admitting that he was at fault and a cheat, or showing disrespect for his opponent. He wished to do neither. He decided to aim wide, but not insultingly so, and trust his shooting was good enough not to hit Frank by mistake. What Frank would do was out of his control. He patted the pocket of his tunic and hoped that Frank wouldn’t shoot him right through the neatly folded square of his final letter to Rosanne, lying next to his heart.
He checked the ground and found the seconds had chosen well. No molehills or hummocks, though tufts of long grass were unavoidable in the summer meadow. He noted a particularly thick one and avoided it in his stance. Due south, so neither had to aim into the rising sun, Frank was already in place. He looked as he always did, incuriously content with whatever life offered.
“Ready?” Blair shouted.
Christian nodded and he supposed Frank did too.
“Fire at will,” Willoughby commanded.
The elaborate gold facings on Frank’s dress uniform glittered, making an easy target. As did his own, of course. He took careful aim at least a yard to Frank’s left.
Three things happened in succession, so quickly that he could never tell in what order.
A feminine shriek of “Stop.”
Two shots.
He waited for the pain of a wound. Nothing. Examining his body gingerly he concluded that he was unharmed. But Frank had pitched forward and lay on his side, knees awkwardly folded. Rosanne tore across the grass, hair streaming behind her, her gown falling off her shoulders, and her skirts hitched up to display far more leg than should be seen by any man but himself.
“Frank!” she cried, kneeling beside him. “Are you all right?”
Willoughby and Blair hastened to the scene and Christian joined them at a run. The blasted red uniforms didn’t show blood, which was all very well for maintaining battlefield morale but almost gave him a seizure as he waited to see where he’d wounded Frank and how badly.
At the Duke's Wedding (A romance anthology) Page 17
