Fairchild Regency Romance

by Jaima Fixsen

  This time Alistair halted so abruptly he nearly flew off his crutches. “You can’t shoot,” he said, steadying himself.

  “I don’t expect Morris is very good either,” Cyril said.

  “You mean it?” Alistair asked, still stunned.

  “I do,” Cyril said.

  “It’s good of you. I never expected—” Alistair shifted on his crutches. “It’s a princely offer, Cyril, but I can’t accept. Promise me this—act as my second. And look after Anna if Morris snuffs me. Don’t let him take Henry.” This wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t threatened Frederick in the first place, back in London.

  They walked up to the house. A chink of light escaping through the shutters fell on Cyril’s pained face. “Let me,” he begged. “I’m expendable.”

  Alistair pulled his hand away from the latch. “You are not.” He met his brother’s eyes. Temporized. “All right, you can be something of a trial, but you don’t need to be. Besides, I’m a better shot. I’ll win. Just please don’t say anything to Anna.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  On Alert

  Waiting was difficult at the best of times. Tonight it was impossible. When she finally heard the scraping latch, Anna flew to the door.

  “What happened?” she asked, taking Alistair’s hands as if she could pull answers out of them.

  “I’ve spoken to Morris. I’ve taken care of it.”

  “Thank God.” Anna sagged into herself, limp and drained.

  “Are you cold?” Alistair asked.

  “No.” Numb perhaps, but not from cold.

  “Then why the cloak?”

  Anna followed his gaze to the lantern waiting on the table, the undisturbed bed. “Anna,” he began carefully. “Were you going to walk all the way home from Freineda?”

  “Not alone. I didn’t know what else to do,” she admitted. “You were such a long time and I was so afraid.” She was dreadful at coping with uncertainty, a victim of relentless imagining that smothered her until she could think of nothing but rushing to her child.

  Alistair hauled himself across the floor and sank onto the bed, propping his crutches against the wall. He looked tired as a rained out parade. “I don’t like to stand in your way, but I can’t manage a fifteen-mile walk in the dark.”

  Anna flinched. “I didn’t think. I’m sorry.” She moved to his side, contrite yet still needing reassurance. “You’re sure Henry’s all right?”

  “He is. And we can leave first thing in the morning.”

  Anna nodded, ducking her chin, but Alistair wouldn’t let her hide. He nudged up her chin and studied her face with probing eyes. “As long as I live I’ll keep you both safe.”

  Primed for tears already, she was too worn to hold them back. Alistair pulled her into his shoulder, letting them soak into his coat. “There now,” he said, in the first decent pause. “Let’s get some rest. You’re so ghastly pale you’ll frighten Henry.”

  Anna laughed shakily as Alistair worked on the fastenings of her cloak. He got her out of her dress, but her fingers were too clumsy to return the favor.

  “I can manage,” he said, smiling into her bleary eyes. “Go to sleep.”

  Despite Alistair’s reassurances, it was a relief to get home and to lay her eyes on Henry, who greeted them with a quick smile and a torrent of questions. Did they get any pudding? See many generals? Was Napoleon there?

  Griggs murmured that luncheon was waiting.

  “I want to go outside,” Henry said.

  “We can go walking after we eat,” Anna replied, momentarily forgetting her resolution to barricade Henry in the house. “Papa and I are hungry.” Cyril was pale and fidgety, which probably meant he needed a drink.

  He downed three, shifting in his seat and staring at his brother.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, glancing between them.

  “Nothing,” Cyril said.

  “Griggs makes better soup than this. Out of shoe leather even,” Alistair said, pushing away his bowl.

  Henry’s head jerked up.

  “Finish your potatoes,” Anna told him.

  “I want to know what’s the matter too,” Henry said.

  Alistair buttered another slice of bread. “I’m afraid we saw your Uncle Frederick last night.”

  “Is he the matter?” Henry’s voice seemed to fade.

  “No, darling,” said Anna.

  “Yes,” Alistair said at the same time. “He has terrible manners. Don’t you grow up like that.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Henry, his anxious creases gone. Anna was not so easily appeased.

  “Will Frederick mention the matter to your commanders?” she asked tentatively. Cyril was jumpy, which didn’t help her worries that Frederick might show up at their door, accompanied by a pair of armed sergeants.

  “No,” said Alistair.

  “You seem very sure,” Anna said, turning her water glass around on the table.

  “Trust me, Anna. I’ve taken care of this.”

  Yes, but what did you do? His assurances meant less each time he refused to explain. “How?” she asked finally, staring at him until he had to look up from his plate.

  He set down his fork. “You don’t think I’m capable of managing a coward like Frederick Morris?” His fierce look ought to have toppled her chair.

  “Of course I do!” It was a lie, but the only thing she could say when he looked at her like that. “I do,” she insisted, trying to budge the scowl from his face.

  “Then you should trust me.” He picked up his fork, and though he finished his meal the picture of complete unconcern, Cyril wouldn’t look up from his plate.

  Uneasy, Anna wanted to defer walking with Henry, but Alistair told her not to be foolish and hurried them out of the house. She and Henry wandered through the empty market and into the cathedral, where Henry liked to sit in the back and make ghoulish whispers. When he growled ‘dead dog’ (they’d seen several since leaving London, but Anna was glad it was merely these frights that stuck with him, because it could have been worse) just a little too loud, she whisked him back outside. His flagging steps said he felt as tired as she did, so they returned to their lodging.

  Alistair was gone.

  Anna contained her uneasiness until Henry went down for a nap. By the time he was asleep, rest for her was impossible. She decided to tidy their rooms. She did trust Alistair. When he said he would handle Frederick, she believed him. But he had revealed nothing to her, nothing at all. It wasn’t unreasonable, expecting an explanation.

  If she were Frederick, she’d be banging down the door by now, or dragging Henry to the nearest port. Why hadn’t he come?

  Anna brushed yesterday’s ball dress with unnecessary force and attacked the mending as her mood soured. Alistair had an alarming number of fraying stockings for someone who could only wear one at a time. Anna sighed. It was probably time to get rid of the left boots. It was depressing, shoving them aside every time they had to get anything from his trunk. Jabbing her needle into torn cuff as if the shirt might be coerced into revealing information, Anna stood up and threw back the lid of the trunk.

  They couldn’t travel with this jumble, that was certain. And it wouldn’t hurt, now that Frederick was on the loose, to be ready. Anna picked up two left boots and tossed them on the bed, setting aside the packet of her letters and discarding a broken pen. Henry’s dit (she’d been looking for that), a knife, a jar of ointment: she kept all those. The ointment was smelly, but Alistair must have it for a reason. Anna tossed the dit on top of her heap of mending, then moved the rest aside so she could sweep out the dirt that had sifted to the bottom of the trunk.

  She stopped. Something was missing. A case that usually rested at the bottom of the trunk, beneath the superfluous boots. Blood rushed to puddle at her feet and she pressed a hand to her stomach. Dear God. She’d opened that case once, looking for scissors to trim Alistair’s bandages. It held two identical pistols.

  He couldn’t mean to—surely he
wouldn’t—

  He wouldn’t dare. Not on crutches. She’d come all this way, bargaining for his soul with death. He’d mended—and married her. In Anna’s book, both these indicated that ownership of his soul had passed, at least in part, to her. She had a life interest in him, a dependence . . . she cleared her head with a shake. Silly legalities were no way to describe the hole she felt widening in her chest. What about his missing leg? Sucking air through her fingers, which were clapped stupidly over her mouth, Anna blinked away the sting in her eyes. It couldn’t be.

  She glanced again at the chest. Yes, they were gone.

  Without knowing how, Anna found herself sitting on the edge of the bed, clutching her hands to stop their shaking. Frederick wasn’t coming for Henry. Not yet. He was going to kill her husband first.

  *****

  “Are those—”

  “They’re mine now,” Alistair said, lifting out one of the pistols and inspecting it in the slanting winter sun. “You can load for me.” He reconsidered. “Better not. I’ll do it.” Alistair had thought about practicing in a tumbledown house down the street—he could chalk a mark on the wall—but had changed his mind. Better to practice like it was the real thing. A walk outside the town walls to tire him and standing on uneven ground. Of course sunlight was better than shooting indoors, but today it came with a wind.

  “Morris insists on going through with this,” Cyril said, gingerly lifting out the second pistol. Squelching the thought that one of these guns might kill him, Alistair found a spot approximately the right distance from a slanting tree that had almost managed to survive the latest assault on the town.

  “Friday, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “And pistols.”

  Cyril groaned. “If his seconds hadn’t talked him out of it, he’d have insisted on swords! He means to kill you.”

  “He’s not the first one to try,” Alistair said mildly.

  “You never stood still for the French.”

  “No, but I did when I faced Renton. And Galloway.”

  “You met him?” Cyril said, turning in surprise.

  “My temper was quicker back then.”

  Cyril grunted. “What did you do?”

  “Watched him shoot first. Then I told him to hold up his hand. Shot the pistol right out of it.”

  Cyril laughed. “No wonder he avoids me.”

  “You should avoid him. Bad lot. Doesn’t do to mix with those.”

  “I daresay,” Cyril said, mocking him.

  “I mean it. You’d save yourself a lot of trouble if you cut yourself free of that bunch. If you’re going to be looking after Anna, you’ll have to—”

  “You’re going to win, remember? Want this?” he asked, holding out Alistair’s camp stool.

  “Not yet.” He would eventually, but he must practice standing for as long as he could.

  “Where’s Morris?” Cyril asked, as Alistair positioned his crutch and aimed.

  “Right there,” Alistair said, and fired. “Damn. Missed him.” He’d have to adjust his stance.

  “Did Morris shoot you?” Cyril asked.

  “Nope. Missed by a yard. He will, you know. See my sideway stance? He’s got a narrow target.”

  “Yes, and it wobbles.”

  “I won’t by Friday,” Alistair said.

  An hour later he wasn’t so sure. He’d have fallen today, if Cyril hadn’t been close by. He shot Morris in the chest perhaps four times in ten—not nearly enough. He was tired.

  Anna was pale and unsmiling when he returned, and mute until they sat down to dinner.

  “I noticed you got out your pistols,” she said, with frightening calm.

  “Just to keep in practice. Something to do,” interjected Cyril.

  “I see,” said Anna. The anger pulsing through the air was bad enough, but the hurt in her eyes was intolerable.

  “I need to speak to Griggs,” Alistair said, rising from the table and fleeing the house, knowing he’d find Griggs at the tavern across the square. Griggs listened, nodding seriously as Alistair emptied two bottles of wine and instructed him on the necessary preparations for their journey home.

  “Thank you, Captain, I’m sure I’ll manage,” said Griggs, keeping a straight face. “Just as I have a time or two before.”

  Alistair blinked, his scowl late in coming. “Dash it, Griggs, you aren’t supposed to let me play the fool.”

  “And when did you ever listen to me?” Griggs sighed. “Let me help you to bed.”

  Anna was there, huddled under the blankets. Waving away Griggs, Alistair lowered himself onto the bed. The door clicked shut. Anna lurched another foot away from him, no small feet in a bed this narrow, hauling the blankets with her and leaving him to wiggle his five toes in the cold. Impossible to sleep in this charged silence. Even her breathing made no sound. Tentatively, Alistair rested his hand against the wall of her back.

  “I want you to tell me,” she ground out.

  Fear took him then, like rushing water in the spring thaw. He closed the space between them, sliding his arms under her own, stifling a groan that pushed against his closed throat. “Please don’t make me. You already know.”

  “Can’t we run away?”

  He choked. “I can’t run.”

  “Can you shoot?”

  “Yes.” If he was lucky.

  Her face, when she brought it to his, was wet, though some of the tears might have been his own. His leg ached and his head swam, heavy with the knowledge that he might not get to keep her. Two days left.

  “Is there another way?” she asked.

  “He’s not going to trouble you,” he said.

  “I hate this,” she said—or at least, he thought so. Her face was half in his shoulder, half in the pillow.

  “No more crying,” he said, to himself and to her, as he laced his fingers together behind her back. He wouldn’t be able to bear it else. It was all right now, when he was drunk and tired, but tomorrow he must think only about shooting straight, and where wanted to put his bullet.

  Chapter Thirty

  Reckoning

  Friday morning Griggs arrived to dress him before dawn. “I thought the black coat today, Captain,” he said, holding it out.

  “What did you do to the buttons?” Alistair asked.

  “Must be this damp air. They’ve tarnished,” Griggs lied. He’d clearly blacked them. Alistair was about to ask for another coat, unwilling to humble himself before Frederick Morris, but then he caught Anna’s shadowed eyes, peering at him over the edge of the sheet. The blacked buttons were her and Griggs’s doing. Steadying himself with a hand against the bed, Alistair bent down to kiss her forehead. “Thank you.” He’d wear the black coat and sacrifice pride. He was a husband and a father. No need to make Frederick’s aim easier.

  “I’ll be back soon. Don’t forget that I love you,” he said. He downed a cup of coffee and ordered Griggs to move a sleeping Henry into bed with Anna. Better if she had a warm body to hold. He’d asked her not to get out of bed.

  Griggs came with him when he stepped outside, waiting for Cyril. He arrived in fine style, driving a well-sprung gig.

  “Lord knows what it will cost me, but I won’t have you bounced from here into Hades,” Cyril said.

  “Where did you find it?” Alistair asked, accepting Cyril’s hand and Griggs’s shoulder.

  “Some fellows helped me borrow it. They wish you their best.”

  “I hope we won’t have an audience,” Alistair said.

  “They know we’re just going for a drive,” Cyril said.

  They drove from the town, winding down the hill, passing a pinched-looking boy and his gathering of goats—too few to call a flock. A stand of bare trees clustered in the low ground. On the other side was the chosen field, a flat space screened from the town by the trees.

  “Lovely spot,” Alistair said.

  “I’m glad you think so.” Cyril settled the horses, then helped Alistair with his awkward descen
t, keeping hold of Alistair’s shoulders even after he was on the ground. “You’re certain I can’t do this? I’d consider it a great honor.”

  Alistair wiped a drip from the end of his nose. The air was cold. “I’ll always remember you offered. And that you meant it.”

  Alistair found himself a convenient tree to lean on, wanting to spare his arms. Cyril paced back and forth across the grass. “They’ll be late,” he said.

  The air felt sharp and chill and clean, with only a hint of distant smoke. Alistair swung his arms, working blood into his flexing fingers, shaking out the tightness in his shoulders. He breathed long and slow, watching the sun blunt the frosty edges of the grass until he felt languid and easy. These things didn’t take long. He didn’t want to kill Morris and wasn’t entirely sure he could. Perhaps blowing a hole in his shoulder would be enough. It would be, in most cases, but there was a fortune at stake. If the Morris’s were as profligate with Henry’s money as Alistair suspected, giving Frederick a wound in the shoulder was only raising the stakes. If Frederick didn’t kill him today, the idea of paying someone to do the job for him would soon cross Frederick’s mind, if it hadn’t already—his own fault again. He should never have mentioned killing back in London. Such threats could never be unsaid or forgotten. He hadn’t thought, back then, as he’d prodded Morris, that it would lead to today, to Anna’s scared eyes.

  Alistair waited until the sound of rattling wheels stopped before turning his head. Morris, buttoned up and determined, jumped down from a rackety cart. Alistair swung his arms again, waiting for Cyril to say the necessary things to Morris’s seconds.

  Should tell Cyril I’m glad he’s standing up with me.

  They examined the case of pistols, their motions scrupulous and refined, their low voices a pleasant rumble. There was something about this air, Alistair thought, drawing it in slowly. He wanted more and more of it, as if inflating his chest enough would float him up into the pale sky. He shut his eyes and smiled, letting the sun wash over his face. He was an eye and an arm and a ball of lead, nothing more, with one task only: shoot straight. He’d aim for the shoulder. They were reasonable men. Morris just needed a reminder not to trifle with him.