The female screamed.
His grace did not go down. Indeed at first it did not appear that he had even been hit. But a bright red spot appeared on his calf, an inch or two above the top of one perfectly polished leather boot, just as if suddenly painted there by an invisible hand with a long-handled brush.
“Shame!” Baron Pottier called from the sidelines. “For shame, Oliver!”
His voice was joined by others, all censuring the man who had taken unfair advantage of his opponent’s distraction.
Sir Conan began to stride toward the duke while the crimson spot increased in diameter and the surgeon bent over his bag. But his grace held up his left hand in a firm staying gesture before raising his right arm again and taking aim with his pistol. It did not waver. Neither did his face show any expression except intense, narrow-eyed concentration on his target, who had no choice now but to stand and await his death.
Lord Oliver, to his credit, stood very still, though the hand that held his pistol to his side was trembling noticeably.
The spectators were silent again. So was the unidentified woman. There was an air of almost unbearable tension.
And then the Duke of Tresham, as he had done at every previous duel in which he had been engaged, bent his arm at the elbow and shot into the air.
The red spot on his breeches spread outward in rapidly expanding concentric circles.
IT HAD TAKEN IRONwillpower to remain standing when it felt as if a thousand needles had exploded in his leg. But even though incensed with Lord Oliver for firing his pistol when any true gentleman would have waited for the duel to be reorganized, Jocelyn Dudley, Duke of Tresham, had never had any intention of killing or even wounding him. Only of making him sweat awhile, of giving him time to watch his life flash before his eyes and wonder if this would be the one occasion when the duke, famed as a deadly shot but also known as a man who contemptuously wasted his bullet on the air during duels, would act untrue to form.
The needle points had taken over his whole person by the time he had finished and tossed the pistol onto the wet grass. He felt like agony personified and remained upright only because he would be damned before giving Oliver the satisfaction of being able to claim that he had been felled.
He was also still angry. An understatement. He was in a white-hot fury that might have been directed against Oliver had there not been a more obvious target.
He turned his head and looked with narrowed gaze to the spot at the edge of the trees where she had been standing a few moments ago, shrieking like a banshee. A serving girl, running an early-morning errand, no doubt, and forgetting one of the primary rules of service—that one minded one’s own business and left one’s betters to mind theirs. A girl who needed to be taught a lesson she would never forget.
She was still there, staring as if transfixed, both hands pressed to her mouth, though she had stopped her caterwauling. It was a pity she was a woman. It would have given him intense satisfaction to set a horsewhip whistling about her hide before being carted away to have his leg attended to. Deuce take it, but he was engulfed in pain.
Only a few moments had passed since he had fired his pistol and tossed it down. Both Brougham and the surgeon were hurrying toward him. The spectators were buzzing with excitement. He heard one voice distinctly.
“Well done, by Jove, Tresh,” Viscount Kimble called. “You would have contaminated your bullet by shooting it into the bastard.”
Jocelyn held up his left hand again without looking away from the woman by the trees. With his right hand he beckoned imperiously to her.
If she had been wise, she would have turned and run. He was hardly in a position to go chasing after her, and he doubted that anyone else present would be interested in running to earth on his behalf an unappealing, gray-clad slip of a servant girl.
She was not wise. She took a few tentative steps toward him and then hurried the rest of the way until she was standing almost toe-to-toe with him.
“You fool!” she cried with angry disregard for her place on the social scale and the consequences of talking thus to a peer of the realm. “What an utterly idiotic thing to do. Have you no more respect for your life than to become embroiled in a stupidduel? And now you have been hurt. I would have to say it serves you right.”
His eyes narrowed further as he determinedly ignored the pulsing pain in his leg and the near impossibility of standing any longer on it.
“Silence, wench!” he commanded coldly. “If I had died here this morning, you would as like as not have hanged for murder. Have you no more respect foryourlife than to interfere in what is no concern of yours?”
Her cheeks had been flushed with anger. They paled at his words, and she stared at him wide-eyed, her lips compressed in a hard line.
“Tresham,” Sir Conan said from close by, “we had better get that leg attended to, old chap. You are losing blood. Let me carry you with Kimble here over to the blanket the surgeon has spread out.”
“Carry?”Jocelyn laughed derisively. He had not taken his eyes off the serving girl. “You, girl. Give me your shoulder.”
“Tresham—” Sir Conan sounded exasperated.
“I am on my way to work,” the girl said. “I will be late if I do not hurry.”
But Jocelyn had already availed himself of her shoulder. He leaned heavily on it, more heavily than he had intended. Moving at last, shifting the weight off his injured leg, he found that the wave of agony made a mockery of the pain hitherto.
“You are the cause of this, my girl,” he said grimly, taking one tentative step toward the surgeon, who suddenly seemed an impossible distance away. “You will, by God, lend me your assistance and keep your impertinent tongue safely housed behind your teeth.”
Lord Oliver was pulling his waistcoat and coat back on while Viscount Russell packed away his pistol and came striding past Jocelyn to retrieve the other one.
