“I do,” he said. “And not just by bedding Violet, but by refusing to take any responsibility for the pain it caused you. I acted rashly and without thought. You were harmed. Beyond that, you were then denied your chance to settle the harm when my brother bullied his way into our previously scheduled duel.”
Gareth nudged his head toward Robert in the distance. “That him?”
Morgan nodded. “It is.”
“Seems a decent enough sort, according to my second.”
“He’s the best of men,” Morgan agreed. “Though don’t tell him I said so.”
He hoped that would encourage his old friend to smile, but Gareth remained tight-jawed and focused.
Morgan cleared his throat. “I didn’t understand how you felt back when this terrible mistake was made. I couldn’t fathom how, if I didn’t know the identity of the woman I bedded, you could be angry at me for taking her. But…but you loved her. You loved her, no matter the circumstances. And I love someone now. If a friend interfered, it wouldn’t matter that he did it knowingly or not. I would be…broken. I’d be destroyed. But back then, I handled it badly, from beginning to end. And I am truly, deeply…sorry.”
Gareth held his gaze a long moment. Morgan held his breath as he waited and hoped that what he said, what he meant, would be accepted. But instead of shaking his hand, Gareth pivoted and returned to his second.
Morgan stared after him, blinking in disbelief. The cold, cruel veil of reality settled over him and suddenly his entire body felt numb. The duel was going to happen. It was real. Gareth was a good shot. If he fired first, he would strike Morgan down for sure.
He staggered back to Robert, who was as pale and shaking as he was. “He didn’t accept?” Robert whispered.
“He—he said nothing,” Morgan admitted. “You—you should go inspect the pistols.”
“Morgan—” Robert said, his voice sharp. “What do you intend to do?”
“Go inspect the pistols,” Morgan choked. “Please.”
Robert’s lips shook, but he didn’t refuse and went to Gareth’s second to examine the pistols that had been produced from the fine cherrywood box attached to the second’s mount.
Robert had asked Morgan what he would do. And he had no idea about the answer. No idea what step to take next. And no idea how to catalogue his life if it only had a few moments remaining in it.
Lizzie’s knees buckled as she watched Morgan and Gareth Covington speak in the middle of the field below. Up on the hill, she couldn’t hear them, but she was an expert in Morgan’s body language by now. She could tell he was pouring his heart out.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think as she waited, frozen in fear, for them to shake hands and end this. But they didn’t. After a few moments that lasted a lifetime, Covington turned away and went back to his second, who fetched the pistols.
“No!” she gasped, spinning to face Amelia, Katherine and Charlotte, who had all joined her in this spying expedition. All three were as pale and sick-looking as she was, herself.
“They’re getting the guns,” Lizzie choked. “They’re going to fire. I must…I must go down. I must stop them.”
She pivoted to run down the hill, but Amelia lunged for one arm and Katherine caught the other. As she struggled against them, Charlotte swept around and cupped Lizzie’s cheeks gently. “You mustn’t.”
“Stop!” Lizzie sobbed. “Let me go!”
Charlotte’s eyes were full of tears. “I can’t imagine what you are feeling, but you mustn’t, love. I’m so sorry. You would never make it in time and even if you did, you could be the one who ended up shot and that would solve nothing.”
Lizzie collapsed to her knees, and Charlotte and the others joined her there. Their arms around her in a circle of love as they all stared at the drama playing out below.
“They could still fire their pistols in the air,” Amelia assured her. “They could still end in honorable acceptance rather than blood.”
“If he didn’t accept Morgan’s apology, why wouldn’t he shoot?” she whispered as reality sank in. Someone would die this morning. It could be Morgan. She wouldn’t see him again, wouldn’t touch him again, wouldn’t get to whisper in the dark to him or smell that spot on his neck that made her shiver.
He would be gone, and she would never be the same.
The men put their backs to each other and then began to pace forward. Morgan was coming toward the group on the hill, though she knew he couldn’t see them up here, where the steepness masked the top. Probably better, for he would be distracted if he knew she was here in this place he surely didn’t want her.
All she could hope was that he would feel her love for him. She stared at him and sent him those loving thoughts with all her might.
They reached ten paces and turned. She watched in what felt like slow motion as Morgan raised his pistol and pointed it to the sky. Of course he would. He wouldn’t kill this man. Not even to save himself.
Her gaze shifted to Covington. Unlike Morgan, he had pointed his pistol directly at the chest of the man she loved. She lifted both her hands to her mouth, her breath coming short and hard as tears flowed down her cheeks. And then, just as she thought it was over, just as the world itself seemed to be at the cusp of ending, Covington lifted the muzzle of his gun to the sky and fired his shot above him.
