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He half wished Harclay lived up to his reputation as an excellent marksman, and at twenty paces shot Henry dead.

The earl disappeared into the fading night, Lady Violet in tow; she’d called out to Caroline, promising that together they would make things right, but Henry knew better.

He just agreed to a bloody
duel
, for God’s sake. If it was to be believed, Henry had never fought a duel before. He’d been too busy extorting Frenchmen and fighting for Harry, England, and St. George. There’d been no time for
duels
.

Until now, that is. He may have never fought a duel, but he knew they usually ended badly.

Caroline could not bear to lose her brother; Henry knew this. As much as he loathed the earl, and wished upon him all the plagues of Egypt, Caroline loved him deeply. He was the only family she had left. Not that Henry ever had a chance with her, but killing her brother in a duel would sever what little affection, friendly or otherwise, Caroline still bore him.

Henry let out a long, low breath, tugging a hand through his hair.

Caroline was looking at her hands. The light around them burned from blue to gray; they had an hour, maybe less, before dawn. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders. It was darker than it was when he’d married her; before it had been honey-hued, still brown but shot through with gold. Now it was chestnut, a shade lighter than coffee.

He wished he’d been there to witness the change. Perhaps it had been gradual; he would’ve noticed it one day in disbelief, the way a parent might look upon a small child and wonder where his baby had gone.

“You did not have to speak on my behalf,” Henry said. “But thank you nonetheless.”

She looked up. “A
duel
.” She said the word as if the very syllables that composed it were as ridiculous as the thing itself. “My brother did always have a flair for the dramatic.”

Henry stepped forward. “You need to stay here, Caroline. I’ll do what I can, but I don’t want you to be there if something . . . happens.”

She looked at him for a long moment. He ached with the desire to reach out and take her face in his hands. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, Henry, are you?”

“Of course I am. Now go back to bed, and don’t you dare follow your brother to Farrow Field. With any luck he’ll lock you in your rooms so I don’t have to worry.”

Caroline crossed her arms, toed at the gravel on the edge of the drive. “But then I’ll worry about you.”

Oh, God, she was killing him.

“I’ll think of something. I can take care of myself,” he said. And I can take care of you, too.

He would take care of her. It was all he could do.

When he met his gaze, her eyes brimmed with tears. “You’ll think of something,” she said. She hesitated, and then she turned and made for the back of the house.

*   *   *

F
arrow Field was little more than a stretch of green surrounded on all sides by adolescent oaks. The nascent sun was sharp with late spring, streaming ardently through crisscrossed leaves to blind the men gathered there. The air smelled clean, of dew and grass.

“So,” Mr. Moon panted as they made their way back across the field, “have you thought of anything?”

“Not since you last asked me two minutes ago, no,” Henry said grimly.

“You always work best under pressure. No doubt you’ll think of
something
before . . . er, shots are fired. I thought the terms were fair, though twenty paces sounds a bit excessive, doesn’t it?”

Henry grunted in reply. Across the field Harclay and his man, Avery, were scrubbing imaginary dust off the earl’s gleaming Manton dueling pistol. Henry held its mate in his left hand; it felt beautifully heavy, a heaviness that spoke of expert craftsmanship, of history, of loving use. No doubt the pair cost a fortune; no doubt the earl had gotten his money’s worth out of them.

Glancing about the field, Henry breathed a silent sigh of relief. Caroline hadn’t come. Thank God she would not be there to see whatever it was that was about to happen. Henry’s stomach had roiled itself into a knot; he had a bad feeling about this. About what would come next.

The surgeon seemed to feel the same; on the opposite edge of the field he held his hands clasped at his back and shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. On the ground beside him rested his leather valise of tools and potions.

Mr. Moon cleared his throat. “Are you . . . er . . . going to walk straight, sir? Without the limp, I mean.”

Henry started. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said carefully.

Mr. Moon took the pistol from Henry’s hand, pretended to inspect it. “I, um, know. I know about your limp, how it comes and goes, depending on your mood. And your aim, it might help to have two steady legs instead of one?”

Henry blinked. And then, after a moment, he clapped Mr. Moon on the shoulder. “You’re a much better agent than I give you credit for, Moon.”

“Yes, sir,” Moon said steadily. “I’ve been waiting for you to acknowledge that fact for quite some time now. Just because I’ve a flair for disguise doesn’t mean I don’t excel at the fundamentals. Sir.”

“How long have you known?”

Moon drew a breath and looked up from the pistol. “Oh, forever, I suppose.”

Henry bit back a smile. “Do you know why I walk with a limp?”

“Officially? Because you saved Mr. Hope from a falling mainmast.” Moon lowered his voice. “Unofficially? Her ladyship the dowager countess.”

“She prefers Caroline.”

Now it was Moon’s turn to smile. “I know.”

“Of course you do.”

From across the field came a shout. Henry and Mr. Moon looked up; the earl was ready.

“Moon,” Henry murmured, “I’ve left instructions on the bureau. You’re to look after her—find the jewel and trade it to Woodstock—”

“Stop it, sir. Just stop it. I’ll have you know I would sell my soul to the devil so that you might win.”

Henry laughed, heart rising. “Let’s hope the devil does not disappoint us.”

“He rarely does.” Moon held out the pistol. “I’d wish you luck, sir, but with the devil on our side, I think we both know we won’t need it.”

Henry took the pistol. “Thank you,” he said.

He continued his walk across the field alone. Harclay strode purposefully toward him from the other end of the field. His eyes were like black beads, flat, serious, immune to the potent light slicing through the trees.

Henry’s heart began to pound.

Of course he had a plan of last resort. But like all plans of last resort, it was tricky and terrible and not at all what he wanted to do.

Think
, he told himself with every step he took.
Think
.

He realized his steps were even. The limp was gone. For now, at least.

Henry met the earl in the middle of the field. Was it stupid to hope the earl’s face would break into a smile, that he would embrace Henry and tell him to go forth and make Caroline happy?

Yes, Henry mused, taking in the earl’s rageful expression. Definitely stupid.

“I am sorry to have offended you,” Henry said. “But I love your sister. I care only for her happiness, her honor.”

The earl looked as if he were about to spit. “Caroline deserves better, and you know it.”

Avery was calling out to them then, the duel’s first commands. Henry turned, his back to the earl’s. He bent his arm, bringing the heel of the gun to his shoulder. The knot in his belly tightened.

“Count paces!” Avery cried, and Henry took the first of his twenty steps.

Think
.
Think. Think.

Oh God, he thought at step thirteen. I’m going to have to resort to my plan of last . . . er, resort
.

For a moment he felt as if he were going to be sick.

But this was not the first time Henry thought he was going to die. And so he did what he always did when faced with certain death: he squared his shoulders and drew a deep breath and willed the fear that cluttered his mind to sod off.

Eighteen, nineteen, and then twenty paces.

Think
.

Henry turned and raised his pistol. He narrowed his eye, aimed wide.

He pulled the trigger at the same moment Lady Violet stumbled into the line of fire, her admonitions to stop, for the love of God,
stop
, lost in the rising rush of Henry’s panic.

Thirty-two

C
aroline watched in horror from the far side of the field as the bullet met with Violet’s belly. Her forward momentum drew to a sudden, sickening halt, and for a moment she stumbled on her feet, arms flung over her head.

And then she was falling backward, all color draining from her face, features squeezed into a grimace of pain.

Half a heartbeat later a dull
thwack
sounded behind Caroline; she turned to see a raw hole burrowed into the trunk of a nearby tree. She looked across the field.

Henry was looking at her.

His bullet
. It had hit a tree.

He’d aimed wide.
Very
wide.

Caroline didn’t have time to think about what that meant. She joined the rush on Violet, sprinting beside the surgeon as he lugged his valise across the field.

By the time they reached her, William was already on his knees, holding her against him. Even as he shouted orders and obscenities, he wept, tears plummeting one after the other to the ground like fat raindrops.

A seeping flower of red grew on the bodice of Lady Violet’s
gown. She was pale, her lips an unnatural shade of purple; her body was limp in William’s arms.

Fear, a violent rush of it, moved through Caroline. If Henry’s bullet hit a tree, that meant the shell lodged in Violet’s ribs came from William’s pistol.

Oh God
, she thought.
Oh my God.

William’s shot Violet
.

Someone’s hands were on Caroline’s shoulders, turning her toward him. She looked up into Henry’s face, heard his voice as he said her name.

“Caroline,” he said. “Caroline, stay here, please, I’ll be back directly.”

He moved her aside, gently, and then bent to pull William away from Violet. William stood, wiping his face with the heel of his hand as he watched the surgeon kneel beside her.

“Is she going to be all right?” he asked. “Is she going to live?”

Caroline wanted to reach for him, to take him in her arms and hold him until the shaking stopped. But he would only push her away. There would be no consoling him; there would be no consoling anyone who’d shot the woman he loved, perhaps fatally.

The surgeon was calling for William; he returned to Violet’s side, and helped administer some sort of potion the surgeon proffered in a glass vial.

“Might I help?” Caroline asked. “I can hold back her hair, or . . . or go and get more help, another surgeon?”

The surgeon waved her away. “Stand back, please, she needs the air.”

William was apologizing now, telling Violet that it was going to be all right, that he would make everything all right.

She did not respond; not until her eyes fluttered open, suddenly, and met with William’s.

Caroline couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard Violet whisper something.

I hate you
, she said.
William, I love you.

Caroline’s eyes blurred with tears.

*   *   *

V
iolet was still alive a few hours later, barely. William had decamped to her family’s Grosvenor Square house; he’d come home to change his shirt and cast up his accounts before
returning to her bedside, where Caroline imagined his moods alternated between bitter weeping and drunken stupor.

He’d taken two quarts of their father’s best vintage brandy, and not an hour ago sent a note to Caroline, asking for two more.

None of them slept. Caroline longed to send for Henry; he’d escorted her home after the duel, holding both her hands in one of his as she stared out the window, hardly daring to breathe.

When they’d reached Hanover Square, Henry had turned to her. “I’m sorry,” he’d said.

“I’m sorry, too,” Caroline replied, though she didn’t know what, exactly, she was apologizing for.

He ran his thumb across the back of her hand, and then he let her go.

Even now, so many hours later, the skin there still burned with the memory of his touch. She was terrified for Violet, for William. For herself. Surely Woodstock grew impatient, and the diamond was lost, gone forever it seemed. Without the diamond, they had nothing with which to bargain for her life, or the lives of Henry’s men.

The terror made her feel lonelier than usual. She would bear it, as she must. But that did not mean she didn’t ache for Henry. He would know what to say, how to touch her; he would make her laugh; and he would bring her relief, at least for a little while.

She wanted him, but she knew she could not have him. Not a day ago, he told her he loved her, and she refused him. She was too frightened to risk her heart again, of reliving the devastation and hurt she’d felt after losing him the first time.

No, Henry was not hers to pine over, or to call upon when she felt lonely. He deserved better than that.