Lord Harry's Folly (24 page)

He spoke calmly and indifferently, as if she were naught but a troublesome boy. Frustration and anger mounted in her, words poured from her mouth. “I would as soon apologize to that monster, Bonaparte. You spoke of my seducing other men’s women I don’t think the fair Melissande quite thought of herself as belonging to a man. Indeed, she was so eager for my embraces, that, if I didn’t know of her intimacy with your grace, I would have thought she’d been marooned alone for many a long month.”

“God, Lord Harry”

“Shut up, Harry,” she said low and mean over her shoulder, her eyes never leaving Lord Oberlon’s face.

Finally, she’d succeeded. She saw rage in his eyes, saw the tightening of his lips, saw the pallor of his high cheekbones. Yes, she’d made him pale with rage. Soon now, at last. She stood proudly, stiff and erect, waiting for him to strike her. With his palm? With a glove? She didn’t care. She waited.

She felt as though someone suddenly whipped her feet from beneath her when the earl of March threw back his head and laughed loudly.

Jason Cavander unclenched his fisted hand. He blinked rapidly several times and turned to the earl. “Damn you, St. Clair, what the hell are you laughing at?”

The earl, amusement still lingering in his deep voice, said more to Lord Harry rather than to the marquess, “You pick the wrong barb, my boy. Cavander here has been so plagued by women that he must needs flee from them. As for his mistresses, it has been said that their sighs of pleasure can be heard from two rooms away. Now, Monteith, may I suggest that you either tell Lord Oberlon why you find him so abhorrent or simply apologize for your many unprovoked insults and be done with this nonsense. Like his grace, I, too, grow annoyed with your inconsequential chatter.”

“Yes, do, lad,” the marquess said, his temper restored. He stared a moment at the young man. “Come, Monteith, I hesitate to kick a bothersome puppy. What is it about me that sticks in your craw?”

“Lord, Harry, please, leave go,” Sir Harry pleaded in her ear.

Hetty felt helpless. More, she felt impotent. It wasn’t until she tasted her own blood that she realized she’d bitten her lower lip. She could think of no more insults, no more sarcastic taunts. She had vowed so long ago not to tell the marquess the reason for her hatred until he lay bleeding away his miserable life at her feet. She could see all the months of her careful charade as a gentleman crumbling into failure in front of him. It was her lack of years that made her look ridiculous. For an instant, she pictured herself as the marquess must see her an arrogant, foolish young boy. They could afford to be amused, these proud gentlemen. She was naught to them but a bothersome puppy, just as Lord Oberlon had drawled to her. Had Lord Oberlon thought Damien just as insignificant? So unimportant, in fact, as to send him out of the country with no self-recrimination? Only dimly did she hear Lord Oberlon give a crack of rude laughter, and say to the earl, “Come, Julien, the farce is ended. I need no apology from a young whelp who is scarce breeched, and who now appears to have lost his tongue. Bravado in the young should be discouraged, don’t you agree? There’s nothing behind it, nothing at all. It’s very trying.”

She felt a surge of hatred so strong that she shook with it. A footman passed by, bearing a tray of glasses filled with chilled champagne. She grasped the slender stem of a glass and held it in front of her, as if readying for a toast. She heard her own voice spilling out words with surprising calmness.

“That I have afforded you such entertainment, your grace, leaves me most gratified. You find my insults nonsensical. Perhaps it’s true, for I haven’t your years of studied brutality. Where my words have failed, perhaps this will not.” She dashed the champagne into Lord Oberlon’s face.

She heard a moan from Sir Harry. She heard the whispers from shocked gentlemen who were even now drawing closer. But her attention didn’t waver from the marquess.

She watched him pull a white pocket handkerchief with a deft, graceful movement, and slowly mop the champagne from his face. In a voice so quiet that she had to lean forward to hear, Lord Oberlon said, “You give me now no choice, Monteith. Do you wish to fight in the middle of White’s, or can your mad rush to dispatch yourself to hell wait until the morrow?”

“A night to anticipate your demise will give me great pleasure.”

“Very well,” he said, his voice flat. “Julien, will you act for me?”

“Yes, if it must be, Jason.”

Sir Harry felt his brother-in-law’s gray eyes. Even as Lord Harry turned, he knew that he had no choice but to second his friend. His yes was a croak.

The earl of March stepped forward and laid his hand on his brother-in-law’s sleeve. He said formally, “It is my duty as a second to seek reconciliation.”

At the silent set faces of Lord Monteith and Lord Oberlon, he continued slowly, “As you will. Tomorrow morning at seven o’clock at the north end of Hounslow Heath. Harry, come with me now, we must make arrangements.”

“Such a fool you are, Monteith,” Lord Oberlon said in a pensive, almost sad voice. “Will you tell me anything before you die?” He turned finally and strode from the gaming salon.

Hetty was left standing alone, the empty champagne glass still held tightly in her hand. Whispering gentlemen began to disperse back to the gaming tables. She thought she saw a footman speaking behind a white-gloved hand to one of his peers. Slowly and with great deliberation, she strode to the footman and placed the champagne glass down upon his tray. She wondered fleetingly if her own face was as pale as the footman’s. She drew a deep breath and walked from the gaming salon, not looking back.

Strangely, Pottson said not a word when Hetty, an hour later, tried with as much calm as she could muster to relate to him what had happened.

“We both knew this night had to come, Pottson, for there was, after all, no other reason for Lord Harry’s existence. On the morrow, Damien will be avenged.”

Pottson raised weary troubled eyes to Miss Hetty’s young, innocent face. “Aye,” he said quietly, “Master Damien will be avenged, or you, Miss Hetty, will follow him to the grave and it will all have been for naught.”

She felt a sudden chill touch her heart and shivered despite the warmth of the small parlor. “Pray don’t seal my fate so quickly. A man’s chest is a much larger target than the wafers at Manton’s.” She paused a moment and looked about her. Odd how this small apartment seemed more her home than Sir Archibald’s town house.

“When we return tomorrow morning, Pottson, we must decide what is to be done with Lord Harry Monteith. And, more importantly, my friend, we must discuss your future. If you have a liking for Herefordshire, my brother, Sir John, would, I am certain, be most willing to engage Damien’s batman.”

Pottson merely grunted an unintelligible reply, and Hetty, mindful of being refreshed on the morrow, rose and walked slowly into Lord Harry’s bedchamber to change into a gown.

As was his habit, Pottson accompanied Miss Hetty back to her father’s town house. As they drew up to the servants’ entrance, where Millie stood waiting, Hetty said, “I’ll see you at six o’clock, Pottson. When it is over, we shall enjoy a hearty breakfast and bid Lord Harry a fond adieu.”

Pottson just looked at her for a long moment. Then he lowered his eyes, nodded, and disappeared into the night.

“What’s wrong with him?” Millie asked once they were in Hetty’s bedroom. “Ate too much of his own cooking?”

“Yes, lamb stew,” Hetty said. She had no intention of telling Millie anything.

If Hetty hugged Millie a bit longer than was her wont, Millie didn’t say anything. She left her young mistress, her own thoughts on the fair that was coming to Bidlington the following week where her sister lived.

Hetty didn’t climb into her bed. She carried her candle to her writing desk and prepared herself to perform a task for which she had no liking, but a task that had to be done. She smoothed out a piece of plain white paper, dipped the quill into the ink pot and began to write. “My dearest father,” she wrote, pausing to chew on the quill handle before continuing. “When you read this letter, you will know that you will never see me again. I pray that you will find forgiveness in your heart for the inevitable scandal that my death will cause. I have tried to act in accordance with principles that carry the highest honor, and although my failure must leave you in the forefront to deal with the unpleasant aftermath, I beg that you will try to understand my motives.”

Motives? Her motive was there, for all to see. She’d simply wanted to avenge Damien. Would she die in the attempt? She hated the fear that surged through her. She didn’t want to die.

The single candle had gutted in its socket before Hetty laid down her pen and rubbed her cramped fingers. Her explanation had covered five long pages, and although she feared much repetition, she had no wish to reread her work. Wearily, she stood and stretched. She saw with a shock that it was past midnight.

Hurriedly, she drew forth more paper, took quill in hand, and wrote much in the same style to John and Louisa as she had to her father.

She thought as she sealed both letters into their envelopes that if she were not to leave the dueling field alive, John would have to seek redress from the marquess. John’s friend, the man who was responsible for both his brother’s and sister’s deaths.

She flung away from the writing table and paced back and forth across the width of her room until the chill drove her to her bed. She sank beneath the heavy covers and stared into the darkness, her eyes refusing to close. How strange it is, she thought, that death has happened so very close to me, yet I cannot really imagine it coming to me.

When word of Damien’s death had reached her, she had felt as though a part of her had died with him. Yet, she still breathed, still felt the sun upon her face, still heartily enjoyed her father’s political vagaries. Even though the past months had moved with unremitting purpose to this point, the possibility of her own death had always seemed only a vague specter, the meaning of death lying only with Damien and in the final revenge she sought from his murderer.

She thought again of Sir John, his open, bluff good nature, his sincere friendship with the Marquess of Oberlon. Perhaps she should have told him of the marquess, of Damien, of Elizabeth Springville. Oh no, it was her revenge, a debt she owed to Damien. She realized with sudden insight that her single-minded goal had hurled her back into life. How very different she was now from the Hetty who had moved through her days and nights after Damien’s death like a vague shadow, allowing nothing to touch her.

If she emerged the victor on the morrow, she would again lose part of herself the proud, outspoken Lord Harry, the brash counterpart of Henrietta Rolland. Which Henrietta Rolland? Parts of her seemed to be strewn all about London, each with a different function, each unwhole, each wanting. How strange it was, too, that Jason Cavander had known each of her parts. The Henrietta Rolland who had attended the masked ball didn’t care for this thought. The marquess she’d known at the masked ball was all that was charming and fascinating, not at all the man who’d had Damien killed, the man who’d simply taken what he’d wanted, not caring, not looking back.

The clock chimed one o’clock in the morning. She had but five hours until Millie would awaken her. She finally fell asleep wondering if Millie suspected that something other than an early ride in the park with Mr. Scuddimore was the purpose for arising at such an ungodly hour.

When the Marquess of Oberlon unceremoniously slammed out of White’s, his many-caped greatcoat flung carelessly over his shoulders, he was in the grip of such rage that he covered the entire length of Bond Street before he was aware of the frigid night wind cutting unhampered through his elegant evening clothes. He drew to a halt and fastened his greatcoat securely about him, and jerked on the fur gloves that had hung out of his pocket.

It was perhaps the feel of the sticky dried champagne on his face and the still damp touch of his cravat against his neck that finally brought forth the reasonable man. Having a glass of champagne dashed into one’s face was certainly not a pleasant experience, yet it had proved to be as effective an insult in 1816, a year when dueling was considered most unfashionable, actually illegal, as a slap with a glove or a few well-chosen words had been to his father’s contemporaries in the bygone days when dueling was an honored activity that cut many a gentleman’s life short. The marquess remembered his bewigged grandfather, a full-lipped, lecherous old gentleman who, had he not broken his neck cramming his horse over a fence, would very likely have been felled by a ball from a pistol the very next day by a one-time crony whom he’d negligently insulted. As it was, the one-time crony had sniffed copiously at his grandfather’s funeral and the marquess’s father had sarcastically muttered to his small son that he didn’t know if the man’s sniffing was from grief or from being cheated out of putting a bullet through his grandfather’s heart.

Lord Oberlon paused a moment, realizing that his wayward thoughts had carried his feet into Millsom Street, altogether in the opposite direction from Berkeley Square. He turned and began to retrace his steps. How very ridiculous it was, he thought anew, to be forced to fight a duel with a young gentleman whose very existence had been unknown to him but a month before. There was but one man whom Jason Cavander had ever wanted to call out. Even so, his father’s sincere disgust at the waste resulting from duels had stilled his fury, if not his contempt for Sir William Filey. He found himself wondering, even now, what he would have done if he had been able to prove beyond doubt Filey’s loathsome conduct in the affair. Damn Filey anyway, and damn Elizabeth. Filey had cared too much for his own skin to ever openly taunt the marquess. As for Elizabeth, he knew that toward the end she had hated him as much as she had Filey. He shut his mind against further unpleasant memories. Elizabeth was dead and long buried, her hatred and bitter unhappiness locked away with her forever.