Royally Ever After (4 page)

Thanks to boredom and drink, he'd been a stupendous lout yesterday. Yet if he'd behaved well, he wouldn't have discovered her. He wouldn't have had the fun of writing incendiary notes and picturing her gleefully composing her replies.

He watched the seconds gravely mark out the field. Then Miss Renfrew guided Miss Sharp to her place. Bates, wearing a look of exasperation, approached and said, “You'll stand here—and you had better pray that nobody gets wind of this.”

“My lips are sealed,” Lovedon said.

“How I wish that were ever true,” Bates said.

He then proceeded to the halfway point between the duelists and asked if there was any possibility of reconciliation.

Miss Sharp shook her head.

Bates looked to Lovedon.

He shook his head.

The lowering sun gilded the fields. A gentle breeze caressed his face.

What a splendid evening for a duel
, he thought.

T
rust me.

Amy put the pistol in Chloe's hand. It was quite small and oddly shaped, double-barreled, and stunningly ornate: gold, with exquisite enameling, and set with pearls and diamonds. She stared at it.

“It's French,” Amy said. “You cock it with this.” She indicated a part. “Then it works the same as any other pistol, Mr. Bates said. But it has a very short range. I suspect it's easier to injure somebody by hitting them in the head with the grip. In any event, we need to shorten the dueling distance. Do you mind? I pointed out to Mr. Bates that the minimum distance is no less than three yards. I do wish I knew what was in Lord Lovedon's mind.”

“He's whimsical,” Chloe said.

“Yes, everyone says so. And it's mere form, of course. So many duels are, you know. One goes through the motions—”

“Yes, yes,” Chloe broke in impatiently. “But we must do it Lord Lovedon's way.” She'd called him a coward and no gentleman. She'd refused to apologize. That, Amy had said, gave him the choice of weapons and terms. And the first shot. “If he wants to dirty his pretty French pistols by shooting them off, that's his choice.”

Shoot straight at me . . . Trust me.

Though she knew—she was
positive
—she had nothing to be afraid of, her heart was pounding very hard. She cocked the weapon as Amy had instructed and held it down by her side.

She was aware of Lord Lovedon following the same procedure, but it was a distant awareness. So many wild thoughts raced through her mind that she couldn't keep up with them, let alone make sense of them. Her heart wouldn't slow. She knew nothing terrible would happen, yet she was panicking all the same.

She was aware of Lord Lovedon coming much closer.

This was too close.

They were very small pistols, but small ones tended to be highly inaccurate. She might hurt him by accident. But no, they couldn't be loaded. He wouldn't shoot her and he couldn't possibly want her to shoot him.

Could he?

This was absurd. He was doing it on purpose to aggravate her. Whimsical, indeed.

Mr. Bates said, “Miss Renfrew will ask if you are ready, then count to two, and give the word to fire. Is that clear?”

Lord Lovedon nodded.

Chloe nodded, though nothing was at all clear.

“Ready?” Amy called out.

No, I'm not even slightly ready.

“One.”

Chloe sucked in air.

“Two.”

She let it out.

“Fire.”

Lord Lovedon raised his pistol and pointed it at her.

Trust me.

He fired.

A little blue and green bird sprang up from between the two barrels.

It twirled and fluttered its wings and sang, “Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet.”

H
er face was a picture. Lovedon had all he could do to maintain his composure.

Then laughter spilled out of her, great gulps and whoops and funny little snorts.

“Your turn, Miss Sharp,” he said.

She turned away, laughing, holding her pistol to her belly.

He stood watching her, marveling at the exuberance and joy of her. She laughed in the same way she'd defended her sister: with all her heart.

“Miss Sharp,” he said.

She went off into whoops again. Then she wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her dress and returned to her dueling stance—body sideways, her glowing face straight on, pistol at her side. She brought up the pistol and fired.

A little blue and green bird popped up between the barrels and fluttered its wings and turned its head this way and that, so wondrously like a real bird, and it tweeted in the cheerful, beckoning way of a bird seeking its mate.

For a time, their birds tweeted and flirted with each other.

She watched the birds. When they stilled, she looked at him.

“I see,” she said in a trembling voice. “They're French.”

“I would say excessively so.”

She held out the singing bird pistol. He took it from her, letting his hand graze hers. He put the birds back into their respective hiding places in the devices, then stepped away to return them to the pistol case, which Bates had left on the ground nearby. When Lovedon rose, he saw the two seconds walking back to the carriages, leaving the duelists to sort themselves out.

He turned to her.

She stood watching him. Her expression had grown serious, and he couldn't read it.

He grew anxious. If he muddled this part, he was finished.

“I realize I made a very bad first impression,” he said. “But I can't apologize. If I hadn't behaved ill, you wouldn't have behaved ill, and then where should we be?”

“Not in Battersea Fields, certainly,” she said. “This . . . it . . .” Her lower lip trembled. Her eyes filled.

She covered her face and wept then, great, racking sobs, as uninhibited as her laughter.

Heart pounding, he closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms about her and held her.

The storm abated as suddenly as it had begun. After a moment, she tried to draw away. He didn't let go. “I only want to know I'm forgiven,” he said.

“I forgive you,” she said. “That was not what I . . .” She paused and swallowed. “My sister was going away, and I was so sure I couldn't be happy again, for a very long time.”

“And now?”

She didn't answer, but she pushed, harder this time, and reluctantly he released her. She'd felt right in his arms. She'd felt right, he realized, from the moment she'd slapped him with her glove.

She started to turn away.

“You did the right thing,” he said, “calling me to account.”

She waved this away. “I was pot-valiant.”

“You'd have done it even if you'd been fully sober,” he said. “You might have done it differently, but you would have acted—out of love and loyalty and . . . all the right things.”

She turned back to him, surprised.

“I want to make reparations,” he said.

“You've done that,” she said. Her expression grew wry. “What a horrid waking up I had today.”

“I've had my share of those,” he said.

“You said you'd seen drunken friends home before,” she said. “I've never done anything like that before in my life.”

“Perhaps I bring out something special in you,” he said.

“I was
mortified
,” she said
.
“I was positive it would be years before I could look myself in the eye, let alone you.” She looked up. “I begin to understand why men do it. A duel clears the air and settles everything.”

“And one can be friends again,” he said.

“We can't be friends again,” she said. “We weren't friends
before
. Our worlds would never have overlapped if not for Althea's marrying Prince Louis.”

“The world changes on that
if
,” he said
.
“We met, we had words, we had a duel. And now that we've cleared the air, I should like to start over.”

The color rising in her face told him she was beginning to understand what he was about.

“I beg that you won't judge me by my actions yesterday,” he said.

She stared down at the toes of her purple boots. “They were not, all things considered,
consistently
bad actions,” she said.

“I improve on acquaintance, people say,” he said. “Well, Bates wouldn't say it, but one must bear in mind that he's lately had a severe disappointment in love, which makes him bitter and quarrelsome. However, Miss Renfrew seems well able to hold her own with him, and really, I don't care much about them. I only care whether you will do me the honor of allowing me to take you for a drive in Hyde Park tomorrow afternoon.”

She stared at her boots for quite a long time. She bit her lip.

He waited, calm on the outside, while his heart attempted to break all previous speed records.

Finally she looked up. “Are you quite sure?” she said.

Speeches wanted to tumble out of him, wild declarations. But that was mad. They'd met only yesterday. He would take this one step at a time, if it killed him.

“Quite,” he said.

Castle de Grey, four weeks later

L
ovedon drew Chloe into the passage between the drawing room and the picture gallery.

“It was here, wasn't it?” Lovedon said. “This was where you heard me talking rot about Prince Louis and your sister.”

“Yes,” she said. “But this isn't an immense royal wedding, only a dinner party, and we'll be missed.”

“Let them miss us,” he said.

He'd arranged the dinner party with his cousin the Duchess of Marchmont. She would have a very good idea why Lovedon had slipped out of the drawing room with Miss Sharp. Being far from conventional, Her Grace would cover up for them.

He wrapped his arms about Chloe and kissed her, firmly, so that there would be no question about it, and lingeringly, so that she wouldn't forget it in a hurry. And yes, certainly, he did it because he needed to and had needed to for what felt like eternity.

“There,” he said, when he was sure he'd done the job properly. She started to pull away, but she stumbled, and he caught her about the waist. Her perfect waist, that went with the rest of her perfect body.

“I am not drunk,” she said.

“I know that,” he said. “I shouldn't have sneaked you in here if you were. You need to be completely in your senses.”

“That's impossible, after what you just did,” she said.

Her voice was a little husky, and even in the passage's dim light, he saw the soft glow in her eyes.

“Somewhat in your senses will be sufficient,” he said. “But not dead drunk. That wouldn't be fair. And I need you to answer more or less rationally.” He went on in a rush, “I meant to take this in slow stages, but I'm so stupidly in love with you that slow and steady is only going to drive me mad.”

“In love,” she said softly.

“Yes, of course. How could I not be? I meant to be romantic, but this was the best I could do on short notice. That is, I didn't mean it to be short notice. I meant to wait until at least Tuesday next, but preferably until September. But there you were, sitting across the dinner table, and I was thinking how agreeable it would be if we could go upstairs to the same bedroom, instead of separate houses, and you could sit in my lap instead of all the way across the table on a chair. And then . . .” He trailed off because his brain was conjuring images that activated his breeding organs while deadening his powers of speech and clear thinking.

He sounded, in short, like a complete nitwit.

“I'm trying to decide,” she said, “whether this is meant to be an offer of carte blanche or a proposal of marriage.”

“I adore you,” he said.

“That declaration could take things either way,” she said.

“My dear Chloe, if you don't marry me, I'll do something rash.”

“By which you mean, I presume, hitting yourself in the head repeatedly with the singing bird pistols until you lose consciousness and I take pity on you and say yes.”

“I will certainly do that if necessary.”

“Oh, you're the most ridiculous man. Of course I'll say yes. I was saying yes, very likely, at the same moment I threw champagne in your face. And I think it's the most romantic thing in the world, your proposing in this passage, instead of properly, on your knees in, say, our drawing room.”

“I hoped you'd think that.”

“You knew I'd think that,” she said. “It's a tragic thing, but our minds are strangely alike.”

“Yes, but I love you anyway,” he said. He pulled her close again. “And I challenge you to put up with me until death us do part.”

She reached up and caught him about the neck. “My lord,” she said, “the satisfaction which your lordship has demanded, it is of course impossible for me to decline.”

D
espite Lord Lovedon's impatience, the marriage had to wait for the bride's dress and the bridesmaids' dresses, and these things take time if they're to be done properly. Since every item issuing from Maison Noirot was always done properly, it was nearly September before Chloe Sharp became Lady Lovedon.

They were married, naturally, in the Gold Drawing Room of Castle de Grey, and the laughing way they looked at each other at the end—so obviously sharing a private joke—told all the world that yes, undoubtedly, they'd married for love.

8 February 1840

Two o'clock in the afternoon