Sea of Secrets: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense (35 page)

“What are you talking about?” I whispered.

I had never seen such determination in those soft blue eyes. “You cannot imagine I will let my son and nephew duel each other and not be present? We must be there when they meet.”

“Do you think we can stop them?” The idea sent hope blazing through me.

“No, my dear. There is nothing we can do to change the course they have set for themselves, not now that honor is involved. In affairs such as these, men will never hear reason.” I must have looked as stricken as I felt, for her voice softened momentarily. “But we may at least be there to see what happens. You would not forgive yourself if the man you love were killed, and you not there in his last moments.”

My mind reeled at the word. I had not allowed myself to think that Charles or Herron—or both—might die. Please, I prayed fervently, please let it not come to that pass. “If we cannot prevent it, can we not at least send for the doctor, so that he will be present?” I said faintly.

“One of the gentlemen will do that, dear. It is usual at these meetings.”

With a brief consoling pat on my shoulder she vanished into her room, and I made my way to mine. I fumbled my way into my riding habit by myself; I could not ring for Jane, I knew, and risk her spreading word of my strange activities. In a few minutes a low tap on my door announced the duchess. She, too, was in her riding habit, a dark blue one, and had draped her bright hair with a black silk shawl. “If the gentlemen see us, they will postpone the meeting,” she explained. “We must keep completely out of sight; fortunately there are woods where we can conceal ourselves. Now, try to get some sleep. We have hours to wait.”

“How can we be sure they will not start early?” I asked. “Their tempers are so inflamed—what if they are at each other’s throats even now?”

“Hush, child. They are men of honor; they will follow the procedure.” She took a seat on the divan, from which she could see the clock, and arranged her skirts to make herself comfortable.

How comforting, I thought numbly, to know that there is an etiquette to killing. How could it be that honor had so many contradictory meanings?

That night was the longest I have ever spent. The duchess and I kept our vigil separately, wrapped in our own thoughts, yet united in fear of what the dawn would bring. We spoke little. Shortly after we had settled in for our long watch, she had lifted her head with a perplexed frown to ask, “What is that noise?”

“Herron, on the roof,” I answered, and saw pained comprehension cross her face. We listened in silence to the footsteps that marked the passage of the night. “How have you borne it?” she asked softly, after a time.

I knew she meant to ask how I had endured that nightly reminder of Herron after he had broken with me. I had suffered keenly at first, until I had thought of a solution, mundane but effective. “Cotton wool in my ears,” I said briefly.

“He’ll wear himself out,” she murmured. “By dawn he will be exhausted.” Then her thoughts seemed to return to the scene we had observed from the gallery; when she spoke again, it was on a new topic. “Herron taxed Claude with intending
another
murder. What did he think was the first?”

I decided it was useless trying to shield her now. “The duke,” I said, as gently as I could.

All she said was “I see,” but I could tell that in the light of that new piece of knowledge she was reliving the last months with belated understanding, revising all her ideas of what she had thought she knew, finally aware of what had been passing through her son’s head.

After that we were silent, and the lonely pacing continued overhead, regular and inexorable.

I could only guess what thoughts kept her company during that long dark night. Mine were far from cheering. Once again I was forced to confront the likelihood that someone I thought I knew possessed a hidden side, one I could not trust. Charles had seemed always to be so reverent of human life, the last person to voluntarily take one. I remembered now what Herron had said about Charles killing in battle, and shivered. He might kill Herron tomorrow.

He might have tried before.

The thought I had been trying to force out of my mind ever since the night before had to be faced. Perhaps the reason I had not smelled smoke last night until after Charles left me was that he set the fire himself. But then why pull Herron from the blaze, after having set it? Perhaps others responded too quickly, and their presence had forced him to rescue the man he had tried to kill. And, having been thus thwarted, he had poisoned the wine tonight, only to have been discovered by his father.

Why, though? How could Herron’s death possibly benefit him? I was certainly not worth killing for, and in any case there was no need of it: I had not even refused Charles. Had I been too quick to dismiss Herron’s thought that he could have been in league with Lord Claude? But I could still not believe that even loyalty to his father would cause Charles to involve himself in murder.

Then the ugly idea came to me that Charles might inherit his cousin’s estate, if Herron did not marry. That would be reason enough to kill Herron and to court me—to keep me from marrying Herron and inheriting Ellsmere. And, hateful as it was, this theory even explained two earlier incidents. The block that had fallen upon me from the tower might have been meant to kill me, to remove the threat I posed as Herron’s potential bride. And Herron’s fall from Caesar could have been easily engineered. Felicity’s careful checks of our mounts’ saddles had shown me how small a thing could cause an accident: a burr under the saddle, a loosening of the girth… someone may have meant for Herron to receive a far more serious injury than a sprained wrist.

I flung out of my chair and walked to the window. I could see nothing, but I could sit still no longer under the needling agony of my own thoughts. This was all the wildest conjecture, I told myself firmly. I had no way of knowing who Herron’s heir was. And in any case, his mother had said that the estate was still in trust; that was why she still had the power to bar him from the house if she chose. So Herron’s murderer would gain nothing unless he waited for his birthday, when he came into his inheritance. Relieved at this recollection, I returned to my chair. Charles could not be after the estate; the idea was laughable even without the logical flaws in such a theory.

But why, came the thought circling back, inevitable and persistent, why challenge Herron?

Hours later, the duchess stirred and stretched. “It’s time we were going,” she said. “We still have to saddle the horses, and we must be on our way before the others reach the stables.”

“How will we find our way?” I asked as I pulled on my cloak.

“I know the place; I can take us there. Come, it’s nearly dawn.”

We reached the stables without encountering anyone. The duchess instructed me in saddling my mount—something I had never had to do for myself—as she performed the same office for her own. After a brief check to satisfy herself that I had done an adequate job, she led the way out into the night.

The landscape lightened as we rode through the woods; nothing as definite as sunlight met us, but the shapes of the trees gradually grew more distinct, and all at once I realized that color had come into the world. We rode in silence, listening for the men so that we might not blunder across their path. The duchess’s unquestioning acceptance of the duel forced me to realize that it was something that we could not forestall. If we tried to interfere, the men would only change the time and venue of their meeting; no matter what we said or did, they would carry it out regardless.

And still I did not know which man I more feared for.

“We must leave the horses here,” said the duchess presently. “We are coming close now, and the horses will be seen. We must walk, and carefully.” Tethering our mounts to branches, we made our way on foot through the thinning woods. When we reached the fringes of the forest, she gestured for me to stoop down; the scattered trees provided less concealment now, and we might be seen. At the edge of the woods we crouched down behind some straggling bushes that provided a screen, and waited.

In the growing light I was able to discern the scene before us. We had an excellent view of the field, which was not a large one: longer than it was wide, its uncropped grass grew knee-high. Across from us, another band of trees marked the boundary. I could no longer hear the sea, and I imagined that this place must be well removed from any dwellings; even I knew that dueling was illegal, and must be carried out in privacy.

My mouth went dry as the sound of horses’ hooves came to my ears. The men had arrived.

Charles and his father rode abreast; was Lord Claude acting as second to his son, I wondered, or was he there as a concerned bystander, like the two of us crouched in the shrubbery? Behind him came a man I did not know; he was elderly, dressed in sober unfashionable garments, and held a black bag before him on the saddle. “The doctor,” the duchess mouthed at me.

Herron came last. He was the only one who had not changed his clothes; he still wore his evening dress, and the elegance of the stiff shirt and white tie was startlingly incongruous in this deserted field at dawn. His jaw was set, and he stared straight before him. The breeze tossed a lock of dark hair into his eyes, and he brushed it away absently with the back of one hand. He looked spent, and very young.

I glanced at the duchess; how could she bear this without speaking, without moving to stop them? Her face wore a frozen calm, and was perfectly still. Only her hands moved; they plucked absently at the dead grass we sat on, pulling up blade after stiff blanched blade. I looked into her eyes once and did not look again. Her whole soul was poised there.

The doctor seemed to be in charge of the proceedings, perhaps because he was the only truly disinterested party. He was inspecting the pistols with an efficiency that suggested he had performed this duty before, and as we watched he gave one to each of the duelists. Herron had brought no second to check his gun, and glanced at it only perfunctorily before loading it, but Charles took a few minutes to perform a more thorough inspection of his weapon. His expression was serious and intent as he handled the gun, and his hands were steady; he was not going to collapse from sheer exhaustion, as his opponent might. I wondered how he could be so calm when preparing to fire a pistol at a blood relative.

“I’m ready,” I heard him say. The sun was rising. There was no brilliant glow in the sky, simply a lightening from grey to white; it promised to be an overcast day. The doctor looked inquiringly at Herron, who gave a curt nod.

“Very well, then, gentlemen. As we have discussed.” The doctor’s voice was deep and faintly resigned, as if he had attended at many of these affairs of honor and had grown almost accustomed to watching young men blow holes in each other. Perhaps he had. “Take ten paces by my count and turn. When I drop my handkerchief, fire one shot each. If neither strikes home, Reginald as the offended party decides whether to continue. One—”

“Charles, wait.” Lord Claude burst out suddenly as they stepped out from each other. “I cannot let you do this. It isn’t your quarrel—”

“I have made it mine. Please let me pass, Father.”

Charles moved inexorably on, taking the proper number of paces. His father trailed after him, his hand still reaching out in appeal, before drifting to a stop several yards away from where the doctor stood.

Charles and Herron stopped and turned to face each other. It was very quiet; not even the birds were singing. I could hear the duchess’s breathing, quick and shallow. Very distantly, I thought I could hear sheep bells.

The lack of ceremony was jarring; how could everyone be so matter-of-fact, so perfunctory? This was no way to die, without time to prepare, without even glory, just a bullet fired across an abandoned strip of weeds.

Someone must stop this, I thought. I could not believe this stupidity had progressed so far. I made a panicked movement, and the duchess’s hand closed around my wrist in a grip like stone.

Charles and Herron raised their pistols to point squarely at each other. For a few moments they stood like that, unmoving, awaiting the doctor’s signal. Men of honor, observing the courtesies as each stood poised to send a deadly ball of lead tearing into the other. What is the doctor waiting for? I thought feverishly.

Then several things happened almost too quickly to see. The handkerchief dropped from the doctor’s hand. Herron suddenly jerked his pistol to the side, away from Charles, and a gun’s report came with deafening force into the silence. There was smoke, and shouting, and then I saw that someone was down. Not Charles, but Herron. It was not his gun that had fired.

A thin shriek burst from me, but it was the duchess who was on her feet and running, fast as a hare, for the place where her son had fallen. The gathered men drew aside for her as she flung herself down next to him.

“He can’t be dead,” I gasped, as I caught up to her. The duchess was stroking her son’s forehead, and his face was so white, so still, that the breath choked in my throat. I knelt down beside them, groping for his hand. His eyes were closed.

“He isn’t,” said the doctor shortly; “not yet. Make room, child. We need to stop the bleeding.”

“Here,” said Charles: he had taken off his coat and folded it into a bundle, and the doctor took it without question and placed it under Herron’s head. I noticed the blood now, what seemed a terribly great amount of it, so much that I could not tell where Herron had been hit.

“How bad is he?” asked Lord Claude, from behind me.

The doctor did not reply at once; he was cutting away Herron’s blood-soaked shirt to reach the wound. “The bullet went straight through the shoulder, very clean,” he said presently. “But he’s losing blood, and there’s always a chance of complications. I presume honor is satisfied?” he asked dryly of Charles, who nodded briefly.

“We must get him home at once, then, where the wound can be cleaned and where he can rest.” The duchess was in command again. “Claude, our horses are three hundred yards into the woods. Fetch them, and get the blankets from my saddlebags. Doctor, can he ride?”