The Second Shot (The Dueling Pistols) (25 page)

After his tentative prodding produced nothing, he feared his extended absence would draw unwanted attention. So he put his fingers in the hole and ripped open the chair back.

The elusive bullet popped free and pinged on the floor, then promptly rolled under the other wing chair. William grimaced and knelt. Seeing that the ball would be easier to reach from behind the chair, he crawled on all fours toward the cold fireplace. He was just reaching under the chair, his face nearly to the floor, when the French door leading to the garden swung open.

Rosalyn fell through the door, and for the barest second William was on eye level with the wild-eyed, tear-streaked face of the eldest Miss Lungren. Her hair was falling down, and a bit of leaf was caught in it. With a sob she crawled through the door and hastily turned around and fastened the catch. She stood exposing a rip in her gown.

Her breath was coming in big, rough gulps, and she stared out the windowpanes for a long moment. She clenched her hands into fists, and just as William told himself he needed to make his presence known, she gave a howl of pure animal rage.

She swiveled, and much to his horror William cowered behind the chair, hoping she didn't see him.

Rosalyn moved to the desk and began yanking out drawers, one of them so hard the drawer and its contents fell to the floor. "Where the bloody hell is that damn gun?"

Another drawer came whizzing out. "Jocelyn!" Rosalyn spun around and put her hands on her hips, surveying the room. "Jocelyn, what have you done with the gun?"

William swallowed hard and decided he was best served staying hidden. He wanted nothing to do with Rosalyn and a gun, although at this moment he was rather glad she seemed to have misplaced it.

Rosalyn stamped her foot and yelled again, "Jocelyn!"

William tried to shrink farther into the space behind the chair, and feared she'd stumble upon him any second.

* * *

Felicity had just finished all the place cards and the seating arrangement when her butler entered the breakfast room and announced a visitor. He handed her a silver salver with a calling card, the edge turned down. Felicity picked it up and studied the name. Lord Algany. She hadn't thought he'd even noticed she was alive during her first season. Not that she had strong feelings one way or another about him.

As she remembered, he was an extremely attractive albeit mature bachelor, with a black reputation hovering over his head. As a debutante she had been warned to steer clear of him, because he was known to pluck the willing flower from the pick of the crop and fulfill her wildest fantasies. The ruined miss was usually scurried into a less than stellar marriage, and the whole thing kept as silent as a blaring trumpet among the gossiping
ton.

Felicity suspected that far too many of the misses were all too willing to be seduced by such an attractive nobleman, sure that he would behave differently with them, that he would do the honorable thing: fall in love and offer marriage. He had never succumbed to that trap. Felicity supposed she might have had her head turned a bit if he had offered the slightest amount of attention. And she certainly couldn't sit in judgment of anyone, given her fiasco of a first season.

She inquired of her butler whether her parents and niece were installed in the rose drawing room. He replied that they were. So Felicity ordered a tea tray, and Lord Algany shown in, while she went upstairs to tidy up.

When she entered the rose drawing room a quarter hour later, Lord Algany stood and crossed the room. He took both her hands in his and with great sincerity, or a heartfelt look, said, "My dear Mrs. Merriwether, you must accept my condolences on your loss. I was so very sorry to hear about your husband's passing."

She nodded. "I appreciate your sympathy." She tried not to mind that it was eight months after the fact.

He held her hands and led her to the sofa as if she might break. "You must be bearing up quite well, because you look lovely."

He didn't wait for her to acknowledge his compliment as he turned and said, "Your parents have just introduced me to your niece. I understand she is to be presented this season."

"Yes, and you shall have to excuse us, Miss Fielding has a fitting she must see to." Lady Greyston stood with Diana's hand in hers. "I daresay you know how much effort goes into preparing a gal for her first season." Lady Greyston practically yanked Diana to the doorway.

Felicity blinked at her mother. Was she holding Diana's hand? Good grief, her mother must think Algany the worst of the worst if she had leaped to Diana's defense. Of course, that didn't stop her mother from leaving her own daughter alone with the rake, except for her father, taking his midmorning nap behind the newspaper on the far side of the room.

"Why, I shall feel greatly deprived to lose your company, Lady Greyston, and yours, Miss Fielding. I trust that I shall have ample opportunities during the season to enjoy your conversation." He bowed politely. "I shall simply have to console myself by reacquainting myself with Mrs. Merriwether."

After they left the room, he gave Felicity a smile and a small aside. "Hardly a dismal prospect, and a most agreeable way to spend a morning catching up with you."

She nodded in reply, wanting to say that he hadn't even noticed her during her first season. As he brought her up to date on all the gossip, Felicity paid little attention, wondering if the carefully arranged hair swooping across Lord Algany's brow was to hide wrinkles marking his age. Although he wasn't old, perhaps ten years older than she—younger than Layton had been—she wanted to tell him the style didn't suit him. It made him look as if he were trying to appear boyish.

He had switched to telling her of a tennis match he'd had with a gentleman whose name escaped Felicity.

"You should come and join the spectators. I should enjoy that very much."

Felicity felt very much as if she were being invited to watch a gladiatorial combat in which Lord Algany was the star. To what purpose, she wondered.

"It is a shame that Major Sheridan shall likely never walk normally, isn't it? So many of our men were lost at Waterloo. Still, I suppose we should be grateful that he returned in one piece. You were once engaged to him, were you not?"

"A long time ago." How had they jumped to discussing Tony? She was simply going to have to pay better attention to the conversation, but since she was barely contributing, she supposed she was at the whim of Lord Algany's reflections.

"The company is a bit thin these days, what with a great many of our own deserting us for Vienna and Brussels this year."

"Oh, but the season hasn't really started yet," said Felicity. She hoped the company wouldn't be so thin that Diana would have a hard time bringing a gentleman up to scratch. She hadn't realized how impatient she would be with all the social niceties and chitchat in which she would have to participate. She checked the mantel clock, thinking of the business affairs that awaited her attention. She surely didn't want to be forced to do this again next year.

"I'm afraid word is out. Your dinner party is the opening event of this year."

"It is?" She had just planned a small dinner party. Something where Diana could get a little social experience without risking drowning in a sea of ineptitude.

"Yes, well, do not act surprised. Your chef's culinary skills are renowned. Though, I do realize you probably didn't know I was in town, I hope I am not too late to be included." He touched her hand and smiled.

His teeth seemed smallish in his mouth, and tilted inward, although really he had very nice teeth. How on earth was she going to avoid inviting him?

Layton had hired one of the chefs from Watiers, the exclusive gentlemen's club and he was very good. But that was hardly the point. "I shall be uneven," she heard herself say.

"Then allow me to suggest the perfect solution. Lady Penelope Fitzwilliam is newly arrived in town with her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Worcester. She is a beautiful young lady, guaranteed to be on all the best guest lists this season, but I am sure that they should receive an invitation from you with the greatest pleasure."

No doubt Lady Penelope would be on all the best guest lists. Even if she was a cow, to be the daughter of a duke would ensure her welcome everywhere. How could Felicity not invite a duke and duchess? "Are you quite certain they would attend?"

"I assure you, 'pon my word as a gentleman, they would not miss it for the world."

Felicity's skepticism must have shown on her face. She may be the daughter of a baronet, but her husband had been a vulgar commoner, a man who had made his fortune in business. And Diana didn't have any kind of right, beyond her tenuous connection to Felicity, to join the ranks of the upper ten thousand.

But to make her debut in society at an intimate—well, not so intimate now—dinner party with not only a duke and duchess but several other members of the ruling class in attendance was bound to add cachet to her niece's season. Felicity couldn't afford to refuse.

Felicity looked at Lord Algany and realized he'd played his trump card. She sincerely hoped he had one to play with the duchess. Likely he did, or he wouldn't have risked coming here.

"Do you have their direction? I'll write out an invitation just now."

Algany smiled his ferret smile, and Felicity wondered what scheme of his she had just fallen into. What did Lord Algany have to gain from her?

* * *

The hallway door snapped open, and the middle sister, Jocelyn, swung through it. "Stop your infernal screeching, Ros. We have guests."

"We do?" Rosalyn's voice wavered quite in counterpoint to her anger before. "I cannot see anyone now."

"Oh, dear God, what happened?" Jocelyn exclaimed.

William thought that he should like to know, too.

Rosalyn leaned against the escritoire. "He...he came after me...in the woods."

"That bastard."

William would surely like to be let in on who the bastard was, and Miss Jocelyn...He didn't know if he would have remarked it—was he not eavesdropping, as it were, and not privy to her expression—but her tone was remarkably mild given her words.

"Did he...?" Jocelyn let the sentence dangle.

"No, I got away. Why won't he leave me alone?" wailed Rosalyn.

William peeked around the edge of the chair. The middle sister was rubbing the elder one's back, but she didn't seem to be concentrating terribly hard on her effort to comfort.

Rosalyn's shoulders shook. "He told me I shouldn't have any choice now. We don't have a place to live if Bedford owns the house. The estate won't support us, anyway."

"There's another solution. I'm sure of it."

Rosalyn spun around angrily. William tucked his head back behind the chair. "What solution? Mayhap he is right. I should marry him. He asks why I protest when we have been intimate."

If the way Rosalyn spit out the word "intimate" was any indication of her feelings toward the matter, it did not paint a pretty picture of it.

"That was years ago."

"I know. I would have thought that he would have found someone else, but he swears his devotion and..." Rosalyn began to pace across the floor. "Where is the gun? I should just shoot him and then myself."

"No, that won't do, love. We can't have two suicides in the family."

What an odd statement. As if social standing and good family name mattered to someone contemplating murder and suicide.

"If the world were without men, we should be so much better served." Rosalyn coughed.

William hoped it was because she choked on the words.

"All he has ever done is try to make me dependent upon him, make
us
dependent upon him."

"Well, we shall take care of that, shan't we?"

"How?" wailed Rosalyn. "I see no course open to us but for me to marry him."

Jocelyn patted Rosalyn on the shoulder. "I shall take care of everything. Not much longer and you won't have to worry about a thing."

"How?" repeated Rosalyn.

"You shall see," said Jocelyn, and she headed for the door. "I'll tell our guests you're indisposed. Oh, by the bye, they have brought us invitations to a dinner party. Some widow friend of the major's."

"We can't go. We haven't anything to wear. Oh, no! Look, I have another rip in my gown."

"Seems they've thought of that. Wonder how they knew."

Rosalyn laughed without mirth. "All they had to do was look at us."

"It seems this widow is out of first mourning and thought we could make use of her weeds."

To which Rosalyn began another coughing paroxysm. Miss Jocelyn left the room without sparing her sister another word.

William couldn't in good conscience stay hidden while Miss Lungren was so afflicted. He plucked the fatal ball off the floor and tucked it in his watch pocket. "I say, Miss Lungren, allow me to fetch you some water?"

She spun around and then doubled over again. "How...how...long have you been there?" The effort to suppress her coughs was making tears run down her face.

"Too long, I'm afraid. But never fear, your secrets are safe with me." He found his handkerchief and handed it to her.

She promptly wadded it in her fist.

He reached out to pluck the bit of dried leaf from her hair.

She ducked away so fast, he was almost surprised she didn't hit her head on the wall.

"You have a some leaves in your hair. I was going to take them out."

She stared back at him, looking unnaturally pale. Her dark eyes almost like holes in her white face. "You—you lied to me. You told me you didn't have the deed to our estate."

"I didn't at the time. Major Sheridan had it to return to you."

William tried again, and this time she held still. He showed her the brown bit of dried foliage he removed. She was as skittish as a doe.

She began coughing again. "You...you haven't...returned it."

"I had every intention of doing so, but things have become complicated. Let me assure you, Miss Lungren, I am not holding it to deny you anything that rightfully should be yours." He plucked his handkerchief from her hand and dabbed at the tracks of tears on her face. "Are you all right?"