Once Upon a Scandal (24 page)

4:26 a.m.

VICTORIA LEANED against the closed door of the guest bedchamber. She splayed her fingers across the cool, smooth wood and swallowed against the tightness throbbing within her throat. Jonathan had not come to her room at all. Not to sleep and not even to say goodbye. In two hours, it could very well be the last time she would ever see Jonathan. Not for a single moment was she going to fool herself into thinking that he would live.

She pushed herself away from the door. How could something so beautiful morph into something so dark? Gathering her nightdress from around her feet, she drifted over to the dresser, where a small mirror and a basin of water had been set. She glanced at her reflection and cringed at the sight of tired, red, swollen eyes and a tangle of blond curls swept every which way, falling out of its pins.

She looked like Victor had on his death bed. Brave though he had been to the very end, he’d still cried, knowing he was dying. Her brother had cried, even though he believed in God. Fear had a horrid way of breaking even the strongest of faiths.

Victoria frantically readjusted the ivory pins in her hair and smoothed the falling curls. She leaned over the basin and dipped shaky hands into the cool water, scrubbing her face clean of tears. Using the folded cloth set by the basin, she dried her face.

She squeezed her eyes shut and blew out a slow breath. If he wasn’t going to say goodbye, she would go and say it for him. Victoria padded across the room, unlatched the door and pulled it open. She froze upon finding Jonathan before her, dressed in full traveling attire and boots.

His blue eyes met hers. His face was ragged, as if he had already fought a hundred duels for her. He held out a gloved hand and unraveled it, revealing his coiled pendant. He stepped toward her and gently draped the pendant over her head. “Wear it. No matter what happens.”

He caught her hand, lifted it toward him and kissed the top of her hand, his eyes closing, allowing his warm lips to linger. It was as if he were saying goodbye.

Her eyed widened. “You are choosing honor over me? Over us?”

He released her hand and stepped back. “Forgive me for always disappointing you, Victoria, but this is who I am and who I have always been. Though allowing my emotions to dictate my life has in many ways been a curse, ’tis better to die in the blaze of one’s beliefs than to live a life without believing in anything at all.” He turned and disappeared, his heavy steps echoing in the corridor until they faded.

Victoria stood there staring at nothing in particular, too many emotions raging through her for her to feel anything but numbness. She staggered, then lowered herself onto the cool floor and sat there for a very, very long time, unable to even cry. There were no more tears left within her.

She could live out the rest of her life drifting, emotionless, and mourning for whatever was about to pass, or she could become the sort of woman she had always wanted to be. The sort of woman who marched into battle in the name of everything she believed in. Like Remington always had and did.

Victoria rose to her feet, her strength fully returning. She was not going to abandon her man when he needed her most. Oh, no. Because despite what he thought, this was her duel to fight. Not his.

6:05 a.m.
The plains

“FIRST SHOT is awarded to the marchese,” Giovanni announced, tucking the coin back into his pocket. He turned and retrieved one of the matchlock pistols from the velvet-lined walnut box set on the matted grass. “We proceed.”

Jonathan stepped toward the wooden stake that marked his position and solemnly watched Giovanni prime the pistol by grabbing the ramrod and loading the lead ball with it. Giovanni pointed the pistol downward and strode toward the marchese, who already stood waiting beside his own wooden stake fifteen yards away. The marchese’s second, a hefty young Italian, silently positioned himself off to the side and held up the white handkerchief.

Jonathan blew out a calming breath and set himself sideways, turning his head toward the marchese. The less he gave the bastard to shoot, the better. The marchese took the offered pistol from Giovanni and waited for the handkerchief to fall.

The thudding sound of pounding hooves and a tremor beneath Jonathan’s boots made him pause. He turned toward the direction of the noise as two figures riding on hellish black horses drew near.

The horses jerked to a halt barely a few feet away. The riders dismounted with a single thud and removed a set of ropes from their saddles, which they looped onto the shoulders of their morning coats.

Jonathan’s lips parted in astonishment as Cornelia and Victoria marched toward him in unison, both dressed in oversize male attire. Giovanni’s attire.

What the blazes were they doing?

Victoria slid the looped rope from her arm and tossed an end toward Cornelia. Cornelia caught it with graceful ease, and together, they snapped the rope straight and dashed straight at him. The two rounded him so fast, he didn’t even have time to think or dodge the hemp rope that caught his upper arms.

“Jesus Christ!” He stumbled as the rope looped and tightened around his arms and waist with each sprinting round they made. He grabbed at the ropes to free himself, but it kept slipping against their swift, sparring movements, burning against the palms of his hands.

“Victoria!” He jerked against the ropes that tightened, causing them to stumble momentarily. He whipped toward her, only to find he was already looking at Cornelia. “Enough of this. Enough!”

But the two merely sprinted around him faster and faster, looping and yanking on the ropes tighter and tighter, causing his skin beneath his linen shirt and waistcoat to sting at every movement. Gritting his teeth, he fought against the ropes, only to find the muscles in his arms and chest tensing and burning in vain. His anger spiked. The only way out of this was to physically hurt them with the weight of his own body. And that he refused to do. Even if they deserved it.

He jumped toward Victoria, the hemp rope digging into his sides. “Untie me. Now.”

“No. I am finally going to live my life the way you do, Jonathan. By embracing what it is I feel instead of always running from it.” Victoria stepped farther back as Cornelia knotted the rope more firmly into place behind him. “Take him off the field,” she ordered, her green eyes staring him down with a heated intensity he’d never known.

His eyes widened as the rope jerked him from behind with a force that made him stumble. He jerked in the opposite direction, causing Cornelia to gasp and stumble back toward him.

“Giovanni!” Cornelia boomed.

Giovanni dashed toward them and skid to a halt, his dark eyes darting to each of them in bewilderment.

Jonathan staggered forward and growled out, “Giovanni. Untie me. Now.”

“Giovanni,” Cornelia chided in an equally predatory tone, yanking on the rope and tightening her hold, “if you assist him in any way, I swear upon whatever love I have for you, I will take a lover into my bed. I will.”

Giovanni rumbled out a laugh and held up both hands. “I apologize, Remington, but my wife means more to me than you do. She has never threatened to take a lover before. Which means she means it.” He rounded Jonathan and grabbed the knotted end of the rope hard. “Come. Off the field.”

He was never going to forgive Victoria for ending this duel. Ever! Jonathan wrestled against the strong movements, leaning as far forward as he could to resist. Though he dug in his heels and threw his weight forward, he still skidded backward, being dragged farther away.

In the distance, he could see Victoria remove her oversize coat and toss it onto the ground. She strode toward his own marked stake and positioned herself beside it, facing the marchese.

His eyes widened in disbelief. Victoria wasn’t ending the duel. She was fighting it. Christ! He lunged forward. “What are you doing?” he shouted across the field, his throat straining. “Victoria!”

She glanced back at him over her shoulder, her face too far away for him to make out her features. She shouted back, “This is my duel, Jonathan! Not yours! Whatever happens, know that I love you!”

He choked. Dearest God. No. No! He lunged forward again, yanking Giovanni with him. “Victoria! No! Nooooo!”

Giovanni grabbed hold of him and shoved him facedown onto the field in the opposite direction, so he couldn’t see anything but the long grass around him.

“No!” Jonathan roared, violently jerking and rocking his body from side to side.
“Giovanni, let me go! Giovanni!”

“Sit on him, Giovanni,” Cornelia drawled.

Giovanni sat on him, his hefty weight pushing out whatever air was left within Jonathan’s chest. “Mia Cornelia. Assure Jonathan that Victoria is not actually going to—”

“Jonathan has a choice in this,” Cornelia said tersely. “He can announce the duel is over or he can watch Victoria fight the duel for him. It is as simple as that.”

Jonathan felt everything momentarily fade. He didn’t even know if he was breathing anymore. All he knew was that if anything happened to his Victoria, he would put a bullet through his own skull. For it would be her blood on his hands. He had challenged her to live by his rules and now she was going to die because of them.

Giovanni leaned toward Jonathan, shifting against his shoulders. “I will untie you, my friend. But I am still waiting for an answer.”

Jonathan swallowed hard. He finally understood that honor and pride meant nothing without Victoria. “Untie me. I will not fight. Now untie me!”

VICTORIA STARED down the marchese from where he imposingly stood opposite her, dressed in only a white shirt, black boots and gray wool trousers. She was about to discover what he really was. An animal. Or a man. “I am here to defend my honor.”

The marchese lowered his pistol to his side, his eyes sweeping the length of her body, which was clad in trousers. “I will not duel a woman.”

“Yet you have no qualms about violating one?” she called back, widening her stance. “You either have morals, my lord, or you don’t. Which is it?”

The marchese strode toward her, his long legs whipping away grass and wildflowers with a refined grace that did not reflect his savage ways. He paused before her, lingering so close that the scent of cigars and leather choked her. “This is not your fight,” he said in a rough, accented tone.

Victoria fisted her hands at her sides to keep them from shaking and refrained from swinging at him. “No. It was my honor and my pride and my body that you violated and therefore it is my fight.”

The muscles in his shaven jaw tightened as he half nodded. He hesitated, then held out the pistol, directing the handle toward her. “Take it. The first shot is yours.”

Though she knew nothing about pistols, and had never even held one, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Jonathan was safe. She reached out and grasped the smooth end of the pistol. It weighed heavily in her hand, eerily symbolic of death.

The marchese jerked up her hand and set the muzzle of the pistol against the middle of his chest. “Now shoot, cara.”

Her hand trembled as her hold tightened on the pistol. She stared up at him, her breath coming in uneven takes, as he intently held her gaze. All she had to do was slide her finger toward the trigger and pull it back and it would all be over. He wouldn’t be a threat to anyone anymore.

His amber eyes mocked her. “Why do you hesitate? Am I still too much of a man in your eyes? Even after what I did?”

She clenched her jaw as her finger instinctively slid toward the trigger. She wanted to kill him. She did. In the name of everything he ever did to her, to Jonathan and anyone else, but it was obvious that was what he wanted. He wanted to drag her down into the pits of hell with him.

“You are not even worthy of hate,” she seethed out, lowering the pistol. “I pity you. I truly do. For you will never know a day of the sort of love that I share with my husband. With my Jonathan.”

His smile faded. “You are wrong. Love created the man you see standing before you.” He lowered his chin. “Now give us both peace. Shoot.” He reached out and grabbed her hand, jerking the pistol to the edge of his right shoulder. He mashed her finger against the trigger.

Her eyes widened as an acrid puff of smoke filled the air and thunder clapped from the pistol, jarring her arm back. She screamed and scrambled back, the pistol falling from her hand and landing in the grass between them.

“Victoria!” She could hear Jonathan charging in their direction from across the field.

The marchese staggered back, the right shoulder of his white shirt blackened with gunpowder as bright-red blood bloomed and soaked his shirt within seconds. “Bartolomeo!” he roared toward the Italian gentleman scrambling toward them. “We leave. This duel is over.”

The marchese yanked his shirt up over his head, his defined muscles shifting. He gasped as he stripped it from his body, exposing the gaping flesh on the edge of his shoulder. Wincing, he dug his bundled shirt against the wound and met her gaze. “Hate. Love. It is all the same. For it consumes every last ounce of the soul. Does it not?”

Jonathan shoved his way between them and froze. He stepped back toward Victoria, shielding her. “Christ.” He jerked toward her and grabbed hold of her shoulders, his eyes wide as he frantically scanned her body. “Are you—”

“N-no.” She choked. “Oh, God. I didn’t—”