Silver-Tongued Devil (Louisiana Plantation Collection) (38 page)

As she glanced back along the path of the light, she felt a pang of dismay. There was a slight figure standing on the gallery, blending with the shadows at the near end. Renold’s mother was there, watching. Had Renold noticed? Would it matter to him if he did?

There was no signal, no office to start. Renold, knife in hand, was adjusting the set of his shoulder bandage. Laurence scowled at him while he tested the sharpness of his blade with his thumb. Then, without warning, Laurence flung himself forward in a lunge.

Renold leaped backward, throwing his arms wide so the knife blade sliced past his shirt front with a vicious whine. He twisted away, his laugh short as he danced out of range. Laurence, his face flushed and mulishly grim, moved after him. Lithe and incredibly agile, Renold flowed into an attack. There was a brief scuffle, then they sprang apart, circling warily.

“I thought you weren’t a knife fighter,” Laurence said in rough accusation.

“I never said so,” Renold answered. “Duels are fought with many kinds of weapons, from sabers on horseback and island machetes to bullwhips, billy clubs, and boat paddles — anything one man can use to harm another. Preparation pays.”

“For what good it will do you,” Laurence said through his teeth, and tossed his knife to his left hand before slashing out with a hard, roundhouse swing.

Renold, as elusive as smoke, was not there. Laurence staggered with the force of his own attack, then whirled around with a bellow of rage as he found his quarry behind him.

“Anger,” Renold said pensively, “is not good form, you know. A duelist is always calm. His indifference to his opponent’s tricks is his hallmark.” With a slight smile and an easy, almost negligent movement, he drifted away from Laurence’s next stabbing advance.

“Stand still and fight,” Laurence said between his teeth.

“Now where is the finesse in that? Or the lesson? Any pair of idiots can stand toe to toe and slash at each other in glorious bloodletting until one of them falls from sheer weakness. No. The duel is derived from ancient law, the trial by might of arms, the right of the wronged to challenge the one who gave the injury. It permitted the robbed the right to accuse the robber, the violated to have redress from the violator, the relative of the murdered to contest with the murderer. Those who were weaker had the right to choose a champion who was then, of course, invested with the same might of right. The man who lost was guilty as sin, since God favors the just.”

“Idiotic,” Laurence said, breathless as he retreated, scrambling, from a sudden whipping extension followed by a savage thrust.

“Possibly, but the loser was just as dead.”

Renold recoiled as if the attack had been a mere object lesson, and stood waiting until his opponent recovered. He added, “Once upon a time, any man could appoint himself as champion of another. For instance, I could fight for Angelica. There is a prayer for the occasion: Dear Lord, gird my arm and guide my sword. You may share it, if you like.”

With that, his instructions, like his indifference, were suddenly at an end. He moved in then with a flurry of motion from which drove a hard blow homing for Laurence’s heart. The other man sprang aside, but not fast enough. Renold’s blade sliced across the front of Laurence’s shirt and brought a streak of red at the level of his breastbone. Laurence wrenched backward frantically, scuttling for safety like a crayfish, as Renold recoiled with grace.

“First blood,” Edmund Carew called. “Is honor satisfied?”

It was Laurence who spoke in savage answer. “No! Only last blood will satisfy me.”

“The question,” Renold corrected dryly, “is mine to answer.”

“Then do it!” There was reckless fury spurred by stung vanity in the words.

Renold’s gaze, there in the dark, was level, considering. When he spoke the words were even. “Last blood,” he said.

They settled to it then.

The knives in their hands were like lethal, darting wraiths. The smell of crushed grass rose around them as their feet bruised the green carpet. The dim illumination shifted over them, sliding in a pale glow across their shirt backs, glinting in their eyes narrowed in fierce concentration, winking with points of fire at the end of their blades.

The two were better matched than had first appeared, being much the same in size and reach. What Laurence lacked in skill, he made up for in cunning and malevolence. Renold had patience and intelligence and the ability to think several moves ahead. The suppleness of body and lithe economy of movement Renold brought to the fight was countered by Laurence’s longer blade and his lack of old and weakening injuries. Laurence used every shadow and uneven patch of ground to trip, and every artifice as a screen for further deceit.

Dangerous, the dark was so dangerous. To judge the speed of a blow or the depth of a thrust was near impossible. The shadows hid the beginning of an assault, veiled the sudden stab. The jostling for position, the strained feinting and urgent withdrawals in the dimness were hideous reminders to Angelica of other contests she had been forced to watch. Yet this one was far more hazardous than the attack of Clem Skaggs in the alley or the grim meeting of Renold with Michel on the lamplit gallery. In those, death had been only a possibility. Now it was a certainty.

Angelica was shaking with nerves.
Her chest ached with her shallow breathing and her head was pounding with the hard beating of her heart. She swayed where she stood, and her hands were clasped together with such tightness that her fingers were numb.

So intent was she on the terrible contest that she started as she felt a movement at her side. It was her father. He took her arm, holding it against him.

Was he supporting her, or she supporting him? She neither knew nor cared as she clung to him, holding tight.

The hard pace of the fight could not be sustained for long, not with death and injury being sought and evaded by inches. Both the combatants were tiring. Perspiration trickled from their hair and made their shirts cling with every lunge.

Renold made a slicing pass, stumbled on a drift of last year’s acorns, then recoiled in haste from a backhanded slash. A grimace of pain flashed across his face. The white of his shirt at the right shoulder darkened to black-red in a spreading stain. He staggered, and his right arm was slow to rise to guard position. The hole made by Michel’s sword had broken open.

Laurence, triumphant as a predator scenting blood, redoubled his efforts. Renold leaped and dodged, but his movements were growing clumsy, the wetness of shirt widening, shining red along his arm. Droplets of blood fell from his wrist as he slung himself aside from a reckless pass.

His recovery was sluggish. Laurence’s teeth drew back in a feral grin. He gathered himself and launched a charging attack. His long knife flashed with gold fire as it struck toward Renold’s heart. The defense was delayed, without power, a mere half turn as the blade slashed toward tender flesh protected only by thin linen, toward vital organs guarded only by bands of rigid muscle.

There was the hard thud of body against body. A muffled grunt of agony. The sound of tearing cloth. The two men caught each other in a mortal clasp, swaying, their lips drawn back and teeth clenched with effort.

Then Renold wrenched free. Laurence stumbled, staggered. There was a great rent in Renold’s shirt at the waist where the blade of his adversary had been allowed to pass harmlessly between body and arm. Laurence’s shirt had received a new decoration, the protruding hilt of a knife embedded between the middle buttons.

Renold reached out as Laurence began to fall. He caught his shoulder, easing him down. The wounded man’s head fell back and his eyes squeezed shut. With his left hand he grabbed at the protruding knife hilt while his right twitched convulsively around his own useless weapon.

Renold went to one knee beside the fallen man. He straightened the bent neck with gentle hands, turned to look for Tit Jean. The manservant stepped forward from beside Michel who was holding Deborah with her face pressed into his chest.

“Send for the doctor, then take a shutter off the hinges and bring it to get him into the house.”

Practical concern, efficient action, that was Renold’s way. His first impulse, Angelica saw, was to repair the damage he had done in as swift and humane a fashion as possible. It said something about the man.

She was given no time to consider it. Her attention was caught by a stealthy movement. Laurence was not as near death as it appeared. Under the cover of darkness, he was tightening his hand on the handle of his knife, straining to lift his arm for a blow at Renold’s unprotected abdomen.

Angelica plunged forward, drawing breath to cry out a warning. Yet her father was before her. Clapping his hand to his waistcoat pocket, he snatched out a pocket pistol.

It was, after all, his place as second to prevent his principle from acting dishonorably. He stumbled in the direction of the two men on the ground as he steadied the pistol in his palsied fist, pointing it at Laurence.

Shaking, her father was shaking so hard with illness and strain that he could not aim. If he fired, he might hit Renold who hovered so close above Laurence. Now the knife, hidden from Michel and Tit Jean and Deborah by Renold’s kneeling form, was rising, rising.

Madame Delaup, running from the gallery toward the scene of the duel as the two men went down, closed in behind Angelica and her father. She took in the scene in a single sweeping glance. She let out a scream.

“Renold, the knife!”

Renold swung with recognition and understanding dark in his eyes. Too late. He must be, would be, too late to retrieve his weapon, raise his guard.

Resolution congealed inside Angelica even as she heard Madame Delaup’s cry, saw Renold turn. She did not think, had no plan; the thing was there and had to be done.

Reaching out to her father, she caught his jerking hand, steadied it. A wheezing sound of rich gratification sounded in Edmund Carew’s throat. Hard on it, he curled his bony finger around the trigger of the pistol and squeezed.

The explosion blasted the night. Orange-red flame spurted with blinding light, flashing through the black smoke of gunpowder. Laurence’s head snapped to one side and the pale shape of his forehead took on a dark, wet sheen. His arm dropped and the knife fell from his lax hand.

Then broad shoulders blocked the scene as Renold caught Angelica in his arms, holding her close while he turned her from the sight of death.

~ ~ ~

“Aren’t we civilized.”

It was Madame Delaup who spoke those words some hours later. It was all over by then.

The body of Laurence Eddington had been laid out in a wagon and carried into town for burial. The waterfront toughs he had hired had been carted away by the local sheriff. Brandy and wine had been taken as a restorative by everyone concerned, after which they had all sat down to a late supper.

Surveying them now, Renold’s mother went on in the same musing tone in which she had first spoken. “Yes, indeed. Here we sit partaking of food and wine as if the late excitement has sharpened our appetites. We smile and make pleasant conversation as though the word sensibility should be struck from our vocabularies — or as if too far gone in shock to succumb to such a luxury. I don’t mind the conversation or the smiles. What is fast becoming unendurable is the silences in between.”

They were around the table in the dining room, the traditional place in a French home for a family gathering, certainly the proper one for a family council. Renold, at the head of the board, had been rebandaged and attired in fresh linen by Tit Jean, but there were lines of strain in his face and dark shadows under his eyes.

His patience had also shortened. “What do you suggest, mother?” he inquired with astringent reason. “None of us, I think, are inclined to sleep.”

“I have been watching and listening these twenty-four hours past, waiting for good sense to triumph over the residue of a senseless quarrel. Nothing so enlightened seems to be imminent. I suggest, then, that some arrangements be made for a more harmonious future.”

Angelica, sitting on Renold’s right, sent a glance flickering in his direction. His gaze was resting on her face as he studied the distinct oval bruises left by Laurence’s fingers, and also the dark circles under her eyes which matched his. Looking away, his gaze swept over Michel and Deborah, sitting close together on his left. It passed over his mother at the foot of the table, and came to rest on Edmund Carew. The eyes of the two men met.

Renold was the first to look away. Pushing back his chair with an abrupt scrape, he rose to his feet. “You prefer generosity and forgetfulness, mother?” he said, bracing his hands on the polished wood in front of him and staring at her down its length. “If so, you might have told me earlier.”

“I thought,” his mother said with a crooked smile, “that you had already come to it.”

“Tolerance is not disagreeable to you, then. I see. The question that now arises is just how highly you value your son’s life.”

“It is, of course, beyond price,” she said with acerbity. “If you are asking what I will give up for the sake of it, what I will endure or allow, then the answer is quite simple: Anything, everything. As you might have known if you had only considered, there is no reward for one who preserves it that I would not gladly grant.”

“None?” He tilted his head as he probed for her answer.