Wilful Impropriety (27 page)

I was not often given to praying, reasoning that God had little cause to favor a woman as impertinent as I. But I prayed now, that Harry be safe, and Byrom suffer the fate he deserved.

We gave the pistols to the duelists, and Lord Deverell himself counted off the paces. “You will turn on the count of three, and fire when I give the word, gentlemen.”

Harry’s eyes met mine, where I stood to one side. I should have spoken before this began—should have told him how I felt—we left too many things unsaid—

“One,” Lord Deverell said. “Two.”

As the word “three” left his mouth, Byrom spun and fired.

And something knocked me to the ground.

•   •   •

At first, my mind was an utter blank.

When at last I managed to form a thought, it was:
What a damnably stupid way out of my troubles
.

A babble of voices deafened me, words leaping clear in brief, half-comprehensible fragments.
Early
—
misfire
—
bad aim
—
cheating bastard
. . . And Byrom, claiming over and over again that it was an accident, that his gun had discharged as he turned, what shocking bad chance that I had been struck.

I pressed one hand to the spreading wetness on my coat. Lord Deverell was bellowing for Byrom to stand his ground and receive the return fire, and through a gap in the men now crowding around me, I saw Harry with his pistol outstretched.

“Harry,” I said. It was soft, and could not possibly have carried over the noise of the crowd. But his head turned nonetheless. I met his gaze, and I shook my head. However much I despised Byrom—the murder I saw in his eyes before had been for me, not for his opponent; he had planned this from the start—I did not want Harry to kill him. He would be put on trial for murder, and even with an acquittal, the stain of that would follow him forever.

Harry’s eyes returned to Byrom, and his lips peeled back in a snarl. Then he fired.

Byrom screamed. Through the legs around me, I saw him drop to the ground, clutching the shattered ruin of his knee. I had no doubt that Harry had struck what he aimed at.

Then I was being lifted and carried inside, while someone went for a doctor. It was all over, if not in the way I had expected; my secret would be lost entirely now. I rather wished Byrom had struck me somewhere more immediately lethal, so I would be spared the indignity that was about to come.

But no. I was laid on a sofa, and heard Kate’s clear voice giving orders; when the door shut, I was very nearly alone. The only ones who remained knew the truth, and were friends besides: Kate, and Granger, and Harry.

“My husband has a
lot
of money,” Kate said, when I focused my eyes on her. “Enough to buy one doctor’s cooperation, certainly. And we three shall keep your secret.”

Granger unbuttoned my coat with impersonal hands, then dragged up my shirt. The white corselet that flattened my meager bosom showed clearly where Byrom’s round had struck: my right side, just below my ribs. “I’m no doctor,” he said, probing the wound, “but I think it missed your intestines. You have good odds of surviving this, Ravenswood.”

“She had better,” Kate said sharply. “I can’t tell if you have spoiled our plan, Victoria, or played into it beautifully.”

Plan? I remembered then what had preceded the insult and the duel: Kate and Harry, returning to the ballroom together. Like a pair of conspirators, ready to carry out their scheme.

Kate smiled at me. She could not entirely hide her worry, but it was mixed with a mad gleam I remembered from our childhood misadventures. “It goes like this. Miss Fanning has no more enthusiasm for her impending marriage than Lieutenant Wycliffe does. Familial pressure, however, prevents either one from admitting that openly. Now, the good lieutenant and I were not in agreement on the notion of faking your death, but as circumstances have presented us with this, ah,
opportunity
—”

She faltered, eyes going to my bloodstained body. Harry cleared his throat, and stepped into the breach. “If my good friend Simon were to beg me to look after his sister . . . I’m sure Miss Fanning would understand.”

For one grinding, dreadful moment, I had a vision of myself as an invalid in truth, incapacitated by this wound, living as a spinster on the charity of Harry and his wife. But no, Kate had said something about lack of enthusiasm for the marriage.
Miss Fanning would understand . . .

Oh.

The sudden acceleration of my heart could not be good for my wound. Byrom disgraced, publicly, by his own hand, and now Harry was offering me—

No. It was
not
everything I had dreamed of. I closed my eyes, because I could not bear to let anyone see the shame there, the temptation to accept this crumb, because without it I had nothing. With so much else gone, I had only my dignity, and clung to it with all the strength I still retained. “I don’t want your pity, Harry.”

Above me, silence. And then he spoke. “It isn’t pity. It’s . . .” A pause, in which I thought my heart had stopped beating entirely. “It’s affection.”

I opened my eyes then, and met his, and saw in them what he had concealed under the shock of our earlier conversation: a mirror to my own feelings.

Feelings he could not admit then; it would not have been right, with him sworn to wed another. He should not admit them now. But that single word was more than enough. We were not simply friends, as he had said in the garden; we had not been
simply
friends for years, even if my masculine facade had forced us to call our bond by that name, or to divert it sideways into brotherhood. I knew, suddenly, that he remembered the near kiss the night I was made lieutenant.

Harry blinked, and I realized from the burning in my own eyes that I had been staring into his for some untold moment. My tongue, working once more, gave voice to a laugh. “It’s fitting, I suppose, given my strange life, that I should be proposed to while bleeding on Kate’s sofa.”

“It is not
quite
a proposal,” Kate corrected me, after Harry and I had gazed at each other for another eternity. “We must put it about first that you have died, or rather that Simon has, and then Miss Fanning can release Lieutenant Wycliffe. But there must be no
actual
dying on your part, do you understand?”

“Yes,” I agreed, not looking away from Harry. It was hard to speak; my lips wanted to stay stretched in a smile forever. “No dying.”

How could I die? I suddenly had all the reason in the world to live.

•   •   •

I played the part of the invalid passably well, I think, courtesy of Byrom’s cowardly shot, and my subsequent long recovery. The wedding was small, out of consideration for my supposed weakness—much greater in story than in truth. It was just as well: fewer guests meant fewer people to wonder at the bride’s oddly weathered face, or less-than-graceful bearing in her gown.

Afterward, Harry and I walked in the garden of his family’s house. A breeze was blowing, and out of habit I raised my head and inhaled deeply. But the air carried no hint of salt.

Harry did not miss the sudden melancholy in my expression. “You miss it, don’t you.”

I sighed. “I miss a great many things. For all its bad parts—the danger, and the brutality, and the restrictions of shipboard life—I felt honored to be in the service. More than anything, though, I miss the sea.”

My new husband took my hand in his own. “There are benefits to this peace with France, you know. Unlike a great many lieutenants, I face no hardship in being put off and placed on half-pay. And there are a great many opportunities for a trained officer, outside the service.” He looked to the south, toward the distant sea. “Some of those opportunities are much more . . .
flexible
.”

As with his proposal—as with so many of the things he said—Harry left his precise meaning unspoken. I heard it well enough. My breath drew in, calling only the faintest of twinges from my side. “You mean—”

He nodded. My hand tightened on his: still a strong grip, despite my convalescence, and the callouses remained, under my glove. Would the crew of a merchant vessel put up with their captain’s wife interfering in shipboard affairs? Surely we could assemble one that would.

I had not lost the sea.

Smiling fit to crack my face in half, I walked on with my husband through the garden, the wind gusting in my ears with a sound like waves.

“Irene, if I am forced to marry the Marquess of Chumley, I will simply die.”

Irene Crawford nodded and cast a curling charm on a lush lock of the speaker’s black hair, sublimely unconcerned with this horrifying pronouncement. Lady Flora Wittingham was in constant peril of immediate expiration. This day alone, she had been forced to eat cold kedgeree when she arrived late at the breakfast table, wear a pale green day dress that muddied her complexion, and accompany her father and his guest on a gentle walk about Rabton Park’s icy grounds while Cyril, Marquess of Chumley, treated them to an extended account of his own grounds in the North.

Flora had, in private, declared all these misadventures likely to herald her immediate removal to paradise, and yet, she had survived to this moment, where she was dressing for dinner in her pretty chambers. Indeed, despite frequent threats of imminent demise, she had survived to the age of seventeen.

An age just right, the Earl of Rabton considered, for a pretty, well-bred gel to be properly affianced to a gentleman of noble title and considerable property. All the better that Lord Chumley not only shared Lord Rabton’s politics, but his fondness for lingering over port and pipe. He was also nearing the end of his third decade—a good age, Lord Rabton thought, for a man to take a wife and ensure his succession. Chumley seemed partial to Flora, and needed only to be brought up to the mark.

The Earl had not condescended to ask his daughter’s opinion on the match, and would have been astonished to know that she could hold one. Irene Crawford was the sole receptacle of such confidences, but her official title was lady’s maid, not confessor. Irene could thus grant Flora neither grace nor absolution—not that such papist institutions would ever be given entrée to the ancient grounds of Rabton Hall—and usually concerned herself with the care of her mistress’s clothes, the arrangement of her hair, the mixing of various potions for her complexion, and the casting of such small spells as could assist in these ventures. She tried not to give her opinion on such potentially perilous topics as Flora’s inner turmoil, and Flora did her part by graciously declining to request Irene’s thoughts on the same.

Consequently, Irene was considerably startled when Flora’s hands ceased in their fretting against each other and flew up to grab Irene’s own. Irene stilled, staring at her mistress in the glass. Flora’s complexion was unusually pale except for two red spots and her large, dark blue eyes positively threatened to spill over with tears.

“My lady?” Irene ventured.

“Oh, Irene,” Flora whispered. “I do mean it, you know. I think I will die if Papa makes the Marquess propose to me. And I think—” she drew a deep breath, “I think I would rather I did. I have not even come out yet! I was so looking forward to my season.”

Irene was not unsympathetic to Flora’s plight. It would be a ter rible thing, she considered, to be forced into marriage with a man so much older than oneself, and moreover, one with whiskers so very blond and bristly. Lady Flora had wealth, beauty, and reason, and Irene thought it outrageous that with these advantages, in this year of 1894, Flora was still not free to choose what path in life she might follow. Irene feared that her own path stretched out narrowly, with no allowance for shortcuts, byways, or highways.

And thus, this was a dangerous situation. Flora, however kindly a mistress, was still a mistress, and Irene a servant. And Flora’s papa paid her wages.

But instead of giving advice directly, and possibly being held to account for it, Irene could hint at a course of action, and had done so on several occasions when she feared Flora’s happiness was really at stake. This was clearly one of those occasions, and she cast around for a way to influence Flora’s thoughts without seeming to do so.

“Do you recall that period last year when you were ill and I read to you, my lady?” she began.

“Oh yes. Such lovely books, with happy endings. I did think that Catherine’s papa might have relented earlier. Henry was such a nice young man, really. So well read.”

“It was
Pride and Prejudice
which has come to mind,” Irene said delicately. “Particularly the chapter regarding the proposal Mr. Collins made Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Literature has much to teach us.”

“Oh!” Flora said, her eyes widening. Irene took advantage of the shock to gently free herself from Flora’s grip. “Why, she refused him! And Mr. Darcy too, though that was only because he was proud, and she knew better later and a good thing too. Do you think I could say no to the Marquess?”

Irene would rather give a direct opinion on whether the garnets went well with the pink ballgown than answer this question. She ostensibly returned her attention to Flora’s ringlets, attempting to indicate with a quirk of an eyebrow that if Lady Flora thought Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s actions might be applicable to her own, that was entirely Lady Flora’s privilege.