Читать книгу What an Earl Wants - Kasey Michaels, Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 7

Kent, England

1789

THE GROUND SEEMED SUITABLE enough for the purpose. Nearly a tunnel of well-scythed lawn on the Saltwood estate, the carefully planted double row of trees serving as a rather romantical canopy overhead. Or it would have, were it summer, which it was not. In fact, it was the dead of winter and, in the false light before dawn, cold as a witch’s teat.

But, then again, no colder than the heart of the man now surveying the scene, no matter how appearances would prompt the casual onlooker to dismiss him as a mindless dandy.

“I say, Burke, shouldn’t there be a mist curling about our legs? Yes, I’m convinced of it. All the best early morning duels feature wispy tendrils of curling mist. I would have thought it mandatory. You’ll hold my cape, of course?”

The seventeenth Earl of Saltwood, one Barry Redgrave by name, lifted his arms and negligently shrugged out of his sable-lined cape, then laughed as his horrified valet sprang forward in a panic to rescue the magnificent thing before it could hit the ground.

“Ah, well executed, Burke. My compliments.” Relieved of the concealing cape, the earl was revealed to be not only a well set-up gentleman but also an exceedingly handsome man, or would be, were it not for a certain indescribable hardness about his dark blue eyes. His humor never quite seemed to reach them.

“You’ve drunk half the night away, my lord. You really must reconsider your timing,” Burke pleaded, now struggling with both the cape and the heavy rosewood box containing the Saltwood dueling pistols.

“I must, Burke?” The earl removed his tricornered hat with the lilac plume, placed it on Burke’s head at a jaunty angle, and then discreetly adjusted his snow-white periwig. “Why? Because of the lack of a mist? God’s teeth, man, it’s actually in the rules?”

“I don’t believe so, my lord, no. I meant only that you might be a mite…foxed, my lord,” the valet said, sighing.

“More than a mite, Burke,” the earl acknowledged, suddenly seeming amazingly sober. “I do my best shooting when three parts drunk. But if it calms you, I promise if I see three of him I’ll prudently aim for the one in the middle. However, if the unthinkable were to occur, you know what to do.”

“Yes, my lord,” Burke said, visibly trembling. “Everything goes to the Keeper, who also knows what to do.”

“Make me pretty, Burke, and well attended by handmaidens, or I shall come back to haunt you,” his lordship warned, and then laughed at his valet’s horrified expression. “I’m not about to die, you old woman. I’ll never die. Satan protects his own. Now, how does our importune Frenchman look to you? Quavering in his boots I should hope, as my reputation must surely precede me.”

Burke hazarded a look toward the plain black coach and the surgeon just now conversing with the very tall man and his second. “I don’t think so, no, sir. Rather, I should say, he appears determined. I should be remiss if I failed to mention that the duty of a second is to dissuade you from dueling, sir, and to broker a peace with the opponent’s second, one that will be acceptable to both sides.”

“A waste of breath best employed to cool your porridge once we’re finished here, Burke. There can be no acceptable solution other than that already decided upon. The man has been poking my lady wife.”

“Many have, sir,” Burke said, sighing once more. “Begging your pardon, my lord, and no offense meant.”

“None taken, my good man,” the earl said, flourishing a snowy linen handkerchief unearthed from his magnificent lace cuff before delicately pressing it to the right corner of his mouth, so as to not disturb the small star-shaped black patch he wore at the left. “Maribel has seen more cocks than any three generations of hens. With my express encouragement, although I should point out she defied me with this one. In any event, her perfidy serves only as a convenient excuse.”

“Sir?”

“Ah, my apologies. I wasn’t clear enough for you, Burke? It has become apparent to me for reasons I won’t bore you with at the moment that my opponent must cease drawing breath in the next quarter hour at most.” The earl replaced the handkerchief and shot his cuffs before smoothing down the lilac velvet of his frock coat, putting out his right foot to admire the dull sheen of his satin breeches in the waning moonlight. “Too much, do you think, Burke? This rig-out, I mean. I didn’t wish to appear shabby, although I might make a richer target in this cursed moonlight than previously considered. Well, no matter. Shall we be on with it?”

“If there is no other way?”

The earl’s jawline went hard as he touched a hand to the small golden pin in the shape of a rose in full bloom stuck into the foaming lace of his cravat. “There probably exist a veritable plethora of other ways, but I have chosen this one, magnanimously granting the dishonorable creature an honorable death. Civilized murder, if you will, with man-made rules. And, of course, a lesson quite literally brought home to my lady wife, hmm, when I bring his bloodied body to her bedchamber, to fling it at her feet? Please allow my fornicating opponent first choice of weapons.”

Burke did as he was told, and much too short a time later he was huddled alongside the surgeon and the other second, watching the combatants stand backto-back, pistols raised to their shoulders, the duel about to commence. The earl appeared to be at his ease, a smile on his handsome face. The Frenchman, his chin held high, was pale-cheeked yet determined, as if knowing he was probably about to die.

Yes, Burke thought, civilized murder. All but an execution.

The earl himself began counting out the paces before they would stop, turn and shoot. “…eight…nine…ten.”

Burke closed his eyes, only opening them again when the sound of a single shot ripped the morning silence, jolting nesting birds into startled flight. The two men now faced each other across the expanse of winter dead grass, their right arms extended, their pistols aimed at each other. Rather like statues, frozen in place.

But then the earl turned about rather stiffly, as if hunting something, and Burke looked to the opposite line of trees and the cloaked figure standing there, head and shoulders wreathed in blue smoke.

“Now there’s something I hadn’t expected…” the Earl of Saltwood said at last, just before he dropped to his knees and pitched forward onto the ground, dead.