Chapter 31
“Raph!” Camelia screamed from her window, but the carriage had already rolled through the gate and out of sight.
The crunch of gravel under its iron-rimmed wheels had wrenched her from the edge of a restless sleep. She had left Pamela’s chamber about an hour ago and must have fallen asleep.
Tears streamed down her face when she realized that Raph had made his decision. Before the first cock crowed, before the sky had even paled, he had chosen the duel.
The thought of losing him shattered her heart into a million little pieces.
She stumbled away from the window and decided to take Pamela and leave while the house still slept. They would go to Lempster Estate, whether Raph liked it or not.
Her hand shook as she packed her essentials. The bed was cold and empty without him, and if Lord Montague won the duel, she imagined that her life would be the same.
She ignored the sudden void in her chest and went to the small writing desk by the window. She pulled out fresh parchment, uncorked the inkpot with clumsy fingers, dipped her quill into it, and began to write a letter to her sisters.
My dearest Iris and Margaret,
The sky was still black when another sound came. This time, it was a soft, hesitant knock.
Camelia froze; maybe she was just hearing things.
Ink dripped from the quill onto the blank page. She cussed and threw it away. To her surprise, she found Pamela awake and standing by her door.
Camelia rushed to her. “Pamela? Are you all right?”
Pamela stood in her nightgown and wrapper. Her hair was pulled in a loose plait, and her eyes were too bright for the hour.
“I-I’m sorry to trouble you. I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted to ask you if you’d have time this morning to watch me ride? I practiced the canter Father—His Grace showed me, and Susy was perfect yesterday, and I thought…”
The hope in her small voice was a slow, deliberate twist of a blade in Camelia’s already bleeding heart. She felt a pang of guilt for packing and planning to escape.
Pamela’s gaze slid from Camelia’s face to the open bag on the bed, then back again.
“Are you going somewhere?” she asked softly.
The pain in her voice was plain.
“No, darling,” she replied steadily.
Pamela took one uncertain step back. “You said you would never leave me.”
“And I wouldn’t, Pamela. I’m only… tidying up.”
Pamela’s eyes narrowed sharply. “Then why does your bag have your warmest pelisse in it? And the blue traveling dress?”
Camelia’s throat closed. She knelt, bringing herself to Pamela’s height, and cupped the girl’s cold cheeks in her hands. “Because sometimes grown-ups must be ready for anything,” she whispered. “But I am not leaving you. Not today. Not ever. And if I do, I will take you with me.”
Pamela searched her face for the lie. “You promise?”
“On every star in the sky, I promise.”
Pamela flung her arms around Camelia’s neck, clutching her tightly, and Camelia held on to her tiny body.
“I’ll be very good at breakfast,” she mumbled into Camelia’s shoulder. “I’ll do everything right and not complain once if you stay.”
Camelia closed her eyes, holding her so fiercely it hurt. “You don’t have to do anything for me to stay, Pamela. And I most definitely want to see you riding. I’ll stay for every moment if you need me.”
“That’s only if you have time. I don’t want to burden you.”
Camelia took Pamela’s icy hands between her own and rubbed warmth into them.
“Of course I have time, darling,” she said kindly.
Pamela pulled back just enough to beam. “Promise you’ll sit in the front of the jumping field so you can see me clear the brush fence?”
“I’ll be in the very front,” Camelia swore, tapping the tip of Pamela’s nose. “Yelling the loudest in all of England.”
Pamela giggled; the sound was bright and unbreakable after all the crying she had done. “I’ll ride faster than the wind just for you!”
“Then I’d better hurry and finish dressing too.” Camelia laughed. “Or the wind will leave me behind.”
“I believe that Susy is already waiting.”
“She’s way more punctual than I am.”
Pamela and Camelia laughed together, and the sorrow from the day before began to ebb.
When Pamela darted down the corridor. Camelia remained by the door a moment longer, staring at the half-packed bag on her bed. When she eventually returned to the desk, she wrote with a hand that no longer shook.
My beloved sisters,
By the time you read this, Raph will have ridden out to meet Lord Montague on a field of honor that is no honor at all. He believes a bullet will end sixteen years of torment. I believe it will end us.
I have failed to stop him. Every plea, every tear, every truth I hurled at him last night, he listened to none of it. He has chosen vengeance over the child who calls him Father and his wife.
Pamela does not yet know he has gone. She woke up this morning eager to show me her canter, smiling as though the world were still kind. I smiled back because I could not bear to watch that light die in her eyes before it must.
I cannot do this alone.
Come to Brentmere. Come as quickly as horses and wheels will carry you.
Bring Papa along if he does not mind. Bring the ancient sword if it comforts him, but come.
I need you both beside me when the news arrives, whether it is a rider with a black band on his arm or Raph himself, bleeding but alive.
If he lives, I will fight for this family with everything I have left. If he does not, I will fight still… for Pamela, for whatever broken pieces remain.
I am sending this with the fastest rider at first light. Do not wait for proper clothes or proper mourning. Just come.
Your loving and terrified sister,
Camelia Hartton, the Duchess of Brentmere.
Camelia blotted the letter with shaking fingers, the ink still wet enough to smudge beneath the linen cloth. She folded it once and placed it into an envelope, creasing the sharp edges, then pressed plain red wax onto the seam.
She rose, crossed to the bell-pull, and yanked it hard enough to make the wire sing.
While she waited, she stood at the window, staring down the empty, frosted drive. Somewhere beyond the gates, on a cold field she could not name, Raph might already be bleeding. Or aiming.
Or dead.
“Please,” she whispered to the pale dawn sky. “Let him be too stubborn to die.”
“Your Grace?”
“Mrs. Weber, wake our fastest rider,” she ordered steadily. “And tell him to ride for Lempster Estate as though the devil were behind him. He is not to stop until my sisters have this letter in their hands.”
“Yes, at once, Your Grace.” Mrs. Weber took it, her eyes flicking to Camelia’s pale face, then to the half-packed bag on the bed. She said nothing more, only curtsied and left.
Camelia stood at the window and watched the first pale streak of dawn bruise the horizon. Somewhere out there, pistols were being loaded. And a little girl was preparing to pull on her riding habit, humming, believing the day held nothing but a blue sky and praise.
She pressed her palm to the cold glass and whispered, “Let him come back. Please, God, let him come back to us.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing, Jo,” Raph said aloud, his voice rough from a sleepless night. “Tell me if I’m wrong.”
He removed his hat and went down on one knee in the frozen earth.
The wind answered, rattling the yew branches as he stared at the carved name on the tombstone:
JOSEPHINE MARY HARTTON, BELOVED SISTER, 1794–1812.
“I swore I’d protect your daughter,” he croaked.
“I swore it to you while you were dying. I swore it over your coffin. I swore it with Montague’s bullet still lodged in my shoulder.
” His gloved hand pressed against the old scar through layers of wool and linen.
“And now, he’s come back to take her and Camelia from me.
Not with his hands, but with his words.”
He laughed once, and it echoed like a hollow crack.
“You always said I was too proud to ask for help, and you were right. I still am.” He bowed his head. “If I ride to Montague today and put a bullet through him, Pamela will be safe. Camelia and her family will be safe. And all the secrets die with him.”
He paused to think.
“But Camelia says that I’ll break them both if I die doing it. That Pamela needs a father more than she needs a martyr. That love matters more than vengeance.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “She looked at me last night like I was choosing death over her. Over them. Tell me, Jo, am I?”
A gust of wind blew through the graveyard and rattled the trees around him.
“I won’t put it past you to mess with the weather wherever you are.”
He pressed his bare palm to the frozen stone, as though he could still feel his sister’s hand in his.
“You once begged me not to kill him. You made me promise mercy while you bled out in my arms. I gave you that mercy, and it cost you your life. And now—” Raph bit the inside of his cheek. “And now, I will not make the same mistake twice.”
He rose slowly, the cold seeping through his coat.
“I wish you could tell me what to do. God knows I can’t ask Father’s grave,” he said dryly. “Goodbye, Jo. Who knows? Maybe I will see you soon.”
He turned to leave when his hand brushed his coat pocket and met something stiff and folded. Raph drew it out. It was a carefully folded piece of parchment. He unfolded it gently and saw a charcoal-colored portrait that took his breath away.
Three figures stood beneath a lopsided willow tree. On the right was a tall man in black, with a stern face but kind eyes. On the left was a lady in a familiar baby blue gown, smiling brightly. And between them was a small girl with flying raven hair, holding both their hands.
Raph recognized the people in the portrait immediately; Pamela drew them perfectly.
She really is talented.
His breath left him in a rush that plumed and vanished. He stood frozen, the paper fluttering in the wind, but he clutched it, afraid it might disappear and he would never see it again.
Pamela must have slipped it into his pocket when he had been too lost in his thoughts to notice. At the bottom of the drawing, she wrote, Father, Camelia, and Pamela Under the Willow Tree.
Not Uncle. Not guardian. But Father.
Raph folded the drawing gently and slid it back into his pocket. A horse neighed beyond the wall, and he closed his eyes for a heartbeat longer before turning back to the tombstone.
“Thanks, Jo.”
He climbed into the carriage, the drawing imprinted in his mind and his purpose imprinted in his heart.
“Where to, Your Grace?”
“Take me to Lord Montague’s estate,” he ordered the driver.
The carriage lurched into motion, iron-shod wheels biting the frosted road. Each hoofbeat rang like a hammer on steel, scattering shards of ice that glittered and died in the pale dawn.
Raph sat rigid, the folded drawing feeling heavy in his pocket as he was carried away from one grave to another.