Escape of the Duellist (Escape #5)

Chapter One

Achill, early morning breeze rushed across Putney Heath, ruffling his shirt and icing his blood like an omen.

It was only just light enough to see, and to Marmaduke Travis, Viscount Durward, everything and everyone looked ghostly grey.

But he could clearly make out the white handkerchief held at arm’s length by Foster’s second, and Foster himself, twenty paces away, in the classic duellist’s stance, offering Durward as slender a target as possible.

In the grip of his usual fatalism, Durward could not be bothered with the rigmarole of buttoning his dark coat up to the neck and turning aside.

In fact, he’d thrown his coat to Calton, his second, and stood now in his shirt sleeves.

He had the feeling that this was it, that Foster would be the one to finally do for him.

A pity. He liked Foster.

Oh well, can’t be helped now. Durward turned aside only out of respect for his old friend and raised his familiar duelling pistol. Across the yards of heath, Foster raised his weapon too.

Durward took careful aim at his opponent’s shoulder.

It was almost second nature for he had fought several duels with these pistols, and he was a crack shot.

He had won all of his fights to date, apart from one which he had cheerfully declared a draw as he’d hailed his erstwhile enemy off to compare wounds in the taproom of the nearby inn.

The handkerchief fluttered downward and Durward fired, even while his spirit soared, ready to meet the pain and his Maker in rapid succession. Both pistols fired.

For an instant, neither duellist moved. Surprised, Durward lowered his pistol. It seemed he had survived again, with the usual inexplicable chaos of disappointment and dread.

Oh well, at least there’s breakfast. He had opened his mouth to shout the thought aloud when Foster crumpled to the ground.

“Oh, the devil,” Durward uttered between his clenched teeth. He was already running across the heath, behind the other seconds and the doctor.

Calton, Durward’s second, got there at the same time. His face was white as he lifted his head and looked at Durward.

“Afraid you’ve done it this time, old fellow,” Calton said unsteadily. “I think he’s dead.”

The blood sang in Durward’s ears. “No. No, this wasn’t meant to happen.”

“What the bloody hell did you expect,” snapped the doctor, shoving Calton out of the way to get to his patient, “when you’re doing your best to blow each other’s heads off?”

I expected him to blow off mine...

“He’s alive,” the doctor said grimly, reaching for his bag. “But only just, and I doubt he’ll last.”

Calton tugged Durward’s arm. “Come on. We’d better get you away from here.”

But Durward wouldn’t go. Not until Foster was put in the coach to be driven back to his family, hanging onto life, as the doctor put it, by a thread.

“Where do you want to go?” Calton asked with forced cheerfulness, for if Foster died, there would certainly be a murder charge against Durward. “The United States?”

“Aren’t we at war with the United States?” objected Wade, Durward’s other second. “If we’re not, we soon will be.”

Calton grimaced. “Maybe South America would be best.”

“Nonsense,” Durward said briskly. “The Mullins fight is this afternoon. I’m for the Duck and Spoon.”

THE MULLINS FIGHT, in a rural field where the law could not stop it, was indeed well worth watching, and the subsequent evening’s drinking, gaming, and wenching turned out to be quite spectacular in its way.

However, with the best will in the world, Durward seemed to be looking down on it all from a distance.

As though he were dead instead of Foster. The way it was supposed to be.

As far as he knew, Foster was still hanging on by that thread the following day when Durward drove himself into Harwich.

“You need a ship,” Calton had said while throwing clothes into a bag for him.

Durward scowled. “I need to stay and face the consequences.” It was the only thing that felt right in a world turned suddenly so wrong.

“You can’t, old boy. Murder’s a hanging matter, even for a peer. Even if you got off, your whole family would likely be ruined. You’ve got to bolt, to give them a chance to weather the storm.”

Fortunately, Durward’s sister Bethany was already married to a decent sort, while his brother Duncan was still at school and would probably escape the worst of the shame.

But Calton was probably right. Flaunting the scandal in Society’s face would be unforgivably selfish.

He really only had one course of action. Flee the country and avoid justice.

Considering all the rules he’d been breaking his entire life, he had no idea why this one should stick in his craw. The Mullins fight and his night in the Duck and Spoon were his final defiance, his last huzzah before ignominious flight.

“Go to Harwich,” Calton advised. “The authorities will expect you to leave from Dover or further west, so if the warrant’s out already, you’ll still have a chance. Take rooms at the Black Lion, and I’ll write to you there as soon as I know anything, one way or the other.”

By nightfall the day after the duel, Durward was walking from the harbour back to the Black Lion. He had found a ship bound for Portugal, from where he could easily find another to take him across the world, far from his friends and his sins.

It was wartime, of course, so he might not survive the voyage. He found it hard to care. In the meantime, he supposed he could get blind drunk. For his ship didn’t sail for two days...

And there was always the faint possibility Foster would recover. Though perhaps he should go anyway. God knew he was doing no one any good here...

Hell’s bells, that is a lovely girl...!

Lovely enough to pierce his armour of distance and indifference.

Incongruously, she had just staggered out of a dockside alehouse and turned up the street toward him, her arm around the waist of an older man, who was warbling some unrecognizable ditty to the stars.

As they paused under a streetlamp, her skin seemed to glow, stretched tight across the delicate bones of her face.

She held her full, lower lip between her teeth and Durward almost growled aloud at his sudden surge of mindless desire.

Noisily, the couple weaved their way up the street, stumbling and lurching.

It was not an edifying sight or even an uncommon one in this place at this stage in the evening.

The man, his battered hat askew, kept singing his off-key song, comprehensible only to other drunks.

By rights, his beautiful companion should have been joining in.

That she wasn’t, was really what held Durward’s erratic attention.

Well, that and her slender, graceful figure. And that face... Which was now scowling. Rigid with effort, wobbling under the man’s weight, she appeared to be all that was holding him upright.

Understandably, passers-by were giving them a wide berth.

Viscount Durward, hedonist, rakehell, and about-to-be fugitive from the law for murder, knew a stirring of volatile chivalry.

If he wasn’t much mistaken, the girl was stone-cold sober.

Young and, as he finally noticed, respectably dressed, she should not have been anywhere near her inebriated companion, let alone supporting his knee-flapping person in public.

He crossed the road to stand in front of the pair and touched his hat.

The girl did not appear to see him for she kept moving determinedly past. The man, however, halted suddenly, causing the girl to be jerked backward again.

They both staggered, though the man beamed at Durward in an unfocused kind of way.

Durward caught the man’s free arm to steady him. “Perhaps I might be of assistance?”

“Bugger off,” the girl snapped.

She yanked her charge forward, breaking Durward’s light hold, and they lurched together round the corner into an alley.

Durward let out a hiss of surprised laughter. He wasn’t used to women spurning him in any way, and he admired her spirit if not her good sense. With worse than no protection, she was walking up an unlit alley where deeper shadows moved in the darkness.

Asking for trouble...

Durward was only too familiar with such reckless and ultimately self-destructive impulses. Other people’s were not his business. He really didn’t need any more trouble in his life, and his assistance had been rejected in no uncertain terms.

Bugger off, indeed!

On the other hand, the beautiful girl with the foul mouth intrigued him. So, he did what he always did and followed his latest whim. He had nothing better to do for two days.

The alley was only just wide enough for the two ahead of him to walk together, but at least his proximity to the wall helped to keep the drunk upright. The problem was, their escape could be easily blocked. Durward’s skin crawled, the hairs on the back of his neck rising in warning.

Was the girl leading her drunken companion into an ambush?

It would explain her lack of fear, and her instant refusal of Durward’s help.

It would also explain those moving black shadows.

Something stirred in the darkness at the end of the lane and vanished.

Then, much closer, a man-shaped figure detached itself from the left-hand wall and stood between Durward and the staggering couple.

A Royal Navy press gang? Surely the drunk was too old for their purposes...

Durward eased nearer the right side, walking slowly and noiselessly to see what transpired. He wasn’t remotely surprised when two more men materialized in front of the lurching couple, one from either side of the passage. Something glinted in a spark of moonlight. A blade.

The man and the girl staggered to a halt.

“Empty ’em,” growled a sepulchral voice.

“Empty what?” the girl demanded, more scathing than furious. “We’ve got nothing, so just stand aside.”