Chapter 27 #2
“Yes. Three times I have shot a man because he would not listen to reason.” Richard raised his arm, still and steady, and pulled the trigger. Bark flew from the edge of the red circle. He turned to his nephew, whose admiration was mingled with shock.
“You shot . . .?” he faltered.
“Twice in the leg, once in the shoulder,” replied Richard. “None of them died, though I believe two of them were left considerably injured. And all of it could have been avoided if they had mastered their tempers and behaved as sensible men.”
“What do you mean?”
Richard laid down his pistol. “A duel results when one fellow feels his pride has been insulted beyond bearing, yet often the insult has been dealt only out of drunkenness, temper, or thoughtlessness, not out of real desire to wound. Sometimes the act is merely perceived as an insult because it strikes too near an unflattering truth. But whatever the incitement, a duel results because one, or perhaps both, parties would risk death or disability rather than humble themselves to make up the slight.” He paused with a significant look at his nephew.
“And do not listen to any nonsense about honor being outraged. The victim of the grievance is as likely to suffer as the perpetrator, and what honor is satisfied then?”
“Then why have you fought three of them?” asked Rafe.
“Once, because a captain of our ship thought we should continue on when a storm threatened.
I refused. He feared to look a coward, so insisted and eventually challenged me.
I accepted for the sake of the entire crew, who were cowed by him.
His shot went wide, my shot pinked him in the flesh of his thigh, and a hurricane blew in the next day and did such damage, his officers came to me to apologize.
We would likely all have been killed had we continued into that storm.
“Second, when I came upon a man beating a woman, his servant. I stopped him and he flew into a passion, insisting I meet him.” Richard smiled slightly. “I did not try hard to avoid that one. Him, I shot in the shoulder, and he never could raise his arm again, to a woman or anyone else.”
Rafe was listening, wide-eyed.
“And third, on one expedition, a chieftain offered to sell us some people he had captured as slaves. One fellow, a merchant who had joined our party, thought that a fine idea. Several of the captives were young, boys and girls about Gabriel’s age.
This man . . .” Richard stopped, remembering the frightened eyes of the children as well as the expression on the merchant’s face as he eyed them.
“I knew why he wanted to buy them. I declined the chieftain’s offer, and this fellow protested.
I said we would leave him behind if he attempted it, and he called me out.
Gerhard tried to reason with him, but he held fast to his belief that I had not only impugned his honor, but that I had cost him valuable .
. . servants.” He glanced at his nephew.
“I shot him in the leg, breaking it badly, and then we left him behind.”
“Oh,” said Rafe softly. “But . . . those do sound honorable, Uncle.”
“Only because they were against men of no honor at all.”
“How did none of them hit you?”
Richard snorted. “One did!” He drew his finger a few inches along the side of his abdomen. “Right here I have a scar. The ball did not penetrate, but it left a bloody gash that took weeks to heal.”
“How were you able to hit all three of them?”
“I stood my ground and did not lose my head.” Richard picked up one of his pistols. “Also, the barrel is rifled, which makes for a more reliable shot.”
Rafe looked uncomfortable. “Oh, but . . . Aren’t rifled barrels unsporting?”
“Cheating, you mean?” asked Richard in amusement. “Only the English think so, and none of the duels I described took place in England.” He shook his head. “Only the English would prefer to be shot at by a pistol which might discharge the ball in any direction but the one where it was aimed.”
Rafe grinned hesitantly.
“The important point to remember,” Richard went on, “is that duels are not mere sporting events, but life and death contests where either man, no matter how grievously wronged or how innocently accused, might pay with his life. They are not to be entered into lightly. If you are ever challenged, you should do all in your power to reconcile the matter peacefully, and I hardly need say that making a challenge is rarely the wisest strategy.”
“Has Mr. Rieger fought any duels?”
“No,” said Richard. “When anyone has challenged Rieger, he has chosen a bare-knuckled brawl as his preferred contest, and the offended parties have always discovered that their honor was not aggrieved so seriously after all.”
Rafe laughed. Richard grinned.
“Gabe wants to join the army,” said Rafael abruptly.
Richard’s brows went up. “Does he?”
His nephew nodded. “Instead of university.”
“He’s rather young for the king’s shilling,” said Richard wryly. Gabriel was only fourteen. “And I do not think your mother would be pleased.”
Rafael huffed in reluctant laughter. “She is why he wants to go into the army. Or the navy. He says they take cabin boys younger than he is now. He . . . He wants adventure, and daring, and action. He wants to explore the world, as you did.” He shot a nervous, sideways glance at Richard.
“And he knows Mama would never approve.”
“Until he is a grown man, he must consider what she says. Even I hesitate to argue with her judgment, and a boy of fourteen can have no justification at all.” Richard took his own pistol, now loaded and primed, and turned his shoulders.
“Stand straight and lean,” he said. “Feet apart just so. If you are ever being shot at, present the slimmest possible target.” He cocked his pistol and raised it.
“If you ever must shoot at someone, aim carefully.” He pulled the trigger, and again bark splintered away from the red circle. “And hit what you aim at.”
Rafe stared at the tree. “It must take some nerve, to meet a man and know he’s going to take a shot at you.”
Richard smiled. “I have rarely been accused of lacking nerve.”
His nephew laughed, the tension breaking. “By God! Not at all! The bravest fellow I know, Uncle.”
Richard fell silent as the young man loaded his pistol, adjusted his stance, took aim, adjusted it, checked his stance, readjusted his aim yet again, and finally pulled the trigger.
Rafe exclaimed as bark blew off the tree; he put down his pistol and charged across the grass to see for himself how close to the target he’d come.
Richard stayed where he was.
Rarely accused of lacking nerve. No, rather the opposite, his entire life, even when his life had been the thing at risk, on the ocean, exploring jungles and forests, climbing mountains.
His mother had once scolded him that some fear was healthy in a man, and that he was sending her to an early grave with his utter lack of it.
Richard had laughed and kissed her cheek, not even cowed by that.
So why was he dithering over a London ball?
He took a deep breath and let it out. He wasn’t—dithering, that is. He was going to that ball, and he would give as long a speech as Sir Paul wanted to hear, and then he was going to dance with Evangeline in front of all London.
Let everyone make of that what they would.