Chapter 21 #2
Freddy moved in slow motion toward him, his voice coming from underwater. “Devil take it, Daring, you’re bleeding,” he stammered. Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and the duke’s son collapsed on the ground.
Havering saw to his man. Darien dropped to his knees, the cold damp seeping through his leather breeches. A dull pain started pulsing in his shoulder and chest. He wondered that it didn’t hurt more—death, that is. Darkness crept around the edges of his vision.
He’d imagined it so many times, tormenting himself in the depths of night, when another faceless woman lay in his bed and his chest ached and his heart raced over the sound of his shallow breath.
Horace had not suffered, Nell had said; he’d been dead before he’d reached the bottom of the stair.
Lucretius’s decline was slow and agonized, the fever racking him for days.
He’d never know how Lucien died, swift and honorable and merciful, or tortured and slow and deranged by pain.
The pain, God, it was every kind of sensation, burning and stabbing and a wild ache at the same time.
The darkness rolled in, and he turned toward it.
He’d wanted it for so long. But as his vision narrowed he saw one face shining in his mind’s eye—Henrietta, the way she had looked after he kissed her, warm and surprised and wondrous and desirous and his.
Henrietta could save him. He needed Henry. It was his last thought before he pitched forward into Charley’s arms.
Henrietta went to bed thinking of Darien.
That delicious kiss wove through her dreams, imprinted on her soul for eternity.
When she opened her eyes, that startling moment slipped into her awareness with a glow of astonishment.
That Darien should have the power to so entirely enthrall her!
Darien, the man she had thought herself safe from.
As if she didn’t know better. As if she didn’t know she would end up like Forsythia Pennyroyal, another goose who had made a pitch for him and lost. Or worse, a soiled dove wrecked in his wake, whom no one else would touch.
She rose and washed, then sat at her dressing table to brush her hair.
A quick twist and a few hairpins dispatched that chore.
She shucked her bedgown and passed over the lovely morning gown that Duprix had laid out, choosing instead an ancient sepia-brown muslin with ink stains on the sleeves.
It was her writing morning, and this was her writing dress.
The maid would bring tea and toast with preserves and her own butter to the sunny sitting room next to her bedchamber, and Lady Mama would leave her unmolested unless some urgent household matter arose.
There were a great many things she had to organize before she could head north—various letters, columns, speeches, and petitions that she had promised to one cause or another.
Then she would visit Mary Ann and the baby, join the family for lunch, and no doubt Aunt Althea would call to start preparations for the wedding.
It was strange to think of Marsibel being married—it was almost like contemplating a marriage for Matilda, who was nine.
Of her own proposal, Henrietta refused to think. It was not sincere—not real—and she refused to devote herself to fanciful imaginings.
She sharpened her quill, opened her inkpot, and was rereading her summary of Mary Wollstonecraft’s arguments to be included in the next bulletin of the Minerva Society when, over the usual morning noise in the street, she heard male voices raised in a rowdy drinking song.
It was not customary for their quiet square to be a route for drunk young gentlemen parading home from their night of debauchery, but one problem with drunk young gentlemen was that they never conformed to expectation.
“Voice, fiddle, and flute, no longer be mute,” a male voice bellowed, off-key. It sounded like Charley. Henrietta shook her head. If Charley turned up here, drunk as a wheelbarrow, she would send him off with a flea in his ear. Miss Wollstonecraft said of women’s education that—
“I’ll lend you my name and inspire you to boot,” caroled another male voice in a deeper register, one she didn’t recognize. How exasperating of Charley to bring a friend. She would refuse to receive them. Wollstonecraft—
“And besides, I’ll instruct you, like me, to entwine—”
This was a weaker voice, faltering, slurred. Still, she recognized it and rose from her desk. She opened the window and leaned out to catch all three men joining in the last line: “The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s vine!”
“Soaked, at this hour! You should be ashamed of yourselves,” Henrietta shouted. “Respectable people are still in their beds, you know.”
“You ain’t,” said Charley, squinting up at her. “Come down, Hetty, and give a fellow a hand.”
“He’s awfully heavy,” said the third man. She recognized Mr. Lionel Havering, whom she had danced with at the Bicclesfield ball. The man who had jilted Lady Celeste.
“Take him to his own bed,” Henrietta said heartlessly. “I don’t know why you think I would want him.”
Darien’s head slumped on his chest, his hair mussed and falling from its queue, his cravat dreadfully flattened, and a stained cloak thrown carelessly over his shoulder. His splendid boots dragged across the pavement as the other men hauled him along.
“Aw, Hetty, show a heart,” Charley cried. “He’s your intended.”
He gave the last word a strange emphasis and shrugged the shoulder that bore half of Darien’s weight. Darien’s head rolled to the side, and he blinked up at her like a man blinded by the light. His face was as white as the part of his cravat that did not bear a dark muddy stain.
He wasn’t drunk.
Henrietta clattered down the stairs ahead of Dearbody and pulled back the bolt. A quick glance at Charley’s face showed his urgency.
“But to bring him here disguised!” she said loudly, seeing the heads turning on the street outside. Her voice sounded as strained and obvious as Charley’s, barely audible over her suddenly pounding heart. “As if I want to see him in such a state.”
“Hullo, Henry,” Darien said, his head rolling forward again. He did appear drunk, when it came to that, his eyes heavy-lidded, his speech muffled. As his compatriots heaved him across the threshold, the cloak slipped and she saw the dark stain on his beautiful coat.
“How bad?” she whispered, staring at Havering’s hand on Darien’s waist. It was smeared with red.
“James is bringing the leech,” Charley said grimly, and Henrietta’s blood went cold.
“That’s my girl,” Darien announced.
“Not the parlor,” Henrietta hissed, slamming the front door. “He’ll upset Lady Mama and the girls. Take him upstairs to my sitting room.”
The men dragged their burden up the stairs while James led another man in from the kitchen. Henrietta’s heart stopped as she recognized the surgeon’s bag. Darien’s boots slipped and scuffed on the runner, as if his muscles did not obey his command.
“The swell’s still in the rattler, dark in his daylights,” James reported.
“Havering will take Freddy home,” Charley said. “Best to pretend he’s sodden too.”
“Lord Alfred?” Henrietta gasped. “Darien, I told you to leave town! I told you.”
Darien groaned as his friends lowered him to the settee. “Tole you Freddy was a terrible shot,” he mumbled. “He missed.”
“No, he didn’t,” Henrietta said, unfastening Darien’s cravat with shaking hands while his friends held him upright. “But why the charade? Were you seen?”
“What do you think?” Charley snapped, all to pieces. “Daring insisted on an open carriage, so sure he’d walk away, and that imp of yours had to bring Freddy behind us as we can’t leave him alone. The whole town will know what we’re up to by noon.”
“Imp, now?” James bridled. “Care I don’t inform on ye for dueling!”
“Pitt’s men are too busy tossing people in jail for expressing their opinions in public,” Henrietta said, watching Havering and her brother wrestle Darien out of his coat. “I doubt he has time to arrest duelers. But to bring him here?”
“It was closest, I knew you’d be dressed, and he wanted to see you,” Charley said.
Darien opened his eyes. “Henry,” he slurred. “Kiss me ere I die.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Henrietta put a hand to her chest, wishing it would cease its wild, erratic thumping. “Charley, you’d best fetch Jasper’s brandy. We’re going to need it.”
“I’ll see Freddy home, then call on you,” Havering said, laying the soiled coat aside. “Devil take it, Daring, I wish I’d married the trull to save you this.”
“Who knows where she is,” Darien said. He let his head fall back on the couch. “Bon voyage to her. God, my arm! Someone needs to tell Rufie.”
“I’ll do it,” Havering said. “And get out of Freddy where she went.”
“Or where Perry went,” Darien said. “Someone ought to find him too.”
“Lady Celeste and Mr. Empson have gone where?” Henrietta asked, her eyes glued to the surgeon’s shears as he began cutting Darien out of his waistcoat. She stepped forward to hold his injured arm as the doctor peeled away the thick silk.
“No, we meant—” Havering paused, incredulous. “Celeste and Perry? It can’t be.”
“I’d believe anything of her,” Darien said. “See what Rufie knows. Henry, darling girl, where did you say that brandy was?”
“Charley’s fetching it.” She put a hand to his brow as the surgeon started on his shirt. “Darien, you impossible man, I told you he was going to shoot you.”
Darien slid his good arm around her waist and leaned his head against her bosom. “Don’t let me die, sawbones,” he muttered. “I’m going to marry this girl.”
“I haven’t agreed to anything,” Henrietta said, propping him up so the surgeon could finish removing his shirt.
Darien had a chest like a classical Greek statue, strong, lean, every muscle gracefully defined.
She couldn’t bear to think of that beautiful form gone still and cold from one reckless moment.