fifteen
For all Jo knew, duels might be fought in Vienna or Paris, but they were definitely not in England.
The only ones who still fought duels were certain deeply depraved rakes or scoundrels, who had already lost all reputation—as well as all sense of reason. It was, simply, not done.
For one thing, it was deeply illegal, and for another, it was uncouth.
If her brother dueled another man, Justin would be hanged for murder, the fool. The details of what had happened were quickly blurted by her maid as she helped her dress within what felt like seconds.
Instead of going to sleep, as he had promised her, Justin had apparently continued to drink after Jo had left him in the library. In his daze, he somehow remembered the mocking words spoken at his father’s funeral, and decided then and there that they deserved retaliation. In Justin’s mind, such comments were a capital offence to his father, the possessor of the title.
Which now belonged to him.
Thus, the man who had spoken them had to be challenged to a duel. The plan was hatched quickly and drunkenly—but easily, since all of his closest friend were currently staying in nearby establishments. With another of his stupid friends acting as his second, he and the offending gentleman were this minute preparing to count to ten, then turn and shoot.
Hannah had overheard everything, seeing as the young gentlemen had left the house roaring their plan for all the staff to hear. Deeply drunk, all of them, of course.
“Where, Hannah?”
Jo asked. “Where?”
“He s-said not to tell you, miss.”
Hannah was softly weeping.
“But you will tell me,”
Jo tried not to shake her.
Within minutes, she was on her horse, galloping through the fading darkness towards the clearing at the top of the hill. Praying she would not be too late.
…
She knew that Justin was mad with grief over what could have been, but this duel would not bring him the attention he so desperately needed from his father. For one thing, Papa was dead. There would be more ignoring Justin from now on than there had ever been before.
Still, Justin was a fool and, worse, a man, and he did not think: he acted.
And if he had already killed the stupid man who had dared to laugh at him, there would be nothing but exile for her brother. Supposing, of course, that he avoided the gallows.
As her horse crested the hill, she saw the silhouettes of four gentlemen, preparing to duel or already beginning to, cast against the dawn. A cluster of more gentlemen was standing to the side—her brother’s idiotic crowd of London friends, no doubt. That arrogant young duke, Ashton, and his diabolically beautiful Adonis of a friend, Lord Ingram, a marquis’ son among them, no doubt. Justin had not been so bad until he had fallen in with that crowd. Those unscrupulous, rakish men, who thought the whole world belonged to them just because of their titles and riches.
They were now looking on, indifferently, as her brother was becoming a murderer, not lifting a finger to stop him. They disgusted her, all of them. Jo reined her horse in with a mastery she wished she could apply to reining in her thoughts, and galloped on. When she reached the top, she did not even bother tethering the horse to a tree; she just ran.
When she reached them, her brother was lowering his sword, crossing his opponent’s expertly, if a little unsteadily. His face was cold, with barely any emotion, but his eyes were steely and focused. In a split second, she knew that he would aim that sword straight for his opponent’s heart.
And he would not miss.
She leapt.
Jo wasn’t afraid of a little swordplay—she was much better at it than Justin, and only a little better than Laurie. But currently, she had no sword. Only her hands. So those would have to do.
She threw herself between the dueling men, and pushed her brother’s rapier-wielding hand away with her own two hands. The other man fell, already pierced through, and as he did, his body’s dead weight dragged her with him. Trapped under his limp body, Jo lay there on the ground, dazed, and felt something warm and wet pooling under her bodice. Blood.
Maybe there is something to be said about a lady wearing gloves whenever she goes out, she mused. I really should have put mine on this time, at least.
Justin screamed, the sword dropping from his hand.
“Josephine!”
he sounded like a man demented.
“What do you think you’re doing, devil take you?”
But Jo was still catching her breath from suddenly jumping between two crossed swords. Please, no. Had she been too late? Had her brother already killed him? It certainly looked that way, judging by the blood gushing out of the man’s white shirt.
She turned around and disentangled herself, but she didn’t get up. She stayed on her knees, fumbling with the man’s bloodied clothes, trying to put his torn flesh together—stupidly. All she succeeded in doing was getting blood all over her hands and riding habit.
Justin was just standing there, panting, in utter shock. Completely still, like his seconds. And then a scream pierced the silence.
“Is she alive?”
a voice screamed—screamed—from the distant crowd of her brother’s idiotic friends.
“Is she breathing?”
Only the voice wasn’t idiotic. Well, it was, but it was also extremely familiar.
“Vidal! Have you killed her, you absolute piece of—”
The voice stopped. Hard breathing filled her ears as she was pulled almost violently from the ground and into a pair of rock-hard arms. Then a heart was beating frantically next to her ear.
“Jo,”
a voice was gasping for air next to her neck—Laurie’s voice.
“God Almighty, Jo. Jo.”
Just that. Her name. Over and over again, like a prayer.
“Put me down, you fool,”
Jo said, struggling against his iron-grip hold. He was immovable as a wall, his expression stony even as his heart beat like a drum.
‘You look like one of those tragic heroines from a story. You look like you should be carried in a man’s strong arms, away from danger.’
His words from that horrible day of the proposal came back to her unbidden. He shifted her against his sculpted chest and she—
Why did she think of it as ‘sculpted’, for heaven’s sake?
It was sculpted, that was why. Like a piece of marble.
More importantly, she had been there while he ‘sculpted’ it for years, during endless hours of boxing in the stables, and fencing with her, and then wishing he could test his strength against Gentleman Jackson’s in London. Maybe he finally had.
“Teddy, look at me!”
she all but screamed up at him.
“I am not hurt. It’s not my blood. I am not hurt.”
Something like recognition flickered in his stony eyes. His arms tightened around her like a manacle, but she’d broken through his petrified haze.
“It’s not me,”
she repeated patiently.
“It’s not my blood; I tried to help that poor man so my brother will not end up a murderer. It’s his blood. So will you stop being an utter oaf?”
He froze, mid-stride, still not letting her go. She waited for his stupid brain to catch up with her words.
“You’re unhurt?”
he murmured in a voice raspy as if from screaming.
He had screamed, hadn’t he? He’d screamed bloody murder. For her. No, that was silly; he had merely been frightened for her idiot of a brother, like she was. It hadn’t been for her. She should stop being so foolish—and he should stop carrying her. Right now.
She was still suspended in his arms, and they were gripping her like a drowning man’s.
“M-my head emptied of blood,”
he murmured. “S-sorry.”
He let her go so abruptly she stumbled. She righted herself with a most unladylike dive, and dusted off her dress. It was completely unsalvageable, the bodice turning black with blood.
“Forgive me,”
Laurie was mumbling, “I need to sit down for a minute.”
Which he did, right there on the grass, his long legs spread out like a spider’s.
Jo took pity on him.
“Would you stop dying long enough to look up at me?”
she demanded.
He blinked, trying to draw in enough air.
“I am all right,”
she repeated, as if talking to a child.
“But another man has possibly been killed at the hand of my brother.”
“I don’t care about another man,”
Laurie gasped, his voice raw, cut to threads.
“I don’t care about anything other than you being alive and not covered in blood…”
“We both know that’s not true,”
Jo said quietly, more so to interrupt whatever he was going to say next than for any other reason. His eyes would not leave her face, not even to blink.
The look of pure anguish on his face would give her nightmares for the rest of her life.
“Are you hurt?”
he asked tightly.
“No, you fool. I was trying to make sure that Justin had not killed that poor sod.”
He frowned at her use of the vulgar word. He had never frowned before when she’d used it—and she often did.
“What is wrong with you?”
“I told you, I got dizzy.”
“Why?”
Why was he suddenly getting dizzy around her all the time? What was wrong with the foolish boy? Laurie pressed his lips together, but his indifferent, frozen exterior slipped for just a second, and pure, primal terror was underneath.
“Why were you screaming?” Jo asked.
“Because I was afraid that I—”
he looked away, making a sort of choking sound.
“What, Laurie, what?”
“I would lose you,”
Laurie replied, rather explosively.
“Well, you won’t,”
Jo replied drily. Suddenly, she was so exhausted, she wanted to sit down on the grass as well.
“You are the one that left, anyway.”
“I had—”
he interrupted himself, casting a quick glance over her.
“You are trembling. Come on, let me wipe that blood off you. I can’t stand to look at it.
He was trembling and it was destroying her. After all these months of silence, of freezing her out, he was standing here, about to fall apart in front of her.
“I don’t need your help,”
she said quietly, and he nodded, a muscle ticking in his jaw.
“What will happen to Justin now?”
she asked.
“It depends on whether the other man dies or not,”
Laurie replied.
“If he does, Vidal shall be hanged.”
At the sound of her brother’s new name, ‘Vidal’, a name that had so long belonged to her father, Jo shuddered. She stumbled and Laurie’s arm shot out to steady her. He stopped short of touching her. His sleeves were rolled up, and thick veins stood out on his lean muscles, and she felt something deep and bottomless awaken within her. Something like hunger.
Do not think of that kiss by the water.
Do not think of that kiss by the water.
Do not think—
“I am sorry,”
he said.
“I know you love your brother.”
“I do love him,”
Jo replied.
“But I am not sure I like him so much. Haven’t done in a while. He has changed so much since he fell in with those London aristocrats.”
Laurie chuckled drily and stood to his feet.
“You are the only one who is brave enough to say what we all have been thinking.”
He looked down the hill, towards the church behind which her father was buried.
“And I worry it is only going to go downhill for him now. There goes his last chance of redeeming himself.”
“You mean my father?”
Jo scoffed in the most unladylike manner she possibly could.
“Justin spent his whole life until now trying to gain his approval, but it was always a hopeless case, from the very beginning. Papa barely even saw him. He may have died two days ago, but he left us years ago. He and Mama both died the day Beth did. We have been raising ourselves since then.”
He shuddered next to her, and dipped his chin to her shoulder, like he did when they were children. It was such a familiar, simple gesture; she did not know why it sent a knife to her chest. A stab of longing for something that was over—and could never be retrieved—hit her straight through the heart.
“You know all this,”
Jo said.
“You were there. You saw.”
“Ask me to stay,”
Laurie said, turning to face her abruptly, his voice gruff, unlike anything she had heard before. “Ask me.”
Jo felt the familiar rage bubble up again, like a thick, black thing, choking her.
“Why do you keep doing that?”
she sputtered through gritted teeth.
“Do what?”
He asked, all raised eyebrows and perfect, lush lips.
Keep ruining things.
Keep looking at me with those lethal eyes.
Keep existing with that cathedral-sharp jawline.
“Proposing,”
she managed to say.
“It’s your fault, Jo,”
he said with a deep frown.
“It’s all I can think about. You’ve ruined me.”
“When did I do that?”
He made a helpless gesture, tried to laugh. It sounded rather wolfish. Somehow pitiful and savage at the same time. Ridiculous. It sounded ridiculous.
“No specific moment I can think of,”
he said.
“I was in way over my head, drowning before I knew to save myself. You ruin me just by existing.”
She closed her eyes.
I am going to lose him forever, she thought frantically. He is going to leave me again, and this time I will never see him again. If I can’t give him what he wants, I can’t keep him.
It’s either lose him or lose myself.
She shivered violently, and it was not from the cold. Laurie’s eyebrows knit together.
“You are afraid,”
he stated it like a fact, not a question.
“What are you afraid of, Jo?”
“Of… of this.”
“Explain.”
“I can’t explain it. I can’t…”
I can’t breathe when you are not here, she thought. “This,”
she said out loud.
“What this?”
His eyes were full of tears now.
“Loving me? Are you afr—Of loving me? Answer me!”
He was trembling from head to foot, running out of breath.
“Answer me.”
His voice dropped low, a mere rumble in his throat.
“It’s frightening.”
The words were wrought out of her.
“Why?”
It sounded like a sob.
Because I lose the ground beneath my feet every time I think of you. Because I lose my very breath whenever I so much as catch a glimpse of your face.
She was so afraid she could not even speak. Afraid of what would come out of her own mouth if she did.
“You will never feel the same, will you?”
Laurie murmured. She looked down.
“Ask me to stay,”
he repeated in this unrecognizable voice that was full of heat and longing and made her legs go weak.
“I can’t do that,”
she replied. Asking him to stay would imply that she returned even a fraction of what he had confessed to her that horrible day.
And she didn’t.
I don’t. Not even a little bit.
I really don’t.
Am I trying to persuade myself?
“Jo, please…”
“It’s getting worse, Teddy. My darkness. Since Papa died, I have been so angry and I can’t stop.”
He took her hands in his, warmed them between his fingers. She closed her eyes and let herself lean on him—even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t. He slowly led her to sit back down on the soft grass.
“You can be angry all you want. I’ll help you be angry,”
he said. He sounded insane. He probably was.
“You won’t be able to stand it,” she said.
“I will. I am. I can.”
“I can’t make anyone happy right now,”
Jo said, gently disentangling her hands and turning away. She heard a sharp intake of breath, as if she’d stabbed her best friend through the chest.
“I can’t ask you to stay.”
“Of course you can.”
“I can’t! My darkness will be too much for you.”
“I love your darkness,” he said.
“Laurie, you liar. You don’t. Look at you, you are made of pure sunshine.”
Or at least you used to be.
The darkness was spreading to him, too. Her darkness. She had barely seen him, and already it seemed that she had snuffed out the light in his eyes.
“Then I'll drown out your darkness,” he said.
She shivered at the word ‘drown’: it evoked the terrible fear that had gripped her the night of his proposal.
He sounded desperately earnest, as if he meant every word. Little did he know, he was already drowning in it, the fool. At the absurdity of his words, she made a sound that came out as a laugh. Well, nearly.
It was mostly a sob.
“How did this happen?”
she asked. She wasn’t expecting an answer, just wondering out loud.
“How is it possible that you… you feel like this after growing up with me? After knowing me so well, for so long? How did you not grow up hating me?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught him nearly choke as the words ‘I love you’ sprang to his lips and he fought to bite them back.
“Because you saved me,”
he said instead, and his eyes glittered. Were those tears? She couldn’t look. She turned her face away.
She wanted the earth to swallow her up.
“And now you’re killing me,” he added.
Jo’s breath caught in her throat.
Laurie drew himself up, visibly closing off his expression, shrouding himself in a cloak of ice again. He took her hand in his and kissed it lightly.
She shivered at the strange intimacy, the exaggerated reverence of the gesture. It should have felt silly, two people who had once been such good friends as they, standing there, her hand in his, his lips brushing her skin.
It didn’t.
It felt dangerous. Raw. Painful.
It hurt—not her skin, but something deep inside her, which was suddenly empty and aching. Something that could only be satisfied by him.
No. No, I cannot feel this way.
I will not allow myself to.
‘What are you afraid of?’ a voice asked inside her head. She did not know how to answer it. She ignored it.
…
When Laurie spoke next, it was in a stranger’s voice. He spoke in the formal tones of Lord Lowry, which sounded nothing like her Teddy.
“I have tarried too long,” he said.
“Don’t leave like this, Laurie, please…”
He did not appear to be listening.
He tried to get up. It looked as if his legs were shaking, but finally he managed it. As soon as he was able to stand, he started walking away. It was becoming their new habit, Jo realized with a sick tightening around her stomach. Him walking away while she watched, helpless.
“Wait!”
Jo said, more loudly.
He froze, but did not turn around. His back turned stiff, muscles popping out.
“What will happen to my brother if he turns out to be a…”
She could not pronounce that word again.
“If the man he fought with dies?”
“We needn’t worry about that yet,”
Laurie replied, his back still toward her. But his voice was softer, and if she ignored the fact that he refused to look at her, she could pretend that he was the old Laurie.
“We shall have to wait and see. It will become clear in a few days at most, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“And if he…”
“I will take care of Justin,”
Laurie said.
“Make sure he doesn’t kill anybody else in the meantime.”
A gasp escaped her at the brutality of his words and he turned around sharply to meet her eyes.
“I shall arrange for your brother to come with me,”
he said.
“Stay on the continent until we decide if it’s safe for him to be in England again.”
Jo suddenly couldn’t breathe.
It is happening: I am losing them both.
“I’ll watch him like a hawk, you have my word,”
Laurie said.
She reached out as if to take his arm, but he flinched at the very idea, and her arm dropped by her side. His eyes flickered.
“Is there any other way I can be of service?”
he asked. She was staring at him hungrily, afraid he would bolt if she so much as uttered a word. He had been cold before; he was anxious now. Anxious to leave.
For heaven’s sake, she thought. Do not let my foolish brother destroy your life as well as his. Do not follow him into war, if he chooses that as his next act of stupidity and defiance.
“He won’t go to war,”
Laurie said, reading her mind—as always.
“I won’t let him.”
Jo flinched.
“Keep him… Not that anyone can, but please try to keep him out of trouble.”
“Always.”
He bowed stiffly.
“ I take my leave of you, my lady.”
No! Stop! She nearly screamed it at him.
“When you leave, the light will go off,”
she said instead. She said it softly, timidly, and hated herself for speaking like a frightened child. But at least, he might not have heard her.
“Then don’t let me leave,”
he murmured. He had heard.
“You want to leave, Laurie,”
she said.
“You can’t stay. You can barely look at me.”
“I don’t have to leave. Just… just give me a little hope, love.”
She shivered at the word.
“No, don’t call me that. I’m not that. I’m your friend, your everything… but not that.”
“Just tell me you feel something for me.”
He was pleading now, the nearest thing to begging he’d ever come to. It tore her heart open.
“I feel everything for you,”
Jo said. He inhaled deeply, reeled on his feet a little bit.
“Except for what you want me to feel.”
He closed his eyes and turned deathly pale.
“I can’t lie to you, Laurie, not even to make you stay. Not if I don’t feel I should in my heart. Don’t ask me to go against my heart.”
He looked at her. Lie to me, his eyes said, raw with need. Lie. She looked away for a second.
The color slowly flowed back into his cheeks and they turned red with anger. When he met her eyes again, they held a stony expression, as if he was closing up his walls again. Her heart sank. This is the end.
“Then I can’t stay,”
he whispered.
“Don’t go, please, I can’t… I can’t exist without you.”
“Do you think it’s just you who is suffering? Do you think I have been able to breathe since I left you?”
He turned and started walking away again.
For the last time.
Suddenly, that deep, bottomless pain in her chest was replaced by unbridled fury.
“I knew this would happen! I knew I would lose you!”
She shouted at his retreating back. If he heard, he gave no indication.
Except for the fact that his body coiled as a tight rope, as if every step was more painful than the last. Every step that took him away from her.
Good.
Dear Beth,
And what does the foolish boy mean by ‘getting dizzy’ every time he so much as deigns to look in my general direction? Always pretending he’s weak when I’m near. Well, the new ‘always’.
He never used to be like this before.
He was all laughter and playful pushes and pretending to fight with me and chasing me, and—I hate it. One would think the silly boy is really besotted. I mean, he is, I have known that for quite some years, but I was patiently waiting for him to outgrow it.
But love?
He is claiming it’s love now, Beth. Can you imagine?
No. I do not believe it. If it wasn’t for that maddened look on his face when he thought I was wounded, I would completely dismiss the thought.
But now… After seeing his face like that… I am not so sure. I keep seeing it in my dreams. In nightmares. That empty look of fear, as if he had lost the entire world.
So I am wondering: Is it love, after all?
Can it be something more than the foolish obsession of a lonely boy?
And if it is love, then where does that leave me?
Can I ever love him? Or anyone, for that matter?
I cannot as yet answer that question. Maybe I never will.
I am sorry for starting this letter in the middle of a sentence. I am sorry for my jumbled, sordid thoughts.
Then again, it’s not as if anyone will ever read it, is it?
I am sorry. I am angry and cruel tonight. My quill is scratchy, my head hurts. And my heart is in agony. The only thing that helps is writing to you. Forgive my darkness.
Eternally,
Your sister